I'd like to agree that Python would be better, since I'm partial to the language myself, but I really don't know enough about VB to say.
But...
It's boneheaded design that will turn the toddler off biking completely.
The reaction of the people taking the course seemed to be, "hey, this programming stuff isn't so bad after all." They only did the simplest of tasks (can't quite remember what any more), and VB ended up being quite sufficient. Of course, you're be correct in thinking that very, very few of them will go on to be programmers. But I'm don't think you can blame that on either the language or the course: none of them were inclined that way to begin with.
So, yes, VB may not lay the best foundation for learning other languages, and it may not be a good tool for serious development, but it seems to get non-techie types past their fear of programming just fine.
I'd suspect that Kernighan considered other languages for the course. He probably even considered Python. It would be interesting to hear what, specifically, his reasons for choosing VB over (languages x, y, z) were.
Isn't it odd that I'd recommend to people who want to become programmers to avoid taking Brian Kerningham's class?
I know people who have taken his classes. I live with one of them (a CS type), and used to live with another (a non-CS type). All of them have nothing but good things to say about Kernighan's classes.
The class in which he teaches VB is oriented towards non-CS types, and, from what I saw of my former roommate's coursework, I can't imagine a better course to give people who are basically computer illiterate SOME idea of just what goes on inside the magic box, and some familiarity with all the issues surrounding information technology (legal, ethical, etc.... like what you see on Slashdot every day). It's not just a programming course -- it covers pretty much every aspect of the field of computing and its related subjects, though in somewhat limited depth.
Complaining about VB's namespace problems in this context is like bitching about giving a toddler a tricycle because he'll never win the Tour de France on anything with three wheels. My former roommate had no problems with his programming assignments that he wouldn't have had in any other language, and, judging from what I've seen of people trying to pick up C and Java for the first time, VB is a far better choice of language for a course that aims to give people a flavor of what computers are all about.
This is the problem with the ISS: it's not an exciting mission, and it only registers on the public radar screen as a waste of taxpayer money. Even if it produces plenty of valuable science, it has nowhere near the PR value of, say, live video from Titan or a Mars landing. It's common sense, really: it's much easier to convince people when you have pretty pictures (Hubble, Mars lander) and human interest (manned Moon missions as a risky race with the USSR with personality conflicts and the rest) on your side.
Planning missions based solely on scientific merit may sound like a good idea, but you need the eye candy and the soap operas to keep up public support and get public money. NASA can ignore this if they like, but they do so at their peril.
First, if you're trolling, congratulations, you got me, and in grand style.
If not:
What's the difference between talking on the phone and talking to someone sitting next to you?
First, if you don't have a hands-free set, you've got your hand by your ear the whole time. You're obstructing your vision and giving yourself one fewer hand to keep control with.
If you do have a hands free set, your attention is diverted from your immediate surroundings. Someone else in the car is responding to the same visual cues as you are, and you are free to break off any moment with no explanation. You can also do this on the cellphone, of course, but there's pressure not to.
These are small factors that don't matter most of the time, but are crucial if you need fast reactions.
Also, I hope you don't check directions on the map on a busy freeway at 60mph or check your blind spot every 10 seconds for the duration of a typical phone call (or when the road's not safe for at least a fraction of a second into the foreseeable future). You have far less control over the timing of a phone conversation than most things you do in the car. People can call you, and people hate being ignored or hung up on. It would be nice if the social pressure against that didn't exist, but it's not going away anytime soon.
Check http://www.onhea lth.com/conditions/in-depth/item/item,2350_1_1.asp. Note the part about cellphones increasing the risk of an accident fourfold. Also note the bit about a hands-free phone providing no significant advantage. Even though that comes with a disclaimer (study may have been too small), you can bet that it's still around the same increase.
It's government, trying to protect it's citizens from anything potentially harmful; and this is wrong!
They ban drunk driving, too. What's your point? They may be different quantitatively (I'm not sure), but you're making a qualitative point here.
What's the next step? Legislation requiring homes to be one level only, so no one can hurt themselves by falling down stairs? Federally mandated safety-scissors? Restricted, liquid-only diet to reduce risk of choking?
