Well, most services coming from US-based companies only support US residents. Most US merchants won't ship outside US - google checkout or not - and many won't accept non-US credit cards even for shipping within the US.
Say what? Nearly every US merchant I've come across ships internationally, and I've never come across one who wouldn't accept a non-US credit card.
I use playlists. It's not a problem. I often simply delete everything on the player,
Yet you were the one complaining about having all the content on a player deleted.
The ability to record from the mic or radio and copy the MP3 off the player to a computer is often not possible with players that have the datalink one way restricted.
That's not a problem with the iPod if you are using a recording accessory.
The ability to copy to and from the player is more of an advantage to some people then automatic music updates on the player.
But it's only an advantage to a very small minority of people. It's great that you restrict your usage to playlists and manual updates, but many people's needs go beyond that, and prefer technology that does things for them, rather than forcing them into restricted usage scenarios. I find it kind of funny that so many geeks want technology to be limited and require extra work, when the whole idea of technology is to make things easier.
Everything that Apple has written for Windows, from iTunes to the Quicktime player, is basically crap.
And everything that Microsoft has written for Windows is basically crap - so what's the difference?
At least Microsoft would have a little extra incentive to make their platform look good.
History shows that this is not true. They are perfectly happy for Windows to look like crap, as they have a monopoly. Since when did Microsoft care about the quality of Windows or the software that runs on it?
Wow, that wasn't the response I expected... but anyway, I hope you get some rest and recover to normal functions soon. I hope my chiding response wasn't too intense. Best wishes for the apocalypse.
But drag-n-drop sucks for music management, because you have to manually manage the tracks on your player. Most people don't want to go manually deleting files on their player to make room for the new ones. They want the software to automatically update the songs, based on their preferences. Which is why "techies" often have so many problems understanding what people want in a music player and management system. You may enjoy using file systems and manually dragging files, most people hate this approach.
If it would have put Microsoft developers on iTunes for Windows, then I would have been very thankful. iTunes 7 is sluggish as hell.
And Microsoft would have helped this... how? By making it twice as bloated? Microsoft developers aren't known for quality programming or lean, nimble software. They are known for having some of the biggest, fattest, most sluggish applications on the market.
Are you kidding? The biggest reason the iPod is popular is because it's flashy, and Steve Jobs can market.
Uh, no. The biggest reason is iTunes, and that the iPod/iTunes combo was very easy to use. Look at the other solutions that were around at the time - the software/syncing procedures absolutely sucked. The software was total crapware - and it was often difficult to navigate a large collection of music on the devices.
Marketing? The original Mac-only generation of the iPod was barely marketed at all. Yet it was still successful - mainly because of iTunes, which was already widely used by Mac users. Remember "Rip, Mix, Burn"? iTunes came first, as part of the "digital hub" - while with other companies, the software was simply an afterthought.
Remember the original reviews? Nobody took the iPod seriously, despite (or perhaps because of) how flashy they looked.
You have a faulty memory. The only people who didn't take it seriously were Apple bashers and slashdot types. Real reviews gave the iPod high marks - with a complaint or two about the price. Aside from the price, serious reviews gave it high marks. Remember that the iPod was the first to offer Firewire syncing. This changed the whole game. Other players used USB 1.1 syncing - which was incredibly sloooow.
The iPod was also the first with the micro-sized HD - other players were either flash-based with pitiful storage capacity, or used larger HDs, which made the units incredibly bulky. So, if you had bought another HD-based player back then, not only did you get a huge unit - but it would take all day to fill with songs over USB 1.1. This made them pretty pointless, as you couldn't easily change the songs stored on the device without significant syncing time.
Oddly enough, the fact that iPods were flashy was enough for consumers to go out and buy them, regardless of the technical reviews.
What do you mean, "regardless of the technical reviews"? the iPod got very good technical reviews, and was in fact far more technically advanced than every other player at the time. Your comments amount to nothing more than revisionist history. Just because CmdrTaco called the iPod "lame" does not mean it was poorly reviewed or received by the market.
If Microsoft had latched on to Apple's product finesse back then, well, they'd be making a little more cash than they do now.
If Microsoft had been involved, they would have insisted on Windows Media Player or some "PlaysForSure" crap and totally screwed up the iPod. Why else would Microsoft partner with Apple, if not to try and dominate the market with their software?
So, you think everybody should pay extra for features that only a small minority actually uses? Everybody should but up with a bulkier iPod because it has to be made bigger for some useless feature? Why do you think people buy computer towers with separate external monitors, rather than having every computer with the monitor built-in?
