I've used MP3Gain to rescue as much as can be rescued. It's close to but not really normalizing. From the FAQ: "Yes, but MP3Gain does not use "peak amplitude" normalization as many "normalizers" do. Audio files with very different peak amplitudes can still sound to the human ear as though they're the same volume. Instead, MP3Gain uses David Robinson's Replay Gain algorithm to calculate how loud the file actually sounds to a human's ears."
"For me it depends on when they have one out with a decent amount of space. Right now, I consider my 30Gb player much too small."
I was in the same boat a few years back. I thought I couldn't live without my 30GB iPod. I was obsessed with keeping as much of my music with me as possible. Then I took a good look at my listening habits, and realized I never actually _need_ that kind of capacity. I moved to a 4GB Nano, and it's much better with cheaper price and much smaller size. And it holds enough music for an across-the-country road trip. I'm much happier with the Nano than the clunky and heavy "normal" iPod.
Heh. I was doing the rounds of gaming shops here in Holland the day before the launch. Two stores said with bold faces that they are "rare" in their ability to guarantee delivery if I pre-order. What does that mean? The demand is so small that they don't have enough pre-orders. In any case, I was in the shops figuring out whether to get one of the two competitors. Only after one of the clerks mentioned PS3 is released tomorrow I found out about it. Played some off-road racing game which was beautiful but slow as molasses. At least Xbox360 has good games.
"A half float will have enormously higher resolution near 0 where the posterization shows. It can also represent numbers greater than 1, negative numbers, +/- infinity, and NaN. And it can efficiently represent the actual intensity of light, rather than a gamma curve that is required for integers to get the samples near zero closer together."
Another major negative for GIMP is the utter lack of color management. Anyone who does "serious" image editing needs to be sure her colors are correct from the scanner/camera to her monitor and out of the printer. With GIMP - and Linux in general - this is currently impossible as it doesn't support ICC profiles, let alone calibrating any input/output devices.
Another shortcoming of GIMP is reportedly poor printing capabilities, but I don't have experience with that, as I went back to PS before I wasted more time with the below-entry-level image editing software GIMP is.
I don't know where your claim that 16 bits is a waste of time in image editing. I know for a fact that I can get seriously atrocious posterization with 8-bit photographic images in the gradients when doing simple curves adjustments in Photoshop. 16-bits is a definite requirement for any serious photo editing, and GIMP fails it.
This "decline in PC game quality" is nothing but a selection bias. There have been crappy games throughout gaming's short history, we have just forgotten about them. Therefore we only remember the Nethacks, Zoids, Wolfensteins and Starcrafts. And there are plenty of innovative games coming - such as Spore - or derivative games which look much more promising than the current fare - Huxley and Warhammer Online.
Best game of the XP generation: Nethack. And Windows ME, 2000, 98(SE), 3.1, MS-DOS, DRDOS, 4DOS, not to mention Macs, Unixes, Linuxes, WinCEs, Amigas, etc. And the only game that literally has survived a human generation - I remember playing it 20+ years ago for the first time. And I still do.
Nethack, the best game of this, past and probably future generations.
it lacks 16-bit support and color management. Most people won't need 16-bit support but if you plan on printing your photos or need to do drastic adjustments it's a must. And without color management your photos will look very different on other people's monitors or printers.
And let's not forget the atrocious printing with GIMP, compounded with both matters above.
There's a reason why PhotoShop is the most asked-for Linux application.
"Situation's a bit different in Europe. The airports in Budapest and Vienna have free wi-fi, and it's blazingly fast. In fact, when I recently had to fly out from Vienna, I got to the airport 36 hours early so I could get several films through Bittorrent."
So let me get this straight: you're in Vienna, arguably one of the best cities in all of Europe full of hot Viennese chicks and excellent Austrian beer. Instead of perusing that selection you CAMP OUT ON A FRIGGING AIRPORT FOR ONE AND A HALF DAYS DOWNLOADING PR0N.
You, sir, are either the biggest loser ever to tread this earth, or the King of Geeks.
