New board, new cases, new RAM, new peripherals. It happens. It's expensive. Get over it. Do you really want old technology sticking around just because we're stubborn? (ISA, coff coff).
Not quite: the only reason P4's need that enormous heatsink is because it's a P3 overclocked to kingdom come, and therefore running much hotter than it should.
I heard Intel has been putting the following ads out prior to the release of the P4:
Are you an avid overclocker? Did you manage to make your Celeron 333 run at 750 by suspending it in a barrel of liquid nitrogen? Then come work for Intel and turn your hobby into a living!
Endorphins are like opiates: they're painkillers, not stimulants. You can, kinda, get addicted to them, too, or at least train your body to produce more of them given certain stimuli. An example from daily life would be the popularity of spicy food: in reaction to the pepper/chilli/blowtorch, the brain releases some endorphins to lessen the painful sensation you get from ingesting spicy foods. We perceive this release of endorphins to be pleasurable, in much the same way that a junkie perceives his shot of Heroin to be pleasurable. This probably explains the popularity of Mexican/Indian/etc. food.
If you eat a lot of these foods over a prolonged period of time, you begin to become tolerant to the levels of endorphin that are released after each meal. The level of spiciness ("mild", say) you started out with no longer serves to give you your kick. So you move on to "fairly hot" and eventually "blitzkrieg" in order to "keep up your habit".
Certain people are genetically made up in such a way that their bodies produce a larger amount of endorphins for a certain stimulus than others. I'm sure everyone knows someone who can take pain better that everyone else. This is not because they are real live macho's, but simply because they release so much endorphins they feel the pain less.
...is probably the same reason a lot of major commercial apps don't get ported to Linux: 90 percent of all desktop pc's (or thereabouts, I think Linux and iMacs are improving their marketshare a bit these days) run Windows. Game companies probably figure it isn't worth it to port to the other 10 percent because pc gamers will most likely use Windows anyway, seeing as that it's standard and that there are more games available. Now on Windows, using OpenGL doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since the chance that hardware manufacturers make their products compatible with DirectX (Windows, and thus: standard) is much larger than the chance of them ensuring their stuff works *well* with OpenGL.
From an economic perspective this makes perfect sense: programmer time is scarce and extremely valuable, so for any commercial outlet it's probably wiser not to waste scarce resources on ensuring compliance with "the other 3D platform" as well and concentrate on dominant DirectX instead.
So, basically, gaming companies and hardware companies don't *care* whether or not OpenGL is better or worse than DirectX and use the latter instead.
IANAB (I am not a biologist), but isn't one of the reasons why animals reproduce the fact that it feels good (for one of the available sexes, at least; have you ever seen ducks mating in a pond? I doubt the females enjoy almost getting drowned whenever three males jump them)? Probably the only way you can model a "biological" form of reproduction in a machine is by giving it some reward for it. I wonder what a bunch of bits would find pleasurable...
will emotionless machines kill their offspring if they cease to be of value and start consuming more than they're producing?
Apparently, lots of animals have no qualms about eating their offspring: crocodiles being one, famous, example. Still, crocodiles as a species seem to thrive no less despite this. And since most artificial life hasn't been endowed with a great emotive power anyways, why should it matter that our little robots develop this kind of behavior? I seriously doubt the parents will have moral qualms over eating their children, and I don't think the children will realise they're eaten by their parents.
(BTW, does anybody else remember the Discovery -stuff to watch while you eat- documentary about robot bugs built out of spare walkman parts that learned how to walk around and avoid obstacles without being told how? Now *that* was cool).
, I'll argue 'till my last breath that the statement "Linux is not ready for the desktop" is only made by people expecting the Windows interface when they sit down a computer.
I doubt it. Most people find Windows to be as arcane and confusing as Macs. The deeper system stuff doesn't interest them at all. Most Windows users have never seen the Control Panel in action.
Personally, I think BeOS is a good example of a desktop OS that gets most things right, but then I am very familiar with the Control panel (unfortunately) and happen to think that a good Unix-esque shell is a better environment for the types of endeavors you'd undertake there. I'm willing to bet, though, that most users like BeOS just as little as they like Windows.
On a side-note: why can't we just leave off the "make Linux ready for the desktop" drill and concentrate on what made it good/popular in the first place? A nice, stable OS for servers, databases, print- and file servers and all purpose Geekboxen and leave it at that? Thank you.
