There isn't an anti-virus product on the planet that's 100% perfect. Every one of them misses things and every one of them has false postives. Some worse than others.
Google doesn't seem to say if they've licensed somebody's scanner engine or rolled their own. I don't care for any of the licensed engines and they may BE Google but I don't see how that qualifies them to roll their own.
I use a commercial AV scanner product. I think it works resonably well. I trust it as much as anyone can trust these things. The product offers the option to warn me or repair most infected files. Google doesn't seem to do that, they just throw away the file. Suppose MY scanner can fix it. I should be allowed to try. Google won't let me. Google won't even tell me that it's deleting the files.
Look Google, I don't need you to make those choices for me. I signed up for email, not so you could play games with my mail.
AVD has been dumping videos at rock-bottom prices since the summer. $6.00 for a DVD that sells (or doesn't) in stores for $40 or $50. Dozens and dozens of titles all at bargain prices.
How long before the stores and middlemen disributors get pissed that they're being severely undercut by ADV selling direct at what has to be a loss? Why so many firesales? Is warehouse space THAT expensive?
If the music and movie industries had their way, their product would be kept locked away inside a vault buried under a mountain surrounded by armed guards, a moat, landmines, pits of diesel ready to burn, and lots and lots of razor wire.
NOBODY is gonna steal even a look at the box, and even if they did, it's sitting on a self-destruct device that would scare Indiana Jones(TM).
Thanks for making sure a) nobody can touch your content, and B) if they do, they and the content get nuked.
It's like that car alarm from one the James Bond movies featuring the innocent "protected by an anti-theft device" sticker. The goon laughs and tries to smash the windshield with a pipe. The car explodes.
Extreme, yeah, but he didn't steal it, did he? Nope! The content is protected!
Come on. The CNN article was about the lack of really good launch games.
NOTHING bad was said about the console itself unless you count a slight mention of the monster power brick. It will probably take a year or two before we start to see games that REALLY show what the hardware can do and probably another couple years after that before we see games hit the limits of what the 360 can do, so there's no point in judging the 360 by what the first round of games can demonstrate.
Chris Morris' take on Xbox360 is similar to mine: The hardware perfomance is amazing. Some of the launch games are impressive (PGR and PDZ for two) and I want a 360 like crazy BUT there isn't one launch title that I want badly enough to stand in line hoping to get a system on launch day.
I was THIS close to spending $3 on a portable AM/FM radio I can carry around in my pocket, but thanks to Cingular's new phone+radio combo plan, now I can spend 50 times the money to listen to the same thing AND pay extra per month for it too!
Wow! I never knew radio could be so much fun!/sarscasm
This reminds me of the old joke about a consultant charging you to use your own watch to tell you want time it is. Except Cingular is taking broadcast radio you can get for free and charging you for it.
TV on phones has the same problem: you can buy a lowend portable TV for under $20 (yes, you can!) or even a decent one for under $100 and watch broadcast TV for free, OR you can buy a cell phone with TV, get a handful of channels, and pay lots per month for it.
The Neil Diamond disc is actually pretty darn good. I bought that one for my mom. She's senile so she thinks it's suddenly Christmas. But the disc makes her happy.
And yeah, the stupid CD IS infected with the rootkit. Thankfully mom doesn't know how to play CDs on her computer and wouldn't ever try that anyway.
EAC had no problem at all ripping songs from it, so Sony prevented nothing. I'm going to make a copy of the CD so mom can lose it (she will). And then I will make another copy and give that to her. And so on. What Sony thinks about this is their problem.
a lot of anime, for example, is written and designed in Japan but drawn in Korea. Is it really anime? Probably.
Not probably. It IS anime. The writing, storyboards, design work, sound, acting, post and funding are done in Japan. The actual anime production -cel painting, camera effects and filming, etc- has been outsourced to subcontractors in Korea, Malaysia, China, etc, for more than 20 years. Disney does the same thing, sometimes sending their cels to the very same subcontractors. It's all about the cost of labor.
At the most basic level, a cel is nothing more than a sheet of acetate (cost X pennies), the paint (X more pennies) and the labor somebody has to spend to put the paint ON the cel (X dollars). The cheaper the labor, the better.