For the 100th time, the button doesn't have to be physically attached to the drive.
WTF? Up until now you have been arguing that it is stupid not to have a button on the drive, and it is more usable to have it there. All of a sudden you are arguing the opposite?
There is no technical issue that *requires* a button on the device the drive is in to eject the disk without safely unmounting.
That's what I was arguing - but like I said, that would require cooperation with drive manufacturers. And the drive manufacturers don't give a shit.
I refuse to believe you are too stupid to realize this, even though you continually demonstrate that yes, you are that stupid. For some ass-backwards reason, you have a mental block which prevents you from imagining a button on a device that is not physically attached to the drive.
I see you can only argue through ad hominems and have a serious comprehension problem. If the button is attached to the device, then how can it not be physically attached to the device? Does it levitate in mid-air?
With that reasoning, why eject the disk at all? (hint: you still have to reach down to pick up the disk after ejecting it)
Because you may not want to pick it up right then. You may want to pick it up later, or leave it in the tray for a temporary unmounting. And it saves time - the disc can eject before you bend over, rather than having to wait for it while you are bent over.
Once again you're assuming that it is absolutely 100% impossible to implement the more usable solution correctly. "OMG, you shouldn't have a button on the device because it MUST mean that the disk will be ejected unsafely."
No, I am not assuming it is impossible. I'm just saying that's how the drive manufacturers did it. You really seem to have problems reading. I'm saying the opposite - that it is entirely possible, but the nature of the industry made it harder for Apple to do that, because the people who make drives just made "dumb" eject buttons.
The point is about USABILITY, not BUGS.
The two are intimately related. Bugs directly affect usability in a negative way. How can you artificially separate the two? I'm pretty sure that most people consider a buggy system to be less usable than a non-buggy system.
The fact that the PC gets the implementation wrong does not preclude Apple from getting the implementation right.
No, but it makes it more difficult and expensive, because custom hardware must be made - but if the PC industry adopted a sensible way, then it would cost nothing, because it would be a standard feature of mass-market drives.
My Dad decided to get my Mom a Mac for Chistmas a few years back (she is "timid" computer user). I got a phone call after he had apparently spent half an hour trying to figure it out. This was, apparently, after he'd spent 10 minutes looking for the power button.
Now there's somme of that stupidity you are so quick to throw around. Why didn't they just look at the manual that came with the machine?
Psst...you can still have a button that isn't physically linked to the eject mechanism.
So, why didn't you say this in the first place, instead of talking about one attached to the device? Of course you can have this - that's what the eject button on the keyboard is! I mean, duh.
But putting an extra one on/near the drive is added expense and bulk. Do you really want to make the device bigger and costlier just for this, when the button on the keyboard works perfectly at no extra cost? Again, the nature of the industry means that stupid workarounds have to be made because of stupid default implementations. Apple already gets enough flak for being more expensive and different - you want that to be even worse o
Pulling out on it's own with it's direct competitors staying would lose them considerable market share, making their competitors stronger.
So what if their competitors were stronger? That doesn't mean Google "couldn't afford it." On the contrary, going in with competition would have made them less money. So what's the big deal? Google also would not have lost marketshare by not going into China - they just would not have gained marketshare in China. It's not like marketshare in China was something they had before going in - so what would they actually lose?
I think you miss the point. Google can afford to say no to China's censorship if all of the major information gateways, i.e., its competitors (MSN, Yahoo, etc), agree to say no under the same set of rules.
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If it can afford to do it if its competitors pulled out, why couldn't it afford to do it if they don't? I thought Google was making a profit before it went into China, anyway.
If anything, if the others agree to pull out, Google would stand to make more profit if it stayed, because there would be less competition.
You keep combining technical issues with non-technical issues.
Of course. That's the very nature of computing and usability. you can't separate these issues, because they are intimately intwined. If putting an eject button on the drive means that people lose the data on their disks, then that is VERY unusable - because if you lose your data, you have nothing left to use.
. Putting the eject button on the keyboard and not putting one on the device is LESS USABLE than putting an eject button on the device BECAUSE it isn't in a location people expect it to be based on other disk-based devices they use.
If my computer is under my desk or in a hard-to-reach position, it's much more usable to eject the disk from keyboard or software. otherwise I have to reach to an uncomfortable position. Why shouldn't we expect eject buttons on our keyboards? It certainly makes things much more convenient in my experience. As does the ability of software to eject a disc - say when you are copying a bunch of discs, and it ejects the disc for you when it's done.