BTW, as a European, I find this American tendency to "sue everything that moves" rather laughable. In this case especially. It's like me sueing (sp?) our local greengrocer because he's too expensive, even though I could take my lazy ass to a cheaper supermarket on the edge of town with very little extra effort.
Yeah, there is, but if you look at what a dedicated system by Roland can't do (they need compression), it might just be a hardware problem as well.
Then again, maybe it would work with the higher-end hardware that's available today. Maybe Roland/Korg/Akai else economise on harddisks and cpu's. You would have to standardize the hardware, though. Build special boxes that do *only* audio recording/processing and write the drivers in such a way that they maximize the performance that can be got out of the components. Also leave out the stuff that deals with playing FreeCell. Write a non-obtrusive OS (to stay ontopic...QNX might be adapted so that it's up to the task), tweak the apps until they take full advantage of the available hardware-potential and you've got...A VS8xxx on speed.
BUT as much as I would like to see such a device, I can see a number of problems with such a scenario:
It would be a hideously expensive system. Just the words Pro Audio on the case alone would cost a whopping USD 1000. It's no longer a commodity product you can buy at any supermarket (yes, over here in NL they sell computers at supermarkets) but a specialty item that'll be priced accordingly.
You could no longer take advantage of the openness that is inherent in the PC/Mac platform. The way things work now, if someone comes up with a whacky soundprocessing idea and they have the skill, there'll be a share/freeware app you can download that could really spice up your mix in certain oddball situations. You'll also minimise the chance of the odd group of hackers coming up with an entirely new essential product, such as the aforementioned FruityLoops or stomper. You'll always be locked into what the proprietary vendor cooks up for you.
Suppose newer and better hardware comes out, it will take a while before it's added to the system.
So while I'd probably get one of these devices, I'd always keep a "normal" pc on the side for the quirks. That is, unless such a system would be hackable on "normal" machines using "normal" tools as well, meaning it would be more or less standard, just with drivers and an OS that's finetuned. Say a Dell Multimedia Plus that's not just a piece of muck with a fancy name, but a box that is *really* optimized for multimedia (well, audio, at least) performance and that can work with day to day apps, just giving them enough of an edge to make them usable. Now that would be cool.
The Nord Modular doesn't do the actual synthesis in software, though. It uses a number of dedicated dsp chips for. You only use the GUI to put together the patches, which then get stored on the chips. There's not much that's time critical about that.
It's a really cool system, btw, and the fileformat for the patches is public, so nothing's stopping you from writing a gui frontend for Linux. If I'm not mistaken, someone wrote a PalmOS version as well.
No respectful disagreements this time. Yes, neither Windows nor MacOS is really good, but one is worse than the other. For synthesis, Windows is fine. It involves no syncing, just playback and number crunching and you don't really notice it if tiny deviations occur. I'll be the first to agree with you, however, that harddisk recording is somewhat of a problem. I once recorded some vocals over an existing track and the recording process slowed down the playback process, making the singer out of sync with the preconstructed bits. Nasty as f***. Maybe, though, the problem is with current hardware. If your disks get faster, possibly the problem would go away by the time MacOS XX or Windows 3000 comes out. I don't know of *any* system where harddisk recording works. Even dedicated stand-alone recording devices such as the Roland VS series can't do it without data compression (ughh).
Comparing MacOS Rebirth to Windows Rebirth simply isn't fair, as the program originated on a Mac, was finetuned for a Mac and never quite adapted well to Windows/Direct X. Compare it to FruityLoops instead. It packs way more functionality in the drum department, a huge number of 303-like devices (pretty good clones, and the amount you can use is only limited by your hardware and eight groups of effects together (plus master group) in realtime, without *any* latency problems.
I dislike Windows as much as the next guy (really!), as it's unstable, messy and a product of the Evil Empire and all that, but the awful truth is that it's plain better for realtime audio than MacOS. Possibly OS X will put Apple back on track, but for now, they're being surpassed.
I'd love to use BeOS, though, but I'm not aware of any *serious* *good-quality* music software for it.
