I would think that calling dumbing-down "retarding down" is incredibly insensitive. I'm not sure why you'd even suggest that. Not that "dumbing down" is any better really, as the word dumb originally referred to someone who is mute. But at least nobody refers to a mute person as "dumb" anymore (at least nobody under 60). And yes, I realize that the ageism in my last parenthesis is just as offensive as what I'm railing against.
Have a nice day;-)
So, you "plan to have neither", which infers a change from a current situation in which you apparently do not have neither. So that implies you were using "or" exclusively and we are led to the conclusion you have both? (congratulations, so do I)
Actually, what the OP said "implies" an idea. You "inferred" that idea. So perhaps you meant to say "...from which I infer a change", or "...which implies a change".
I Hate to be a grammar Nazi, but you started it;-).
Why would you have a secondary screen to the left, and not make that the primary screen? Do you read right to left (I'm assuming not, since you posted in English)?
Precisely! My favourite rant about Unity is people complaining that it's not as customisable as gnome2/docky, etc. My question to those people is: if you're using docky and customizing gnome, why are you complaining about the DEFAULT desktop in Ubuntu. If you know how to install/configure docky, and how to configure/remove gnome panels, you should probably find it no problem to switch from unity back to gnome2. It's literally a 1 minute change. And I AM one of those people who like to customize (I have 6 household computers; two mediacenter PCs run custom compiz with no gnome panels, two laptops run fluxbox with nomachine clients, one audio computer runs classic gnome, and only my one main development machine runs stock ubuntu). Why would I complain about the fact that the default isn't MY default? Because that would be DUMB!!!! The reasons Ubuntu rules the desktop linux world are: 1) it just works 2) software center/apt kicks ass. 3) available software via official repos/ppas is unbeatable 4) I CAN customize.
If the DEFAULT DE/WM make you feel like switching to a different distro, fine, but don't think for one second that your user experience will ever get easier by going that route.
hear, hear!
As a theologist with no specific religion (I would hesitate to even call myself agnostic), I find it ludicrous that people can be evangelical about atheism while judging others for being theists of any kind. The enlightenment was over ages ago. Anyone claiming to be an atheist now is just as confused and dogmatic as their predecessors, with the added burden of being self-indoctrinated.
true fact. People often think that a regular release is the equivalent of a regular windows/osx release, which is a fallacy. The LTS releases are the ones we ought to base our opinions on (especially since before ubuntu, nobody did a 6 month release cycle). But, I must conceed, that is Ubuntu's fault alone. They would do well to call their LTS's "regular" releases, and all the in-betweens "alpha", "beta", and "RC" respectively. OTOH, they wouldn't get as much user testing that way, and hence, their LTS releases would not be as stable.
'things like the sometimes-unified-global-menu are frankly infuriating'
The global menus work with kde and gnome apps, as well as firefox. The only one not installed by default is libreoffice's menubar. You can get it in the repos, it's called lo-menubar, and will probably be default in 11.10 as it works just fine right now and will probably be bug free by then.
'Basically, the only thing that sucks about unity is the unity desktop itself. The only thing from there I miss is the text search/launcher. If that didn't take up the whole desktop it would be much better.'
What?! your desktop is unity, but less polished. I like the fact that you thought of the same things as the unity developers, but what, exactly, are the advantages of your setup?
Are you using Virtualbox 4.0? It was just released recently and you need it. Get it from Oracle's site, install, and make sure that the checkbox for "3d acceleration" is checked on your VM setup. Then it should work (provided you have the guest additions up to date. As a caveat, you have to be able to do 3d acceleration on your host machine for this to work.
Enjoy!
What's so hard about Drupal? It was the first CMS I ever used (before that I had built sites with Kompozer, iWeb, and Dreamweaver, and before that, I used old fashioned HTML in the 90s), and I found it not only easy to use, but that being able to use modules for ecommerce, flash, mp3s, rotating banners, etc. made the whole site WAY more appealing to users at a level of complexity I could never do on my own (I tried hacking together bits of java, flash, etc. in the past). Not only that, but once it's set up, like all CMS systems, I can administer from the web, from anywhere, and it just works.
