Pepijn Bruienne

It's a definite improvement over the earlier UI for sure and I am loving the single-click Archive and server-side rules. Good start, Apple.

On the topic of FLV conversion, Video Monkey has been the only app that was able to convert a batch of FLV video files with uncompressed 16 bit integer sound into proper MP4 files for me. It borrows code from the now-defunct Visualhub and unlike the more well-known sibling offshoot Film Redux, Video Monkey is actually useable right now.

Also, it is free.

http://videomonkey.sourceforge.net/

Since I assume it uses UPNP-AV for its Mediashare magic, you could opt to go with Elgato's EyeConnect instead which includes the ability to share your videos as well as photos and music. And if you're a little more technically inclined as well as cheap, check out mediatomb. It's a command line UPNP-AV server tool that does on-the-fly transcoding -- it has been streaming HD content to my DirecTV HR21-700 flawlessly for months now.

I'm thinking that Apple must be thrilled that it wasn't Jerry who peed on Jesus' portrait in this episode.

I agree with others on the app choices. Ms. Madow is opinion and not news, same for Mr. Olbermann. Leaving out major apps like NYT, WSJ is additional sloppiness. But then the writer of the article didn't really set out to write a news story but an op-ed masked as news -- FNC bash and all. Bravo sir.

The VMware Tools are listed in the Add/Remove Programs control panel. Simply remove them, let it reboot and reinstall the 2.0.4 Tools. That should take care of it -- if indeed they are to blame for your Safari issues.

Not that it makes the omission of Howard any less of a letdown for having to pay an almost 25% premium to be allowed to use this app, but the Starplayr 3 beta streams *all* available Internet channels including 100 and 101 just fine - at 128 kbit whether you are a "premium" sub or not. Meanwhile it's back to Shoutcast for the iPhone-using Howard listeners I guess, Sirius. Nice job.

We started out with 3 receivers on Christmas day 2003. What I've noticed since the merger is that SIRIXM has made no efforts to work on actual customer retention, in fact they have worked on the exact opposite. I am now down to just one Sirius receiver while my wife has XM that came with her car and we both agree there are a number of major problems impacting our enjoyment of either service:

- Killed off supposed "overlapping" programming on the fly, without notice and without offering real alternatives.

- Found a loophole to circumvent the government-mandated subscription fee freeze by charging for previously free Internet streaming.

- DRAMATICALLY increased the quantity of commercials and "happy DJ talk" on the music channels. This is a big one and doesn't seem to get as much discussion but for a *paid* service that is advertised as offering commercial-free music this is pretty unforgiveable. I understand that the talk can't be 100% commercial-free and that they got into tangles with Clear Channel who supply a chunk of their music programming which meant they were pretty much forced into inserting ads into the music but seriously folks, you can't charge us $12.95/mo at that point. Drop it to $9.95/mo or more to the point, give us that a-la-carte you spoke so favorably of during FCC/DOJ procedures. I'd gladly pay $1 or $2 per channel for the few I listen to.

As for the iPhone/iPod threat, ever since upgrading to a 3G iPhone I have found myself no longer listening to Sirius music channels in my car. Instead I created Pandora stations for the Sirius music channels I used to listen to. Upside: no commercials, no talk and 100% home-to-work-to-home coverage. Some people complain that their 3G coverage is much worse than satellite but for me in the metro Detroit area I have more dropouts with satellite radio with things like driving under an overpass than with AT&T's 3G. I would get rid of Sirius altogether but I still enjoy listen to Howard on my morning commute. Yet, I am starting to think that I could satisfy my need for talk radio in the morning by loading a few podcasts of shows I missed during the previous day onto my iPhone. That's $12.95+ I can put towards my $30 unlimited data subscription.

I think Sirius/XM is in serious trouble.

I bought an original $200 Slingbox and waited for almost a year for the Mac Sling Player to become available. It has served me well but I'll be *damned* if I go and "upgrade" to be able to use it with my iPhone 3G. Sorry Sling, I guess the larger corporate entity that is E* has fully enveloped you guys. No dice for me.

So I had a hunch that the garbage on the screen was actually gzip-compresssed data, having seen that kind of thing before, which turns out to be the case. I'm not sure if you want to include a "Content-Encoding: gzip" to your code, the lack of which some browsers are choosing to ignore resulting in them properly decompressing the gzipped page content before rendering it. Anyway, for those wanting to verify, load the article (or home page) until all the "garbage" is in your browser window. Save the content as plain text, name it something like unclutterer.html.gz to your Desktop (or wherever you please). Double click the file with the .gz extension in the Finder (Windows users faites vos jeux) and hey-presto! The resulting html file will load just dandy (minus whatever dynamic content PHP is supposed to be generating) in your browser.