No, the artists get a shit load more than that. They got representation at the local record stores. They get A&R to help get them on the radio. They get advertisments and otherwise reimbursed for touring.
You know what else, few artists you probably listen to make enough money for the record companies to actually return money back on them. The Britneys and Backstreets out there are subsudizing a majority of the artists you listen to. I'll say it again, most musicians are a loosing proposition for companies, but they continually buy up 10 bands for every profitible band because they HOPE that one of them will bring the money back into the fold. The market is volitile...bands that don't keep their sounds current don't stay around in the charts. Great bands that happened to show up and release an album at the wrong time also don't do well. Crappy artists that just happen to release an album just when a void is forming do well. Predicting all of this is practically impossible.
I know a lot of this is off topic (actually maybe not for this article) but just because a band only sees a dollar or two off every CD doesn't mean they aren't seeing results from being on the lable. They choose to be on the lable, not you. If they didn't want to take the bloodmoney, they could have started their own music lable, kept ALL the profits and thus needed to sell only a fraction of what they sell to make the same amount of money. They could tour (which IS the major money maker for most artists) and ignore all of that.
They didn't and choose to go the 'simpler' way (or maybe just conventional way). It isn't your duty as a consumer to second guess what they choose. Their finances are not your concern. Respecting companies and artists legitimate intellectual properties rights ARE your concern. If you want to be a thief that is all well and good. Before I get modded me down, just think of how ya'll would feel if a company snagged GPL'd software for a shipping product and claimed it would cost too much to license it or they just didn't like the terms. One of the/.'rs has an interesting quote about Microsoft and 'Viral Licensing Schemes' saying if you don't like it don't use it. If you don't want to pay for music, find like minded artists and listen to them.
You know why it isn't looked at as a serious proposition? Because every gawd damn dope smoking hippy pushes this as the miracle product and your rightwing buddies are going to oppose it on just that principle.
Face it, the dope smoking phish listening to population isn't after pushing help for anything other than legalizing it will be one step closer to leaglizing its cousin that few can recognize without botany training (either that or smoking it and figuring out if ya get high or just have a really nasty headache).
Trust me, get the hippies and the dopers onto some other wonder drug and the Rightwingers will go for hemp like nothing. I know I'm going to be modded down for this by some dumbass (remember smoking dope lowers your IQ...wasn't that on here or was that k5) but think about it. Have folks in suits pushing that Hemp Jelly...get swimsuit models wearing that itchy fibre over their most sensative body parts...just don't have some stoned out spokesman that looks like he should be in a drum circle or hugging other guys in a heterosexual mens group way pushing it and the image will change.
I'd simply show them the Unix stuff that is cross platform. Start off with things such as Apache or even PHP.
More than likely, if they are going for their MCSE cert, they will be running Wind'rs no matter what you tell them, but showing them these cross platform apps might be the seed to slowly merge them to other platforms. For instance, I run both Apache and PHP on most of my servers...I run them on Wind'rs, MacOS X, Unix. They are VERY stable across platforms. I still run IIS5.0 on one machine, but thats because I have clients that NEED ASP. I use to develop against ASP, but now use PHP on everything because I never know what platform I'm going to be running on.
After that -- because everyone needs to know how to set up a web server -- grab the Posix Tools from Cygwin (??? I think thats where I get them...I just google everytime) and install them on Windows. You get all the nice commands that ya do on unix, but on Windows. Its VERY nice because Windows doesn't come with a very good Kill command (there is one on the Resource Disc...but I prefer these ones better)...sometimes you REALLY need a service to quit and their is no other way.
Start showing folks these xplatform tools and show them how they only need to memorize one set of instructions instead of a dozen that do the same things across a dozen platforms (the CLI stuff on Windows isn't the same even across their different platforms...they change the names of apps too readily). How do you get to a Command Line on Windows? Is is CMD? Is it Dosprmpt? Depends on the version. Things like this.
I install the cross platform tools so people can be familiar with the Unix stuff...hell I've got my boys so brainwashed that when I ask them to hit one of my unix boxes, they now tell me its 'just like windows'. Once you can safely work around a machine without having to stumble, you then feel a little braver and may actually explore a bit. Maybe then they figure out why a Unix box is so much nicer and more stable than the same PC...
Actually, I thought the Newton had Grafitti built in as a default, but used natural writting as a fall back. I've used them all from the MP100 to an upgraded 2000 (I believe it worked the same as the 2100). I swear I had Grafitti cards that I kept putting on the back of the case, and I don't think they were 3rd party upgrades but licensed into the OS.
Anywho, yes, grafitti is better for fast entry...if you can remember all the symbols and everything else. Alphas aren't too hard, but past that I have a hard time remembering how to get anything without pulling the damn thing out of its case and looking at my cheat sheets on the back of it.
BUT the Newton handwritting was still hard better than people gave it credit for. Its like when a doctor writes you out a prescription and you get the wrong meds because they can't write worth shit, are you going to blame the pharmacist or the doctor (discounting of course that the pharm could simply call the dr if there was confusion). The newton actually forced me to learn to write a little more ledgibly...people complained that it didn't learn, but forced you to learn...no shit. Learn to write ledgibly and you won't have problems. Learn to spell correctly (something I don't do well) and the software will more accurately figgure out what you are trying to say.
Ok, I'm sure there are a few dozen Newton posts like this by now attached to different comments...especially since this device is always knocked by folks that only played with one for 5 minutes...so feel free to mark this as redundant. All I know is I wish I had a Newton the size of my Clie, cause its hard to wear cargo pants to pocket your PDA when you are forced to wear a tie and jacket every day.
clif
Re:pitch correction is nothing new
on
Pitch Perfect Karaoke
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Agree'd. It sounded cool the first time, but now it just sucks. I have a good friend that refers to this as Oscilator Vocals...I understand the Kid Rock country song, but mainstream country??? This is about the time I start explaining to clients that they need to seriously consider if they want to use this effect or not.
In moderation, it can helps vocals, but can be done far better manually - ie., non-autotune. On my site, one of our latest interviews, Steve Duda of Nine Inch Nails (or at least the latest album) discribes some of his techniques for doing this:
I personally would use a piece of software called Melodyne. Its not real time, BUT has some of the most natural algorythms around. It is practically a Pitch Word Processor. You can leave in as much vibrato as you want, kill it all together (like most Autotune apps above) or even add it naturally for those that don't know how to articulate it very well. You can shift notes as far as a 5th before they start to sound funny, and it still keeps all the tied notes together so that you can slide between pitches without the sudden note being triggered as is so commonly found in todays image concience talent free musics.
I personally know a lot of folks that make their bread and butter fixing vocals for the stars and I'm not against it at all...I just wish the producers would get a little more credit as they are the ones doing all the work these days. Everyone has a natural desire to express themselves, as noted by the Karaoke main heading, and this sort of thing allows people to focus more on being creative instead of blindly honing a talent that can only go so far (face it, some people are never going to be able to sing naturally no matter how much practice...I'm one of them).
Of course its a valid question...at least for all of use musicans that are cat lovers too.
I wrote a review of a music product a few years ago that was so good that I was forced to write about stuff other than just the review (ie., it was good...it sounded good...it was the best I had heard at the time...bad -- it was expensive...thats all I could write if I decided to do it straight). It detailed my former and present cats preferences in musics...
http://reviews.sonikmatter.com/features/coakley2
Anywho, my cats over the years loved different sounds too. My curent cat, CatCatCat (the only cat I had that hasn't chosen to elect a human name...thus monikered as the only thing he comes to) is DEFINATELY a piano cat. I come home every day to find him basking on my piano as the sun hits the sweet spot, making catlike bird calls on top of it out the windows when its not sleepy time, and listening to me play piano for as long as my fingers hold out these days the rest. The only thing that pisses him off is that I recently aquired a new Mac...picked it up with a 17" monitor that now shares space on top of the piano and the top is no longer just his spot.