Really, so you've seen people unable to determine how to get a disk out of the drive on a PC before?
No, but I've seen people destroy data by pressing the eject button before. Which is better - losing data, or taking five seconds to learn how to unmount and eject your disc? I've never seen any Mac user have problems working out how to remove a disc either - but I've never seen them lose data due to inadvertently ejecting a disk that was in use.
What it would do is destroy the "sleek" look of their product, which is probably the main reason why they don't do it. I also suspect they also secretly enjoy watching people spend half an hour trying to figure out how to get a disk back out of the machine...
I've never seen anyone spend half an hour doing that. but you are wrong in your assessment. The reason for this has NOTHING to do with "sleekness" or being cool. The reason is that early Macs did not have hard drives, everything ran from a floppy. If you just had an eject button, then people would totally screw the system and their data by ejecting the disk when it was not safe. It was a usability issue, not an image issue. At the time, other manufacturers did not care about users, and made it easy for users to accidentally screw everything up. And that's just not PCs, the same goes for Amigas and Commodore 64s and Atari STs, and pretty much everything else on the market. Apple did things the smart way, where other just did things the obvious way.
If intelligence had prevailed in the PC market, then other companies would have adopted that way of doing things, and the Apple way would be normal, because it is the safest, most convenient, and most logical.
You got it right later; the eject button on the front of the computer should do a safe unmount before releasing the disk, and it is exactly what Apple should be doing.
I agree, but Windows doesn't do that either - so you can't really say that they are doing it right, as you implied earlier. The problem is that Apple does not make CD-ROM drives. This is a problem that the device manufacturers should deal with in conjunction with the PC and OS manufacturers. But they don't give a shit.
Look, it's fine that Apple does these quirky things. And it is fine that people like them. But those quirks don't make the machine more usable; don't be bewildered when someone is puzzled by behavior that they don't expect.
Eh? There's nothing less quirky about the way Windows or Linux does it. So what's your point? The problem is that it is one that can only be solved by co-operation. Unfortunately, nobody wants to be bothered about usability. Nobody wants to negotiate a more sane way to do it - so the end result is that things are pretty crappy all around.
The Apple way isn't perfect, but they seem to be the only ones who acknowledged the problem of premature ejectations. Back in the days when we used floppy disks, people used to destroy their data all the time by pushing the eject button while the disk was spinning. The Apple way saved many people from that fate. Kind of ironic, given the "trash" metaphor that actually helped protect data, versus the "press eject" button that destroyed data.
So lemme get this right, Sony and other music companies that force Microsoft do implement DRM.. but Microsoft is still at fault?
Poor Microsoft, being forced to do things by the big bad bullies. So weak and powerless. I guess you have to pity these little insignificant companies with no bargaining power.
The technical crap going on behind the scenes doesn't matter to a user. Usability matters to the user. Usability means complying with the user's expectations for how something should work.... If the sum of your life experience conditions you into thinking that "media" is removed from a device by pressing a button on the machine, then you damn well better believe that a user is going to expect to find a button on the machine to remove the media.
Which is exactly why the traditional eject button on the device is not a particularly good idea. The user expects to safely remove the media by pressing the button, as it does on other devices. but that's not what the eject button on the CD-ROM does. So, it should be removed to avoid confusion.
they don't have any built in behavior that helps them locate that functionality (well, short of reading the user manual).
Right, so by removing the button on the device, you are teaching them the proper behavior. They will have to learn the way to unmount and eject the media safely. The other alternative would be to have the button on the device safely unmount. But that's not what they do at the moment.
When you put a disc into a computer, it is more than just being a playback device, it is "in" the Operating System - and the interface for the OS is through the keyboard, mouse and screen. So it's logical that you would deal with the representation of the device in the OS, not the device itself.
What about the radio shark? What about FM tuner cards for your PC? These products are both legal and allow you to make a digital copy (At least, from the analog source)
Actually, there's now RadioSHARK 2, which supports both analog and digital radio. So, it's not just for analog copies anymore.
That case CANNOT be made. Big conglomerates like Sony and GE both distribute media content (they own publishing, broadcasting, etc. businesses) and manufacture/sell recording devices that aid in the copying of content that is owned both by themselves and their competitors.
Sure it can. Just because they are prosecuting XM and not Sony, does not mean that Sony is legally in the clear. It could be that Sony has given enough money to politicians to avoid prosecution. Or that they may be next on the hit list.