Animation subcontracting was quite a hot little specialty until computerized anime programs (animo for one) finally got rolling in the last couple years. Now robots are making cartoons about robots. Human cel painters are in decline.
Subcontracting also goes on in the manga industry and of course in the US comic industry.
The 360 does so exist: I touched one Friday at Walmart. It was plugged in and fired up and the graphics looked great. I played a couple demos.
So it does indeed exist.
Still didn't see any launch titles that make it a must-buy for me, and I hate the way they have moved the "black and white" buttons to the top middle of the controller. It's uncomfortable to reach that far.
Skype turns your PC into a peer-to-peer node which is all nice and well if you know and agree to allow that to happen. But what if your ISP or workplace or whatever happens to forbid P2P apps.
It's possible a clueless user could install Skype, skip the EULA and suddenly find themselves banned from their ISP or pink-slipped, for something they didn't realize they were doing. "But I just wanted to make free phone calls!!!"
Reality check: my workplace considers P2P a firing offense. My ISP technicaly bans P2P but hasn't really enforced it as much as they have quietly lowered bandwidth for heavy P2P users.
Yep. Spirals seem to be an extremely popular form of matter for very large and very small things. Some galaxies are spirals but so is DNA.
Maybe it reflects the underlying structure of the universe, or maybe it's just that things spin when gravity or mass become even slightly imbalanced, or maybe there's another reason.
Perhaps someone forgot to put a shim under the front corner of the universe's washing machine.
Speaking as a trained Xerox Docu* operator who can recite his DEEZEROCEE serials in his sleep.....
The DocuColor printers in question are very high end printer/copiers that are installed and maintained by trained technicians known by Xerox as Customer Service Engineers or CSEs. When it breaks or needs parts, you call your CSE. Think "on-site support" but on steroids. You pay a ton for this.
The system clock is set by the installer CSE and possibly updated as needed on subsequent service calls, and there are MANY of those as DocuColors require frequent maintenance and upkeep. It is not uncommon to have service once a week for some models. Or worse. They can be touchy beasts. The machines, I mean. The CSEs can be your pal or your worst nightmare. I like the ones my bosses hate. Go fig.
So what is the clock for? Among other things, time stamps are used by the printshop for tracking when every single print was made including which operator made it. So no more late night "free copies" for your pals. Xerox also uses the logs for all sorts of legit reasons. Nothing evil there.
So what about resetting the clock? First you'd have to get the machine open. This is not like a computer with handy access panels and common PCBs, er, that's PWBs in Xerox-speak. You'd have to know the machine inside-out, have the tools and the skill to take it apart (God help you), and hope that the battery is resettable rather that buried inside a chip. Xerox is very, very aware of people trying to cheat the machine meters to make free copies so stuff like counters and clocks are already armored and protected from prying hands.
Assuming you managed to do all those things and got the machine back together, then it has to be recalibrated because taking it apart will have wrecked the system setup. So you have to call your CSE, who resets the clock straight away, probably by pushing the keys with the bones he removed from your hands for messing with his machine. If you're still alive at this point, you are right back where you started!
Side notes: the vast majority of DocuColors are leased out by Xerox rather than sold, so the machine is normally Xerox property from assembly to reman to reman to reman to junkyard. Why? Some of them can cost half a million and up for new, less for used, but either way these are not something people "buy" when they can simply lease. GE Credit is happy to finance the leases and end users find it much cheaper and they don't end up stuck with obsolete machines.
Many of the older machines can and do end up on the sale market and it is possible to buy one and own it, but it will still require service (lots for an old machine), toner, supplies, parts, and preventive maintenance. Xerox controls almost all the DocuColor parts, supplies, ink, and most of the trained CSEs so you pretty much have no choice but to sign on for a Xerox service contract even when you own the thing free and clear.
Yes, there ARE trained key operators who can get in and do SOME maintenance chores but only Xerox can get parts and has the technical knowledge to use them.
Buoyed by their success with Yahoo Podcastg, Yahoo today announced a revolutionary system tha will allow internet users to "search" for "things" and eventually "find" them too.