It's made by a US company so you can bet your first-born that there's a backdoor - probably "protected" with a password some idiot would have in their luggage. How many government agencies and People That Are Out To Get You know about this backdoor is anybody's guess. And its full protocol hasn't been disclosed so you can't be sure regardless of how many assurances you get from the company.
You're wrong. You're looking at it from a very different POV than the vast majority of iPhone's target market. You're looking at the features it _doesn't_ have, while most people are looking at the features it _does_. I see a phone which doubles as an iPod and (probably) a decent PDA. That's heaven-sent, finally that convergence techies have been promising for a decade.
There is a very thin demand for a phone that downloads music and video. Even if there was a phone that did, there's no service out there that enables it. So that's a moot point. I'm sure Apple has plans to integrate iTMS with iPhone so you _can_ dl video and music, but that's for iPhone 2.0 in a year or two.
But that doesn't mean iPhone 1.0 will suck. If it does the three things Mr Jobs started his keynote with well, it'll sell by the boatload.
How do you think this differs from any other technical support profession? If customers are idiots that's not an excuse to treat them like that. People are idiots in general, and especially in a field you are an expert.
Hell, how do you think doctors feel when the same obese person comes to their practice every few months complaining about X and disregards all your advice? How do you think police officers deal with the drunk guy spewing insults they pick up from the mall for the nth time? They both do it with grace and professionalism, and so should you.
If you, sir, have such issues with dealing with clueless customers, you need to change your profession.
While I agree to a point about extraneous Arwen scenes, having one or two short scenes of a 10+ hour film which is otherwise magnificent make you not watch it again is just sad.
Now, if you were talking about the endless, boring and slow-paced ent scenes I'd understand your pain completely. I feel like pouring battery acid in my eyes every time the droning idiots congregate.
I don't get this. Frighteners is very much in line with what Mr Jackson had been doing before it, and was a natural continuation in his development as a director. Or are you one of those people who think money spoils everything it touches?
Only 6 million XBox 360s sold by end of September? Can that be right? Just a few stories up Nintendo claims to have sold 6 million Wiis in the few weeks it has been out, while XBox 360 was released a year ago. I don't know much about console sales and history of releases, but doesn't that mean XBox 360 is a total non-issue?
Thank you so much for this, this is exactly what I'm looking for! The only two devices I couldn't find tips for were for my digital cameras, but that's understandable since they have (proprietary) li-ion batter chargers so a mere tip isn't enough.
I replied to another poster suggesting sticking to miniUSB-powered/charged devices and the same counter-argument applies: sticking with battery-powered devices is a ridiculously limiting factor. There are no dSLRs, cell phones or Nintendo DSs out there which run on alkalines. And switching from an iPod Nano to something AAA bulky is out of the question.
I'd rather lug around the 5+ chargers than limit myself to a very small subset of each device category based on its charging scheme alone. Features such as compactness, usability and battery life are more important to me than how its charged, but it would be nice to be able to have just one for all of them.
Well, at surface this sounds like a reasonable suggestion. But why would I want to limit my choice of gadgets to those who use a certain type of power source. It's just one feature and it's not even a feature that's pertinent to the gadget's function. So, even if I have to lug around 5+ chargers I'd rather do that than use a sub-par camera, for example.
Besides, I don't know any dSLRs, portable gaming devices or phones which use (mini)USB for charging.
Perhaps the Japanese have more integrity than you have cynicism? Just because practically every western kid or homeless man would do what you suggest doesn't mean people in countries where crime is not considered a-ok would do so, too.
I can't find a download link on getfirefox.com. I don't want to read about the wonderful features (3 links to those). I don't want to learn about support, add-ons or developers. I just want a BIG FAT LINK TO DOWNLOAD FIREFOX 2.0.
I know, it's not a big deal. But it is. If I can't find a download link on _the_ Firefox website, I'm positive there's thousands of people who can't. At least I know to google for it or go to other websites.
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I've used MP3Gain to rescue as much as can be rescued. It's close to but not really normalizing. From the FAQ: "Yes, but MP3Gain does not use "peak amplitude" normalization as many "normalizers" do. Audio files with very different peak amplitudes can still sound to the human ear as though they're the same volume. Instead, MP3Gain uses David Robinson's Replay Gain algorithm to calculate how loud the file actually sounds to a human's ears."