Never underestimate the potential of selective enforcement and abuse of laws.
That would only be true if, in that strange alternate universe, your tape player, vcr, cd player, dvd player, various floppy drives on computers made prior to 1985, etc, didn't provide a way to remove the disk from the device itself.
Not really. The "eject" button on a CD-ROM is not a "true" eject button like the one on your VCR. Sure, it physically ejects the disc - but it doesn't unmount the disc. That has to be done in software. So, either the eject button doesn't work, because the disc is in use - or you risk screwing something up because the OS is trying to access the disc.
Software eject is the real eject button that is equivalent to a VCR, which will stop playing, unthread tape, and then eject. The button on a CD ROM would be like if your VCR tried to eject a tape while it was threaded and still playing.
Slashdot Mirror
Say what? Nearly every US merchant I've come across ships internationally, and I've never come across one who wouldn't accept a non-US credit card.
Yet you were the one complaining about having all the content on a player deleted.
The ability to record from the mic or radio and copy the MP3 off the player to a computer is often not possible with players that have the datalink one way restricted.That's not a problem with the iPod if you are using a recording accessory.
The ability to copy to and from the player is more of an advantage to some people then automatic music updates on the player.But it's only an advantage to a very small minority of people. It's great that you restrict your usage to playlists and manual updates, but many people's needs go beyond that, and prefer technology that does things for them, rather than forcing them into restricted usage scenarios. I find it kind of funny that so many geeks want technology to be limited and require extra work, when the whole idea of technology is to make things easier.
And everything that Microsoft has written for Windows is basically crap - so what's the difference?
At least Microsoft would have a little extra incentive to make their platform look good.History shows that this is not true. They are perfectly happy for Windows to look like crap, as they have a monopoly. Since when did Microsoft care about the quality of Windows or the software that runs on it?
Wow, that wasn't the response I expected ... but anyway, I hope you get some rest and recover to normal functions soon. I hope my chiding response wasn't too intense. Best wishes for the apocalypse.
But drag-n-drop sucks for music management, because you have to manually manage the tracks on your player. Most people don't want to go manually deleting files on their player to make room for the new ones. They want the software to automatically update the songs, based on their preferences. Which is why "techies" often have so many problems understanding what people want in a music player and management system. You may enjoy using file systems and manually dragging files, most people hate this approach.
And Microsoft would have helped this ... how? By making it twice as bloated? Microsoft developers aren't known for quality programming or lean, nimble software. They are known for having some of the biggest, fattest, most sluggish applications on the market.
Uh, no. The biggest reason is iTunes, and that the iPod/iTunes combo was very easy to use. Look at the other solutions that were around at the time - the software/syncing procedures absolutely sucked. The software was total crapware - and it was often difficult to navigate a large collection of music on the devices.
Marketing? The original Mac-only generation of the iPod was barely marketed at all. Yet it was still successful - mainly because of iTunes, which was already widely used by Mac users. Remember "Rip, Mix, Burn"? iTunes came first, as part of the "digital hub" - while with other companies, the software was simply an afterthought.
Remember the original reviews? Nobody took the iPod seriously, despite (or perhaps because of) how flashy they looked.You have a faulty memory. The only people who didn't take it seriously were Apple bashers and slashdot types. Real reviews gave the iPod high marks - with a complaint or two about the price. Aside from the price, serious reviews gave it high marks. Remember that the iPod was the first to offer Firewire syncing. This changed the whole game. Other players used USB 1.1 syncing - which was incredibly sloooow.
The iPod was also the first with the micro-sized HD - other players were either flash-based with pitiful storage capacity, or used larger HDs, which made the units incredibly bulky. So, if you had bought another HD-based player back then, not only did you get a huge unit - but it would take all day to fill with songs over USB 1.1. This made them pretty pointless, as you couldn't easily change the songs stored on the device without significant syncing time.
Oddly enough, the fact that iPods were flashy was enough for consumers to go out and buy them, regardless of the technical reviews.What do you mean, "regardless of the technical reviews"? the iPod got very good technical reviews, and was in fact far more technically advanced than every other player at the time. Your comments amount to nothing more than revisionist history. Just because CmdrTaco called the iPod "lame" does not mean it was poorly reviewed or received by the market.
If Microsoft had latched on to Apple's product finesse back then, well, they'd be making a little more cash than they do now.If Microsoft had been involved, they would have insisted on Windows Media Player or some "PlaysForSure" crap and totally screwed up the iPod. Why else would Microsoft partner with Apple, if not to try and dominate the market with their software?