As part of that process, Yahoo also introduced a technique they are calling "hyperlinks" where users can "click" on a "search result" and actually see the result!
Yahoo predicts "lots" of people will be using this system real soon!
Innovation is everthing!
Next they'll be offering up email and maybe even auctions.
That's why they have flunkies to do: listen to the employees, put their comments in the circular file, and make sure to record a bad mark for the next annual review.
"Too ambitious. Emailed C*O about a new process that would cut costs and save the company."
The bigger issue is that MOST consumers still watch TV and DVDs and games on plain old standard def TVs. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray hidef movies will offer nothing new, no immediate improvement over standard DVD to these consumers. Most people are happy with standard DVD video. Sure, HD is better but most people don't know or don't care. They just want to watch a movie.
So there's going to have to be a helluva incentive to get them to fork over money for new discs and new player machines, and to make it worse, the movies won't be as cheap ad DVDs and the new players are NOT going to be the $29.95 consumers have come to expect from DVD players. Remember when DVD players first came out? Getting one for $200 was considered an absolute steal. A movie for less than $50 was considered good.
I suspect the new formats are going to get off to a very slow start, which will, without a doubt, be blamed on downloads and piracy and everything ELSE rather than the format war, the lack of actual need right now for HD content, and the high price of new hardware.
This must be the reason why I keep hearing electrical engineers would love to scrap the US 110/120 system and go to 220/240. Reduced line losses, reduced amps, etc.
I think the main objections were that you'd have to use some sort of "smart" outlet to automatically switch between new appliances and legacy 110 stuff, and apparently it's easier to shock yourself and die from the higher voltages. Might be wrong on that.
: Is it worthwhile to limit the advances of potentially destructive sciences like this one or is it an inevitability?
The problem with limiting study of subjects such as this (or stem cells, or anything else) is that there will always be someone or a group of someones who will not obey they limits.
I.e. Congress may pass laws to forbid US researchers from studying stem cells but foreign powers have no such problems and will push their scientists to pursue the goals. Net result is that the foreign powers have the potentially very powerful technology and the US does not. But we've held the moral ground, by golly!
In the case of fusion from anything, you can bet every nation on the planet with any kind of military force -and probably many private companies- will be looking very carefully at this, if it seems like it will work.
If a group of nations stands back and says they won't allow the research, there will surely be plenty of nations which will allow it, and the research will still go on no matter what.
In the case of stem cells, we have already seen dozens of countries jump in on this. There is far too much to be gained, and honestly, what the US says or does is of decreasing concern to many countries.
Yeah, I'm probably going to blow my karma saying that. It's not anti-American to state the facts as they are. Oh well.
It doesn't matter if the details published or not. Some of the 9/11 highjackers had gone to flight schools. They were familiar with the operation of the airliner and the crew. Secret procedures leak one way or another.
Anyone concerned with highjacking another plane would probably know about "secret" tricks like wristbands or hidden alarm buttons.
I think this is all kind of moot, however, because anyone highjacking an airliner these days is going to get beaten to death by angry passengers who have nothing to lose. The phrase "I have a knife, I am taking over this plane!" no longer has power.
I do like that heart monitor idea: that would help the pilots keep tabs on the hot new flight attendant's vitals.;)
(I am not being a pig: there are female pilots and male flight attendants too.)
Agreed: it did not have spyware. Used WinMX heavily from when Napster closed down right up until early 2005. No problems at all.
This recent RIAA action is the first time I can recall ANYONE going after WinMX; no doubt RIAA would like to make this quiet and humble program into "just another evil spyware P2P" app.
Come on, my PDA is already a pain to use because it's the OS is trying to be desktop Windows on a tiny machine with a bad screen and no keyboard.
Hey MS, If you're gonna make the PDA entirely unusable, why not go all-out and make it run DOS or *shudder* CP/M or something even more arcane and unsuited for a PDA touch screen. Gary Killdall, where are you!?!?! There is work left to do!
Yes, I know there are DOS prompt apps for PocketPC. No, I don't want to carefully peck in letters with a stylus. Thanks anyway.
My PDA currently has a flaky touch screen that has already been replaced once. When it finally dies, I'm going to get an iPod and get smug. I hear that comes packed in those Apple factory boxes.:)
I used to live next door to a 7-11. Yes, I gained a lot of weight from 24 hour snacks. Sigh.
Lucky for us, I moved and 7-11 long ago abandonded my new state -there literally aren't any 7-11s within hundreds of miles- so I don't have to worry about drinking too many Slurpees.
We do still have Icee machines in assorted gas stations, and there's always the frozen drinks at QuikTrip which I like better than 7-11 anyway.
The thing is, Apple hasn't got the first shot at it because this phone is NOT the first cellphone with MP3 support.
And "they'll sell the same number of devices" doesn't apply either because this phone is really a Motorola product running an Apple software app, which is different from an Apple hardware and software combo like the iPod. Mot gets the money, if any, from phone sales. Apple loses money if someone buys this phone instead of an iPod.
For this phone, Apple is basically a third-party software vendor. That's harsh new territory for Apple. Maybe this is a toe in the water for selling a standalone OS.
Do these evacuees have radios to listen? I'm sure some do but enough to make this worthwhile?
I'm not knocking the idea of helping any way possible but this radio station idea reminds me of something that happened to me some years back.
Me and some pals started our own fan convention. Not important which one. I think it's still running. Anyway, one of the founders got the idea that we should have our own pirate radio station running during the convention. It was mostly an attempt to look cool -"we got our own radio station, girls will like us, or at least look in our general direction!"- mixed with simple ego.
The idea went nowhere thanks to cooler heads realizing that the convention attendees would be too busy doing other stuff instead of wandering around with walkmans.
Slashdot Mirror
Burning karma...
There isn't an anti-virus product on the planet that's 100% perfect. Every one of them misses things and every one of them has false postives. Some worse than others.
Google doesn't seem to say if they've licensed somebody's scanner engine or rolled their own. I don't care for any of the licensed engines and they may BE Google but I don't see how that qualifies them to roll their own.
I use a commercial AV scanner product. I think it works resonably well. I trust it as much as anyone can trust these things. The product offers the option to warn me or repair most infected files. Google doesn't seem to do that, they just throw away the file. Suppose MY scanner can fix it. I should be allowed to try. Google won't let me. Google won't even tell me that it's deleting the files.
Look Google, I don't need you to make those choices for me. I signed up for email, not so you could play games with my mail.
Worse,
Rent 1 = BitTorrent +infinity.
AVD has been dumping videos at rock-bottom prices since the summer. $6.00 for a DVD that sells (or doesn't) in stores for $40 or $50. Dozens and dozens of titles all at bargain prices.
How long before the stores and middlemen disributors get pissed that they're being severely undercut by ADV selling direct at what has to be a loss? Why so many firesales? Is warehouse space THAT expensive?
Phone number, check. But forget the restaurant: I'd cook for her.
If the music and movie industries had their way, their product would be kept locked away inside a vault buried under a mountain surrounded by armed guards, a moat, landmines, pits of diesel ready to burn, and lots and lots of razor wire.
NOBODY is gonna steal even a look at the box, and even if they did, it's sitting on a self-destruct device that would scare Indiana Jones(TM).
Thanks for making sure a) nobody can touch your content, and B) if they do, they and the content get nuked.
It's like that car alarm from one the James Bond movies featuring the innocent "protected by an anti-theft device" sticker. The goon laughs and tries to smash the windshield with a pipe. The car explodes.
Extreme, yeah, but he didn't steal it, did he? Nope! The content is protected!
Come on. The CNN article was about the lack of really good launch games.
NOTHING bad was said about the console itself unless you count a slight mention of the monster power brick. It will probably take a year or two before we start to see games that REALLY show what the hardware can do and probably another couple years after that before we see games hit the limits of what the 360 can do, so there's no point in judging the 360 by what the first round of games can demonstrate.
Chris Morris' take on Xbox360 is similar to mine: The hardware perfomance is amazing. Some of the launch games are impressive (PGR and PDZ for two) and I want a 360 like crazy BUT there isn't one launch title that I want badly enough to stand in line hoping to get a system on launch day.
