but unfortunately I have to switch by 1280X1024 to fit this article on the page.
Anyone else have this problem? It wouldn't bother me as much but I have crummy eyesight and the type looks TINY at that resolution.
Truly, there are people who care about advancing the state of the art in audio composition and multitracking tools. I'm one of them...if only so I can take advantage of those tools for my own work. =P
64 Bit computing will revolutionalize computers as we know them. I am an hobby mathematician, and once for a few days I played around with numbers theory as it relates to bit depth, and computing capabilities. Pretty interesting stuff...
AMD has a real opportunity to create a market here. If they are thinking strategically for the long-term, as I suspect they are, the groundwork they are laying with the Athlon processor is helping to build a solid reputation (and reputation is everything in this game) which could serve as a foundation for capturing a large piece of the 64-bit market (once the demand arrives.)
Software programming techniques will need to be adapted and refined before any of this becomes relevent. Now if I could just get my 32-bit machines with the 2-bit OS's to stop crashing...when I try to do things they weren't designed for. =P
In-class student evaluations are *never* accurate; when I filled out evaluations of my professors, it was in their class.
"Sure, it's anonymous! Say whatever you want!" Then, when the professor collects them, we're supposed to believe (s)he doesn't read them? And when they read them, we're supposed to believe they don't try to figure out who wrote the negative ones? Puh-lease.
Teacher evaluations written in class are almost invariably favorably biased; everybody wants to kiss up and try to get a better grade.
I'm not saying Internet teacher reviews are any better, but at least the anonymity is really, truly there. (Unless my Creative Writing prof decides to check the IP address log, trace it back to my ISP, get them to rat me out...yeah, right!)
Like today I was trying to transfer two large-ish (20 MB) graphic files from Sven, my wife's Win95 box, to Marley, my Samba server. Not terribly had to do, especially since I've set it up and used it a million times before.
Except I couldn't see Sven from either of the other two computers. Went across the house to her computer, pulled up the network neighborhood, and could see the other two from there.
She had network access, though, and I could ping the other boxes... This is fairly typical in my experience with SMB networking, even peer-to-peer Win95 Networking. They should just call it Windows Notworking instead.
I never have any problems getting into my Samba server though, wonder why that is.
You guys listening to this? This is your customer base! WE WANT LINUX DRIVERS. We don't want to beta test your NT drivers. We don't want to have to reverse engineer your Windows drivers. But we will if we have to.
It's cool to hear some useful criticism for a change, rather than empty flames. =P
Um, how can I argue with that... well, I can't, so how 'bout this; if we can come up with some solid, viable options for:
hard disk recording/multitracking
sampling/looping
MIDI composing/sequencing,
and work on making the GUI easier to use for non-techie types, I will by all means try to get people to base workstations around it. Then, perhaps, the market share will become large enough to get some more experimental sound products.
And then I'll be able to recommend some alternatives... the question is, can I risk it now, or will it take a while before these apps come into existence? Guess I got some research to do...
Also, the attitude of the big companies in regards to driver support really is going to have to change. Echo Audio flat out says on their web site they have no intention of supporting Linux drivers. How's that again? Reminds me of Nvidia's "commitment to Open Source". Bah.
What would help, I suppose, would be to organize something to help move the hardware manufacturer's along a bit, maybe hold a "Drive for Drivers" or something.
DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) have to fit specific needs to be interesting to many musicians. There are a few serious obstacles for home studios and pro studios before Linux as a DAW operating system can be a viable choice.
Aside from the fact that I can't get Linux drivers out of Event (actually Echo Audio) for my Gina/Darla/Layla cards (strangely enough, I can get BeOS drivers and even NT drivers now) here is a short synopses of why I, a lowly amateur musician, won't be looking at Linux as a Music OS for a long time.
I am not a big MS fan, but music composition/ sequencing/ sampling/ recording/ effects software (lots of categories here) for Windows 9x is pretty decent. I've played with a lot of them, and they work. Doesn't mean I won't look at other choices though, primarily because Windows crashes frequently. The plugins architecture is an excellent touch. (i.e. a reverb plugin becomes available in all DirectX-compatible recording programs when it's installed.)
Unfortunately, I think a lot of energy that could have gone into interesting Open Source music projects has been used by programmers writing music shareware/freeware for Windows. AudioMulch, Anvil Studio, and many others, are good examples of excellent, innovative (especially AudioMulch) software written for poor working musicians without high budgets. And, yes, they are only for Windows, sadly. I'm not sure why, except that for a long time it was difficult to get sound cards working under Linux.