Yeah, where do they get off requiring drivers to get licensed? Or not letting you drive without insurance?
I note your point, but then again, when you're driving, you can hurt a lot of people besides yourself very, VERY easily.
Banning a single technology or behaviour is sheer ignorance.
That's an awfully ignorant statement. Everything in moderation.
This cellphone ban may be the wrong idea, but it may not be. Is it considerably more or less dangerous than drunk driving? Than checking a map? Than talking to your friend? And then the decision needs to be made on those grounds.
"It's become quite fashionable lately for artists to express outrage at music piracy, and I'm a fashionable gal," [Courtney] Love began. "Stealing artists' music without paying for it fairly is absolutely piracy, and I'm talking about major-label recording contracts, not Napster."
It doesn't really depend much on which store I go to, here in Stockholm most of there stores will let me listen to a record before I buy it.
And then, here in Beijing, it doesn't matter because they're all about US$1 apiece and none are any good anyways.:) But my experience before I came here, back in the States, was that pretty much anything with shrink wrap was off-limits - even at stores that weren't big chains.
(I usually just listen to some of the tracks at - dare I say it? - amazon.com before I buy a record though.)
This worked for me for a while, but I've found that I really have to have more than that to make a decision. I need to listen to a few full songs to see if I like more than a particular 30 seconds worth of the first 4 tracks.
Smaller artists don't have same ability to do that.
Yes, but the more widely their music is distributed, the more power they have to do that. I've lost the link, but somebody here a few weeks back was posting a link to an article that detailed what a typical artist gets in a typical record deal - screwed. They almost never earn out the advance (and have to spend most of that on producing the album anyway), and only have any sort of opportunity to make money on the tours and merchandise.
Having said that, I'm not a small, struggling artist with a record deal, so if anyone who is or ever has been one has had a different experience, feel free to correct me.
Also, not all who listen to trance are DJ's and therefore don't need the vinyl.
I'm one.
And since Napster seems to be by far the easiest way to get for instance trance music, those small artists will continue to lose opportunities to sell records since people just download the music instead of searching for it off the net.
Well, I never would have found out that I really liked trance if it weren't for Napster. And I'm not sure what kind of cut artists get from inclusion on a mix album, but quite a few have gotten that much more from me because of Napster.
When you steal a Ferrari, the owner won't have it anymore.
If I steal a Ferrari, the company doesn't get more exposure. If I steal a Ferrari, the company won't get more people coming to its shows. If I steal a Ferrari, that isn't going to make more people want to buy/steal one. If I borrow a Ferrari, the owner can't use it while it's gone. If I steal a Ferrari, I'm probably going to damage it in the process.
On the other hand, if I steal a Ferrari, the "artist" (Ferrari) gains - the insurance company loses.
There are plenty of good anti-Napster arguments (just as there are plenty of good pro-Napster arguments), but this isn't one of them.
Hm - perhaps I'm wrong here, but I thought this wouldn't be as much of a problem for electronic music (or at least the dance-oriented varietiees). About how much of the market is DJ's, and about how much is home listeners?
And of those DJ's, are any significant number actually willing to use MP3's (or former MP3's)? Wouldn't the sound quality put them off?
If you try asking the people who work at the record store they will probably let you listen to the record once (or maybe even twice) before buying the record.
Vinyl (which most trance comes out on), yeah, that's usually the case. But I assume you're talking about CD's, so I'd just like to know which music store you go to. The best I've seen are stores that let you listen to any used CD you want - but, generally, anything w/ shrink wrap is off-limits.
And it doesn't sound like this guy has a turntable, anyway. (Or like he could afford one.)
You can't afford to buy records. Well, I feel sorry for you, but it's still not okay to steal something just because you can't afford it.
If he goes out and does buy it when he has money, please explain to me how anybody is losing money from this.
and it is the artists that don't sell too many records (trance?..) that will lose the most money.
Really? Generally, the artists that don't sell many records are VERY hard to find, even on Napster, and specifically, trance has to come out on vinyl, because DJs have to use it.
(Would most DJ's even consider using MP3's, or anything that had ever been MP3 encoded? Probably not. Swirly hi-hats and other similar audio disasters are not good things.)