And it's free. http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/
"For me it depends on when they have one out with a decent amount of space. Right now, I consider my 30Gb player much too small."
I was in the same boat a few years back. I thought I couldn't live without my 30GB iPod. I was obsessed with keeping as much of my music with me as possible. Then I took a good look at my listening habits, and realized I never actually _need_ that kind of capacity. I moved to a 4GB Nano, and it's much better with cheaper price and much smaller size. And it holds enough music for an across-the-country road trip. I'm much happier with the Nano than the clunky and heavy "normal" iPod.
Heh. I was doing the rounds of gaming shops here in Holland the day before the launch. Two stores said with bold faces that they are "rare" in their ability to guarantee delivery if I pre-order. What does that mean? The demand is so small that they don't have enough pre-orders. In any case, I was in the shops figuring out whether to get one of the two competitors. Only after one of the clerks mentioned PS3 is released tomorrow I found out about it. Played some off-road racing game which was beautiful but slow as molasses. At least Xbox360 has good games.
"A half float will have enormously higher resolution near 0 where the posterization shows. It can also represent numbers greater than 1, negative numbers, +/- infinity, and NaN. And it can efficiently represent the actual intensity of light, rather than a gamma curve that is required for integers to get the samples near zero closer together."
ENGLISH. DO YOU SPEAK IT?
Another major negative for GIMP is the utter lack of color management. Anyone who does "serious" image editing needs to be sure her colors are correct from the scanner/camera to her monitor and out of the printer. With GIMP - and Linux in general - this is currently impossible as it doesn't support ICC profiles, let alone calibrating any input/output devices.
Another shortcoming of GIMP is reportedly poor printing capabilities, but I don't have experience with that, as I went back to PS before I wasted more time with the below-entry-level image editing software GIMP is.
I don't know where your claim that 16 bits is a waste of time in image editing. I know for a fact that I can get seriously atrocious posterization with 8-bit photographic images in the gradients when doing simple curves adjustments in Photoshop. 16-bits is a definite requirement for any serious photo editing, and GIMP fails it.
This "decline in PC game quality" is nothing but a selection bias. There have been crappy games throughout gaming's short history, we have just forgotten about them. Therefore we only remember the Nethacks, Zoids, Wolfensteins and Starcrafts. And there are plenty of innovative games coming - such as Spore - or derivative games which look much more promising than the current fare - Huxley and Warhammer Online.
Yes.
Best game of the XP generation: Nethack. And Windows ME, 2000, 98(SE), 3.1, MS-DOS, DRDOS, 4DOS, not to mention Macs, Unixes, Linuxes, WinCEs, Amigas, etc. And the only game that literally has survived a human generation - I remember playing it 20+ years ago for the first time. And I still do.
Nethack, the best game of this, past and probably future generations.
it lacks 16-bit support and color management. Most people won't need 16-bit support but if you plan on printing your photos or need to do drastic adjustments it's a must. And without color management your photos will look very different on other people's monitors or printers.
And let's not forget the atrocious printing with GIMP, compounded with both matters above.
There's a reason why PhotoShop is the most asked-for Linux application.
"Situation's a bit different in Europe. The airports in Budapest and Vienna have free wi-fi, and it's blazingly fast. In fact, when I recently had to fly out from Vienna, I got to the airport 36 hours early so I could get several films through Bittorrent."
So let me get this straight: you're in Vienna, arguably one of the best cities in all of Europe full of hot Viennese chicks and excellent Austrian beer. Instead of perusing that selection you CAMP OUT ON A FRIGGING AIRPORT FOR ONE AND A HALF DAYS DOWNLOADING PR0N.
You, sir, are either the biggest loser ever to tread this earth, or the King of Geeks.
It's made by a US company so you can bet your first-born that there's a backdoor - probably "protected" with a password some idiot would have in their luggage. How many government agencies and People That Are Out To Get You know about this backdoor is anybody's guess. And its full protocol hasn't been disclosed so you can't be sure regardless of how many assurances you get from the company.