Cats are very intelligent animals. Dogs tend to enjoy anything that their owners shows interest in, but cats find their own way in the world. They let you know if they like an instrument or howl when you play what they don't like (mine has a habit of finding the live mic and playing diva ensuring bad takes aren't kept).
Well my cat wants to play rat before bed...damn thing keeps holding it in his mouth and growling at me while I type. Damn thing needs more attention than some dogs I've had.
Thats funny! I had gotten some crap from their servers in the last few days as well. I've gotten a few dozen emails with the subject "Re: Order" and 'funnily' enough, using other folks images (one of which was changed to a 'THIS IS SPAM' in big red letters across the screen). yeah, I would normally put this in a spam filter, BUT my vendors respond back with headings like this and I hadn't had time to figure out what to filter on.
Looking through the headers, a good chunk of these had gone through the Spenser school:-)
Wadda prick...hell, one of my servers recently had an open relay and the folks at these types of places (Orbz) actually helped me fix it. It pissed me off that I was getting blocked, and it pissed me off that I was getting hate mail, but you know what? It was my fuck up (ok inherited fuck up) and I hate spam as much as the rest. This guy sounds like most of the MCSEs I know...won't even try fixing anything that ain't a M$ Server (and when it is - ain't responsible for anything til a hotpatch is rolled out).
Reread this again. She wrote the code. Some of the bugfixes were taken out of examples I had given her, but that is no different than finding examples on the net and incorpotating these into the code base.
Why would she have lost her degree? As an employeer, I paid her to code, therefor this was a work for hire that belonged to me BUT I gave her the right to use the code for her education. She programmed it, not me.
Anywho, no courts -- we had it sent to arbitration before anything like that ever happened.
Actually, I had a situation similar to this a few years back. An employee of mine asked if I wouldn't mind letting her do a project she was working on as a Senior Thesis. The only thing that meant for me was that I, as an employeer, had to be vigilant NOT to take the code and reprogram it for her in the middle of the night as I could get her in trouble with her educators (I also work for an educational facility, so things like that would effect me if it were thought I was helping a student cheat). It just meant that I had to act pretty much as an idiot non-programmer and give her bug reports and things like that, but not the actual code fixes. Hell, I'd end up writing an example code of something different showing her how I would fix the code, just to insulate me from the process and it worked well.
Anywho, a month after her graduation, that school started offering a product line VERY similar to my own...I knew because their department had been licensing the older software from us (as do quite a few schools) and was shopping it around to my other clients.
It ended up being a real pain in the ass, with her professor actually claiming that he came up with the entire idea of this and didn't know she worked for me. He claimed that she was such a bad programmer that he also wrote most of the code (when in fact a good chunk of what was there in the end, was actually my example code...I was a little miffed as I told her NOT to use my examples wholesale for this application, but to do something similar).
So for 4 months, we argued back and forth about all of this, until we got the lawyers involved. The jerk of a prof continued to tell everyone that it was his idea and mostly his programming, when the guy barely knew this language...in the end, he was able to keep a chunk of the software that I paid my employee for and use it in house (which meant I lost their school as a major client) but it was agreed that they would not sell it or let anyone else use it.
So yeah, your company and your educational institution may end up fighting over your code in the end. Make sure everyone who is involved knows whats going on and arrange a meeting with everyone BEFORE you start to use the code (as the employeer I didn't meet anyone til about the time the educator was having trouble using the code...which I let her leave in the stripped down 'Thesis Mode' on my demo server, but he needed it installed on his machine to see how it worked...but didn't even know how to get ODBC set up...yeah it was windows code). If I had met all these people, I would have gotten a signed statement from everyone these saying, "Yeah, I know she's using this for a class and I'm not helping any more than as a mentor, but it still fucking belongs to me as I'm paying for the shit". I would have gotten a signed statement from the educator revoking any right he had to the code and I would have gotten a signed statement from the employee / student saying she understood both of our positions. If ANY of the following did not agree to this, I would have told her to do something completely different that ANYTHING that we were doing in my department.
So, maybe this in some sense explains why employeers have to be nazi's about the whole damn thing.
Dude, few of the Under $200 cards are REALLY going to give you 24 bit. They MAY record at 96k, but the noise floor of these things will effective lower the bit level to something much less.
Then again, I generally go with the Echo or MAudio cards, some of which WILL fit the under $200 budget.
I've seen suggestions of SoundBlasters...the minute you hear ANYONE suggest a SB for ProAudio on ANY budget, you can discount their advice on anything else. Still the one guy makes mention of the Mackie vs. Behringer...for my money, Behringer makes a damn good board. Its all Chinese manufacturing and done very inexpensively, BUT it isn't cheap. I played with their new board at NAMM a few weeks back and I'm kinda regressing my higher end Tascam board.
As another guy mentioned and is entirely on -- Hosa IS crap for most work (unless you are a plug and forget person that doesn't move equipment) and Monster sucks big time...for christ sakes, they sell ETHERNET Monster cables and try to tell us that the gold plating and unoxidized cable makes digital audio downloaded over the internet sound better. I don't care HOW cheap Monster is, I will never buy their products after that crap.
Anywho, this is NOT something that should be asked on Slashdot. Geeks like to look at specs and buy according to those (yeah, I double duty as a geek in both the Music Industry AND in a day job that is slowly becoming more of a hobby as my music stuff paid more last year than my university research). Look on Usenet or one of the most excellent websites out their like ProRec or even a site like my own -- http://sonikmatter.com. My site ISN'T geared towards a lot of the things you are looking into, but if ya decide to use Proaudio software such as Logic Audio, it WILL be the place to learn about these as well as building a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
Find a forum (NOT/.) and ask the same question there.
As a side note, I am actually taking a break from working on my latest DAW. Its a midrange audio box...just threw a 1.8Ghz and a decent server Motherboard into a box with 512M of memory (will expand to 1.5G as soon as I get other things tweaked). Matrox dual 450 card - great for audio work as its stable and doesn't screw with the PCI bus as most gaming cards will. Echo Darla...this isn't going to be recording more than a stereo pair in, BUT will need to use all 8 outputs occasionally. UW SCSI is a must on this box, I need at LEAST 64 tracks internal before grouped to 8. Gigasampler, Reaktor and Logic Audio Platinum 5 will be installed on this in the next week (as soon as 5 gets here). So far, it has cost me about $800 and most of this box is new (except for the software which was sent to me for beta testing and reviews and the older SCSI stuff that I've pulled out of servers as I upgrade them). Add about $800 for the high end audio software (and there ARE a lot that are lower range and will do what ya need).
You CAN do this on a budget, but ya have to plan everything out and watch Pricewatch / Pricegrabber like a hawk and make sure you get EXACTLY what you planned on, not just what ever might work...audio is picky about what ya put in your machine...especially if you are appreciative of stability. Windows CAN be stable...hardware is mostly the same, its drivers by irreputable companies that keep it from being stable.
Thats enough of my sharing...read what ya can and get an idea from that. Check out the websites and check on Usenet.
"If by impressive you mean impressive technically, then yes Final Fantasy is light years ahead of Shrek and Monsters Inc"
Hmm...I thought I had read somewhere that at least Monsters and FF used the same rendering applications, which would mean technically, they are the same. It was noted that the application (I believe it is Pixar's Renderman or something...too lazy from debugging all night to research and this COULD be a figment of my imagination right now:) was so versitile that it could do both cartoonlike work as well as near photographic quality.
Monsters had a much better dialogue and plot than FF and was aimed at a different audience. FF was was aimed squarely at the gamer geek crowd hoping that it would draw in more than just the playstation crowd...beautiful movie, but because of the artists and direction not because of the technology. If we were going to talk technology, look at the applications used to define Sully's fur...
Probably redundant as I haven't read the rest of the threads...
"I first played with Apache (on NT4 in fact) at about the same time as I was given my first real live webserver to handle - which was IIS3, and soon afer, 4. Configuration of IIS is a nightmare compared to Apache."
Well, yeah...IIS3 SUCKED. It had the worst interface ever. 4 wasn't bad. 5 actually got things right from a GUI POV. Every version only has gotten better.
Hell, if it weren't for M$'s practices of blaming sysadmin for their mistakes (and with an organization as big as M$, its to be expected...holes are actually easier to accidently be left in because so many developers have their hands in the pie) and the fact that I can serve almost 3x as much dynamic content from the equally equiped Linux box (IIS still can server more static text...but who the hell uses static text these days???) is why I moved over Apache for most of my stuff.
Right now, I use a mixture of servers and finally started converting my code to PHP and JSP from ASP (and a few other 3 letter acronyms) and finding these aren't nearly as bad as the 'professional' web developers will tell ya. Not as many visual tools to work with in the programming (ie., no PHP for Dreamweaver...ok there IS an extention, but it isn't nearly as fleshed out as the ASP and I still find it faster to do database stuff by hand).
So, if I had dedicated IIS Admin, more hardware that I didn't have to service and lots of licenses, I'd probably go with M$'s contribution...its much easier to find a monkey that can fix a M$ problem than a Linux / Apache problem. But as I know how all this stuff works and I don't have all the above, I'll probably keep converting my old boxes over to Linux as they retire from their windows duties (and get more performance they did in the previous years to boot:)
The Midiman / MAudio stuff is pretty good...they've actually worked with Apple to get the latency down to near realtime speeds for their Delta 1010.
To be honest, I'm not sure why this was a/. question...go to any of your local music stores and ask there. Most pro musicians are STILL Mac despite what others may tell you (usually bedroom musicians are more likely to tell you Windows is the predominant music OS...because thats what they have and what they can pirate easily).
After you've checked out your local music store and found there are dozens of options stop on over at Sonikmatter.com as we have tons of knowledgable users that work on Macs and all have different audio interfaces).
I completely agree. If you are no longer with this company, get a new DNS host or PAY them.
Having said that, I've hijacked a few myself. Clients that decided not to pay any more or screwed me over some other way. Hell, I had one a few weeks ago that was just waiting for their registration to lapse so that they could buy it back (and had some broker providing for this)...they owed me a few grand for the work I did, and decided that it wasn't good enough (even though they hired someone to take the graphics I did and translate them to their print stationary and banners)...Fuck it...I reregistered the domain myself under one of those cheap $7 a year registrars and have it pointing at one of their competitors sites. If they want to bring in a lawyer, I'll give it over, but until I get a summons, it ain't moving unless I get paid (which would be FAR cheaper than finding a lawyer willing to do this).
So, back to the point...make sure that your old web provider was paid up, make sure they realize there are no problems between you and then and get the crap moved to your own site. I just took a look at that everydns the parent response mentioned, and this would be cool to use (and I'd consider something like this for the few domains that I have that I don't have on Register.com which has their own DNS server so I could finally get rid of my crappy little unstable DNS box I'm using now...don't even have a back up anymore).
"Go into CompUSA and show me a word processor other than MS Word, or better yet, a spreadsheet other than Excel."
Actually, last time I was in CompUSA I saw a few diferent office type products. A good deal were focused on non-general use, but there were a few all round products. Only reason I noticed was that they were stacked near the Linux area (gasp! An actual linux area in a commercial store!?!?!)
Competition exists, but most people go for what they know. For some reason people will spend $700 on software like this and use 3% of the features than buy a package that is $30 and is narrowly focused on what they need.
I agree, as opposed to cash in the cash in the mail (Money Orders / Whatever) it is a hell of a lot better.
I use PP for a lot of transactions, and have also recently paid to get a merchant account with a 'real' bank. Its far more expensive, and the rules are far stricter...especially since we sell everything over the internet. If I get screwed by someone with the Merchant Account, I am out the merchandice, I get a return fee AND if the bank happens to approve too many fradulent cards, they charge us again.
To me, that is far worse than PPs methods. Why the hell should I be charged by the bank for something they approved? I'm told I can pay for their verification system (at a cost of like $1 per transaction of something huge like that), but they still don't offer any insurance.
No system is perfect, hell, a friend sold a few gran worth of equipment and decided to do things the most secure way he knew how -- COD through UPS. UPS took the obviously fraulent money order (looked like it was printed on a bad inkjet) and then proceeded to blame the seller...told him to talk to the postal authorities since it was a 'postal money order', who of course didn't have anything to do with it as they didn't print it out, and it wasn't one of their folks accepting it.
So, to me, PP offers far greater security than merchant accounts. As a buyer, I get a little warry about folks using this, but as a seller, I'd rather take the few problems PP has over the other systems...
Well thats kinda my point...Quark is NOT easy, but graphic designers pick it up all the time. It takes work to learn how to use.
HTML is the same way. Just because you know how to make a pretty table, doesn't make you a Web Expert any more than being able to construct a sentence out of a dictionary gives you the ability to be a good writer.
I have to disagree with UseIt.com. It isn't just ugly, but its practically unusable. Very little use of white space and everything is cluttered. It reminds me of reading footnotes in an encyclopedia. I gave up trying to get through this after a few lines of text.
Anywho, not to knock graphic designers, but I think any professional site should have a usability specialist managing all others within the site, be it HTML experts or the designers.
Of course they are common sense. Unforunately, few people in ANY field have common sense, they are too busy worrying about having the latest greatest product.
I read above someone complaining about the layout here on/.. They have the common sense to know that the layout works for the site and not to change it JUST to make the site look newer or cooler.
Most markettoids don't have that common sense...at least with this book you have tangible prrof that these guys don't know about UI and shouldn't be dictating it...and that goes along with graphic designers that now think that writting a web page is as easy to do as using Quark or Illustrator, ya shouldleave it to the experts.
Actually, I never got a usage policy or contract until about 2 months after I had called up and requested the service. Had a decent box from my last providers, so I never needed to buy their box and they didn't try pushing it on me. The network techs gave me what I needed to access the service. Never even used the software they provided. Heh! Not sure how it would have installed anyways.
So, as I never signed any contract, I am simply following the letter of their advertisement, not some usage policy that came 2 months after I signed up and had already been paying the bills.
Damn right about that. I pay for a set amount of bandwidth and I should get it. My site (above) had just upgraded its bandwidth and was deciding between colos and a T1...funny thing was that several of the folks that had talked about doing the T1 had mentioned an increased price for 'Excessive' Bandwidth.
What the F*ck????
I was willing to pay for a set amount of bandwith...if I saturate it 24/7 why should it matter? I can't imagine how I could have excessive bandwidth...do these guys sense that my lines are saturated and go out and install a second line (actually we had enough lines run to install several....when ya go up 14 flights, ya don't want to do it again).
Ok, that is a business situation, so it is *slightly* different. Then again, when I look at my DSL contracts, it really is the same wording. I am paying for 512k SDSL. They promise 512k of bandwidth ready to use...I'm going to damn well use it. I'm not paying per meg, thats not what they advertised, they advertised always on 512k of service.
Yeah yeah, I know the reality of this, and ya'll all know the reality is that the companies are banking on the fact you won't be using the service 24/7. This is the same reason biz phones cost 10x what residential phones do because the assumption was that residential phone users don't use the phone as much as businesses (we're ignoring the modem users out there because this is still a model predated from the advent of the 'internet' as the former AOL User know it).
If companies want to charge per meg, let them advertise that...it doesn't sound as sexy to say 10Gigs of downloads a month as it does 512k UNLIMITED Downloads.
You will get far less folks buying it if it sounds limited in any way. Too f*cking bad. Stop advertising it as unlimited and let us do what we will with our lines. I don't have more than one computer hooked up to my DSL...I have my little linux box hooked up to it...I have several other computers hooked up to the box, but none of them actually touch the lines, so its none of their business what else I have in my home.
Again, the problem I have with this is truth in advertising...don't get mad when people take you for your word...