I didn't even buy a book, just read tutorials and did google searches on the things I couldn't figure out on my own (admittedly not very much). I had considered myself very much an amateur before using Drupal, and I'm certainly no programmer, but now I use it to administer three of my own sites and two that I was hired to create for people I know.
Drupal is great for its flexibility and easy interface, but I would agree that it's a bit overkill for 90% of the sites people create, where all they need is a simple information site with some pictures. If that's the case, use wordpress.
P.S. Although I recommend Wordpress for simple sites, when I first used it after having done a couple sites in Drupal, I was utterly baffled at the differences, and I'm sure it works both ways.
We are streaming only. I must admit that most of the shows we watch, however, are not available on hulu where we live, so most of the content we watch in our house is illegal.
Ditched cable about five years ago when I found out about torrents, and switched to streaming only about two years ago when the shows we like in our house all became available. Honestly, if you find the right sites, there's not much you can't find. Even old/obscure shows pop up often, so content-wise, it's basically the same as having cable or a dish. If you're going this way, though, make sure to install adblock plus, as pirate tv sites are FILLED with flash ads.
However, I would gladly watch all these shows with commercials legally, except for:
1. Most shows are not available in my area legally
2. When they are, the players from local tv stations usually don't work as well (crash more, etc.) as the pirate sites
3. Even when the shows we want to watch are available, and the player isn't buggy (vis-a-vis most discovery and tlc shows), it's just more convenient to stick with the pirate sites, as we can access ALL the content we want through one search portal. It would be a waste of my time to switch to the legal sites, especially as the law here currently doesn't forbid consumers from accessing pirate material, only providers can't provide illegal stuff.
If they had a free, ad supported version of "freevideosforwatching.com*" (*name changed) AND it was illegal for me to watch the pirated ones, I wouldn't hesitate to switch for a second.
Anyone who has ever dealt with a major label knows that all recording/production costs are recouped by the label before the artist makes any money. Plus the record label only pay out a dollar or two per album (I had heard a few years back that Metallica was making $4 per album, but even that figure is ludicrously high). Plus retail also takes a cut (even on itunes). Plus manufacturing costs money if you're making CDs and 15% (this is standard) of these CDs are given away as promotional. So consider the fact that if one spends $50,000 on the recording and production of an album (a modest figure in a major studio), one must sell about 30,000 copies of the album just to break even on the cost of making the album. Music acts make money playing live, and don't recieve a wage during recording (unless they get an advance, which is also recouped, adding to the number of albums which must be sold to break even).
The alternative now is that I can buy the $100 computer (a p4 with 3gb ram will do great), and a $200 soundcard (an m-audio delta 1010lt). I should have been more clear earlier, but the other $700 would easily rent a nice set of drum microphones (if you're even using real drums, and even then, it's usually easier to get a good sound with triggers - ala Nirvana's Nevermind, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and just about every other mainstream record you've ever heard), a good vocal mic, and any instruments you may also need (although if you're a recording musician you probably already have that stuff, major label deal or not). To be absolutely realistic, the costs of the rentals you'll need for tracking (and the old carpet you need for the walls) is probably more in the region of about $200, but I tend to err on the side of caution when I make such broad statements. So you could make an album yourself, and after you recoup the $1000 it took to make it, you start earning money on all the hard work you have done in writing and recording your music. Alternatively, you could make an album with a major label, go into the hole with them for $50,000, and start making money for the same amount of work after 30,000 albums are sold. And when you want to make a new album again, the label won't let you unless you've made money on the last. If you had done it yourself, you could not only start creating again in a couple of months, but your costs for album 2 are 30% less because you already have the computer and soundcard you used the first time
Where do I come up with this stuff? I've done it. Several times. Check out dickmacinnis.com to listen to my debut solo album, which I've already made almost $20,000 on to date. The album took about two months to write/record/produce/master, and I'll be able to continue selling it until the day I die. I'm currently working on the follow up.
I remember when I started programming basic on a 386. It had only the pc speaker. I had always been interested in music, so I had started programming with basic little beeps and such to play a melody I had written. At the time you needed to spend $50,000 to record a decent sounding professional album in a studio. Nowadays you can make a recording on par with the hits of the 90s (at least) on a $100 desktop with a $200 soundcard. And major record labels wonder why we're not convinced that the major pop acts are worth the money. The reason is they're not. The old days are gone, and anybody with the willingness to learn and a passion for music making can make just as good a product for a tiny fraction of the cost. One only needs to sell about a hundred albums at $10 each to break even nowadays (of course most mainstream pop artists don't have the first clue how to do any of this work, which is why they're so easily duped into a record contract).
