murrays

Gimmie Shelter -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

We all know about the RIAA suing thousands of people for downloading music and sharing music on P2P networks, etc. Now, according to this Washington Post article the RIAA is saying that ripping CDs you OWN and transferring the digital files to a computer or iPod/MP3 player is copyright infringement and illegal. These guys have gone completely nuts as far as I am concerned. I buy mostly CDs and they are read once as I rip them to transfer to my iPod. Then, they serve as my hard copy backup. If they are going to pursue this, I am going to quit buying music in any shape or form. Time to write to our politicians and stop the music Gestapo! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Roger Ponce?? [WAG] -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Congrats! I think you should ask for a replacement. Enjoy! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I really wish I could remember more of their concert when I saw them in Winnipeg in 1970. Just too messed up to remember any of it. Let's keep our fingers crossed that they decide to take the show on the road. All the reviews have been glowing. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I can't help you with the iPod question....if Senuti doesn't work maybe get a friend to use a Windows/iPod tool to get the music off of it and then burn a data disc or two. If your music winds up on a data disc, just drag the files into iTunes on your Mac. After that is done you can reformat the iPod for a Mac and hook up to iTunes in the usual fashion. Don't reformat that iPod until you have your music safely off of it. Same thing with the photos...just drag them into the iPhoto window. Pick up an external drive to use as your Time machine backup drive!! Let us know how it goes! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Add me to the list of jealous people!! That should be a great machine. The only thing I would suggest you look at is a larger hard drive if you are doing video editing. I'm always amazed at how quickly every hard drive I own fills up. Maybe an external drive for Time Machine as well? Sell your 1 gb Ram sticks and buy 2 2gb sticks from a good ram supplier??? I can't really think of much else. I have a 20" iMac at work and love the thing....I think you will be very happy with the machine you have chosen. Let us know how the transition goes for you and check back if you have any questions. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

You can also buy refurbed machines from apple.com. Click on the store tab and look for a blurb off to the side about special prices. I find that you have to be careful to actually save money buying a refurb. Because you have no flexibility in the RAM/hard drive size, be very careful to weigh what you are getting plus the costs of adding ram to a machine actually available for full price. Most of the time, I think a person is better off buying at full price. That being said, I snagged a black Macbook last summer at a good price but I am always checking out what is available and know what the current configurations are. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Just how many holes do you have in your body? You can't be badmouthing Jimi on his birthday!!!! Nov. 27. Jimi was an innovator, died way too young and we never heard his best stuff. RIP -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I hear that the winner of GSP/Hughes fights Serra. Because of the animosity between Hughes and Serra, I am SURE we'll see them fight at some time regardless of the outcome of GSP/Hughes. Serra could be out a long time with a herniated disc if he needs surgery. Has anybody heard anything about his expected return timetable? -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I would recommend going to the Apple.com store and Amazon, doing a search and reading the reviews. The more reviews for a particular model the better as the result should be more reliable. I don't have any personal experience as I use a 20 year old ghetto blaster hooked up to my iPod so I haven't been in the market but taking alook online is a good way to get started. Cheers, -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

What may make this card either great or not-so-great is the almost complete lack of big "names". I'll go with you on the Evans-Bisping fight. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Mark, Ok, you promote Rockbox all the time so I figured I'll take a look at the website. I took a look at the Rockbox manual for 1/2 gen iPods. I can honestly say that one look at that manual is enough to convince me I never want to use Rockbox on any iPod I own. Thanks but no thanks. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

See his Vista Death Watch article..... Then, for laughs check out the responses on Fake Steve Jobs..too funny! Fake Steve's Eric Schmidt Serenity Prayer was one of his all time best...check it out while you're in the neighbourhood. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