Why do most of the projects I see on Linux just copy other software? Why can't somebody write some audio software for Linux that just blows my socks off? I've seen some pretty freaky, damn cool programs come out for Macs, hell, even Windows, in the last year or two. They were innovative. They weren't knockoffs of software on other platforms. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place, but it is not enough for Linux to ape whatever MS and MacOS does.
Even if some cool audio programs were written for Linux (and I know there are some available), I don't think I would use Linux for my multimedia stuff yet. Why? The desktop environments and GUIs are (how can I put this without getting flamed) not quite comfortable to work in yet.
Fonts are aliased, widgets are inconsistent, etc; maybe it's just the fact that I use KDE (should I switch to Gnome?), but it just plain doesn't do it for me yet. And yes, I know, "but that's what I love about Linux, is it's totally customizable." Well, not everyone wants to have to customize every damn thing on their system just to get it to work, Spunky.
Even Netscape (a universally available browser under Linux) looks like crap compared to certain Windows browsers. Why is this??? It's not like it's a 1.0 release or something. And please don't tell me to copy my Windows TT fonts into the appropriate system directory in Linux; that is just another in a long line of things I shouldn't have to do to make Linux work out of the box. If I won't do it, you better believe most musicians (no offense to pro musicians out there) won't even know where to start.
I don't know how the latency issues are compared to BeOS or Windows, and quite frankly I don't think I care. Even under a high latency system like Windows 9x I have been getting acceptable results, probably because I don't use MIDI stuff.
Please don't misinterpret this to read that I think MS RULEZ! or that LINUX SUX! because hopefully we are all intelligent enough to realize that is not what I am saying at all. If I thought that, I wouldn't have multiple boxes running multiple OS's and wouldn't be hanging out at Slashdot in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see somebody come along and fix these things in the next generation of Linux distros. But the fact is, I need music software/hardware support in 1997, not in 2003 (it has been around in one form or another for 20+ years now). I love Linux for my servers, but for a DAW it needs a serious, or maybe just a whole bunch of tiny tweaks;-) makeover.
their drivers because they won't support Linux. (I kind of paraphrased it.) Being a Gina owner I thought this was rather short sighted of them at first, but then I thought of the Mac hardware/ software model and realized Echo Audio only understands that particular business model.
I dunno, their Kiko and La Pistola albums were quite pleasing, and they have seemed to draw consistently large crowds...for 25 years. I guess that maybe they're second-rate compared to third-rate bands like the Rolling Stones or Third Eye What-Have-You though.
One of the things that astounds me about Linux (I'm running a couple distros on a few boxes around the house here) is that one of the basic differentiating factors about it is the multi-user capability.
I can see how this might be useful in some environments, but the fact is, I personally, and many of the people who I work with, don't really need or want that particular capability for most of our computing needs. Nobody else uses them except for me. Also, having a Root account in an OS almost ALWAYS leads to security holes.
I'm planning on trying BeOS when 5.0 ships and is available for free download. I want to try it out before I commit any $$ to it. It sounds fantastic, and so what if it doesn't have multi-user capabilities.
Seriously, though, it's really good to see developers that can actually agree on standards, even at later stages in Linux development. Unlike certain commercial projects I can think of.
An API for embedded Linux will certainly help foster growth in the number of programmers that are willing to commit to it, for both OSS and commercial endeavors.
How is progress coming on the Real-Time aspect? I've been a little curious to see how that's implemented. It seems that it would require some serious revamping of the kernel.
especially since you so concisely pointed out the exact things that I personally hate about Realplayer, I think it is fantastic that some of the larger Windows/Mac software makers are starting to pay attention to the Linux crowd.
This will only help to spur competition, hopefully until something writes an open source player that reverse engineers the WMP and Real format, and plays 'em back without all the crap.
=P
Paging Dr. Tiny, Dr. Tiny....
on
Nanomedicine
·
· Score: 2
I don't mean to dismiss VMWare as a practical IT solution; it's just that I find the pricing (1X-3X the cost of the Windows license) offensive. And, yeah, I know they are two totally different means of acheiving an end. (still, check out VNC, which is kind of a cross-platform PCAnywhere, so you can look at your Windows box from a window in KDE, or from your MacOS machine. It's also a cool "hack".)
I was really, truly excited when I first heard that I might be able to migrate my clients from Windows to Linux, while enabling them to keep some of their apps that have no Linux equivalent. Conversely, I was really, truly disappointed when I found out just how much they want us to pay for the dubious privilege of running Windows on a Linux box.