You're wrong. You're looking at it from a very different POV than the vast majority of iPhone's target market. You're looking at the features it _doesn't_ have, while most people are looking at the features it _does_. I see a phone which doubles as an iPod and (probably) a decent PDA. That's heaven-sent, finally that convergence techies have been promising for a decade.
There is a very thin demand for a phone that downloads music and video. Even if there was a phone that did, there's no service out there that enables it. So that's a moot point. I'm sure Apple has plans to integrate iTMS with iPhone so you _can_ dl video and music, but that's for iPhone 2.0 in a year or two.
But that doesn't mean iPhone 1.0 will suck. If it does the three things Mr Jobs started his keynote with well, it'll sell by the boatload.
This is yet another reason to outsource IT jobs
How do you think this differs from any other technical support profession? If customers are idiots that's not an excuse to treat them like that. People are idiots in general, and especially in a field you are an expert.
Hell, how do you think doctors feel when the same obese person comes to their practice every few months complaining about X and disregards all your advice? How do you think police officers deal with the drunk guy spewing insults they pick up from the mall for the nth time? They both do it with grace and professionalism, and so should you.
If you, sir, have such issues with dealing with clueless customers, you need to change your profession.
While I agree to a point about extraneous Arwen scenes, having one or two short scenes of a 10+ hour film which is otherwise magnificent make you not watch it again is just sad.
Now, if you were talking about the endless, boring and slow-paced ent scenes I'd understand your pain completely. I feel like pouring battery acid in my eyes every time the droning idiots congregate.
I don't get this. Frighteners is very much in line with what Mr Jackson had been doing before it, and was a natural continuation in his development as a director. Or are you one of those people who think money spoils everything it touches?
Only 6 million XBox 360s sold by end of September? Can that be right? Just a few stories up Nintendo claims to have sold 6 million Wiis in the few weeks it has been out, while XBox 360 was released a year ago. I don't know much about console sales and history of releases, but doesn't that mean XBox 360 is a total non-issue?
Thank you so much for this, this is exactly what I'm looking for! The only two devices I couldn't find tips for were for my digital cameras, but that's understandable since they have (proprietary) li-ion batter chargers so a mere tip isn't enough.
I replied to another poster suggesting sticking to miniUSB-powered/charged devices and the same counter-argument applies: sticking with battery-powered devices is a ridiculously limiting factor. There are no dSLRs, cell phones or Nintendo DSs out there which run on alkalines. And switching from an iPod Nano to something AAA bulky is out of the question.
I'd rather lug around the 5+ chargers than limit myself to a very small subset of each device category based on its charging scheme alone. Features such as compactness, usability and battery life are more important to me than how its charged, but it would be nice to be able to have just one for all of them.
Well, at surface this sounds like a reasonable suggestion. But why would I want to limit my choice of gadgets to those who use a certain type of power source. It's just one feature and it's not even a feature that's pertinent to the gadget's function. So, even if I have to lug around 5+ chargers I'd rather do that than use a sub-par camera, for example.
Besides, I don't know any dSLRs, portable gaming devices or phones which use (mini)USB for charging.
Why? I haven't used a "legitimate" ISP email address in 10+ years, except for school stuff as they don't like to forward to my webmail.
Perhaps the Japanese have more integrity than you have cynicism? Just because practically every western kid or homeless man would do what you suggest doesn't mean people in countries where crime is not considered a-ok would do so, too.
I can't find a download link on getfirefox.com. I don't want to read about the wonderful features (3 links to those). I don't want to learn about support, add-ons or developers. I just want a BIG FAT LINK TO DOWNLOAD FIREFOX 2.0.
I know, it's not a big deal. But it is. If I can't find a download link on _the_ Firefox website, I'm positive there's thousands of people who can't. At least I know to google for it or go to other websites.
"I think you'll be asking for Cytheria more than Jenna."
/exactly/ the parent referred to, or that enough people knew to mod it up to 5.
I don't know what is more disturbing: that I knew what