There are a few software options available to you...I recently used Podworks to transfer my music off my iPod. It is shareware but at a reasonable cost of $8.00. Here is a link to versiontracker's page on it: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17443 -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I refer you to a recent New York Times review of a brand new smartphone using Windows Mobile 6. Here's the money quote: "There you have it: the Shadow, one of the least expensive smartphones on the market, loaded with features, feeling luxurious and looking stunning in your hand. For once, you don’t have to be jealous of the much cooler phones available in Europe. But then you turn the thing on. Unfortunately, after they did such a great job designing the hardware, T-Mobile’s chief executive and his ex-Apple designer punted on the software. They equipped this phone with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6. As it turns out, that decision is just as much an impediment to the Shadow’s greatness as AT&T exclusivity is to the iPhone. Frankly, Windows Mobile 6 is a mess. Common features require an infinitude of taps and clicks, and the ones you need most are buried in menus. Apparently the Windows Mobile 6 team learned absolutely nothing from Windows Mobile 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5." I've never seen an iPhone, they aren't available up here in Canada. If they did release it I wouldn't get one because the only network they would run on is Rogers. Rogers, whose coverage in my part of Canada sucks, and whose contract with me thankfully just ran out. I got 2 new phones from Virgin Mobile that are going to cost me 35% of what I paid Rogers per month. My hate for Rogers is too great to ever permit me to get an iPhone....but I digress. But, I have played with an iPod Touch....what an incredible piece of technology! It's the software design, not the pretty case. The cel phones I have owned can do a ton of things...I can't be bothered to learn anything beyond the most basic stuff because they are such a complete pain to navigate around in. If the iPhone lets you do the main things quickly and easily, never mind elegantly, you're better off with it than something that can do ten million things but you can't figure out how to use it because it's just too difficult. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Interesting. I have had no issues like any of the ones you just described. I am using a 500gb WD MyBook Premium Edition as my Time Machine volume. I also have a 1tb Lacie drive connected and no issues at all with them disconnecting, etc. They are hooked up to a MacBook with a Firewire 400 hub. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

It seemed to take quite a while to do the first backup but after it has been running for a while it is very quick to go back and retrieve files from the past. I have a 500gb Western Digital drive that I am connecting with FW400. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Lots of good things. My only gripes so far are Stacks and the new Dock. There are lots of ways to change the Dock but I haven't seen anybody come up with a way to change how Stacks works. Some applications load much faster...Mail and Safari. Mail is quicker when you are dealing with large mailboxes. Quicklook is GREAT! Time Machine is wonderful. The new iChat looks very cool but I haven't had the opportunity to use it with anybody yet. All in all, I think it is a good upgrade. Knowing that my photos and iTunes library are always being backed up is worth the upgrade to me. I have a 500gb Firewire drive that I got for $159 from Costco set up as my Time Machine..pretty cheap backup system! Murray

His first name was Rob. I went down to ZHills for a few days just a couple of days after he had nearly bounced and made a half dozen jumps with him in early November/1983. He told me he got his reserve canopy open about 10 feet off the deck. Does that agree with your memory? He was as surprised as anybody else that he was alive but he said he kept shaking the risers right until the reserve opened. He landed hard but was obviously pretty much completely unhurt. Keep pulling shit until your goggles fill with blood! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

You have 3 options when you insert the install DVD: 1 - Clean install - Hard drive is reformatted/erased and os is installed, 2 - Upgrade - Just the bits that need upgrading are changed by the installer...this is the default. Some people believe this is the best way to go but I always use option: 3 - Archive and install - Previous system is archived and the new OS is installed - you can save all your applications and user data...but you have to check the box to keep the user info. After a few days I delete the Previous Systems folder. I think my Leopard install took a bit over an hour. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

JP, I hope that you received a full copy of Leopard and not just an upgrade disk as mentioned in this TUAW post. If you got the upgrade disk, get somebody with a full version dvd to burn you a copy. If you can't find someone local, let me know Glad to hear that you have found the transition straightforward. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

JP Did you get Leopard preinstalled on your MacBook? If not, you should be entitled to a free upgrade (plus some sort of handling fee I imagine). I'm curious what you use your computers for and how you have found the transition to the different OS so far. Congrats, I'm sure you'll enjoy that MacBook...I have a black one as well and aside from the fact that my eyes are almost too old for a 13" screen, it's a great little piece of gear. Murray -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Mark, The rockbox website says it won't work with the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd gen Nano, Classic or Touch so that isn't an option anymore. Murray

I have a 2nd gen Nano and use it far more often than my old 20gb Hard Drive iPod. I really like the light weight. It's easy to change the music. If you want to carry a lifetime of music with you for long trips or something then get the 80gb. 8gb is a lot of music. I have 8.18 gb on my machine at work and iTunes tells me that is about 4 days of music...5.3 if you bother to sleep The flash units are quicker/more responsive and you don't have to worry about them getting dropped, etc. I really like the 3rd gen Nanos. They fit in the hand better than I thought they would when I first saw the photos of them and the screen is really sharp. The Touch is a very cool piece of technology...as mentioned above, it is large for 8gb of storage and if you have no desire/need to use the wi-fi functions on it not worth buying. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey