Posted 11/21/2008 at 02:36:47pm

It works great, and doesn't have the proprietary music formats.  I guess Ogg Vorbis is getting a bit long in the tooth, though.  I have an extra Karma that I bought broken --I'm waiting for CF cards in the size I want to hit a more agreeable price, before I mod it to be hard disk free.  (No, I don't have a portable player, to watch movies or look at album art...)

I expect to use these Rio machines until you can quite literally buy a mp3 player/cellular phone/PDA that offers as good ratio of performance/capacity/price as anything that's been marketed up to this point.

It's good that DRM is losing ground, but the only common format is still mp3 --and the RIAA's killled all inovation as far as selling/improving the universal format. 

I find it a bit offensive that Apple, MS, and all the other game console maker is particular take these devices and especially the accessories as a license to print money.  Just because it's typical doesn't make it right and/or appropriate.  I react to the prices I see on accessories as though they've flipped me the bird.

Nothing against the Zune --it's just not yet the device I want. I hope MS & others keep plugging away --I'm not interested in an "all Apple" marketplace.

The iPhone is just insulting, for what it could be...

Posted 11/19/2008 at 01:26:56pm

At the Engineering College I went to, their were about 2-3x as many men as women --pretty much as you might expect, but better than it would have been 10 years earlier... 

It's not the same as the area of Computer Science, but I mention it, because the major "Environmental Engineer," was more like 50/50.  [Those ladies were the hottest Engineering Majors I ever saw, too.]

My personal theory is that women are just raised or "hard-wired," to care more about what they are doing and do more things that they care about.  It's just harder to care about tracking down a programing bug, or flow-charting.

 I've got a sister who's a programmer for a large insurance company.  She's in no way a robot, or anti-social --neither does she have dozens [or more] of pairs of shoes.

I guess I'm pretty sexist.  I also happen to think it's one of the things we like about women though...A woman with the personality & drive of Donald Trump wouldn't get a second date, except from gold-diggers, or guys with [what I'd call] bizarre fetishes.

How many of us can think of one or more girls from elementary or high school, who were "pretty enough," they felt no need to really try or excell at anything else?

I really like intelligent women, I don't think they need to cater to my needs/wants ---but for a personal relationship, we still want to have that emotional connection.  Women know this very well.

Women are raised in almost cult-like conditions, the from the moment a little girl is handed her first doll.  I can't help thinking you'd need a similar cult-like scenario for more intelligent girls  --separate from boys in school, no Barbie-like cheerleader-types running around-- to reverse the many pressures put on little girls, based on feminine vs. masculine expectations. 

Posted 11/14/2008 at 10:39:37pm

I don't like the idea of giving a multi-million dollar company a short-term loan of my cash, for which I have to give them copies of information they might/should have collected at the register, when I paid.

The bigger companies actually are usually more reasonable & reliable than the smaller ones, but they really should just give you the rebate at the cash-register.

I guess it's petty, but I think if they had to fill out a page of paper-work, clip a UPC, & photocopy the receipt,  for each purchaser of their product --they wouldn't bother staying in that line of business, either.  It's like a much more annoying form of "coupon clipping," without all the silly ads from the Sunday paper [which can be entertaining] mixed in.

Posted 11/12/2008 at 12:25:33pm

I keep changing, whenever a subscription ends (renewal prices are usually 2x what I paid for the original), but I'm back with Norton for the moment.

Last month, it suddenly decided that a file that I've had for 5 years is a trojan.  It's been scanned 200 times, 30 of them by Norton, but now it's a trojan...

These mistakes are funny.  It's certainly better than having an unidentified infections mess your computer up, before you see the problem...

Posted 11/11/2008 at 12:03:17pm

I don't know why they don't just keep track of un-installations.   [Can you hear me, Microsoft???]

They already have registration built into the installation package --it seems a logical extension, to me.

DRM is all about pointing the finger at people over piracy.  I absolutely love that the publishers are being sued now.  It's "a taste of their own medicine."

I seriously wonder how many copies true pirates crank out, for every legal copy that gives it's owner problems on their computer.

I agree with Quinn Norton in the Holiday issue... they are driving customers to piracy, because it's easier & just works better.

Posted 10/27/2008 at 11:21:45pm

I just think MS, hardware manufacturers & OEMs celebrated Vista's release like it was a license to print money...instead of ironing out the bugs.  

 So, they sold buckets of garbage to early adopters --just like their dreams.

Then the bugs gave Vista a bad rep.  

They've already fixed the bugs on the new hardware, as it comes out.  But they're doing almost nothing for the early adopters. 

Why should those people forgive MS? ... that's before you get to over-pricing on various versions & the DX 9 Halo game that only runs under DX 10.

If You and/or MS, want everyone to kwityerbitchn' about Vista --then You and/or MS need to take a bigger hand in making all this annoying shit better.  Otherwise, just don't read the comment under this type of article --because you know Someone is going to post a negative comment.

Maybe 7 will be better.  I hope so.  I don't expect them to follow through, if/when they decide it doesn't pay.

Posted 10/23/2008 at 04:36:17pm

Hmmm, so more software pirates really are living under Totalitarian regimes, or "Axis of Evil..."

I wonder how many of those "blacked out" computers are owned & operated by the Chinese Government?  :D

Seems odd to say, but I gotta agree with MS over the Chinese.  They're at least a partial cause of all the DRM garbage we get to wade through. --Serves them right.

Posted 10/23/2008 at 12:23:35am

I was laughing, ROFLOL, even before I read the comments. 

If I made delusional statements, like these, they'd lock me in a rubber room.

I wonder what the pay-scale is, for a wishful thinking PR job --like coming up with this garbage is...

Posted 10/22/2008 at 12:55:06am

I've begun to think there's a positive side effect to this B.S.

Just think of all the annoying extra Divorce Lawyers and Ambulance Chasers, who all these lawsuits keep off the street. 

Even if it's just for a few hours at a time, the world is a better place for it.

It's almost as good as if half of them had intermiable diarrea, and the other half had twice their normal constipation.

(How's that for a "Happy Thought of the Day?")

Posted 10/22/2008 at 12:46:33am

Here I though my best reason for still using my PS/2 keyboard was "Since I know where 1 end of the cord is, I can always find the other end."

Now.  The question is, can they use the same type of system, to see what my wireless mounse is pointing at?  That would be some technology.   :D