In my experience, most softsynthesis takes place on, well, uhm, sorry...Windows. I think there you have at least a partial answer to your question. Before people start screaming that the only reason for this is that Windows has a larger userbase: most (semi-) professional musicians, i.e. people who can afford the steep costs of a reasonably good software synth (at USD 500 they're not exactly toy software) prefer Macs. So I guess this must mean that there's something about Windows that makes it very suitable for real-time audio manipulation. I'm further guessing that this has something to do with Direct X, which lets software access the hardware directly. If you compare the Mac version of Acid to the Windows version (which is heavily optimized for Direct X), for example, you'll find that it's much less responsive and capable of handling *large* mixes. A similar situation occurs with name audio programs like CuBase, Wavelab and Logic, which contain almost no Win/Direct X platform-specific optimizations (sp?). They're clumsy and slow. So, to answer part of your questions, between the two major desktop OS-es (notice I said *desktop OS*, and not just *OS*), Windows wins because there's already a more or less stable way to handle the hardware side of things gracefully.
I'm guessing that Linux will *never* be suited for hardware-intensive tasks like audio. There isn't, as of yet, a way to circumvent X and the kernel.
And as for BeOS: well, from what I've seen from it, it could actually be good, if there was any software for it. For a Media OS it has surprisingly little substantive software. Demos of thirty mp3's playing simultaneously do make it look promising, though. I'm guessing they've designed the OS specifically so that it puts as few barriers as possible between the app and the media subsystem. Unfortunately, it is such a niche-system no manufacturer in their right mind would spend the millions of dollars needed to write an app. to specifically take advantage of the system.
Finally, QNX: from what I've learnt about it in the past five minutes, it looks kinda promising because it's supposedly fast as hell. Still, though, no one is using it, so there won't be any serious software for it in the near future. Maybe what *will* happen, though, is that hardware manufacturers start using it as an os for virtual analog synths, because it would take away the need to develop a new OS specifically for a certain device. That would be pretty cool, actually: imagine being able to play tetris on your synth while the guitarist takes a ten minute solo!
The lack of end user applications is *part* of the issue, yes. There is no Office for Linux yet (StarOffice stinks. Sorry, it does) and there is no stable browser yet, either (Netscape isn't stable, it's just dying a slow and painful death). I'd love to see this otherwise, because it would be good for Microsoft to see some competition, but it's not. However, newer versions of StarOffice and Netscape (that would have to be Mozilla, then) might correct this issue and from what it looks like now, they probably will.
Suppose this happens, though, there's still not much that will draw Joe User to Linux. Not because there's an inordinate amount of arcane Finnish magic to be performed, but simply because in certain situations it's necessary to just "mess around" and see what happens. "Messing around to see what happens", however, is a mindset that only comes natural to those who already have an interest in computers, not to those who see computers as a tool they need to get their office work done (those people would be afraid they'd "break something"). Unfortunately, it's a mindset that's indispensible when working with Linux the way it's currently set up. Linux is, after all, still somewhat of a geek toy. That's why it's extremely popular in geek fields, such as science and webhosting, but not in decidedly geek-unfriendly fields such as accounting. If Linux is to "conquer" the world, it needs to lose this geek toy aspect (which would be a shame) or it needs to hide it very well from the casual user. Maybe we shouldn't be wondering why no one is using Linux on the desktop (well, apparently, four percent of computer users do, but...), but if it's worth it to let it come to that.
Disclaimer: Personally, I use Windows in situations where I don't want to be bothered with the working of the system (design, writing long pieces of text) and Linux for everything else. So maybe my personal habits have taken on the status of dogma in my mind.
The reason Linux boxes are almost as expensive as Red Hat boxes are:
OEM licences for Windows are much cheaper than the licences you buy in a store, probably very close to the cost of an OEM licence from Red Hat (which is not exactly the cheapest distro anyways)
It takes more time (and hence money) to set up Linux than it does to set up Windows. Flame away, my brethern, if you must, but 't is a fact, that is to say, 't is fact if you want to set up Linux as a desktop OS (which it was not exactly meant to be).
Having said that, I'd of course much prefer them not to install anything, be it Windows or Linux, because I'm one of those control freaks who'd rather keep everything in their own hands. I'd much rather put stuff on my harddisk in a way that makes sense to *me* (and probably no one else) than to dig through an entire 13.7 Gig HD trying to find out where Dell has put the sources to the kernel.
Sure, the photoshop brand of tabbed palettes were kinda, uhm, well, innovative when they first came out, but so was all that nifty stuff done by Xerox PARC way back when. Too bad for Adobe good ideas tend to become more or less public domain after a while, because everyone starts ripping them off after a while (3D Studio Max uses them as well, now). It's very difficult to uphold a patent that's as vague and general as this. Just change some of the little details and the party sueing hasn't got a leg to stand on in court. I'd really like to see them try, though. It's always amusing to see the death spasms of an obsolete moloch.
Which is precisely what's going on here, I think. Adobe is losing the lucrative webmarket very fast to those nice, slick and Internet-savvy boys and girls from Macromedia. I'm not very much inclined to worship huge companies that sell their stuff at outrageous prices, but if you're doing webgraphics, the stuff Macromedia puts out is just way, way better. The fancy-ass photo manipulation you can do with Photoshop is something that I at least don't use for day to day web work. If I have to do a site, I just stick with Fireworks. Then there's the Adobe joke that's called Illustrator: sure, you can do nice stuff with that, but they can't even get their own (both AI and EPS) file format right, making your artwork completely useless except, maybe (I wouldn't know) for print. Basically what is happening is that there's a very lucrative and very big new market emerging in the graphic sector and Adobe isn't getting as much of it as they would like. Sure, the people doing print work will probably stick with Adobe for a while yet, but what happens when every designer makes most of his/her income from webgraphics? You think they'll pay the extra money just to get pantone calibrated stuff from Adobe when the Macromedia software they already own performs more or less equally good?
And we all know what happens when big companies start running into trouble:
Sue the bastards.
Am I the only one to see striking parallels with the way the RIAA is behaving right now?
Linux is apparently becoming the OS of choice in many third world countries. The Chinese government publicly stating they'll only use Linux from now on is only one, very obvious example. I know for a fact that a lot of Indonesians use Linux, but I'm sure it's popular in other, similar, countries as well. It's cheap (even though Indonesians, at least, don't really care about copyright that much...God, I miss the days a new game was the price of the floppy and 25 cents USD), because copies are easily made without running the risk of an occasional gov't crackdown on piracy. But you can bet those installs aren't counted. This is not a.sig
Karma be damned: it's a valid question to ask. To me, the 4.1% marketshare Linux has in the client/desktop market is amazing. I'll be the first to admit it's a superb server-OS, but (like all *nixes) it's not for the average or even the not so average home user/desktop worker.
Let's see..desktop use for a computer would be to:
Process words
Practice some form of accounting
Browse the web/do the email thing
Play games
OK..start screaming how you use StarOffice/Whatever all the time and how it serves all you needs - for most normal users, it doesn't. As much as I (a non-normal user, I guess) like Linux, I hate typing long letters in X because the font thing is so screwed up it gets painful on the eyes after a while. Add to that the fact that for most average users, setting up X is a nasty adventure at best and the fact that, like it or not, MS Word is the dominant file format, Linux isn't very well suited for this area. The same holds true for accounting: most medium to small offices use Excel because "everyone else does." So guess what an office worker uses to do their household budget? Hell, it's something they know from work already.
Then there's the games...even though there's a lot of progress being made in Linux gaming, it still has a long way to go.
That leaves browsing/the e-mail thing. Now *that* is something that actually works quite nicely under Linux. But is that enough for millions of home/desktop users to switch to a new OS in an age where even your *fridge* is connected to the Internet? Hardly.
Like I said, considering this, it is very surprising Linux has even 4.1 percent marketshare. So I guess this is good news.
Not really. Almost all new classical music is completely independent of the major labels; in fact, most of the major levels have completely ceased their classical operations aside from cruft such as Charlotte Church and the like. Naxos, which is a highly respected budget label, puts out great quality new music for $6 / CD,
Well, you're partially correct...Naxos does have a huge catalogue of established names in classical music. If you're out to get some Mozart or some Stravinsky, you'd be completely nuts to get any other version but the Naxos one (in Europe, at least, I don't know if their stuff comes out in the US as well). I'm not so sure if they're not RIAA-afilliated in some way, though - their distribution is extremely well put together, much better than that of your average independent company. This is just a suspicion, however.
though most of the classical minors are more expensive.