I'll admit it, I've pirated songs using Napster before. And, sometimes, I went right out and bought the CD's. Why? MP3 sound quality isn't all that great, if you're downloading a mix you have to choose between downloading a single huge track and downloading separate tracks with annoying jumps between the songs, and it's the right thing.
No artist (even record label, for that matter) is getting any less money from me because of Napster.
Maybe it's not so ingenious, but Taucher makes most delicious use of the 303 (or something sounding an awful lot like it) on Waters. There's a wonderful soft, gentle sound you can get from that little box.
Taxes are not such a bad thing. A 2 or 3 percent tax would give it an advantage over most states (not mine, I dont pay).
First: as you point out, it's not an advantage over all states.
Second: shipping ends up being quite a lot - for me, it's almost always at least as much as tax.
Third: as somebody else pointed out, you don't pay taxes on mail-order goods either (assuming the retailer has no point of presence in your state). Why should catalog retailers have an advantage over Internet ones?
But instead should be used to build up the internet, that way when broud band becomes the norm we will be able to support it.
Good ideal. But, first, I seriously doubt that much government support is going into Internet infrastructure these days (Internet2 notwithstanding - but that's not for general use). I'd suspect that most of the money is private. And, quite honestly, if this tax were implemented, I doubt very much of it would go to building Internet infrastructure. The government's decimation of the Social Security fund demonstrates what happens to money earmarked for long-term gain....
Also, once you institute a tax, it's almost impossible to get rid of it. The income tax was originally very low (read: 10% was seen as impossible) and supposed to be a temporary measure. Guess what? We've still got it, and it's bigger than ever.
When the there is a significant amount of business on the internet and the states are beginning to feel the loss of taxes it will be time to start shifting the money from developement to the states over a 2 - 5 year prossess.
Hm. I would say that the taxes should not be established at all (for reasons given above) until the online retailers are firmly entrenched. They're having a hard enough time anyway, and putting taxes into place too early as opposed to too late could end up setting e-commerce back several years. I'd say it's better to err on the side of caution with this (as opposed to get all the money out of it that you can) and go with fewer taxes instead of more.
In the long run everyone will be happy (we will get our broudband, wallmart will go out of business anyway, and the states will get their money when the loss starts becoming a factor, and the average consumer will still get less taxes on the net.)
Well, we can dream, can't we?:)
Seriously, I doubt this scenario would come to pass. I'd say Wal-Mart is here to stay - they're shrewd and powerful, even if we hate them. Broadband will come through private (not government) effort - feel free to correct me if the government is putting actual cash into broadband development. The states will figure out some way to get their money, hopefully in a way that doesn't seriously cripple e-commerce, and the average consumer is still going to have to pay for shipping, which just about kills the tax advantage.
please do not flame my grammer or spelling, I am only 12 and don't have a dictionary handy.
The ironic thing is that saying this probably increases your chance of being flamed for it.:)
This is true - Buzz is certainly a great program. However, the other two projects I mentioned are efforts to do almost exactly the same thing, except GPL'd.
There are (at least) two reasons that this might be a good thing:
1. These projects are trying to avoid some of the deeper-seated mistakes in Buzz (it's mono, auxillary machine connections are an ugly little hack, etc.).
2. Oskari (the author) is (or at least seems to me to be) quite cranky most of the time, and isn't always responsive to his users. Also, much like Linus, Oskari doesn't scale.:)
I have relatively few problems with running Buzz under WINE (no Windows partition), and it doesn't use much more CPU than it would under Windows. There are some bugs, but they're generally tolerable.
Also, what's the current plan for Be, Inc.? Do they still have any sort of viable business model, and, if so, are they having any success in executing it? And if they go away, is there any guarantee that BeOS will retain some degree of support?
Gsynth is dead. There are similar live projects...
on
Jazz++ 4.0 Released!
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... mostly along the same lines, including BEAST/BSE (sorry, don't know the URL - should be linked from the GNOME site), GNU OCTAL (http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/octa l.html - the Gsynth guy is now working w/ this project), and Buzz under WINE as a stopgap until one of the others gets usable.
I should note, though, that none of the things I mentioned, or Gsynth, for that matter, are quite the same thing as Rebirth, ReCycle, or Reason. The ones I mentioned probably share more of a common heritage with trackers, though they're also based on modular soft synths and effects processors.
There are a few other projects attempting to do the same thing that appear to have slightly more momentum, including BEAST/BSE (sorry, don't know the URL) and GNU OCTAL (http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/octal.html - the guy behind Gsynth is involved with this project now). You might want to check those out if you're interested in this sort of thing.
Ok, if it _must_ work on a 386 or 486, fair enough, ASM will probably be necessary. But, then again, even rewriting every bit of Buzz in ASM for DOS probably won't get you too far, and won't be very fun.
I guess what I'd say now would be this: if you already have a dedicated tracking box running DOS trackers written in ASM, what reason is there for you to move to Linux? Or to move anywhere, for that matter....
Also, Buzz has a lot more functionality than a hardware sequencer, and you don't need a PIII to run it. A P200 should do fine.... On the other hand, it sounds like your needs are met by what you have.
Mm... This really isn't so much of an issue. Soundtracker uses _maybe_ 10% CPU on my system, and, AFAIK, the only bit in asm is the mixer. I don't know how much using the C mixer slows things down, but I expect it's not too bad.
Or Buzz, a modular tracking system for Windows. The machines (where almost all the DSP work takes place) are usually written entirely in C++, and I certainly don't have any problems with it - I run it under WINE, and I've never gotten it to use more than 50% CPU on a P3-500 (except when I get buggy machines).
So, no, assembly is by no means necessary, and yes, you can definitely get away with C.
I'd also bought an NVidia card due to their initial steps in the right direction. However, it's now apparent that I've been terribly misled. Sure, they never promised me anything. However, they certainly led me to believe that they would continue to do the Right Thing. Now that they're failing to do so, they've lost my trust. It's too late for me to do anything about this now, but I certainly won't buy anything from them or believe any promises that they make until they make right on this.
I can (sort of) understand their reasons, but, even simply as a consumer with no interest in any software philosophy over any other, I believe I stand far more to gain from truly open drivers than from a 5 FPS lead over the next best card.
Actually if you look at the CS world you see a corrolary between certain programming languages and the ability to produce "good" programs. Some mediums make things easier and some harder. Programming a win32 app from scratch is much harder than using say Visual C++ and the MFC
Ok, true.... But can you really extend this to music, where the functionality that you're shooting for can't be defined nearly as objectively? (Not that either could be defined totally objectively, but I'm not really competent to argue that.)
Depends on what you are doing. You can produce anything you want in whatever environment you want just depends on how you want to get recognized.
No disagreement here.... I'm pretty much trying to say "I don't need the approval of professional musicians if that's the attitude they have" in a slightly less childish/(something)-sounding way, but I haven't really succeeded.:(
I'm currently biased much more towards Octal than BEAST/BSE (cleaner design, I think), but I'm involved with Octal, so draw your own conclusions.
And you don't have to keep Windows around to run Buzz, as long as you've got another machine to render to.wav on, and you're willing to convert all your samples to.xi before importing them.... It was worth it for me, though. (Oh, you'll also want to use the native comctl32.dll.)
Between this post's parent and its, well, grandparent, there's sanity.
Anything aside from Buzz running on WINE on the computer I have at work after hours is out of my price range. Does this make me less of a musician? Does this diminish or enhance my talent or lack thereof in any way, shape, or form? And there's no medium that's totally brain-dead. If you can't make it sound intelligent, that's not a reflection upon the medium itself, it's only a reflection of your capabilities within that medium.
And, quite frankly, if there's anyone who thinks less of me for not having a real studio setup, their opinion means just about nothing to me anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to agree that Python would be better, since I'm partial to the language myself, but I really don't know enough about VB to say.
...
But
It's boneheaded design that will turn the toddler off biking completely.
The reaction of the people taking the course seemed to be, "hey, this programming stuff isn't so bad after all." They only did the simplest of tasks (can't quite remember what any more), and VB ended up being quite sufficient. Of course, you're be correct in thinking that very, very few of them will go on to be programmers. But I'm don't think you can blame that on either the language or the course: none of them were inclined that way to begin with.