I've NEVER seen a tenured prof fired for anything BUT sexual harrasment. Errr...except Bob Knight (yeah he was considered a tenured professor) and that was only after he publicly attacked a 'disrespectful' student because he refered to him as simply 'What up Knight?'.
Seriously...you have to do something that is soooo in the publics eye and so far out of character with a university that it can't ignore it anymore before you get fired as a tenured professor.
Heck, my office went through with something like this about two years back. An employee of mine decided to do her Senior Thesis as a project with my department. She had gotten approval to do so by her academic department. The Academic Department did not offer her any guidance or otherwise other than this approval and suggestion on the scope of the project which happened to be 'Do What The Customer Wants'.
Anywho, she gets the project done, does the write up on it and turns everything in...source code and all. 3 Months later, I find her professor is trying to sell the code that I paid for and claim that it is his. Now, my department is a non-academic department at the same university..but it is entirely funded by grant work. We pay rent to the university and pay the university a large amount inwhich they turn around and pay our salaries. In a sence, we are paying to work here because we can (and some cases have) take the research outside of this institution and keep a larger chunk to ourselves.
Ok, that complicated things a little more. We 'work' for the same organization its a little harder for one department to get satisfication from another. This professor is now trying to sell the code to other universities and other organizations saying that he wrote it himself. We had to escallate this to a legal means using our grant provider (who legally owns a big chunk of our research) outside of the university and then bring in internal arbitration.
At this arbitration, this professor reiterates the fact that he wrote 99% of this code and she helped him. The fact of the matter was that since this was for her senior thesis, I helped her get direction on this and explained theory behind certain ideas in implementing my research, but she did 99% of the coding...with maybe 1% of it being me.
The professor that she was working with academically couldn't even understand the first bit of this, and couldn't even follow the code to reverse engineer it. I had to install it on his computer because he had never done anything like this before and couldn't follow the simple directions given on the cdrom.
The subject area of this research (psychometric shtuff) was something that she didn't know much about and the professor knew less of. In the end, he claimed that it was all his idea, it was his code, and it was his project...much to the dismay of our grant provider and my boss. Arbitration was the only way to get this out in the open and it was more or less determined that this professor was lying and had stolen the code, BUT that as it was freely given for a class assignment, the university could asurp it and do what they want...even though it was paid for by someone else. He was no longer free to sell it himself without the universities permission, along with the owners of the software.
Needless to say, everytime he's had opportunity to sell it, I've consulted with the grant provider and we've simply given a site license to them. I'll be damned if I let this asshole make any money off the deal, and they back me up on this. They paid for it, and they aren't going to let anyone else make a profit either. As he is guarenteed a certain percentage as pursuant to his tenure agreement, we are making sure that he gets exactly 49% of nothing.
So back to the point, this stuff is expected in academics. If ya don't think so, you are fooling yourself. Universities know this, and will go out of their way to make sure that their proffesors are paid well, even if its not by them. They don't want to take any chance of anyone thinking they are showing any improprieties, so its all swept under the carpet.
Luckily in my case, the stuff we were working on was supposed to be free anyways, but now we are forced to give it away for free 'under contract'. My student got screwed and her reputation on this campus was blemished and the professor simply walks away from this...though enough folks know what a sleeze and an asshole he is now...and I make it perfectly known on this campus NOT to do anything with him that he could injure a student with at a later point. None of my employees will ever work for him again, and as I've had some of the most talented programmers on campus vieing to work for me, it means that his pool of students that he can get to do his work for him is less than it was a few years ago. They make it known to the other students as well...the only thing I can hope is that he doesn't publish and the university will get sick of paying him...but that won't happen. Tenured employees never get fired...
Heh! I'll have to check as I can't access my mail right now. I was on a ecommerce mailing list and had mentioned the fact that I would like to use PayPal in my personal app, but didn't think that it could work well and one of their programmers emailed me and asked if I wanted the info.
Sent me a 40 page PDF with all the details and some examples. Actually got most of it to work under ASP which was a pain in the butt as there are like no comm objects that deal with sending secured HTTP stuff that doesn't cost a grand or more. Dealing with this in Perl was MUCH easier, but then I'm stuck with an app written in at least 2 languages (and sometimes more...usually do ASP as my clients are all M$, and then PHP and / or Perl to take care of the crap that I can't take care of on ASP...yeah don't ask why I don't just program EVERYTHING in one of those...client specs and stuff...)
If I remember to look, I'll see if I can find a URL on this as I believe it had one embeded in the doc...and I did find it on their networks once searching on specific terms...
Because he signed a contract and 'Prince' was a trademarked name...by the singer himself.
Its a crying shame when I sign a contract that the gov't actually allows the countersigners to actually force me to abide by this. What jerks.
I think I'm going to change my name because I don't agree with the contract that let me get student loans. I mean, 10 years ago they seemed like such a good deal. I got money at an affordable rate and didn't have to pay it back for years to come, and NOW they expect me to give them money in return for it.
Give me a fricken break. I understand California putting a 7 year limit on contracts Actors / Musicians / Etc BUT when someone signs a contract because a company is willing to give them money and then doesn't like the terms of it AFTER they strike it big and realizes that what was a good deal before no longer is such a good deal (ie., the Record Company took a MAJOR gamble in the first place...or you just didn't care to realize your own potentional...whatever) which essentially is because of the chances afforded by the original contract, then tough fucking shit. BooHoo, a musician -- that has made far more money than most of us here even in the last several years that he hasn't even had a song on the charts -- had to wait for the contract he was in to expire not even paying off the record company that gave him millions.
Anywho, this is essentially off topic and SHOULD be moded as such...and so should the parents...as too many/.'rs think that they should be able to screw musicians just because musicians think they are getting screwed by their lables, which is tantamount to saying yer already screwed, so we're just going to join in with the rest of the guys.
clif
editor sonikmatter
(heh! Why doen't/. have a spell checker...everytime I preview this I find a few more...)
Actually, there are a few APIs that PayPal will give ya if you just ask. Things such as a way for PP to send an SSL Enabled Verification back to a CGI on your website so that you can be sure the user did do exactly what they said they did.
I had actually started building a commerce site around PayPal before I discovered RedHat's (Akopia's) Interchange and decided to do things right (ie., real CC processor). The problem with a 'real' CC processor is that the user now has to trust you and your employees with the security of their cards. This means, did ya close all the holes, have ya shut down SQL Access to the outside world (you'd be supprised how many MySQL machines I have been able to access since switching to this software and playing around with it), if ya DO use things like card storage, ya then need to (if you are a responsible sort) encrypt the data, and not just with a ROT13.
Its a LOT of work for someone designing a site on their own. You'd be supprised how many people have their sites email them the #s in plain text. Too many 'geeks' think that just because they can write a PHP site, they understand programming and security (geeks in quotes as I wouldn't consider most PHP 'programmers' real geeks...even though I'm starting to use it myself).
PayPal does most of this for you, and if you aren't willing to put the time to learn everything ya need and verify that it does what it is supposed to do, then PayPal is PERFECT for these folks even if it didn't have the 'secret' APIs to do the verification -- which the users will not see because they are sent by the PP server to your computer, NOT from their server to the users computer to your own computer...which I think it does that as well...but only for simplicity...think about it as secure as a Javascript CC Mod13 Verification system (was it Mod13? I haven't written one of these in years).
Why not just get an external USB trackball? There are several really good ones. Hell, I even saw one the other day that ya wore on your index finger and manipulated with your thumb (believe the button was like a trigger as well...good for the gamers:). If ya could type with it, it would be even better than having it integrated anyways.
Anywho, I haven't seen one installed in any computer in years. The last one I had was an old Powerbook 140. Oops admitting that is enough to get my karma demoted to under 50.
BTW Heh! My First First Post! Womder if this will get through the crap filter...
Slashdot Mirror
No, the artists get a shit load more than that. They got representation at the local record stores. They get A&R to help get them on the radio. They get advertisments and otherwise reimbursed for touring.