So, you think everybody should pay extra for features that only a small minority actually uses? Everybody should but up with a bulkier iPod because it has to be made bigger for some useless feature? Why do you think people buy computer towers with separate external monitors, rather than having every computer with the monitor built-in?
For the 100th time, the button doesn't have to be physically attached to the drive.
WTF? Up until now you have been arguing that it is stupid not to have a button on the drive, and it is more usable to have it there. All of a sudden you are arguing the opposite?
There is no technical issue that *requires* a button on the device the drive is in to eject the disk without safely unmounting.
That's what I was arguing - but like I said, that would require cooperation with drive manufacturers. And the drive manufacturers don't give a shit.
I refuse to believe you are too stupid to realize this, even though you continually demonstrate that yes, you are that stupid. For some ass-backwards reason, you have a mental block which prevents you from imagining a button on a device that is not physically attached to the drive.
I see you can only argue through ad hominems and have a serious comprehension problem. If the button is attached to the device, then how can it not be physically attached to the device? Does it levitate in mid-air?
With that reasoning, why eject the disk at all? (hint: you still have to reach down to pick up the disk after ejecting it)
Because you may not want to pick it up right then. You may want to pick it up later, or leave it in the tray for a temporary unmounting. And it saves time - the disc can eject before you bend over, rather than having to wait for it while you are bent over.
Once again you're assuming that it is absolutely 100% impossible to implement the more usable solution correctly. "OMG, you shouldn't have a button on the device because it MUST mean that the disk will be ejected unsafely."
No, I am not assuming it is impossible. I'm just saying that's how the drive manufacturers did it. You really seem to have problems reading. I'm saying the opposite - that it is entirely possible, but the nature of the industry made it harder for Apple to do that, because the people who make drives just made "dumb" eject buttons.
The point is about USABILITY, not BUGS.
The two are intimately related. Bugs directly affect usability in a negative way. How can you artificially separate the two? I'm pretty sure that most people consider a buggy system to be less usable than a non-buggy system.
The fact that the PC gets the implementation wrong does not preclude Apple from getting the implementation right.
No, but it makes it more difficult and expensive, because custom hardware must be made - but if the PC industry adopted a sensible way, then it would cost nothing, because it would be a standard feature of mass-market drives.
My Dad decided to get my Mom a Mac for Chistmas a few years back (she is "timid" computer user). I got a phone call after he had apparently spent half an hour trying to figure it out. This was, apparently, after he'd spent 10 minutes looking for the power button.
Now there's somme of that stupidity you are so quick to throw around. Why didn't they just look at the manual that came with the machine?
Psst...you can still have a button that isn't physically linked to the eject mechanism.
So, why didn't you say this in the first place, instead of talking about one attached to the device? Of course you can have this - that's what the eject button on the keyboard is! I mean, duh.
But putting an extra one on/near the drive is added expense and bulk. Do you really want to make the device bigger and costlier just for this, when the button on the keyboard works perfectly at no extra cost? Again, the nature of the industry means that stupid workarounds have to be made because of stupid default implementations. Apple already gets enough flak for being more expensive and different - you want that to be even worse o
So what if their competitors were stronger? That doesn't mean Google "couldn't afford it." On the contrary, going in with competition would have made them less money. So what's the big deal? Google also would not have lost marketshare by not going into China - they just would not have gained marketshare in China. It's not like marketshare in China was something they had before going in - so what would they actually lose?
Well, the wazoo is where you would usually put DRM.
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If it can afford to do it if its competitors pulled out, why couldn't it afford to do it if they don't? I thought Google was making a profit before it went into China, anyway.
If anything, if the others agree to pull out, Google would stand to make more profit if it stayed, because there would be less competition.
Of course. That's the very nature of computing and usability. you can't separate these issues, because they are intimately intwined. If putting an eject button on the drive means that people lose the data on their disks, then that is VERY unusable - because if you lose your data, you have nothing left to use.
. Putting the eject button on the keyboard and not putting one on the device is LESS USABLE than putting an eject button on the device BECAUSE it isn't in a location people expect it to be based on other disk-based devices they use.If my computer is under my desk or in a hard-to-reach position, it's much more usable to eject the disk from keyboard or software. otherwise I have to reach to an uncomfortable position. Why shouldn't we expect eject buttons on our keyboards? It certainly makes things much more convenient in my experience. As does the ability of software to eject a disc - say when you are copying a bunch of discs, and it ejects the disc for you when it's done.