So, yes, VB may not lay the best foundation for learning other languages, and it may not be a good tool for serious development, but it seems to get non-techie types past their fear of programming just fine.
I'd suspect that Kernighan considered other languages for the course. He probably even considered Python. It would be interesting to hear what, specifically, his reasons for choosing VB over (languages x, y, z) were.
Isn't it odd that I'd recommend to people who want to become programmers to avoid taking Brian Kerningham's class?
... like what you see on Slashdot every day). It's not just a programming course -- it covers pretty much every aspect of the field of computing and its related subjects, though in somewhat limited depth.
I know people who have taken his classes. I live with one of them (a CS type), and used to live with another (a non-CS type). All of them have nothing but good things to say about Kernighan's classes.
The class in which he teaches VB is oriented towards non-CS types, and, from what I saw of my former roommate's coursework, I can't imagine a better course to give people who are basically computer illiterate SOME idea of just what goes on inside the magic box, and some familiarity with all the issues surrounding information technology (legal, ethical, etc.
Complaining about VB's namespace problems in this context is like bitching about giving a toddler a tricycle because he'll never win the Tour de France on anything with three wheels. My former roommate had no problems with his programming assignments that he wouldn't have had in any other language, and, judging from what I've seen of people trying to pick up C and Java for the first time, VB is a far better choice of language for a course that aims to give people a flavor of what computers are all about.
This is the problem with the ISS: it's not an exciting mission, and it only registers on the public radar screen as a waste of taxpayer money. Even if it produces plenty of valuable science, it has nowhere near the PR value of, say, live video from Titan or a Mars landing. It's common sense, really: it's much easier to convince people when you have pretty pictures (Hubble, Mars lander) and human interest (manned Moon missions as a risky race with the USSR with personality conflicts and the rest) on your side.
Planning missions based solely on scientific merit may sound like a good idea, but you need the eye candy and the soap operas to keep up public support and get public money. NASA can ignore this if they like, but they do so at their peril.
First, if you're trolling, congratulations, you got me, and in grand style.
p . Note the part about cellphones increasing the risk of an accident fourfold. Also note the bit about a hands-free phone providing no significant advantage. Even though that comes with a disclaimer (study may have been too small), you can bet that it's still around the same increase.
If not:
What's the difference between talking on the phone and talking to someone sitting next to you?
First, if you don't have a hands-free set, you've got your hand by your ear the whole time. You're obstructing your vision and giving yourself one fewer hand to keep control with.
If you do have a hands free set, your attention is diverted from your immediate surroundings. Someone else in the car is responding to the same visual cues as you are, and you are free to break off any moment with no explanation. You can also do this on the cellphone, of course, but there's pressure not to.
These are small factors that don't matter most of the time, but are crucial if you need fast reactions.
Also, I hope you don't check directions on the map on a busy freeway at 60mph or check your blind spot every 10 seconds for the duration of a typical phone call (or when the road's not safe for at least a fraction of a second into the foreseeable future). You have far less control over the timing of a phone conversation than most things you do in the car. People can call you, and people hate being ignored or hung up on. It would be nice if the social pressure against that didn't exist, but it's not going away anytime soon.
Check http://www.onhea lth.com/conditions/in-depth/item/item,2350_1_1.as
It's government, trying to protect it's citizens from anything potentially harmful; and this is wrong!
They ban drunk driving, too. What's your point? They may be different quantitatively (I'm not sure), but you're making a qualitative point here.
What's the next step? Legislation requiring homes to be one level only, so no one can hurt themselves by falling down stairs? Federally mandated safety-scissors? Restricted, liquid-only diet to reduce risk of choking?
Yeah, where do they get off requiring drivers to get licensed? Or not letting you drive without insurance?
I note your point, but then again, when you're driving, you can hurt a lot of people besides yourself very, VERY easily.
Banning a single technology or behaviour is sheer ignorance.
That's an awfully ignorant statement. Everything in moderation.
