Dell announces Alienware acquisition - News at GameSpot

Dell announces Alienware acquisition - News at GameSpot

Sweet Relief For Ipod Owners Like Me

I am really satisfied with the Apple Ipod and Itunes, except for one fact. Unless I kept a copy of a song or podcast on my hard drive, I had no way of playing it through my computer speakers. I then found that I could access the Ipod through Windows Explorer and dig through the music files, which were now not sorted in any fashion I could use. I can plug my Ipod into my stereo, but I think it is stupid that I cannot play the music on my Ipod through my PC speakers using Itunes.

Until now. With Winamp 5.12 you can now access your Ipod like a separate drive and play the music stored on it - without having a copy on your hard drive. And all the playlists show up as they appear on the Ipod, so finding songs is much easier than looking at every directory and hoping you have guessed correctly. If there is a solution through Itunes, I haven't found it yet; and with Winamp being so simple, I won't bother.

Some Subscriptions Are Worth Their Weight In Minutiae

OED Online Word of the Day

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coaster

SECOND EDITION 1989

(kst(r)) Also 7 coster. [f. COAST v. + -ER.]

1. One who sails along the coast; the master or pilot of a coasting-vessel.

1574 BOURNE Regiment for Sea 7b, It behoveth him too be a good coaster. a1642 SIR W. MONSON Naval Tracts III. (1704) 341/1, I give the Name both of Pilot and Coaster to one Man..A bare Pilot serves only for the Port he is hired for. 1841 D'ISRAELI Amen. Lit. (1867) 12 Long it was ere the trembling coasters were certain whether Britain was an island or a continent.

fig. 1670 DRYDEN Tyrranick Love IV. i, In our small Skiff we must not launch too far; We here but Coasters, not Discov'rers, are. 1691-8 NORRIS Pract. Disc. (1707) IV. 189 Some are but Coasters in this great Sea (the World).

2. A vessel employed in sailing along the coast, or in trading from port to port of the same country. (The usual modern sense.)

1687 Lond. Gaz. No. 2266/2 The small Coasters having Orders not to stir out, till the way be cleared for them. 1707 Ibid. No. 4317/2 Her Majesty's Ship the Pool, having under her Convoy several Coasters. 1801 NELSON in Nicolas Disp. 11 Aug. (1845) IV. 453 Every Fishing Smack and Coaster gives one Man. 1840 R. DANA Bef. Mast xxiii. 74 His father was a skipper of a small coaster, from Bristol.

3. a. One who dwells by the sea coast.

1612 tr. Benvenuto's Passenger (N.), You never saw, nor heard any, or English man, or other coaster, or river man, or ilander, use more malicious inventions. 1615 Trade's Incr. in Harl. Misc. (Malh.) III. 308 Coasters, that give away our coin to the stranger for our own fish. 1888 Daily News 17 July 5/3 The cocoanut and the cabbage palm grow wild, though the pampered Gold Coasters despise them.

b. A resident of West Africa of European origin. c. N.Z. One who lives on, or comes from, the West Coast of the South Island.

1898 G. MACDONALD Gold Coast iii. 65 To ‘Old Coasters’ this breeze is very welcome. 1902 W. African Year Bk. 28 Old Coasters generally induce perspiration by a drink of hot weak tea. 1907 J. DRUMMOND Life R. J. Seddon xxi. 349 [Seddon's] good wife (who shared the love of all Coasters, with her husband). 1914 M. HALL Woman in Antipodes xii. 102 Another of his stories was of an old coaster. 1926 [see COAST n. 4c]. 1935 G. GREENE Basement Room 5 Old Coasters..call all food chop. 1936 Journey without Maps I. ii. 25 There was the Coast... People said, ‘Eldridge. Of course, he's an old Coaster.’.. There was no other Coast but the West Coast. 1941 BAKER N.Z. Slang v. 44 Coaster, for a resident of [the West Coast of the South Island]..is also well known.

d. U.S. A bovine animal reared near the coast of Texas. Also coaster horn.

1890 Stock Grower (Las Vegas, New Mexico, U.S.) 19 Apr. 7/2 There are lots of big old-fashioned ‘coaster’ horns among them. 1902 Rep. Kansas Stage Board Agric. 1901-2, 154 Horns of the old Texas coaster. 1929 J. F. DOBIE Vaquero 20 The ‘coasters’, or ‘sea lions’, as people sometimes called the longhorned cattle of the coast country, could swim like ducks and were as wild. 1935 Amer. Speech X. 270/1 Coasters, Texas cattle raised in areas near the Gulf of Mexico.