So none of you should try to get one either, OK?
I was THIS close to spending $3 on a portable AM/FM radio I can carry around in my pocket, but thanks to Cingular's new phone+radio combo plan, now I can spend 50 times the money to listen to the same thing AND pay extra per month for it too!
/sarscasm
Wow! I never knew radio could be so much fun!
This reminds me of the old joke about a consultant charging you to use your own watch to tell you want time it is. Except Cingular is taking broadcast radio you can get for free and charging you for it.
TV on phones has the same problem: you can buy a lowend portable TV for under $20 (yes, you can!) or even a decent one for under $100 and watch broadcast TV for free, OR you can buy a cell phone with TV, get a handful of channels, and pay lots per month for it.
The Neil Diamond disc is actually pretty darn good. I bought that one for my mom. She's senile so she thinks it's suddenly Christmas. But the disc makes her happy.
And yeah, the stupid CD IS infected with the rootkit. Thankfully mom doesn't know how to play CDs on her computer and wouldn't ever try that anyway.
EAC had no problem at all ripping songs from it, so Sony prevented nothing. I'm going to make a copy of the CD so mom can lose it (she will). And then I will make another copy and give that to her. And so on. What Sony thinks about this is their problem.
a lot of anime, for example, is written and designed in Japan but drawn in Korea. Is it really anime? Probably.
Not probably. It IS anime. The writing, storyboards, design work, sound, acting, post and funding are done in Japan. The actual anime production -cel painting, camera effects and filming, etc- has been outsourced to subcontractors in Korea, Malaysia, China, etc, for more than 20 years. Disney does the same thing, sometimes sending their cels to the very same subcontractors. It's all about the cost of labor.
At the most basic level, a cel is nothing more than a sheet of acetate (cost X pennies), the paint (X more pennies) and the labor somebody has to spend to put the paint ON the cel (X dollars). The cheaper the labor, the better.
Animation subcontracting was quite a hot little specialty until computerized anime programs (animo for one) finally got rolling in the last couple years. Now robots are making cartoons about robots. Human cel painters are in decline.
Subcontracting also goes on in the manga industry and of course in the US comic industry.
The 360 does so exist: I touched one Friday at Walmart. It was plugged in and fired up and the graphics looked great. I played a couple demos.
So it does indeed exist.
Still didn't see any launch titles that make it a must-buy for me, and I hate the way they have moved the "black and white" buttons to the top middle of the controller. It's uncomfortable to reach that far.
Skype turns your PC into a peer-to-peer node which is all nice and well if you know and agree to allow that to happen. But what if your ISP or workplace or whatever happens to forbid P2P apps.
It's possible a clueless user could install Skype, skip the EULA and suddenly find themselves banned from their ISP or pink-slipped, for something they didn't realize they were doing. "But I just wanted to make free phone calls!!!"
Reality check: my workplace considers P2P a firing offense. My ISP technicaly bans P2P but hasn't really enforced it as much as they have quietly lowered bandwidth for heavy P2P users.
Yep. Spirals seem to be an extremely popular form of matter for very large and very small things. Some galaxies are spirals but so is DNA.
Maybe it reflects the underlying structure of the universe, or maybe it's just that things spin when gravity or mass become even slightly imbalanced, or maybe there's another reason.
Perhaps someone forgot to put a shim under the front corner of the universe's washing machine.
Speaking as a trained Xerox Docu* operator who can recite his DEEZEROCEE serials in his sleep.....
The DocuColor printers in question are very high end printer/copiers that are installed and maintained by trained technicians known by Xerox as Customer Service Engineers or CSEs. When it breaks or needs parts, you call your CSE. Think "on-site support" but on steroids. You pay a ton for this.
The system clock is set by the installer CSE and possibly updated as needed on subsequent service calls, and there are MANY of those as DocuColors require frequent maintenance and upkeep. It is not uncommon to have service once a week for some models. Or worse. They can be touchy beasts. The machines, I mean. The CSEs can be your pal or your worst nightmare. I like the ones my bosses hate. Go fig.
