I don't know about a "datacenter", but I don't think having a machine on 24/7 is very unusual, particularly around slashdot! My server is also a print server, provides remote backups for the other machines around the house, runs BT and Tor clients, etc as well as serving music with SqueezeCenter and video with TVersity. Given that it was basically free from spare parts, the only cost is power (about 50W avg, so roughly $60 a year), not bad. I haven't seen a need to run a UPS for it.
I probably have 6 or 7 slimdevices units around the house on average (it varies - I do a lot of community support on their forums so I need a diverse setup!) so they are the significant cost, but music (and access to it) is important enough to me to warrant it. Plus, SD are well known for rewarding contributors well, so if you don't have the cash just start churning out some perl and watch the mailbox!
Finally, whilst I do run "real" amps in a couple of locations, most of the less important listening rooms (bedrooms, offices, etc) have auto-sensing powered speakers (audioengine) so it's all pretty easy. You could even use something like X10 if you wanted to switch power amps on and off from another room (there are plugins for SqueezeCenter which integrate with X10 or IR control systems to make it seamless).
Well my media server doesn't crash, even though it runs XP:) I have $300 players in a bunch of rooms. A lttle more than a second hand ipod for sure, but the sound quality is way better, I have access to my whole collection (well over a TB) without having to resync them all manually, I can choose whether to play the same thing in each room or sync playback between rooms, plus I can listen to podcasts, internet radio etc all live. Oh and there's Pandora, Rhapsody and Slacker support. And I have remote controls with displays large enough to be read from a distance, plus a web interface for browsing the library, managing playlists etc.
So a little more expensive than your solution, but a hell of a lot more functionality. Oh and it's all open source.
That wiki page is out of date (aren't they all?!). As of the latest release of the server Rhapsody is fully integrated, with a sub you can play anything without any advance downloading.
I'll also repeat the recommendations for any of the Squeezebox product line (from Slim Devices, now part of Logitech). Fantastic audio quality, amazing support and full of creamy open source goodness. Look me up on their forums if you need any help with anything.
Except, of course, that Engadget's lawyer obviously agrees that T-Mobile don't have a leg to stand on or he wouldn't have let them put that post up. Don't forget Engadget is owned by AOL/TW - I'm sure they have plenty of IP lawyers of their own keeping an eye out for problems like this and advising on responses.
Reading a file in Java is much the same as any other language. You call read() in a loop until it returns null, that indicates EOF. If you call read() again however, well you screwed up and you will get an exception. Makes perfect sense to me.
I agree that Apple has decided to cripple the iPhone to the point that even with the SDK, it is useless, especially for business.
Why do you say this? I don't think the iPhone is "useless", in fact it's the most useful phone I've ever owned. As for the business perspective, I work for a "large company", and I carry a blackberry (the defacto business-oriented mobile device). I don't see anything that my blackberry does that the iPhone won't be able to do with the new sdk & exchange integration.
Google has decided that developers cannot write powerful native binary applications for Android phone, which is important for high performance cryptographically secure applications. How is Apple any worse than Google which only allows interpreted programs, when since the launch of the iPhone, developers could always write Javascript interpreted programs, and now even some native ones as well through the iStore?
Because Java and Javascript have nothing to do with each other except name? Java is not interpreted. Why is C++ a requirement for a secure application? Hasn't the last 20 years of buffer overflows taught us that, maybe, just perhaps, managed languages are actually more secure than unmanaged ones? MS support C++ apps on their phones because, up until pretty recently, MS were basically a C++ shop. I'm sure the.NET CLR will be ported to mobile soon, if it hasn't already.
Then you're not looking hard enough (or your SLR shots are terrible). There's plenty of good reasons to use a compact camera, I carry one myself, but to say that the image quality is up to that of a SLR is kidding yourself. The primary difference is not the shutter speed (your SD600 goes to 1/1500 which is plenty fast in most cases), and it's certainly not zoom length (although the flexibility of interchangeable lenses is certainly nice). The difference is in the quality of the optics and the size of the sensor. Having a larger sensor (with the same MP count) gives less noise. Less noise means that you can raise the ISO more for the same quality of shot, raising the ISO means you need less light which means you can use a faster shutter. My compact has more noise in a shot at ISO100 than my SLR does at ISO400, and that makes a big difference. As for optics quality, there's simply no way to get the same level of sharpness, color and lack of distortion from a lens that's less than 1cm diameter vs one that's ten times that size. Small wide angle lenses usually show a lot of geometric distortion and all small lenses have issues with chromatic abberation (the purple fringes seen around high contrast areas).