/.'rs has an interesting quote about Microsoft and 'Viral Licensing Schemes' saying if you don't like it don't use it. If you don't want to pay for music, find like minded artists and listen to them.
You know what else, few artists you probably listen to make enough money for the record companies to actually return money back on them. The Britneys and Backstreets out there are subsudizing a majority of the artists you listen to. I'll say it again, most musicians are a loosing proposition for companies, but they continually buy up 10 bands for every profitible band because they HOPE that one of them will bring the money back into the fold. The market is volitile...bands that don't keep their sounds current don't stay around in the charts. Great bands that happened to show up and release an album at the wrong time also don't do well. Crappy artists that just happen to release an album just when a void is forming do well. Predicting all of this is practically impossible.
I know a lot of this is off topic (actually maybe not for this article) but just because a band only sees a dollar or two off every CD doesn't mean they aren't seeing results from being on the lable. They choose to be on the lable, not you. If they didn't want to take the bloodmoney, they could have started their own music lable, kept ALL the profits and thus needed to sell only a fraction of what they sell to make the same amount of money. They could tour (which IS the major money maker for most artists) and ignore all of that.
They didn't and choose to go the 'simpler' way (or maybe just conventional way). It isn't your duty as a consumer to second guess what they choose. Their finances are not your concern. Respecting companies and artists legitimate intellectual properties rights ARE your concern. If you want to be a thief that is all well and good. Before I get modded me down, just think of how ya'll would feel if a company snagged GPL'd software for a shipping product and claimed it would cost too much to license it or they just didn't like the terms. One of the
Your argument is B.S.
You know why it isn't looked at as a serious proposition? Because every gawd damn dope smoking hippy pushes this as the miracle product and your rightwing buddies are going to oppose it on just that principle.
Face it, the dope smoking phish listening to population isn't after pushing help for anything other than legalizing it will be one step closer to leaglizing its cousin that few can recognize without botany training (either that or smoking it and figuring out if ya get high or just have a really nasty headache).
Trust me, get the hippies and the dopers onto some other wonder drug and the Rightwingers will go for hemp like nothing. I know I'm going to be modded down for this by some dumbass (remember smoking dope lowers your IQ...wasn't that on here or was that k5) but think about it. Have folks in suits pushing that Hemp Jelly...get swimsuit models wearing that itchy fibre over their most sensative body parts...just don't have some stoned out spokesman that looks like he should be in a drum circle or hugging other guys in a heterosexual mens group way pushing it and the image will change.
clif
I'd simply show them the Unix stuff that is cross platform. Start off with things such as Apache or even PHP.
More than likely, if they are going for their MCSE cert, they will be running Wind'rs no matter what you tell them, but showing them these cross platform apps might be the seed to slowly merge them to other platforms. For instance, I run both Apache and PHP on most of my servers...I run them on Wind'rs, MacOS X, Unix. They are VERY stable across platforms. I still run IIS5.0 on one machine, but thats because I have clients that NEED ASP. I use to develop against ASP, but now use PHP on everything because I never know what platform I'm going to be running on.
After that -- because everyone needs to know how to set up a web server -- grab the Posix Tools from Cygwin (??? I think thats where I get them...I just google everytime) and install them on Windows. You get all the nice commands that ya do on unix, but on Windows. Its VERY nice because Windows doesn't come with a very good Kill command (there is one on the Resource Disc...but I prefer these ones better)...sometimes you REALLY need a service to quit and their is no other way.
Start showing folks these xplatform tools and show them how they only need to memorize one set of instructions instead of a dozen that do the same things across a dozen platforms (the CLI stuff on Windows isn't the same even across their different platforms...they change the names of apps too readily). How do you get to a Command Line on Windows? Is is CMD? Is it Dosprmpt? Depends on the version. Things like this.
I install the cross platform tools so people can be familiar with the Unix stuff...hell I've got my boys so brainwashed that when I ask them to hit one of my unix boxes, they now tell me its 'just like windows'. Once you can safely work around a machine without having to stumble, you then feel a little braver and may actually explore a bit. Maybe then they figure out why a Unix box is so much nicer and more stable than the same PC...
clif
sonikmatter.com
Actually, I thought the Newton had Grafitti built in as a default, but used natural writting as a fall back. I've used them all from the MP100 to an upgraded 2000 (I believe it worked the same as the 2100). I swear I had Grafitti cards that I kept putting on the back of the case, and I don't think they were 3rd party upgrades but licensed into the OS.
Anywho, yes, grafitti is better for fast entry...if you can remember all the symbols and everything else. Alphas aren't too hard, but past that I have a hard time remembering how to get anything without pulling the damn thing out of its case and looking at my cheat sheets on the back of it.
BUT the Newton handwritting was still hard better than people gave it credit for. Its like when a doctor writes you out a prescription and you get the wrong meds because they can't write worth shit, are you going to blame the pharmacist or the doctor (discounting of course that the pharm could simply call the dr if there was confusion). The newton actually forced me to learn to write a little more ledgibly...people complained that it didn't learn, but forced you to learn...no shit. Learn to write ledgibly and you won't have problems. Learn to spell correctly (something I don't do well) and the software will more accurately figgure out what you are trying to say.
Ok, I'm sure there are a few dozen Newton posts like this by now attached to different comments...especially since this device is always knocked by folks that only played with one for 5 minutes...so feel free to mark this as redundant. All I know is I wish I had a Newton the size of my Clie, cause its hard to wear cargo pants to pocket your PDA when you are forced to wear a tie and jacket every day.
clif
Agree'd. It sounded cool the first time, but now it just sucks. I have a good friend that refers to this as Oscilator Vocals...I understand the Kid Rock country song, but mainstream country??? This is about the time I start explaining to clients that they need to seriously consider if they want to use this effect or not.
In moderation, it can helps vocals, but can be done far better manually - ie., non-autotune. On my site, one of our latest interviews, Steve Duda of Nine Inch Nails (or at least the latest album) discribes some of his techniques for doing this:
http://interview.sonikmatter.com/duda/
I personally would use a piece of software called Melodyne. Its not real time, BUT has some of the most natural algorythms around. It is practically a Pitch Word Processor. You can leave in as much vibrato as you want, kill it all together (like most Autotune apps above) or even add it naturally for those that don't know how to articulate it very well. You can shift notes as far as a 5th before they start to sound funny, and it still keeps all the tied notes together so that you can slide between pitches without the sudden note being triggered as is so commonly found in todays image concience talent free musics.
I personally know a lot of folks that make their bread and butter fixing vocals for the stars and I'm not against it at all...I just wish the producers would get a little more credit as they are the ones doing all the work these days. Everyone has a natural desire to express themselves, as noted by the Karaoke main heading, and this sort of thing allows people to focus more on being creative instead of blindly honing a talent that can only go so far (face it, some people are never going to be able to sing naturally no matter how much practice...I'm one of them).
Clif Marsiglio
Editor@sonikmatter.com
Sonikmatter: Mind + Music + Technology
Of course its a valid question...at least for all of use musicans that are cat lovers too.
2
I wrote a review of a music product a few years ago that was so good that I was forced to write about stuff other than just the review (ie., it was good...it sounded good...it was the best I had heard at the time...bad -- it was expensive...thats all I could write if I decided to do it straight). It detailed my former and present cats preferences in musics...
http://reviews.sonikmatter.com/features/coakley
Anywho, my cats over the years loved different sounds too. My curent cat, CatCatCat (the only cat I had that hasn't chosen to elect a human name...thus monikered as the only thing he comes to) is DEFINATELY a piano cat. I come home every day to find him basking on my piano as the sun hits the sweet spot, making catlike bird calls on top of it out the windows when its not sleepy time, and listening to me play piano for as long as my fingers hold out these days the rest. The only thing that pisses him off is that I recently aquired a new Mac...picked it up with a 17" monitor that now shares space on top of the piano and the top is no longer just his spot.