This cellphone ban may be the wrong idea, but it may not be. Is it considerably more or less dangerous than drunk driving? Than checking a map? Than talking to your friend? And then the decision needs to be made on those grounds.
Haven't seen this posted yet. Saw it on a mailing list:
t ist=23:
from http://rollin gstone.lycos.com/news/newsarticle.asp?ID=10847&Ar
"It's become quite fashionable lately for artists to express outrage at music piracy, and I'm a fashionable gal," [Courtney] Love began. "Stealing artists' music without paying for it fairly is absolutely piracy, and I'm talking about major-label recording contracts, not Napster."
inside the 40-story glass monolith that is Slashdot
So that's where they keep all the trolls.
It doesn't really depend much on which store I go to, here in Stockholm most of there stores will let me listen to a record before I buy it.
:) But my experience before I came here, back in the States, was that pretty much anything with shrink wrap was off-limits - even at stores that weren't big chains.
And then, here in Beijing, it doesn't matter because they're all about US$1 apiece and none are any good anyways.
(I usually just listen to some of the tracks at - dare I say it? - amazon.com before I buy a record though.)
This worked for me for a while, but I've found that I really have to have more than that to make a decision. I need to listen to a few full songs to see if I like more than a particular 30 seconds worth of the first 4 tracks.
Smaller artists don't have same ability to do that.
Yes, but the more widely their music is distributed, the more power they have to do that. I've lost the link, but somebody here a few weeks back was posting a link to an article that detailed what a typical artist gets in a typical record deal - screwed. They almost never earn out the advance (and have to spend most of that on producing the album anyway), and only have any sort of opportunity to make money on the tours and merchandise.
Having said that, I'm not a small, struggling artist with a record deal, so if anyone who is or ever has been one has had a different experience, feel free to correct me.
Also, not all who listen to trance are DJ's and therefore don't need the vinyl.
I'm one.
And since Napster seems to be by far the easiest way to get for instance trance music, those small artists will continue to lose opportunities to sell records since people just download the music instead of searching for it off the net.
Well, I never would have found out that I really liked trance if it weren't for Napster. And I'm not sure what kind of cut artists get from inclusion on a mix album, but quite a few have gotten that much more from me because of Napster.
And so are all its variations.
When you steal a Ferrari, the owner won't have it anymore.
If I steal a Ferrari, the company doesn't get more exposure.
If I steal a Ferrari, the company won't get more people coming to its shows.
If I steal a Ferrari, that isn't going to make more people want to buy/steal one.
If I borrow a Ferrari, the owner can't use it while it's gone.
If I steal a Ferrari, I'm probably going to damage it in the process.
On the other hand, if I steal a Ferrari, the "artist" (Ferrari) gains - the insurance company loses.
There are plenty of good anti-Napster arguments (just as there are plenty of good pro-Napster arguments), but this isn't one of them.
Hm - perhaps I'm wrong here, but I thought this wouldn't be as much of a problem for electronic music (or at least the dance-oriented varietiees). About how much of the market is DJ's, and about how much is home listeners?
And of those DJ's, are any significant number actually willing to use MP3's (or former MP3's)? Wouldn't the sound quality put them off?
If you try asking the people who work at the record store they will probably let you listen to the record once (or maybe even twice) before buying the record.
Vinyl (which most trance comes out on), yeah, that's usually the case. But I assume you're talking about CD's, so I'd just like to know which music store you go to. The best I've seen are stores that let you listen to any used CD you want - but, generally, anything w/ shrink wrap is off-limits.
And it doesn't sound like this guy has a turntable, anyway. (Or like he could afford one.)
You can't afford to buy records. Well, I feel sorry for you, but it's still not okay to steal something just because you can't afford it.
If he goes out and does buy it when he has money, please explain to me how anybody is losing money from this.
and it is the artists that don't sell too many records (trance?..) that will lose the most money.
Really? Generally, the artists that don't sell many records are VERY hard to find, even on Napster, and specifically, trance has to come out on vinyl, because DJs have to use it.
(Would most DJ's even consider using MP3's, or anything that had ever been MP3 encoded? Probably not. Swirly hi-hats and other similar audio disasters are not good things.)