4. One who visits or lands on a coast. Obs.

1660 G. FLEMING Stemma Sacrum 17 Inquilini, or Intruders, are no other than Coasters or Adventurers, that are sent forth into a Nation to sack and spoile.

fig. 1719 D'URFEY Pills V. 349 Old Coasters, Love boasters, who set up for Truth.

5. (See quot.) Obs.

1688 R. HOLME Armoury II. 312/1 A Coaster [is] a Keeper of a Decoy, or place to catch wild Fowl.

6. Formerly, a low round tray or stand for a decanter (usually of silver); now used generally for any small, usu. round, tray or mat on which a bottle or glass, etc., may stand. (See also quot. 1890.)
So called from ‘coasting’ or making the circuit of the table after dinner.

c1887 Catal. Mallet & Son (Bath) 13 Two choicely pierced coasters. 1888 M. DELAND John Ward (ed. 2) 113 The decanters in the queer old coasters. 1890 Stratford on Avon Herald 24 Oct. 6/1 Next to spoons old silver coasters are the mania of the day... They are made to do duty as stands for ink-bottles and pincushions; flowerglasses raise their heads from coasters... The homely little brown jugs of Surrey cream come upstairs set in coasters, and..the coasters offer chocolate creams. 1951 M. SHARP Lise Lillywhite xv. 132 Martin observed her beer-mug making a ring and automatically put it on a coaster. 1959 N. MAILER Advts. for Myself (1961) 96 She had picked up a coaster for a highball glass.

7. U.S. a. One engaged in the sport of ‘coasting’. and b. A sledge or toboggan for ‘coasting’.

1870 L. M. ALCOTT Old-Fashioned Girl iii. 34 The coasters were at it with all their might... Some little girls were playing with their sleds. 1881 Our Little Ones 72 To-morrow the hills All over the town Will be lively with coasters That race up and down. 1888 Pall Mall G. 8 Sept. 4/1 The Roller Coaster at the Crystal Palace has had a bad accident. 1888 Sat. Rev. 22 Sept. 340/1 Roller coasters, switchback railways, toboggan slides, are all prodigiously popular. 1943 M. FLAVIN Journey in Dark 17 Tom had a coastera long, low, sleek one, with shiny runners anchored to the frame.

c. A rest for the foot used when coasting on a bicycle.

1895 Montgomery Ward Catal. 555/2 Steering forkCold drawn steel tubing, with..adjustable nickeled coasters. 1897 Outing (U.S.) Feb. 463/2 Having gleefully perched my feet up on the coasters, I..shot forward like an arrow.

d. = roller coaster s.v. ROLLER n.¹ 25. U.S.

1910 Sat. Even. Post 9 July 5/1 Ten years ago, if a coaster ‘dropped’ ten feet, it was a ‘thriller’. 1984 New Yorker 16 Apr. 41/1 This coaster, besides having a great historyit was the coaster in the first Cinerama movieis a great ride.

8. A loafer, sundowner. Austral. slang.

1878 ‘R. BOLDREWOOD’ Ups & Downs viii. 75 A voluble, good-for-nothing, loafing impostor, a regular ‘coaster’. 1945 BAKER Austral. Lang. v. 102 The scowbanker or skullbanker, coaster, sundodger..were other vagabonds who loafed in the outback or drifted from station to station.

Paradigms, Eyeballs, Blah Blah Blah

As I predicted when I signed up to watch the NCAA Tournament online for free:

"CBS Corp's decision to broadcast the annual March Madness college basketball tournament free of charge over the Internet this year is taking the on-line world by storm. Just four days into the event, the games have already set records for on-line audience numbers and strained the network's capacity."

This was obvious after the Olympics tanked in the TV ratings, but saw HUGE increases in the hits for both CBC's and NBC's online offerings. This is the same reason that ABC is offering their My ABC service in May. There are more markets and advertisers that can be served by the internet that aren't now by traditional methods. Bring on the ads, just give me content and flexibility. Which is something the cable services do not provide. ABC and CBS have figured out that they can deliver content directly to the market. And the success of Itunes videos has shown that, for all the hype about HD, people just want to watch when they want to watch. Quality is a secondary (possibly tertiary) concern when it comes to television shows,music videos and songs.

Disney Doesn't Own Everything

Archive.org is a great resource for public domain material. And it turns out that a lot of great cartoons are now available in the public domain; cartoons like Fresh Hare from 1942. If your kids are watching Yu-Gi-Oh, or other such shite, turn them on to cartoons that are animated. Yup, framerates above 10 fps. They may get a seizure from the newness of it all, but it will be worth it.

And look for the video 15-Love. It is one boy's struggle to be the top player in Jackson Michigan. Though amateurish, it captures the sadism of the teaching pro in an eerily precise fashion. I saw myself in a few shots, and weeped at the greatness that was this video.