Cats are very intelligent animals. Dogs tend to enjoy anything that their owners shows interest in, but cats find their own way in the world. They let you know if they like an instrument or howl when you play what they don't like (mine has a habit of finding the live mic and playing diva ensuring bad takes aren't kept).
Well my cat wants to play rat before bed...damn thing keeps holding it in his mouth and growling at me while I type. Damn thing needs more attention than some dogs I've had.
clif
Thats funny! I had gotten some crap from their servers in the last few days as well. I've gotten a few dozen emails with the subject "Re: Order" and 'funnily' enough, using other folks images (one of which was changed to a 'THIS IS SPAM' in big red letters across the screen). yeah, I would normally put this in a spam filter, BUT my vendors respond back with headings like this and I hadn't had time to figure out what to filter on.
:-)
Looking through the headers, a good chunk of these had gone through the Spenser school
Wadda prick...hell, one of my servers recently had an open relay and the folks at these types of places (Orbz) actually helped me fix it. It pissed me off that I was getting blocked, and it pissed me off that I was getting hate mail, but you know what? It was my fuck up (ok inherited fuck up) and I hate spam as much as the rest. This guy sounds like most of the MCSEs I know...won't even try fixing anything that ain't a M$ Server (and when it is - ain't responsible for anything til a hotpatch is rolled out).
clif
Reread this again. She wrote the code. Some of the bugfixes were taken out of examples I had given her, but that is no different than finding examples on the net and incorpotating these into the code base.
Why would she have lost her degree? As an employeer, I paid her to code, therefor this was a work for hire that belonged to me BUT I gave her the right to use the code for her education. She programmed it, not me.
Anywho, no courts -- we had it sent to arbitration before anything like that ever happened.
Actually, I had a situation similar to this a few years back. An employee of mine asked if I wouldn't mind letting her do a project she was working on as a Senior Thesis. The only thing that meant for me was that I, as an employeer, had to be vigilant NOT to take the code and reprogram it for her in the middle of the night as I could get her in trouble with her educators (I also work for an educational facility, so things like that would effect me if it were thought I was helping a student cheat). It just meant that I had to act pretty much as an idiot non-programmer and give her bug reports and things like that, but not the actual code fixes. Hell, I'd end up writing an example code of something different showing her how I would fix the code, just to insulate me from the process and it worked well.
Anywho, a month after her graduation, that school started offering a product line VERY similar to my own...I knew because their department had been licensing the older software from us (as do quite a few schools) and was shopping it around to my other clients.
It ended up being a real pain in the ass, with her professor actually claiming that he came up with the entire idea of this and didn't know she worked for me. He claimed that she was such a bad programmer that he also wrote most of the code (when in fact a good chunk of what was there in the end, was actually my example code...I was a little miffed as I told her NOT to use my examples wholesale for this application, but to do something similar).
So for 4 months, we argued back and forth about all of this, until we got the lawyers involved. The jerk of a prof continued to tell everyone that it was his idea and mostly his programming, when the guy barely knew this language...in the end, he was able to keep a chunk of the software that I paid my employee for and use it in house (which meant I lost their school as a major client) but it was agreed that they would not sell it or let anyone else use it.
So yeah, your company and your educational institution may end up fighting over your code in the end. Make sure everyone who is involved knows whats going on and arrange a meeting with everyone BEFORE you start to use the code (as the employeer I didn't meet anyone til about the time the educator was having trouble using the code...which I let her leave in the stripped down 'Thesis Mode' on my demo server, but he needed it installed on his machine to see how it worked...but didn't even know how to get ODBC set up...yeah it was windows code). If I had met all these people, I would have gotten a signed statement from everyone these saying, "Yeah, I know she's using this for a class and I'm not helping any more than as a mentor, but it still fucking belongs to me as I'm paying for the shit". I would have gotten a signed statement from the educator revoking any right he had to the code and I would have gotten a signed statement from the employee / student saying she understood both of our positions. If ANY of the following did not agree to this, I would have told her to do something completely different that ANYTHING that we were doing in my department.
So, maybe this in some sense explains why employeers have to be nazi's about the whole damn thing.
clif / sonikmatter.com
Dude, few of the Under $200 cards are REALLY going to give you 24 bit. They MAY record at 96k, but the noise floor of these things will effective lower the bit level to something much less.
/.) and ask the same question there.
Then again, I generally go with the Echo or MAudio cards, some of which WILL fit the under $200 budget.
I've seen suggestions of SoundBlasters...the minute you hear ANYONE suggest a SB for ProAudio on ANY budget, you can discount their advice on anything else. Still the one guy makes mention of the Mackie vs. Behringer...for my money, Behringer makes a damn good board. Its all Chinese manufacturing and done very inexpensively, BUT it isn't cheap. I played with their new board at NAMM a few weeks back and I'm kinda regressing my higher end Tascam board.
As another guy mentioned and is entirely on -- Hosa IS crap for most work (unless you are a plug and forget person that doesn't move equipment) and Monster sucks big time...for christ sakes, they sell ETHERNET Monster cables and try to tell us that the gold plating and unoxidized cable makes digital audio downloaded over the internet sound better. I don't care HOW cheap Monster is, I will never buy their products after that crap.
Anywho, this is NOT something that should be asked on Slashdot. Geeks like to look at specs and buy according to those (yeah, I double duty as a geek in both the Music Industry AND in a day job that is slowly becoming more of a hobby as my music stuff paid more last year than my university research). Look on Usenet or one of the most excellent websites out their like ProRec or even a site like my own -- http://sonikmatter.com. My site ISN'T geared towards a lot of the things you are looking into, but if ya decide to use Proaudio software such as Logic Audio, it WILL be the place to learn about these as well as building a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
Find a forum (NOT
As a side note, I am actually taking a break from working on my latest DAW. Its a midrange audio box...just threw a 1.8Ghz and a decent server Motherboard into a box with 512M of memory (will expand to 1.5G as soon as I get other things tweaked). Matrox dual 450 card - great for audio work as its stable and doesn't screw with the PCI bus as most gaming cards will. Echo Darla...this isn't going to be recording more than a stereo pair in, BUT will need to use all 8 outputs occasionally. UW SCSI is a must on this box, I need at LEAST 64 tracks internal before grouped to 8. Gigasampler, Reaktor and Logic Audio Platinum 5 will be installed on this in the next week (as soon as 5 gets here). So far, it has cost me about $800 and most of this box is new (except for the software which was sent to me for beta testing and reviews and the older SCSI stuff that I've pulled out of servers as I upgrade them). Add about $800 for the high end audio software (and there ARE a lot that are lower range and will do what ya need).
You CAN do this on a budget, but ya have to plan everything out and watch Pricewatch / Pricegrabber like a hawk and make sure you get EXACTLY what you planned on, not just what ever might work...audio is picky about what ya put in your machine...especially if you are appreciative of stability. Windows CAN be stable...hardware is mostly the same, its drivers by irreputable companies that keep it from being stable.
Thats enough of my sharing...read what ya can and get an idea from that. Check out the websites and check on Usenet.
clif - sonikmatter.com
"If by impressive you mean impressive technically, then yes Final Fantasy is light years ahead of Shrek and Monsters Inc"
:) was so versitile that it could do both cartoonlike work as well as near photographic quality.
Hmm...I thought I had read somewhere that at least Monsters and FF used the same rendering applications, which would mean technically, they are the same. It was noted that the application (I believe it is Pixar's Renderman or something...too lazy from debugging all night to research and this COULD be a figment of my imagination right now
Monsters had a much better dialogue and plot than FF and was aimed at a different audience. FF was was aimed squarely at the gamer geek crowd hoping that it would draw in more than just the playstation crowd...beautiful movie, but because of the artists and direction not because of the technology. If we were going to talk technology, look at the applications used to define Sully's fur...
Probably redundant as I haven't read the rest of the threads...
clif
"I first played with Apache (on NT4 in fact) at about the same time as I was given my first real live webserver to handle - which was IIS3, and soon afer, 4. Configuration of IIS is a nightmare compared to Apache."