I'll admit it, I've pirated songs using Napster before. And, sometimes, I went right out and bought the CD's. Why? MP3 sound quality isn't all that great, if you're downloading a mix you have to choose between downloading a single huge track and downloading separate tracks with annoying jumps between the songs, and it's the right thing.
No artist (even record label, for that matter) is getting any less money from me because of Napster.
Maybe it's not so ingenious, but Taucher makes most delicious use of the 303 (or something sounding an awful lot like it) on Waters. There's a wonderful soft, gentle sound you can get from that little box.
Taxes are not such a bad thing. A 2 or 3 percent tax would give it an advantage over most states (not mine, I dont pay).
:)
:)
First: as you point out, it's not an advantage over all states.
Second: shipping ends up being quite a lot - for me, it's almost always at least as much as tax.
Third: as somebody else pointed out, you don't pay taxes on mail-order goods either (assuming the retailer has no point of presence in your state). Why should catalog retailers have an advantage over Internet ones?
But instead should be used to build up the internet, that way when broud band becomes the norm we will be able to support it.
Good ideal. But, first, I seriously doubt that much government support is going into Internet infrastructure these days (Internet2 notwithstanding - but that's not for general use). I'd suspect that most of the money is private. And, quite honestly, if this tax were implemented, I doubt very much of it would go to building Internet infrastructure. The government's decimation of the Social Security fund demonstrates what happens to money earmarked for long-term gain....
Also, once you institute a tax, it's almost impossible to get rid of it. The income tax was originally very low (read: 10% was seen as impossible) and supposed to be a temporary measure. Guess what? We've still got it, and it's bigger than ever.
When the there is a significant amount of business on the internet and the states are beginning to feel the loss of taxes it will be time to start shifting the money from developement to the states over a 2 - 5 year prossess.
Hm. I would say that the taxes should not be established at all (for reasons given above) until the online retailers are firmly entrenched. They're having a hard enough time anyway, and putting taxes into place too early as opposed to too late could end up setting e-commerce back several years. I'd say it's better to err on the side of caution with this (as opposed to get all the money out of it that you can) and go with fewer taxes instead of more.
In the long run everyone will be happy (we will get our broudband, wallmart will go out of business anyway, and the states will get their money when the loss starts becoming a factor, and the average consumer will still get less taxes on the net.)
Well, we can dream, can't we?
Seriously, I doubt this scenario would come to pass. I'd say Wal-Mart is here to stay - they're shrewd and powerful, even if we hate them. Broadband will come through private (not government) effort - feel free to correct me if the government is putting actual cash into broadband development. The states will figure out some way to get their money, hopefully in a way that doesn't seriously cripple e-commerce, and the average consumer is still going to have to pay for shipping, which just about kills the tax advantage.
please do not flame my grammer or spelling, I am only 12 and don't have a dictionary handy.
The ironic thing is that saying this probably increases your chance of being flamed for it.
Sorry about that.
This is true - Buzz is certainly a great program. However, the other two projects I mentioned are efforts to do almost exactly the same thing, except GPL'd.
:)
There are (at least) two reasons that this might be a good thing:
1. These projects are trying to avoid some of the deeper-seated mistakes in Buzz (it's mono, auxillary machine connections are an ugly little hack, etc.).
2. Oskari (the author) is (or at least seems to me to be) quite cranky most of the time, and isn't always responsive to his users. Also, much like Linus, Oskari doesn't scale.
I have relatively few problems with running Buzz under WINE (no Windows partition), and it doesn't use much more CPU than it would under Windows. There are some bugs, but they're generally tolerable.
Also, what's the current plan for Be, Inc.? Do they still have any sort of viable business model, and, if so, are they having any success in executing it? And if they go away, is there any guarantee that BeOS will retain some degree of support?
... mostly along the same lines, including BEAST/BSE (sorry, don't know the URL - should be linked from the GNOME site), GNU OCTAL (http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/octa l.html - the Gsynth guy is now working w/ this project), and Buzz under WINE as a stopgap until one of the others gets usable.