IMHO, listening to these side by side, that Roland MT32 is better sounding than even the cd-quality digital audio. How about that sweet marimba lead line?
DickMacInnis.com
Agreed! Besides which, ideas are certainly not the only thing being sold in multimedia content.
I'm a songwriter. You want to come to my house and listen to me play a song. Sure! But if I don't let you in, you're screwed. If I'm playing a song in my front yard and you're on the street, I can't stop you from listening. And even if you learn all the words and how to play it on the piano, I can't stop you from playing it at your house, or to your friends. Try that with a movie. Hang around with a screenwriter, watch what he types, and then convince your friends to act it out with you. Not very good? Well, maybe what you want is a professional movie. Maybe what you want is a professional sound recording. Here's the rub: even if I own a studio, professional musicians and actors don't work for free. A jam band at your family reunion? Sure! A community play? Maybe. The point is, you probably wouldn't watch Transformers (at least not for an hour and a half), if it was acted out by people from your neighborhood with cardboard outfits. And even then, do you think they'd want to do that every night?? And you probably wouldn't want to listen to Radiohead's latest album if it was played by laidoff workers from the local steel mill, and even if you did, they wouldn't do it every day, at least not for free. Even street performers pack up and go home when they don't make a single penny. And yet, people think that they have the right to consume PROFESSIONAL works, which COST MONEY TO MAKE, for free (and yes, I am one of those people). I don't disagree with piracy, but it is CERTAINLY unethical
I download pirated movies, music, software (to a far lesser extent since I switched to FOSS) for all of the above reasons, but as a content provider myself, I must mention that it's not as easy as we would all think to have simultaneous global distribution. Here are the problems:
1) Registration of copyrighted works. This takes a different amount of time every time you do it, never mind in every global jurisdiction. With advertising being so expensive, and/or so time consuming, we want the product to drop as soon as it's advertised, which leads me to point
2) Global advertising. If I advertise on a website most frequently visited by people in my country (Canada), there are certainly people from other countries around the globe who will see these ads. If those people want my content, and they are impatient (as I am), they will want to pirate the content in question rather than wait for it to appear in stores. This, in and of itself is not such a problem, as all content providers want to reach as wide a fan/user base as possible. Nonetheless, I would say with almost absolute certainty that if someone (myself, at least) ALREADY has a pirated copy of the content, they have even LESS motivation to buy the legal content than they originally did. In a best case scenario, a friend will come over to your house, watch the pirated movie, and want to buy it because they don't know about bittorrent.
3) Manufacturing and shipping. If I make a movie, and want to get it into theatres, no problem! Make a couple thousand copies, and send them around the world. Once they've arrived, release the movie everywhere at once and millions can be made at the box office. When it's DVD release time, however, I must make MILLIONS of copies. Now what? If I contract the work out to a single duplication service, they will take months to make that many DVDs (because they have other clients, and even major film studios with in-house duplication have more than one movie to print at a time; think about back catalogs alone). Since I've advertised the hell out of my movie, and this advertising is next to worthless six months from now, this is not an option. That's not even taking into account that shipping times would delay the release in many areas of the world. Option 2 is to contract the duplication out to regional companies (which almost everyone does). I can't set a specific release date in any area until I know when they're ready to ship, and yet even this will vary from region to region. Perhaps in China my movie is not as popular as in Canada, so the duplication house is prioritizing larger clients ahead of me, which delays release there.
There are only two ways to achieve simultaneous global release with the above problems in mind.
1) Wait until every single aspect is in place to release. This could take years. It's ludicrous. As long as I have a product ready and it's sitting in a warehouse awaiting release, I'm losing massive amounts of money.
2) Forget about physical media. I'm sure we'll get there someday (probably soon), but for now, even with piracy, physical media is still making money, and I can guarantee that stopping all production will not increase digital sales, It will just prevent people who don't know how to download (legally or illegally) from buying my product.