They should just cut to the chase and license VMWare with a Linux distro, and stop trying to do things the other way around. VMWare is a cool Linux add-on, but they'd sell a hell of a lot more copies if it was reasonably priced, or better yet, if something like Red Hat Professional came with a VMWare license (how could a client argue with that? =p) Think of what that would do for Linux acceptance in the workplace!
Seriously, though, how can I justify adding $300 to each system I install? Most of my clients expect to save money by going to Linux. The margins on workstations are slim enough as it, is without us pricing ourselves out of the market entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
The sheet music is the source code, IMHO. To claim that music can't be GPL'ed because it wasn't written in (or converted to) MIDI format is absurd.
It isn't so much that using 'he" is incorrect, it's just damned impolite if you think about it. But I suppose that's too much to ask.
At least show a little taste when you try to piss off the MPAA!!!
=(
Yeah! I RULE THE INTRENET!
stay for the pie.
Honestly. Hensen must be turning in his grave. (I bet he reads /.)
=P
Anyone else have this problem? It wouldn't bother me as much but I have crummy eyesight and the type looks TINY at that resolution.
Truly, there are people who care about advancing the state of the art in audio composition and multitracking tools. I'm one of them...if only so I can take advantage of those tools for my own work. =P
AMD has a real opportunity to create a market here. If they are thinking strategically for the long-term, as I suspect they are, the groundwork they are laying with the Athlon processor is helping to build a solid reputation (and reputation is everything in this game) which could serve as a foundation for capturing a large piece of the 64-bit market (once the demand arrives.)
Software programming techniques will need to be adapted and refined before any of this becomes relevent. Now if I could just get my 32-bit machines with the 2-bit OS's to stop crashing...when I try to do things they weren't designed for. =P
"Sure, it's anonymous! Say whatever you want!" Then, when the professor collects them, we're supposed to believe (s)he doesn't read them? And when they read them, we're supposed to believe they don't try to figure out who wrote the negative ones? Puh-lease.
Teacher evaluations written in class are almost invariably favorably biased; everybody wants to kiss up and try to get a better grade.
I'm not saying Internet teacher reviews are any better, but at least the anonymity is really, truly there. (Unless my Creative Writing prof decides to check the IP address log, trace it back to my ISP, get them to rat me out...yeah, right!)
Except I couldn't see Sven from either of the other two computers. Went across the house to her computer, pulled up the network neighborhood, and could see the other two from there.
She had network access, though, and I could ping the other boxes... This is fairly typical in my experience with SMB networking, even peer-to-peer Win95 Networking. They should just call it Windows Notworking instead.
I never have any problems getting into my Samba server though, wonder why that is.
You guys listening to this? This is your customer base! WE WANT LINUX DRIVERS. We don't want to beta test your NT drivers. We don't want to have to reverse engineer your Windows drivers. But we will if we have to.
It's cool to hear some useful criticism for a change, rather than empty flames. =P
Um, how can I argue with that... well, I can't, so how 'bout this; if we can come up with some solid, viable options for:
hard disk recording/multitracking
sampling/looping
MIDI composing/sequencing,
and work on making the GUI easier to use for non-techie types, I will by all means try to get people to base workstations around it. Then, perhaps, the market share will become large enough to get some more experimental sound products.
And then I'll be able to recommend some alternatives... the question is, can I risk it now, or will it take a while before these apps come into existence? Guess I got some research to do...
Also, the attitude of the big companies in regards to driver support really is going to have to change. Echo Audio flat out says on their web site they have no intention of supporting Linux drivers. How's that again? Reminds me of Nvidia's "commitment to Open Source". Bah.
What would help, I suppose, would be to organize something to help move the hardware manufacturer's along a bit, maybe hold a "Drive for Drivers" or something.
Aside from the fact that I can't get Linux drivers out of Event (actually Echo Audio) for my Gina/Darla/Layla cards (strangely enough, I can get BeOS drivers and even NT drivers now) here is a short synopses of why I, a lowly amateur musician, won't be looking at Linux as a Music OS for a long time.
I am not a big MS fan, but music composition/ sequencing/ sampling/ recording/ effects software (lots of categories here) for Windows 9x is pretty decent. I've played with a lot of them, and they work. Doesn't mean I won't look at other choices though, primarily because Windows crashes frequently. The plugins architecture is an excellent touch. (i.e. a reverb plugin becomes available in all DirectX-compatible recording programs when it's installed.)