That's my understanding (although I'm not an expert, I do come and go from the US a lot). The only 3rd option is to hold you while determining whether or not you are a citizen. If that's in doubt they may need some time to decide.
You're assuming that there are paying customers. Given the number of people who seem to think they're entitled to free music, I'd expect to see much longer lines at the backdoor than the ticket office.
I wish people would stop quoting that rule as if it means that anyone living in an apartment building or condo is allowed to install a dish. That's simply not the case. From TFD:
Q: If I live in a condominium or an apartment building, does this rule apply to me?
A: The rule applies to antenna users who live in a multiple dwelling unit building, such as a condominium or apartment building, if the antenna user has an exclusive use area in which to install the antenna. "Exclusive use" means an area of the property that only you, and persons you permit, may enter and use to the exclusion of other residents. For example, your condominium or apartment may include a balcony, terrace, deck or patio that only you can use, and the rule applies to these areas. The rule does not apply to common areas, such as the roof, the hallways, the walkways or the exterior walls of a condominium or apartment building. Restrictions on antennas installed in these common areas are not covered by the Commission's rule. For example, the rule would not apply to restrictions that prevent drilling through the exterior wall of a condominium or rental unit and thus restrictions may prohibit installation that requires such drilling.
(emphasis mine)
So if you have a regular apartment without a balcony/terrace (that's the vast majority of buildings here in NYC) the rule doesn't apply (unless you want to put a dish inside the apartment pointing out a window). I, for one, am glad. Coming from the UK where every apartment building is literally covered in dishes it seems like a much better and more visually appealing option to have cable or a communal dish on the roof. I would support a ruling forcing a building to install a communal dish if enough tenants wanted it.
You seem very firm in your beliefs, but you're wrong. Any electronic communication within a public company is covered, regardless of whether it's a shady transaction or you asking what's for lunch. Verbal communication isn't (yet) covered - but note that in many industries phone calls are already taped for legal reasons. By intentionally preventing the required logging you are most certainly putting yourself and the company as a whole at risk.
A nice summary, note that the restrictions are even tighter for financial & healthcare institutions.
Even in legal proceedings the courts recognize the difference between a private conversation, and an official statement.
Of course they do. They realise that a private conversation is much more likely to be honest and accurate:)
What happened to freedom of opinion? Feel free to disagree with someone, but wishing them dead (or celebrating their death) because of things they've said is out of order as far as I'm concerned.
But if you're not a part of the press -- and you can't just declare yourself a reporter -- then you can't simply publish a photograph of anyone you see on the street.
Rubbish. Someone on the street is in public and therefore can have no expectation of privacy. I most certainly can take their photo, and given that I own the copyright on any picture I take, I can certainly publish it (in 99% of cases anyway). What's more, press photographers aren't generally protected in any particularly special way - anyone can use the reason of "news worthiness" or public interest to protect their publication of an otherwise problematic image.
More info in the PDF found here and in this USA Today article.
What you are failing to understand is the difference between an underground railway, which runs on it's own tracks in it's own tunnels, and a tram, which runs on street level tracks in the middle of the road. There simply isn't space for multiple parallel tracks, just as roads have intersections so do tram lines.
Besides which, the tube certainly does have switches, just look at how many delays are based on their failures:)
And this voodoo code made it past review how? Anyone can understand it if you explain it well enough. If you can't explain it, you don't understand it either. If you simply can't be bothered to explain it, then I don't want you working for me.
However get a couple of really great guys who understand each other then you will get superior code in a fraction of the time. Code that's worthless because it will have to be thrown away when the requirements change and no-one knows how to patch it.
...and at the risk of being nitpicky, excseeive dynamic compression actually increases the likleyhood that you use all 16-bits, because all of your waveform becomes full sweep (+MAX/-MAX). Quieter, less compressed music will use less bits, and therefore as a side effect also have a lower S/N ratio when decoded (due to the DACs fixed noise floor). That's why dynamic compression isn't a bad thing, except when abused.
mp3 (et al) don't compress by simply reducing the bit depth, they use an entirely different data representation which is inheriently lossy, so there is always a difference regardless of the source material. Think about the equivalent with images - jpeg compression always degrades the quality regardless of whether the source image is color or greyscale.