Now, all this aside, I completely agree, as a consumer, with every point in favour of piracy. As content providers, we need to have BOTH simultaneous global DIGITAL release, AND the standard, staggered physical release. Meeting the needs of ALL possible customers only makes business sense.
1) I film something with these cameras, convert the footage to an open codec, and release the copies under a creative commons attribution license. I keep this footage on my personal computer behind a firewall in a folder with a copy of the license previously mentioned.
2) When I decide to make a commercial movie (which could be years, days, or even seconds later), I license this raw footage from myself under the terms of the creative commons license (if I really want to get complex, my wife licenses it from me and subsequently I from her).
3) I make a movie using footage I obtained under an attribution license which has no commercial or share-alike restrictions. In the credits of the movie, I clearly state who filmed the footage I used, and under what license I obtained it.
4) Profit!!!
5) The MPEG-LA sues me because I made a movie with their codec. I explain to them that this was not the case, as the movie I made contained no footage using their codec.
6) the MPEG-LA sues me because I released footage I had recorded without their consent to the filmmaker in question (me). I explain that the footage was converted away from their codec and subsequently licenced to the filmmaker for free, which adheres to the license I obtained when I bought the camera. No violation.
All this is not even taking into account that I may have rented said camera, or bought it second-hand, in which case I had no dealings whatsoever with, and hence could not have entered into a contract with the MPEG-LA.
Bear in mind that even if everything above was untrue, buying a camera only to read the manual is not a binding contract. What's to say I even read the darned thing? I rarely read manuals, and even if I did, nothing prevented me from using the camera before I had agreed to the terms of said license (as in the case of software which cannot be installed without agreeing to an EULA).
I may sell you a coat with a note in the inside pocket stating that you may not wear this coat on Tuesdays, but good luck getting that through any court of law in the world should I decide to sue, even in the US, and even with millions of dollars to spend on lawyers.
Should anyone actually be sued concerning such a ridiculous license, they should take their appeals to the highest court in the land, where a judgement in the defendant's favour will forever set the precedent for case law of such a ludicrous nature.
this entire license is nothing more than FUD, although I can see why it can be included, as the camera manufaturer's HAVE entered into an agreement with the MPEG-LA to include this license, and their contract is binding, no matter how insane it may be
Ok, as someone who used Cubase as my first foray into recording, I can understand your confusion. However, things on linux work much more like real hardware, so to anyone besides you and me, who has used a tape machine or hdr, with a console, outboard effects, and a patchbay, the Ardour approach is much more sensible. Much like the way a beginner guitarist will want an all-in-one amplifier with effects, reverb, and several channels, whereas a seasoned pro used stompboxes, rackmounted processing and a dedicated power amplifier, this is the difference between a studio suite like Cubase and a dedicated editor/mixer/recorder like Ardour. Check out the plugins available at linuxdsp.co.uk or google search for the invada plugins if you need something with a fancy gui. Otherwise, the plugins included with ubuntustudio-audio-plugins in your standard repos are sure to have all the functionality you need (although they're not necessarily user-friendly, as a trade off though, the ladspa effects are generally quite system-resouce light, so you can use more than in a Cubase VST type setup).
As for your issues with hydrogen, I don't really understand. When you use a piece of software like fruity loops or reason (i've never programmed drums in cubase), you must use a loop that's four beats long. To make a 3/4 beat in hydrogen, just change the pattern length to 12. The reason this is way more useful is in the case that you're making a song with one patter at 3/4, another at 4/4. and so on. Sure, it's a little bit harder to wrap your head around if you're only using one type of beat for a song, and you only use either 4/4 or 3/4 for any song you do, but for anyone looking to get truly creative (hence, anyone with moderate to advanced musical training), the complexity you can achieve with such a system is absolutely necessary.
I've been using Ardour professionally for the last five years. Check out my latest album at dickmacinnis.com. Works better than any other DAW I've used (including cubase/nuendo, protools, cakewalk, etc....). I've only recently started using hydrogen, but the fact that it can be hooked up via jack to any midi sequencer is super great, and even programming within the editor itself is totally awesome. I used to use fruity loops and reason back when I was a windows guy. The unlimited routability of jack applications is not only terribly handy, it's how software should behave (that's how hardware works: you can plug a hard-disk recorder into a separate guitar amplifier). And believe me, I am definitely a professional musician: I have been solely self-employed (making live appearance and merchandise profits) for the last 3 years. All the while using open source software for everything from recording, to graphic and web design, to video production.