:)
Well, yeah...IIS3 SUCKED. It had the worst interface ever. 4 wasn't bad. 5 actually got things right from a GUI POV. Every version only has gotten better.
Hell, if it weren't for M$'s practices of blaming sysadmin for their mistakes (and with an organization as big as M$, its to be expected...holes are actually easier to accidently be left in because so many developers have their hands in the pie) and the fact that I can serve almost 3x as much dynamic content from the equally equiped Linux box (IIS still can server more static text...but who the hell uses static text these days???) is why I moved over Apache for most of my stuff.
Right now, I use a mixture of servers and finally started converting my code to PHP and JSP from ASP (and a few other 3 letter acronyms) and finding these aren't nearly as bad as the 'professional' web developers will tell ya. Not as many visual tools to work with in the programming (ie., no PHP for Dreamweaver...ok there IS an extention, but it isn't nearly as fleshed out as the ASP and I still find it faster to do database stuff by hand).
So, if I had dedicated IIS Admin, more hardware that I didn't have to service and lots of licenses, I'd probably go with M$'s contribution...its much easier to find a monkey that can fix a M$ problem than a Linux / Apache problem. But as I know how all this stuff works and I don't have all the above, I'll probably keep converting my old boxes over to Linux as they retire from their windows duties (and get more performance they did in the previous years to boot
clif
The Midiman / MAudio stuff is pretty good...they've actually worked with Apple to get the latency down to near realtime speeds for their Delta 1010.
/. question...go to any of your local music stores and ask there. Most pro musicians are STILL Mac despite what others may tell you (usually bedroom musicians are more likely to tell you Windows is the predominant music OS...because thats what they have and what they can pirate easily).
To be honest, I'm not sure why this was a
After you've checked out your local music store and found there are dozens of options stop on over at Sonikmatter.com as we have tons of knowledgable users that work on Macs and all have different audio interfaces).
clif marsiglio
editor
sonikmatter.com
I completely agree. If you are no longer with this company, get a new DNS host or PAY them.
Having said that, I've hijacked a few myself. Clients that decided not to pay any more or screwed me over some other way. Hell, I had one a few weeks ago that was just waiting for their registration to lapse so that they could buy it back (and had some broker providing for this)...they owed me a few grand for the work I did, and decided that it wasn't good enough (even though they hired someone to take the graphics I did and translate them to their print stationary and banners)...Fuck it...I reregistered the domain myself under one of those cheap $7 a year registrars and have it pointing at one of their competitors sites. If they want to bring in a lawyer, I'll give it over, but until I get a summons, it ain't moving unless I get paid (which would be FAR cheaper than finding a lawyer willing to do this).
So, back to the point...make sure that your old web provider was paid up, make sure they realize there are no problems between you and then and get the crap moved to your own site. I just took a look at that everydns the parent response mentioned, and this would be cool to use (and I'd consider something like this for the few domains that I have that I don't have on Register.com which has their own DNS server so I could finally get rid of my crappy little unstable DNS box I'm using now...don't even have a back up anymore).
clif
"Go into CompUSA and show me a word processor other than MS Word, or better yet, a spreadsheet other than Excel."
Actually, last time I was in CompUSA I saw a few diferent office type products. A good deal were focused on non-general use, but there were a few all round products. Only reason I noticed was that they were stacked near the Linux area (gasp! An actual linux area in a commercial store!?!?!)
Competition exists, but most people go for what they know. For some reason people will spend $700 on software like this and use 3% of the features than buy a package that is $30 and is narrowly focused on what they need.
clif
I agree, as opposed to cash in the cash in the mail (Money Orders / Whatever) it is a hell of a lot better.
I use PP for a lot of transactions, and have also recently paid to get a merchant account with a 'real' bank. Its far more expensive, and the rules are far stricter...especially since we sell everything over the internet. If I get screwed by someone with the Merchant Account, I am out the merchandice, I get a return fee AND if the bank happens to approve too many fradulent cards, they charge us again.
To me, that is far worse than PPs methods. Why the hell should I be charged by the bank for something they approved? I'm told I can pay for their verification system (at a cost of like $1 per transaction of something huge like that), but they still don't offer any insurance.
No system is perfect, hell, a friend sold a few gran worth of equipment and decided to do things the most secure way he knew how -- COD through UPS. UPS took the obviously fraulent money order (looked like it was printed on a bad inkjet) and then proceeded to blame the seller...told him to talk to the postal authorities since it was a 'postal money order', who of course didn't have anything to do with it as they didn't print it out, and it wasn't one of their folks accepting it.
So, to me, PP offers far greater security than merchant accounts. As a buyer, I get a little warry about folks using this, but as a seller, I'd rather take the few problems PP has over the other systems...
clif
Well thats kinda my point...Quark is NOT easy, but graphic designers pick it up all the time. It takes work to learn how to use.
HTML is the same way. Just because you know how to make a pretty table, doesn't make you a Web Expert any more than being able to construct a sentence out of a dictionary gives you the ability to be a good writer.
I have to disagree with UseIt.com. It isn't just ugly, but its practically unusable. Very little use of white space and everything is cluttered. It reminds me of reading footnotes in an encyclopedia. I gave up trying to get through this after a few lines of text.
Anywho, not to knock graphic designers, but I think any professional site should have a usability specialist managing all others within the site, be it HTML experts or the designers.
Of course they are common sense. Unforunately, few people in ANY field have common sense, they are too busy worrying about having the latest greatest product.
/.. They have the common sense to know that the layout works for the site and not to change it JUST to make the site look newer or cooler.
I read above someone complaining about the layout here on
Most markettoids don't have that common sense...at least with this book you have tangible prrof that these guys don't know about UI and shouldn't be dictating it...and that goes along with graphic designers that now think that writting a web page is as easy to do as using Quark or Illustrator, ya shouldleave it to the experts.
So yeah, it should be common sense, but it ain't.
clif
Actually, I never got a usage policy or contract until about 2 months after I had called up and requested the service. Had a decent box from my last providers, so I never needed to buy their box and they didn't try pushing it on me. The network techs gave me what I needed to access the service. Never even used the software they provided. Heh! Not sure how it would have installed anyways.
So, as I never signed any contract, I am simply following the letter of their advertisement, not some usage policy that came 2 months after I signed up and had already been paying the bills.
clif
Damn right about that. I pay for a set amount of bandwidth and I should get it. My site (above) had just upgraded its bandwidth and was deciding between colos and a T1...funny thing was that several of the folks that had talked about doing the T1 had mentioned an increased price for 'Excessive' Bandwidth.
What the F*ck????
I was willing to pay for a set amount of bandwith...if I saturate it 24/7 why should it matter? I can't imagine how I could have excessive bandwidth...do these guys sense that my lines are saturated and go out and install a second line (actually we had enough lines run to install several....when ya go up 14 flights, ya don't want to do it again).
Ok, that is a business situation, so it is *slightly* different. Then again, when I look at my DSL contracts, it really is the same wording. I am paying for 512k SDSL. They promise 512k of bandwidth ready to use...I'm going to damn well use it. I'm not paying per meg, thats not what they advertised, they advertised always on 512k of service.
Yeah yeah, I know the reality of this, and ya'll all know the reality is that the companies are banking on the fact you won't be using the service 24/7. This is the same reason biz phones cost 10x what residential phones do because the assumption was that residential phone users don't use the phone as much as businesses (we're ignoring the modem users out there because this is still a model predated from the advent of the 'internet' as the former AOL User know it).
If companies want to charge per meg, let them advertise that...it doesn't sound as sexy to say 10Gigs of downloads a month as it does 512k UNLIMITED Downloads.
You will get far less folks buying it if it sounds limited in any way. Too f*cking bad. Stop advertising it as unlimited and let us do what we will with our lines. I don't have more than one computer hooked up to my DSL...I have my little linux box hooked up to it...I have several other computers hooked up to the box, but none of them actually touch the lines, so its none of their business what else I have in my home.