Slashdot Mirror
How deeply can/do they search a laptop while I'm waiting to get on my plane?
This is customs, not TSA/security. They are checking people arriving into a country, not departing on a flight. They can take as long as they want.
I don't know about a "datacenter", but I don't think having a machine on 24/7 is very unusual, particularly around slashdot! My server is also a print server, provides remote backups for the other machines around the house, runs BT and Tor clients, etc as well as serving music with SqueezeCenter and video with TVersity. Given that it was basically free from spare parts, the only cost is power (about 50W avg, so roughly $60 a year), not bad. I haven't seen a need to run a UPS for it.
I probably have 6 or 7 slimdevices units around the house on average (it varies - I do a lot of community support on their forums so I need a diverse setup!) so they are the significant cost, but music (and access to it) is important enough to me to warrant it. Plus, SD are well known for rewarding contributors well, so if you don't have the cash just start churning out some perl and watch the mailbox!
Finally, whilst I do run "real" amps in a couple of locations, most of the less important listening rooms (bedrooms, offices, etc) have auto-sensing powered speakers (audioengine) so it's all pretty easy. You could even use something like X10 if you wanted to switch power amps on and off from another room (there are plugins for SqueezeCenter which integrate with X10 or IR control systems to make it seamless).
Well my media server doesn't crash, even though it runs XP :) I have $300 players in a bunch of rooms. A lttle more than a second hand ipod for sure, but the sound quality is way better, I have access to my whole collection (well over a TB) without having to resync them all manually, I can choose whether to play the same thing in each room or sync playback between rooms, plus I can listen to podcasts, internet radio etc all live. Oh and there's Pandora, Rhapsody and Slacker support. And I have remote controls with displays large enough to be read from a distance, plus a web interface for browsing the library, managing playlists etc.
So a little more expensive than your solution, but a hell of a lot more functionality. Oh and it's all open source.
Linky: Slimdevices
That wiki page is out of date (aren't they all?!). As of the latest release of the server Rhapsody is fully integrated, with a sub you can play anything without any advance downloading.
I'll also repeat the recommendations for any of the Squeezebox product line (from Slim Devices, now part of Logitech). Fantastic audio quality, amazing support and full of creamy open source goodness. Look me up on their forums if you need any help with anything.
Except, of course, that Engadget's lawyer obviously agrees that T-Mobile don't have a leg to stand on or he wouldn't have let them put that post up. Don't forget Engadget is owned by AOL/TW - I'm sure they have plenty of IP lawyers of their own keeping an eye out for problems like this and advising on responses.
I'm starting a new job...not a good omen :)
And "wahla", "waa la", "valar" etc (for "voila"). I've even seen it spelled that way by supposedly professional journalists.
Reading a file in Java is much the same as any other language. You call read() in a loop until it returns null, that indicates EOF. If you call read() again however, well you screwed up and you will get an exception. Makes perfect sense to me.
I have a Series 3 and a TivoHD and have never seen anything like you describe, so I think you should be OK :)
I agree that Apple has decided to cripple the iPhone to the point that even with the SDK, it is useless, especially for business.
.NET CLR will be ported to mobile soon, if it hasn't already.
Why do you say this? I don't think the iPhone is "useless", in fact it's the most useful phone I've ever owned. As for the business perspective, I work for a "large company", and I carry a blackberry (the defacto business-oriented mobile device). I don't see anything that my blackberry does that the iPhone won't be able to do with the new sdk & exchange integration.
Google has decided that developers cannot write powerful native binary applications for Android phone, which is important for high performance cryptographically secure applications. How is Apple any worse than Google which only allows interpreted programs, when since the launch of the iPhone, developers could always write Javascript interpreted programs, and now even some native ones as well through the iStore?