I use lastpass. They have online sync plugins for firefox, chrome, ie, and safari, as well as a downloadable tool similar to keepassx. All you have to do is remember this one password, and it keeps track of all the others. very handy. Plus, if you do use the online sync tool (i.e. if you're not afraid of having your passwords on some other company's machine), you can always log in at their site to retrieve passwords if you're on a computer that can't download the plugin.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I had (or knew how to use) mod points. This is right up my alley as far as humour goes. Strange that when I read it it was modded simply "2".
I assume you mean "when will Debian update WINE?", because a new version of WINE just came out last week.
Why on earth would anyone use XFCE for a "light" desktop, especially as a Linux user, when there's Fluxbox?
I would think that calling dumbing-down "retarding down" is incredibly insensitive. I'm not sure why you'd even suggest that. Not that "dumbing down" is any better really, as the word dumb originally referred to someone who is mute. But at least nobody refers to a mute person as "dumb" anymore (at least nobody under 60). And yes, I realize that the ageism in my last parenthesis is just as offensive as what I'm railing against. Have a nice day ;-)
So, you "plan to have neither", which infers a change from a current situation in which you apparently do not have neither. So that implies you were using "or" exclusively and we are led to the conclusion you have both? (congratulations, so do I)
Actually, what the OP said "implies" an idea. You "inferred" that idea. So perhaps you meant to say "...from which I infer a change", or "...which implies a change".
I Hate to be a grammar Nazi, but you started it ;-).
Why would you have a secondary screen to the left, and not make that the primary screen? Do you read right to left (I'm assuming not, since you posted in English)?
Precisely! My favourite rant about Unity is people complaining that it's not as customisable as gnome2/docky, etc. My question to those people is: if you're using docky and customizing gnome, why are you complaining about the DEFAULT desktop in Ubuntu. If you know how to install/configure docky, and how to configure/remove gnome panels, you should probably find it no problem to switch from unity back to gnome2. It's literally a 1 minute change. And I AM one of those people who like to customize (I have 6 household computers; two mediacenter PCs run custom compiz with no gnome panels, two laptops run fluxbox with nomachine clients, one audio computer runs classic gnome, and only my one main development machine runs stock ubuntu). Why would I complain about the fact that the default isn't MY default? Because that would be DUMB!!!! The reasons Ubuntu rules the desktop linux world are: 1) it just works 2) software center/apt kicks ass. 3) available software via official repos/ppas is unbeatable 4) I CAN customize. If the DEFAULT DE/WM make you feel like switching to a different distro, fine, but don't think for one second that your user experience will ever get easier by going that route.
hear, hear! As a theologist with no specific religion (I would hesitate to even call myself agnostic), I find it ludicrous that people can be evangelical about atheism while judging others for being theists of any kind. The enlightenment was over ages ago. Anyone claiming to be an atheist now is just as confused and dogmatic as their predecessors, with the added burden of being self-indoctrinated.
true fact. People often think that a regular release is the equivalent of a regular windows/osx release, which is a fallacy. The LTS releases are the ones we ought to base our opinions on (especially since before ubuntu, nobody did a 6 month release cycle). But, I must conceed, that is Ubuntu's fault alone. They would do well to call their LTS's "regular" releases, and all the in-betweens "alpha", "beta", and "RC" respectively. OTOH, they wouldn't get as much user testing that way, and hence, their LTS releases would not be as stable.
'things like the sometimes-unified-global-menu are frankly infuriating' The global menus work with kde and gnome apps, as well as firefox. The only one not installed by default is libreoffice's menubar. You can get it in the repos, it's called lo-menubar, and will probably be default in 11.10 as it works just fine right now and will probably be bug free by then.
'Basically, the only thing that sucks about unity is the unity desktop itself. The only thing from there I miss is the text search/launcher. If that didn't take up the whole desktop it would be much better.' What?! your desktop is unity, but less polished. I like the fact that you thought of the same things as the unity developers, but what, exactly, are the advantages of your setup?