Really, so you've seen people unable to determine how to get a disk out of the drive on a PC before?No, but I've seen people destroy data by pressing the eject button before. Which is better - losing data, or taking five seconds to learn how to unmount and eject your disc? I've never seen any Mac user have problems working out how to remove a disc either - but I've never seen them lose data due to inadvertently ejecting a disk that was in use.
What it would do is destroy the "sleek" look of their product, which is probably the main reason why they don't do it. I also suspect they also secretly enjoy watching people spend half an hour trying to figure out how to get a disk back out of the machine...I've never seen anyone spend half an hour doing that. but you are wrong in your assessment. The reason for this has NOTHING to do with "sleekness" or being cool. The reason is that early Macs did not have hard drives, everything ran from a floppy. If you just had an eject button, then people would totally screw the system and their data by ejecting the disk when it was not safe. It was a usability issue, not an image issue. At the time, other manufacturers did not care about users, and made it easy for users to accidentally screw everything up. And that's just not PCs, the same goes for Amigas and Commodore 64s and Atari STs, and pretty much everything else on the market. Apple did things the smart way, where other just did things the obvious way.
If intelligence had prevailed in the PC market, then other companies would have adopted that way of doing things, and the Apple way would be normal, because it is the safest, most convenient, and most logical.
I agree, but Windows doesn't do that either - so you can't really say that they are doing it right, as you implied earlier. The problem is that Apple does not make CD-ROM drives. This is a problem that the device manufacturers should deal with in conjunction with the PC and OS manufacturers. But they don't give a shit.
Look, it's fine that Apple does these quirky things. And it is fine that people like them. But those quirks don't make the machine more usable; don't be bewildered when someone is puzzled by behavior that they don't expect.Eh? There's nothing less quirky about the way Windows or Linux does it. So what's your point? The problem is that it is one that can only be solved by co-operation. Unfortunately, nobody wants to be bothered about usability. Nobody wants to negotiate a more sane way to do it - so the end result is that things are pretty crappy all around.
The Apple way isn't perfect, but they seem to be the only ones who acknowledged the problem of premature ejectations. Back in the days when we used floppy disks, people used to destroy their data all the time by pushing the eject button while the disk was spinning. The Apple way saved many people from that fate. Kind of ironic, given the "trash" metaphor that actually helped protect data, versus the "press eject" button that destroyed data.
Nice. I'm just disappointed you didn't post something about XM radio into that post.
All this screwing, but I still can't get any :(
Well, that's what you'd expect from sickos like Heinlein.
Poor Microsoft, being forced to do things by the big bad bullies. So weak and powerless. I guess you have to pity these little insignificant companies with no bargaining power.
Which is exactly why the traditional eject button on the device is not a particularly good idea. The user expects to safely remove the media by pressing the button, as it does on other devices. but that's not what the eject button on the CD-ROM does. So, it should be removed to avoid confusion.
they don't have any built in behavior that helps them locate that functionality (well, short of reading the user manual).Right, so by removing the button on the device, you are teaching them the proper behavior. They will have to learn the way to unmount and eject the media safely. The other alternative would be to have the button on the device safely unmount. But that's not what they do at the moment.
When you put a disc into a computer, it is more than just being a playback device, it is "in" the Operating System - and the interface for the OS is through the keyboard, mouse and screen. So it's logical that you would deal with the representation of the device in the OS, not the device itself.
Actually, there's now RadioSHARK 2, which supports both analog and digital radio. So, it's not just for analog copies anymore.
Link? The Christmas tree thing sounds more interesting than this discussion.
Sure it can. Just because they are prosecuting XM and not Sony, does not mean that Sony is legally in the clear. It could be that Sony has given enough money to politicians to avoid prosecution. Or that they may be next on the hit list.
Never underestimate the potential of selective enforcement and abuse of laws.
It's called "slashdot."
Not really. The "eject" button on a CD-ROM is not a "true" eject button like the one on your VCR. Sure, it physically ejects the disc - but it doesn't unmount the disc. That has to be done in software. So, either the eject button doesn't work, because the disc is in use - or you risk screwing something up because the OS is trying to access the disc.
Software eject is the real eject button that is equivalent to a VCR, which will stop playing, unthread tape, and then eject. The button on a CD ROM would be like if your VCR tried to eject a tape while it was threaded and still playing.
Use a permanent marker to cross the articles you don't want to see off the screen.