Because Java and Javascript have nothing to do with each other except name? Java is not interpreted. Why is C++ a requirement for a secure application? Hasn't the last 20 years of buffer overflows taught us that, maybe, just perhaps, managed languages are actually more secure than unmanaged ones? MS support C++ apps on their phones because, up until pretty recently, MS were basically a C++ shop. I'm sure the
Then you're not looking hard enough (or your SLR shots are terrible). There's plenty of good reasons to use a compact camera, I carry one myself, but to say that the image quality is up to that of a SLR is kidding yourself. The primary difference is not the shutter speed (your SD600 goes to 1/1500 which is plenty fast in most cases), and it's certainly not zoom length (although the flexibility of interchangeable lenses is certainly nice). The difference is in the quality of the optics and the size of the sensor. Having a larger sensor (with the same MP count) gives less noise. Less noise means that you can raise the ISO more for the same quality of shot, raising the ISO means you need less light which means you can use a faster shutter. My compact has more noise in a shot at ISO100 than my SLR does at ISO400, and that makes a big difference. As for optics quality, there's simply no way to get the same level of sharpness, color and lack of distortion from a lens that's less than 1cm diameter vs one that's ten times that size. Small wide angle lenses usually show a lot of geometric distortion and all small lenses have issues with chromatic abberation (the purple fringes seen around high contrast areas).
slowing down pink pictures
Don't give them any ideas! That particular strategy would probably work pretty well...
That's my understanding (although I'm not an expert, I do come and go from the US a lot). The only 3rd option is to hold you while determining whether or not you are a citizen. If that's in doubt they may need some time to decide.
You're assuming that there are paying customers. Given the number of people who seem to think they're entitled to free music, I'd expect to see much longer lines at the backdoor than the ticket office.
(emphasis mine)
So if you have a regular apartment without a balcony/terrace (that's the vast majority of buildings here in NYC) the rule doesn't apply (unless you want to put a dish inside the apartment pointing out a window). I, for one, am glad. Coming from the UK where every apartment building is literally covered in dishes it seems like a much better and more visually appealing option to have cable or a communal dish on the roof. I would support a ruling forcing a building to install a communal dish if enough tenants wanted it.
"...Won't get fooled again."
These are the words of our Dear Leader
You're in some kind of Roger Daltrey cult? Cool...where do I sign up?
You seem very firm in your beliefs, but you're wrong. Any electronic communication within a public company is covered, regardless of whether it's a shady transaction or you asking what's for lunch. Verbal communication isn't (yet) covered - but note that in many industries phone calls are already taped for legal reasons. By intentionally preventing the required logging you are most certainly putting yourself and the company as a whole at risk.
:)
A nice summary, note that the restrictions are even tighter for financial & healthcare institutions.
Even in legal proceedings the courts recognize the difference between a private conversation, and an official statement.
Of course they do. They realise that a private conversation is much more likely to be honest and accurate
What happened to freedom of opinion? Feel free to disagree with someone, but wishing them dead (or celebrating their death) because of things they've said is out of order as far as I'm concerned.
Hmmm...not sure what happened to my PDF link - you can find it here.
But if you're not a part of the press -- and you can't just declare yourself a reporter -- then you can't simply publish a photograph of anyone you see on the street.
Rubbish. Someone on the street is in public and therefore can have no expectation of privacy. I most certainly can take their photo, and given that I own the copyright on any picture I take, I can certainly publish it (in 99% of cases anyway). What's more, press photographers aren't generally protected in any particularly special way - anyone can use the reason of "news worthiness" or public interest to protect their publication of an otherwise problematic image.
More info in the PDF found here and in this USA Today article.
What you are failing to understand is the difference between an underground railway, which runs on it's own tracks in it's own tunnels, and a tram, which runs on street level tracks in the middle of the road. There simply isn't space for multiple parallel tracks, just as roads have intersections so do tram lines.
:)
Besides which, the tube certainly does have switches, just look at how many delays are based on their failures
And this voodoo code made it past review how? Anyone can understand it if you explain it well enough. If you can't explain it, you don't understand it either. If you simply can't be bothered to explain it, then I don't want you working for me.
However get a couple of really great guys who understand each other then you will get superior code in a fraction of the time.
Code that's worthless because it will have to be thrown away when the requirements change and no-one knows how to patch it.
...and at the risk of being nitpicky, excseeive dynamic compression actually increases the likleyhood that you use all 16-bits, because all of your waveform becomes full sweep (+MAX/-MAX). Quieter, less compressed music will use less bits, and therefore as a side effect also have a lower S/N ratio when decoded (due to the DACs fixed noise floor). That's why dynamic compression isn't a bad thing, except when abused.
mp3 (et al) don't compress by simply reducing the bit depth, they use an entirely different data representation which is inheriently lossy, so there is always a difference regardless of the source material. Think about the equivalent with images - jpeg compression always degrades the quality regardless of whether the source image is color or greyscale.