Are you using Virtualbox 4.0? It was just released recently and you need it. Get it from Oracle's site, install, and make sure that the checkbox for "3d acceleration" is checked on your VM setup. Then it should work (provided you have the guest additions up to date. As a caveat, you have to be able to do 3d acceleration on your host machine for this to work. Enjoy!
the show/hide behavior and scale of the dock can be adjusted. You need compizconfig-settings-manager, though.
install guest additions
What's so hard about Drupal? It was the first CMS I ever used (before that I had built sites with Kompozer, iWeb, and Dreamweaver, and before that, I used old fashioned HTML in the 90s), and I found it not only easy to use, but that being able to use modules for ecommerce, flash, mp3s, rotating banners, etc. made the whole site WAY more appealing to users at a level of complexity I could never do on my own (I tried hacking together bits of java, flash, etc. in the past). Not only that, but once it's set up, like all CMS systems, I can administer from the web, from anywhere, and it just works. I didn't even buy a book, just read tutorials and did google searches on the things I couldn't figure out on my own (admittedly not very much). I had considered myself very much an amateur before using Drupal, and I'm certainly no programmer, but now I use it to administer three of my own sites and two that I was hired to create for people I know. Drupal is great for its flexibility and easy interface, but I would agree that it's a bit overkill for 90% of the sites people create, where all they need is a simple information site with some pictures. If that's the case, use wordpress. P.S. Although I recommend Wordpress for simple sites, when I first used it after having done a couple sites in Drupal, I was utterly baffled at the differences, and I'm sure it works both ways.
We are streaming only. I must admit that most of the shows we watch, however, are not available on hulu where we live, so most of the content we watch in our house is illegal. Ditched cable about five years ago when I found out about torrents, and switched to streaming only about two years ago when the shows we like in our house all became available. Honestly, if you find the right sites, there's not much you can't find. Even old/obscure shows pop up often, so content-wise, it's basically the same as having cable or a dish. If you're going this way, though, make sure to install adblock plus, as pirate tv sites are FILLED with flash ads. However, I would gladly watch all these shows with commercials legally, except for: 1. Most shows are not available in my area legally 2. When they are, the players from local tv stations usually don't work as well (crash more, etc.) as the pirate sites 3. Even when the shows we want to watch are available, and the player isn't buggy (vis-a-vis most discovery and tlc shows), it's just more convenient to stick with the pirate sites, as we can access ALL the content we want through one search portal. It would be a waste of my time to switch to the legal sites, especially as the law here currently doesn't forbid consumers from accessing pirate material, only providers can't provide illegal stuff. If they had a free, ad supported version of "freevideosforwatching.com*" (*name changed) AND it was illegal for me to watch the pirated ones, I wouldn't hesitate to switch for a second.
The alternative now is that I can buy the $100 computer (a p4 with 3gb ram will do great), and a $200 soundcard (an m-audio delta 1010lt). I should have been more clear earlier, but the other $700 would easily rent a nice set of drum microphones (if you're even using real drums, and even then, it's usually easier to get a good sound with triggers - ala Nirvana's Nevermind, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and just about every other mainstream record you've ever heard), a good vocal mic, and any instruments you may also need (although if you're a recording musician you probably already have that stuff, major label deal or not). To be absolutely realistic, the costs of the rentals you'll need for tracking (and the old carpet you need for the walls) is probably more in the region of about $200, but I tend to err on the side of caution when I make such broad statements. So you could make an album yourself, and after you recoup the $1000 it took to make it, you start earning money on all the hard work you have done in writing and recording your music. Alternatively, you could make an album with a major label, go into the hole with them for $50,000, and start making money for the same amount of work after 30,000 albums are sold. And when you want to make a new album again, the label won't let you unless you've made money on the last. If you had done it yourself, you could not only start creating again in a couple of months, but your costs for album 2 are 30% less because you already have the computer and soundcard you used the first time
Where do I come up with this stuff? I've done it. Several times. Check out dickmacinnis.com to listen to my debut solo album, which I've already made almost $20,000 on to date. The album took about two months to write/record/produce/master, and I'll be able to continue selling it until the day I die. I'm currently working on the follow up.
