Critics derided Apple Computer's flash RAM-based iPod shuffle as a useless toy because it lacks a screen with which to navigate through its stored songs and instead plays songs randomly. Well, those criticisms haven't mattered a whole lot. The iPod shuffle, which sold out immediately upon its launch, continues to sell incredibly well weeks later. And Toshiba, the company that manufactures some of the flash memory cards for the iPod shuffle, noted this week that it can't make enough cards to satisfy Apple. "Demand created by this new machine is so vast that our current capacity can in no way meet their needs," Toshiba Corporate Vice President Masashi Muromachi said. Maybe life really is random