So what is the clock for? Among other things, time stamps are used by the printshop for tracking when every single print was made including which operator made it. So no more late night "free copies" for your pals. Xerox also uses the logs for all sorts of legit reasons. Nothing evil there.
So what about resetting the clock? First you'd have to get the machine open. This is not like a computer with handy access panels and common PCBs, er, that's PWBs in Xerox-speak. You'd have to know the machine inside-out, have the tools and the skill to take it apart (God help you), and hope that the battery is resettable rather that buried inside a chip. Xerox is very, very aware of people trying to cheat the machine meters to make free copies so stuff like counters and clocks are already armored and protected from prying hands.
Assuming you managed to do all those things and got the machine back together, then it has to be recalibrated because taking it apart will have wrecked the system setup. So you have to call your CSE, who resets the clock straight away, probably by pushing the keys with the bones he removed from your hands for messing with his machine. If you're still alive at this point, you are right back where you started!
Side notes: the vast majority of DocuColors are leased out by Xerox rather than sold, so the machine is normally Xerox property from assembly to reman to reman to reman to junkyard. Why? Some of them can cost half a million and up for new, less for used, but either way these are not something people "buy" when they can simply lease. GE Credit is happy to finance the leases and end users find it much cheaper and they don't end up stuck with obsolete machines.
Many of the older machines can and do end up on the sale market and it is possible to buy one and own it, but it will still require service (lots for an old machine), toner, supplies, parts, and preventive maintenance. Xerox controls almost all the DocuColor parts, supplies, ink, and most of the trained CSEs so you pretty much have no choice but to sign on for a Xerox service contract even when you own the thing free and clear.
Yes, there ARE trained key operators who can get in and do SOME maintenance chores but only Xerox can get parts and has the technical knowledge to use them.
Buoyed by their success with Yahoo Podcastg, Yahoo today announced a revolutionary system tha will allow internet users to "search" for "things" and eventually "find" them too.
As part of that process, Yahoo also introduced a technique they are calling "hyperlinks" where users can "click" on a "search result" and actually see the result!
Yahoo predicts "lots" of people will be using this system real soon!
Innovation is everthing! Next they'll be offering up email and maybe even auctions.
That's why they have flunkies to do: listen to the employees, put their comments in the circular file, and make sure to record a bad mark for the next annual review.
"Too ambitious. Emailed C*O about a new process that would cut costs and save the company."
The company I work for just last week issued brand new Verizon Blackberries to all the managers, on-call staff, and important people-type staff.
It was Wednesday, I believe. We managed to break one of the holders in less than 24 hours. I hoped at the time that it wasn't an omen.
If our company was jumping in with both feet, it was a) probably a shallow pool of water, and b) time for everyone else to jump out.
The bigger issue is that MOST consumers still watch TV and DVDs and games on plain old standard def TVs. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray hidef movies will offer nothing new, no immediate improvement over standard DVD to these consumers. Most people are happy with standard DVD video. Sure, HD is better but most people don't know or don't care. They just want to watch a movie.
So there's going to have to be a helluva incentive to get them to fork over money for new discs and new player machines, and to make it worse, the movies won't be as cheap ad DVDs and the new players are NOT going to be the $29.95 consumers have come to expect from DVD players. Remember when DVD players first came out? Getting one for $200 was considered an absolute steal. A movie for less than $50 was considered good.
I suspect the new formats are going to get off to a very slow start, which will, without a doubt, be blamed on downloads and piracy and everything ELSE rather than the format war, the lack of actual need right now for HD content, and the high price of new hardware.
This must be the reason why I keep hearing electrical engineers would love to scrap the US 110/120 system and go to 220/240. Reduced line losses, reduced amps, etc.
I think the main objections were that you'd have to use some sort of "smart" outlet to automatically switch between new appliances and legacy 110 stuff, and apparently it's easier to shock yourself and die from the higher voltages. Might be wrong on that.
: Is it worthwhile to limit the advances of potentially destructive sciences like this one or is it an inevitability?
The problem with limiting study of subjects such as this (or stem cells, or anything else) is that there will always be someone or a group of someones who will not obey they limits.