DickMacInnis.com
DickMacInnis.com
IMHO, listening to these side by side, that Roland MT32 is better sounding than even the cd-quality digital audio. How about that sweet marimba lead line? DickMacInnis.com
I'm a songwriter. You want to come to my house and listen to me play a song. Sure! But if I don't let you in, you're screwed. If I'm playing a song in my front yard and you're on the street, I can't stop you from listening. And even if you learn all the words and how to play it on the piano, I can't stop you from playing it at your house, or to your friends. Try that with a movie. Hang around with a screenwriter, watch what he types, and then convince your friends to act it out with you. Not very good? Well, maybe what you want is a professional movie. Maybe what you want is a professional sound recording. Here's the rub: even if I own a studio, professional musicians and actors don't work for free. A jam band at your family reunion? Sure! A community play? Maybe. The point is, you probably wouldn't watch Transformers (at least not for an hour and a half), if it was acted out by people from your neighborhood with cardboard outfits. And even then, do you think they'd want to do that every night?? And you probably wouldn't want to listen to Radiohead's latest album if it was played by laidoff workers from the local steel mill, and even if you did, they wouldn't do it every day, at least not for free. Even street performers pack up and go home when they don't make a single penny. And yet, people think that they have the right to consume PROFESSIONAL works, which COST MONEY TO MAKE, for free (and yes, I am one of those people). I don't disagree with piracy, but it is CERTAINLY unethical
DickMacInnis.com
1) Registration of copyrighted works. This takes a different amount of time every time you do it, never mind in every global jurisdiction. With advertising being so expensive, and/or so time consuming, we want the product to drop as soon as it's advertised, which leads me to point
2) Global advertising. If I advertise on a website most frequently visited by people in my country (Canada), there are certainly people from other countries around the globe who will see these ads. If those people want my content, and they are impatient (as I am), they will want to pirate the content in question rather than wait for it to appear in stores. This, in and of itself is not such a problem, as all content providers want to reach as wide a fan/user base as possible. Nonetheless, I would say with almost absolute certainty that if someone (myself, at least) ALREADY has a pirated copy of the content, they have even LESS motivation to buy the legal content than they originally did. In a best case scenario, a friend will come over to your house, watch the pirated movie, and want to buy it because they don't know about bittorrent.
3) Manufacturing and shipping. If I make a movie, and want to get it into theatres, no problem! Make a couple thousand copies, and send them around the world. Once they've arrived, release the movie everywhere at once and millions can be made at the box office. When it's DVD release time, however, I must make MILLIONS of copies. Now what? If I contract the work out to a single duplication service, they will take months to make that many DVDs (because they have other clients, and even major film studios with in-house duplication have more than one movie to print at a time; think about back catalogs alone). Since I've advertised the hell out of my movie, and this advertising is next to worthless six months from now, this is not an option. That's not even taking into account that shipping times would delay the release in many areas of the world. Option 2 is to contract the duplication out to regional companies (which almost everyone does). I can't set a specific release date in any area until I know when they're ready to ship, and yet even this will vary from region to region. Perhaps in China my movie is not as popular as in Canada, so the duplication house is prioritizing larger clients ahead of me, which delays release there.
There are only two ways to achieve simultaneous global release with the above problems in mind.
1) Wait until every single aspect is in place to release. This could take years. It's ludicrous. As long as I have a product ready and it's sitting in a warehouse awaiting release, I'm losing massive amounts of money.
2) Forget about physical media. I'm sure we'll get there someday (probably soon), but for now, even with piracy, physical media is still making money, and I can guarantee that stopping all production will not increase digital sales, It will just prevent people who don't know how to download (legally or illegally) from buying my product.
Now, all this aside, I completely agree, as a consumer, with every point in favour of piracy. As content providers, we need to have BOTH simultaneous global DIGITAL release, AND the standard, staggered physical release. Meeting the needs of ALL possible customers only makes business sense.
DickMacInnis.com
1) I film something with these cameras, convert the footage to an open codec, and release the copies under a creative commons attribution license. I keep this footage on my personal computer behind a firewall in a folder with a copy of the license previously mentioned.
2) When I decide to make a commercial movie (which could be years, days, or even seconds later), I license this raw footage from myself under the terms of the creative commons license (if I really want to get complex, my wife licenses it from me and subsequently I from her).