I should note, though, that none of the things I mentioned, or Gsynth, for that matter, are quite the same thing as Rebirth, ReCycle, or Reason. The ones I mentioned probably share more of a common heritage with trackers, though they're also based on modular soft synths and effects processors.
No, Gsynth has been dead for a few months now.
There are a few other projects attempting to do the same thing that appear to have slightly more momentum, including BEAST/BSE (sorry, don't know the URL) and GNU OCTAL (http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/octal.html - the guy behind Gsynth is involved with this project now). You might want to check those out if you're interested in this sort of thing.
Ok, if it _must_ work on a 386 or 486, fair enough, ASM will probably be necessary. But, then again, even rewriting every bit of Buzz in ASM for DOS probably won't get you too far, and won't be very fun.
I guess what I'd say now would be this: if you already have a dedicated tracking box running DOS trackers written in ASM, what reason is there for you to move to Linux? Or to move anywhere, for that matter....
Also, Buzz has a lot more functionality than a hardware sequencer, and you don't need a PIII to run it. A P200 should do fine.... On the other hand, it sounds like your needs are met by what you have.
Mm... This really isn't so much of an issue. Soundtracker uses _maybe_ 10% CPU on my system, and, AFAIK, the only bit in asm is the mixer. I don't know how much using the C mixer slows things down, but I expect it's not too bad.
Or Buzz, a modular tracking system for Windows. The machines (where almost all the DSP work takes place) are usually written entirely in C++, and I certainly don't have any problems with it - I run it under WINE, and I've never gotten it to use more than 50% CPU on a P3-500 (except when I get buggy machines).
So, no, assembly is by no means necessary, and yes, you can definitely get away with C.
I'd also bought an NVidia card due to their initial steps in the right direction. However, it's now apparent that I've been terribly misled. Sure, they never promised me anything. However, they certainly led me to believe that they would continue to do the Right Thing. Now that they're failing to do so, they've lost my trust. It's too late for me to do anything about this now, but I certainly won't buy anything from them or believe any promises that they make until they make right on this.
I can (sort of) understand their reasons, but, even simply as a consumer with no interest in any software philosophy over any other, I believe I stand far more to gain from truly open drivers than from a 5 FPS lead over the next best card.
Congratulations. The last line of your message has just become my sig. :)
Actually if you look at the CS world you see a corrolary between certain programming languages and the ability to produce "good" programs. Some mediums make things easier and some harder. Programming a win32 app from scratch is much harder than using say Visual C++ and the MFC
:(
Ok, true.... But can you really extend this to music, where the functionality that you're shooting for can't be defined nearly as objectively? (Not that either could be defined totally objectively, but I'm not really competent to argue that.)
Depends on what you are doing. You can produce anything you want in whatever environment you want just depends on how you want to get recognized.
No disagreement here.... I'm pretty much trying to say "I don't need the approval of professional musicians if that's the attitude they have" in a slightly less childish/(something)-sounding way, but I haven't really succeeded.
I'm currently biased much more towards Octal than BEAST/BSE (cleaner design, I think), but I'm involved with Octal, so draw your own conclusions.
.wav on, and you're willing to convert all your samples to .xi before importing them.... It was worth it for me, though. (Oh, you'll also want to use the native comctl32.dll.)
And you don't have to keep Windows around to run Buzz, as long as you've got another machine to render to
Between this post's parent and its, well, grandparent, there's sanity.
Anything aside from Buzz running on WINE on the computer I have at work after hours is out of my price range. Does this make me less of a musician? Does this diminish or enhance my talent or lack thereof in any way, shape, or form? And there's no medium that's totally brain-dead. If you can't make it sound intelligent, that's not a reflection upon the medium itself, it's only a reflection of your capabilities within that medium.
And, quite frankly, if there's anyone who thinks less of me for not having a real studio setup, their opinion means just about nothing to me anyway.
Does this include Soundtracker? I'm too addicted to Buzz-style soft synth / tracker hybrids to have used it much myself, but it seems decent.
:) That and anything else you'd like to contribute, actually.
If it doesn't fit your needs, what edge does Impulse Tracker have on it? I haven't used either, so I don't really know....
And check out my brief plug for Octal here. We'd love to have your 'flazicator'.