I.e. Congress may pass laws to forbid US researchers from studying stem cells but foreign powers have no such problems and will push their scientists to pursue the goals. Net result is that the foreign powers have the potentially very powerful technology and the US does not. But we've held the moral ground, by golly!
In the case of fusion from anything, you can bet every nation on the planet with any kind of military force -and probably many private companies- will be looking very carefully at this, if it seems like it will work.
If a group of nations stands back and says they won't allow the research, there will surely be plenty of nations which will allow it, and the research will still go on no matter what.
In the case of stem cells, we have already seen dozens of countries jump in on this. There is far too much to be gained, and honestly, what the US says or does is of decreasing concern to many countries.
Yeah, I'm probably going to blow my karma saying that. It's not anti-American to state the facts as they are. Oh well.
It doesn't matter if the details published or not. Some of the 9/11 highjackers had gone to flight schools. They were familiar with the operation of the airliner and the crew. Secret procedures leak one way or another.
;)
Anyone concerned with highjacking another plane would probably know about "secret" tricks like wristbands or hidden alarm buttons.
I think this is all kind of moot, however, because anyone highjacking an airliner these days is going to get beaten to death by angry passengers who have nothing to lose. The phrase "I have a knife, I am taking over this plane!" no longer has power.
I do like that heart monitor idea: that would help the pilots keep tabs on the hot new flight attendant's vitals.
(I am not being a pig: there are female pilots and male flight attendants too.)
Agreed: it did not have spyware. Used WinMX heavily from when Napster closed down right up until early 2005. No problems at all.
This recent RIAA action is the first time I can recall ANYONE going after WinMX; no doubt RIAA would like to make this quiet and humble program into "just another evil spyware P2P" app.
FUD.
Come on, my PDA is already a pain to use because it's the OS is trying to be desktop Windows on a tiny machine with a bad screen and no keyboard.
:)
Hey MS, If you're gonna make the PDA entirely unusable, why not go all-out and make it run DOS or *shudder* CP/M or something even more arcane and unsuited for a PDA touch screen. Gary Killdall, where are you!?!?! There is work left to do!
Yes, I know there are DOS prompt apps for PocketPC. No, I don't want to carefully peck in letters with a stylus. Thanks anyway.
My PDA currently has a flaky touch screen that has already been replaced once. When it finally dies, I'm going to get an iPod and get smug. I hear that comes packed in those Apple factory boxes.
So it's a late reply...
NSF, is that National Sanitation Foundation, National Science Foundation, National Sleep Foundation, or something else?
There are too many groups with that same acronym.
Most "NSF things" people encounter in their everyday lives are related to National Sanitation rather than National Science.
I used to live next door to a 7-11. Yes, I gained a lot of weight from 24 hour snacks. Sigh.
Lucky for us, I moved and 7-11 long ago abandonded my new state -there literally aren't any 7-11s within hundreds of miles- so I don't have to worry about drinking too many Slurpees.
We do still have Icee machines in assorted gas stations, and there's always the frozen drinks at QuikTrip which I like better than 7-11 anyway.
The thing is, Apple hasn't got the first shot at it because this phone is NOT the first cellphone with MP3 support.
And "they'll sell the same number of devices" doesn't apply either because this phone is really a Motorola product running an Apple software app, which is different from an Apple hardware and software combo like the iPod. Mot gets the money, if any, from phone sales. Apple loses money if someone buys this phone instead of an iPod.
For this phone, Apple is basically a third-party software vendor. That's harsh new territory for Apple. Maybe this is a toe in the water for selling a standalone OS.
Do these evacuees have radios to listen? I'm sure some do but enough to make this worthwhile?
I'm not knocking the idea of helping any way possible but this radio station idea reminds me of something that happened to me some years back.
Me and some pals started our own fan convention. Not important which one. I think it's still running. Anyway, one of the founders got the idea that we should have our own pirate radio station running during the convention. It was mostly an attempt to look cool -"we got our own radio station, girls will like us, or at least look in our general direction!"- mixed with simple ego.
The idea went nowhere thanks to cooler heads realizing that the convention attendees would be too busy doing other stuff instead of wandering around with walkmans.