3) I make a movie using footage I obtained under an attribution license which has no commercial or share-alike restrictions. In the credits of the movie, I clearly state who filmed the footage I used, and under what license I obtained it.
4) Profit!!!
5) The MPEG-LA sues me because I made a movie with their codec. I explain to them that this was not the case, as the movie I made contained no footage using their codec.
6) the MPEG-LA sues me because I released footage I had recorded without their consent to the filmmaker in question (me). I explain that the footage was converted away from their codec and subsequently licenced to the filmmaker for free, which adheres to the license I obtained when I bought the camera. No violation.
All this is not even taking into account that I may have rented said camera, or bought it second-hand, in which case I had no dealings whatsoever with, and hence could not have entered into a contract with the MPEG-LA.
Bear in mind that even if everything above was untrue, buying a camera only to read the manual is not a binding contract. What's to say I even read the darned thing? I rarely read manuals, and even if I did, nothing prevented me from using the camera before I had agreed to the terms of said license (as in the case of software which cannot be installed without agreeing to an EULA).
I may sell you a coat with a note in the inside pocket stating that you may not wear this coat on Tuesdays, but good luck getting that through any court of law in the world should I decide to sue, even in the US, and even with millions of dollars to spend on lawyers.
Should anyone actually be sued concerning such a ridiculous license, they should take their appeals to the highest court in the land, where a judgement in the defendant's favour will forever set the precedent for case law of such a ludicrous nature.
this entire license is nothing more than FUD, although I can see why it can be included, as the camera manufaturer's HAVE entered into an agreement with the MPEG-LA to include this license, and their contract is binding, no matter how insane it may be
Ok, as someone who used Cubase as my first foray into recording, I can understand your confusion. However, things on linux work much more like real hardware, so to anyone besides you and me, who has used a tape machine or hdr, with a console, outboard effects, and a patchbay, the Ardour approach is much more sensible. Much like the way a beginner guitarist will want an all-in-one amplifier with effects, reverb, and several channels, whereas a seasoned pro used stompboxes, rackmounted processing and a dedicated power amplifier, this is the difference between a studio suite like Cubase and a dedicated editor/mixer/recorder like Ardour. Check out the plugins available at linuxdsp.co.uk or google search for the invada plugins if you need something with a fancy gui. Otherwise, the plugins included with ubuntustudio-audio-plugins in your standard repos are sure to have all the functionality you need (although they're not necessarily user-friendly, as a trade off though, the ladspa effects are generally quite system-resouce light, so you can use more than in a Cubase VST type setup). As for your issues with hydrogen, I don't really understand. When you use a piece of software like fruity loops or reason (i've never programmed drums in cubase), you must use a loop that's four beats long. To make a 3/4 beat in hydrogen, just change the pattern length to 12. The reason this is way more useful is in the case that you're making a song with one patter at 3/4, another at 4/4. and so on. Sure, it's a little bit harder to wrap your head around if you're only using one type of beat for a song, and you only use either 4/4 or 3/4 for any song you do, but for anyone looking to get truly creative (hence, anyone with moderate to advanced musical training), the complexity you can achieve with such a system is absolutely necessary.
I've been using Ardour professionally for the last five years. Check out my latest album at dickmacinnis.com. Works better than any other DAW I've used (including cubase/nuendo, protools, cakewalk, etc....). I've only recently started using hydrogen, but the fact that it can be hooked up via jack to any midi sequencer is super great, and even programming within the editor itself is totally awesome. I used to use fruity loops and reason back when I was a windows guy. The unlimited routability of jack applications is not only terribly handy, it's how software should behave (that's how hardware works: you can plug a hard-disk recorder into a separate guitar amplifier). And believe me, I am definitely a professional musician: I have been solely self-employed (making live appearance and merchandise profits) for the last 3 years. All the while using open source software for everything from recording, to graphic and web design, to video production.
I use lastpass. They have online sync plugins for firefox, chrome, ie, and safari, as well as a downloadable tool similar to keepassx. All you have to do is remember this one password, and it keeps track of all the others. very handy. Plus, if you do use the online sync tool (i.e. if you're not afraid of having your passwords on some other company's machine), you can always log in at their site to retrieve passwords if you're on a computer that can't download the plugin.