Unfortunately, I think a lot of energy that could have gone into interesting Open Source music projects has been used by programmers writing music shareware/freeware for Windows. AudioMulch, Anvil Studio, and many others, are good examples of excellent, innovative (especially AudioMulch) software written for poor working musicians without high budgets. And, yes, they are only for Windows, sadly. I'm not sure why, except that for a long time it was difficult to get sound cards working under Linux.
Why do most of the projects I see on Linux just copy other software? Why can't somebody write some audio software for Linux that just blows my socks off? I've seen some pretty freaky, damn cool programs come out for Macs, hell, even Windows, in the last year or two. They were innovative. They weren't knockoffs of software on other platforms. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place, but it is not enough for Linux to ape whatever MS and MacOS does.
Even if some cool audio programs were written for Linux (and I know there are some available), I don't think I would use Linux for my multimedia stuff yet. Why? The desktop environments and GUIs are (how can I put this without getting flamed) not quite comfortable to work in yet.
Fonts are aliased, widgets are inconsistent, etc; maybe it's just the fact that I use KDE (should I switch to Gnome?), but it just plain doesn't do it for me yet. And yes, I know, "but that's what I love about Linux, is it's totally customizable." Well, not everyone wants to have to customize every damn thing on their system just to get it to work, Spunky.
Even Netscape (a universally available browser under Linux) looks like crap compared to certain Windows browsers. Why is this??? It's not like it's a 1.0 release or something. And please don't tell me to copy my Windows TT fonts into the appropriate system directory in Linux; that is just another in a long line of things I shouldn't have to do to make Linux work out of the box. If I won't do it, you better believe most musicians (no offense to pro musicians out there) won't even know where to start.
I don't know how the latency issues are compared to BeOS or Windows, and quite frankly I don't think I care. Even under a high latency system like Windows 9x I have been getting acceptable results, probably because I don't use MIDI stuff.
Please don't misinterpret this to read that I think MS RULEZ! or that LINUX SUX! because hopefully we are all intelligent enough to realize that is not what I am saying at all. If I thought that, I wouldn't have multiple boxes running multiple OS's and wouldn't be hanging out at Slashdot in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see somebody come along and fix these things in the next generation of Linux distros. But the fact is, I need music software/hardware support in 1997, not in 2003 (it has been around in one form or another for 20+ years now). I love Linux for my servers, but for a DAW it needs a serious, or maybe just a whole bunch of tiny tweaks ;-) makeover.
.
I dunno, their Kiko and La Pistola albums were quite pleasing, and they have seemed to draw consistently large crowds...for 25 years. I guess that maybe they're second-rate compared to third-rate bands like the Rolling Stones or Third Eye What-Have-You though.
cuz it made me giggle. +6, funny
I know there's a contest to guess the ship date...sigh...
I can see how this might be useful in some environments, but the fact is, I personally, and many of the people who I work with, don't really need or want that particular capability for most of our computing needs. Nobody else uses them except for me. Also, having a Root account in an OS almost ALWAYS leads to security holes.
I'm planning on trying BeOS when 5.0 ships and is available for free download. I want to try it out before I commit any $$ to it. It sounds fantastic, and so what if it doesn't have multi-user capabilities.
Seriously, though, it's really good to see developers that can actually agree on standards, even at later stages in Linux development. Unlike certain commercial projects I can think of.
An API for embedded Linux will certainly help foster growth in the number of programmers that are willing to commit to it, for both OSS and commercial endeavors.
How is progress coming on the Real-Time aspect? I've been a little curious to see how that's implemented. It seems that it would require some serious revamping of the kernel.
This will only help to spur competition, hopefully until something writes an open source player that reverse engineers the WMP and Real format, and plays 'em back without all the crap.
=P
Please report to the L'il Emergency Room, STAT!
I was really, truly excited when I first heard that I might be able to migrate my clients from Windows to Linux, while enabling them to keep some of their apps that have no Linux equivalent. Conversely, I was really, truly disappointed when I found out just how much they want us to pay for the dubious privilege of running Windows on a Linux box.
They should just cut to the chase and license VMWare with a Linux distro, and stop trying to do things the other way around. VMWare is a cool Linux add-on, but they'd sell a hell of a lot more copies if it was reasonably priced, or better yet, if something like Red Hat Professional came with a VMWare license (how could a client argue with that? =p) Think of what that would do for Linux acceptance in the workplace!
Seriously, though, how can I justify adding $300 to each system I install? Most of my clients expect to save money by going to Linux. The margins on workstations are slim enough as it, is without us pricing ourselves out of the market entirely.