Again, the problem I have with this is truth in advertising...don't get mad when people take you for your word...
clif marsiglio
I've NEVER seen a tenured prof fired for anything BUT sexual harrasment. Errr...except Bob Knight (yeah he was considered a tenured professor) and that was only after he publicly attacked a 'disrespectful' student because he refered to him as simply 'What up Knight?'.
Seriously...you have to do something that is soooo in the publics eye and so far out of character with a university that it can't ignore it anymore before you get fired as a tenured professor.
Heck, my office went through with something like this about two years back. An employee of mine decided to do her Senior Thesis as a project with my department. She had gotten approval to do so by her academic department. The Academic Department did not offer her any guidance or otherwise other than this approval and suggestion on the scope of the project which happened to be 'Do What The Customer Wants'.
Anywho, she gets the project done, does the write up on it and turns everything in...source code and all. 3 Months later, I find her professor is trying to sell the code that I paid for and claim that it is his. Now, my department is a non-academic department at the same university..but it is entirely funded by grant work. We pay rent to the university and pay the university a large amount inwhich they turn around and pay our salaries. In a sence, we are paying to work here because we can (and some cases have) take the research outside of this institution and keep a larger chunk to ourselves.
Ok, that complicated things a little more. We 'work' for the same organization its a little harder for one department to get satisfication from another. This professor is now trying to sell the code to other universities and other organizations saying that he wrote it himself. We had to escallate this to a legal means using our grant provider (who legally owns a big chunk of our research) outside of the university and then bring in internal arbitration.
At this arbitration, this professor reiterates the fact that he wrote 99% of this code and she helped him. The fact of the matter was that since this was for her senior thesis, I helped her get direction on this and explained theory behind certain ideas in implementing my research, but she did 99% of the coding...with maybe 1% of it being me.
The professor that she was working with academically couldn't even understand the first bit of this, and couldn't even follow the code to reverse engineer it. I had to install it on his computer because he had never done anything like this before and couldn't follow the simple directions given on the cdrom.
The subject area of this research (psychometric shtuff) was something that she didn't know much about and the professor knew less of. In the end, he claimed that it was all his idea, it was his code, and it was his project...much to the dismay of our grant provider and my boss. Arbitration was the only way to get this out in the open and it was more or less determined that this professor was lying and had stolen the code, BUT that as it was freely given for a class assignment, the university could asurp it and do what they want...even though it was paid for by someone else. He was no longer free to sell it himself without the universities permission, along with the owners of the software.
Needless to say, everytime he's had opportunity to sell it, I've consulted with the grant provider and we've simply given a site license to them. I'll be damned if I let this asshole make any money off the deal, and they back me up on this. They paid for it, and they aren't going to let anyone else make a profit either. As he is guarenteed a certain percentage as pursuant to his tenure agreement, we are making sure that he gets exactly 49% of nothing.
So back to the point, this stuff is expected in academics. If ya don't think so, you are fooling yourself. Universities know this, and will go out of their way to make sure that their proffesors are paid well, even if its not by them. They don't want to take any chance of anyone thinking they are showing any improprieties, so its all swept under the carpet.
Luckily in my case, the stuff we were working on was supposed to be free anyways, but now we are forced to give it away for free 'under contract'. My student got screwed and her reputation on this campus was blemished and the professor simply walks away from this...though enough folks know what a sleeze and an asshole he is now...and I make it perfectly known on this campus NOT to do anything with him that he could injure a student with at a later point. None of my employees will ever work for him again, and as I've had some of the most talented programmers on campus vieing to work for me, it means that his pool of students that he can get to do his work for him is less than it was a few years ago. They make it known to the other students as well...the only thing I can hope is that he doesn't publish and the university will get sick of paying him...but that won't happen. Tenured employees never get fired...
Heh! I'll have to check as I can't access my mail right now. I was on a ecommerce mailing list and had mentioned the fact that I would like to use PayPal in my personal app, but didn't think that it could work well and one of their programmers emailed me and asked if I wanted the info.
Sent me a 40 page PDF with all the details and some examples. Actually got most of it to work under ASP which was a pain in the butt as there are like no comm objects that deal with sending secured HTTP stuff that doesn't cost a grand or more. Dealing with this in Perl was MUCH easier, but then I'm stuck with an app written in at least 2 languages (and sometimes more...usually do ASP as my clients are all M$, and then PHP and / or Perl to take care of the crap that I can't take care of on ASP...yeah don't ask why I don't just program EVERYTHING in one of those...client specs and stuff...)
If I remember to look, I'll see if I can find a URL on this as I believe it had one embeded in the doc...and I did find it on their networks once searching on specific terms...
Because he signed a contract and 'Prince' was a trademarked name...by the singer himself.
/.'rs think that they should be able to screw musicians just because musicians think they are getting screwed by their lables, which is tantamount to saying yer already screwed, so we're just going to join in with the rest of the guys.
/. have a spell checker...everytime I preview this I find a few more...)
Its a crying shame when I sign a contract that the gov't actually allows the countersigners to actually force me to abide by this. What jerks.
I think I'm going to change my name because I don't agree with the contract that let me get student loans. I mean, 10 years ago they seemed like such a good deal. I got money at an affordable rate and didn't have to pay it back for years to come, and NOW they expect me to give them money in return for it.
Give me a fricken break. I understand California putting a 7 year limit on contracts Actors / Musicians / Etc BUT when someone signs a contract because a company is willing to give them money and then doesn't like the terms of it AFTER they strike it big and realizes that what was a good deal before no longer is such a good deal (ie., the Record Company took a MAJOR gamble in the first place...or you just didn't care to realize your own potentional...whatever) which essentially is because of the chances afforded by the original contract, then tough fucking shit. BooHoo, a musician -- that has made far more money than most of us here even in the last several years that he hasn't even had a song on the charts -- had to wait for the contract he was in to expire not even paying off the record company that gave him millions.
Anywho, this is essentially off topic and SHOULD be moded as such...and so should the parents...as too many
clif
editor sonikmatter
(heh! Why doen't
Actually, there are a few APIs that PayPal will give ya if you just ask. Things such as a way for PP to send an SSL Enabled Verification back to a CGI on your website so that you can be sure the user did do exactly what they said they did.
I had actually started building a commerce site around PayPal before I discovered RedHat's (Akopia's) Interchange and decided to do things right (ie., real CC processor). The problem with a 'real' CC processor is that the user now has to trust you and your employees with the security of their cards. This means, did ya close all the holes, have ya shut down SQL Access to the outside world (you'd be supprised how many MySQL machines I have been able to access since switching to this software and playing around with it), if ya DO use things like card storage, ya then need to (if you are a responsible sort) encrypt the data, and not just with a ROT13.
Its a LOT of work for someone designing a site on their own. You'd be supprised how many people have their sites email them the #s in plain text. Too many 'geeks' think that just because they can write a PHP site, they understand programming and security (geeks in quotes as I wouldn't consider most PHP 'programmers' real geeks...even though I'm starting to use it myself).
PayPal does most of this for you, and if you aren't willing to put the time to learn everything ya need and verify that it does what it is supposed to do, then PayPal is PERFECT for these folks even if it didn't have the 'secret' APIs to do the verification -- which the users will not see because they are sent by the PP server to your computer, NOT from their server to the users computer to your own computer...which I think it does that as well...but only for simplicity...think about it as secure as a Javascript CC Mod13 Verification system (was it Mod13? I haven't written one of these in years).
Why not just get an external USB trackball? There are several really good ones. Hell, I even saw one the other day that ya wore on your index finger and manipulated with your thumb (believe the button was like a trigger as well...good for the gamers :). If ya could type with it, it would be even better than having it integrated anyways.
Anywho, I haven't seen one installed in any computer in years. The last one I had was an old Powerbook 140. Oops admitting that is enough to get my karma demoted to under 50.
BTW Heh! My First First Post! Womder if this will get through the crap filter...
clif (damn too many clif(f)s here)