The classical minors tend to be released on very small independent labels only (and yes, you're right, they're hideously expensive. I'd be swimming in Stockhausen cd's if this weren't the case), which more or less proves my point that truly independent music tends to be of interest only to a small group of people. Here in Holland you can get Bach at your local drugstore, but you'll have to search long and hard to pick up anything by John Cage (canonical though he may be) or Xenakis.
Of course, it is also the most meaningful and emotion music in production!
Let's not get into that, now shall we? I personally find both Mozart's 40th symphony and Husker Du's Diane equally emotional and meaningful, albeit in different ways.
Music such as folk and bluegrass is also almost completely independent of major labels (bluegrass, in particular, is perhaps the most commercially uncompromising music of the 20th century
But again, these are fringe styles that are not very popular with a wide audience and hence there's not a whole lot of money to be made from it, just like there's not that many people who are into Zimbabwean goth or Turkmeni grindcore.
You're right, most underground music and punkrock is non-RIAA, but you're giving the wrong examples. Epitaph was sold to Sony a long, long time ago, and as for Fat Wreck, well, they're RIAA-afilliated (sp?).
You have to be very careful with this kind of thing - a lot of so-called independents are really just subsidiaries of major labels such as Sony or Warner. Roadrunner a nice, independent metal outlet? Forget it, they're a sub of, I think, Sony. Creation? Nope, sold to EMI. Sub pop? Warner. Mo'Wax? EMI. Etc. Etc.
If you want to avoid RIAA and the majors, you'll have to dig very, very deep to find your music, and the music you'll find may actually not be very much to your liking. Most underground music is underground for a very good reason: it only appeals to a very small group of people. If you're into Zimbabwean goth played on bagpipes or Turkmeni grindcore, you could live a very happy, fulfilled life having nothing to do with the RIAA, but if your taste is slightly more mainstream, you'll have somewhat of a problem.
Don't forget, the majors didn't become major for no reason: they gave ninetynine percent of the people what they wanted to hear. If it turned out that, say, twenty percent of the people all of a sudden wanted to hear something else (Nirvana), they simply went out to buy that something else and mass-market that. Remember grunge? Remember skate-punk? Or, in the UK, the Asian craze? If fifteen percent of American teenagers decides tomorrow that from now on it's extremely cool to be into avantgarde electronica, you can be sure Warner will buy up everyone on the A-musik roster without even thinking about it.
Actually, I read it in a Dutch PC-hobbyists magazine (PCM), in an article about making your own digital movies. It kinda surprised me as well, although if you think about it it's quite a sensible position really, seeing as that there's no way they're losing money. No one who isn't going to be able to charge customers for their expensive software (or who isn't deadly serious about their hobby, which I would think would be a minority) is going to buy software that expensive anyways.
Maybe, though, they're only going after companies who use pirated versions of their software, leaving the little guys alone.
What the press release says is that they will a release a stripped-down version of 3DSMAX:
"to game players for no charge on the web"
It's free, is what that means. However, if you're a game developers, you will have to pay a licence fee if you want to release this stripped down MAX with your game as a level/model editor. And for quite a large (I would imagine) extra sum, AutoDesk/Kinetix/Discreet will customize the stripped down MAX to work with your particular game.
So it is good news, especially for people with shares in the company, as this stunt will no doubt increase the position of 3DSMAX in the very lucrative gaming industry.
Actually, Kinetix/AutoDesk have been saying for years that they don't mind you using a warez-copy of 3DSMAX as long as you don't use it commercially (quite a sensible attitude, btw).
They probably make most of their money from things like support and training anyways, so why should they really care about giving away their software (also the same principle by which a number of linux companies make their money, btw)?
As an added bonus, a lot of people who end up working in the games industry nowadays start out by making player models and building levels for their own enjoyment. Once they join a certain company, it's in AutoDesk's best interest to have them be familiar with 3DSMAX, as it's always easier to use software your employers already know (that's the way WordPerfect made it big in the 80's, remember?)
...and where your traffic is going. For example, most of Europe is pretty self-sufficient now, as far as Internet connections are concerned. So as long as you limit your traffic to Europe (not very unlikely, because of time differences), you should have no problem. I'm told Southeast Asia is pretty self-sufficient as well, they'd only have a problem if someone nuked Singapore. Africa and Latin America I'm not too sure of, however. From what I know about Africa, they don't even have normal cross-continent telephone lines, let alone optical fiber. I'm guessing Latin America is only slightly better: have you ever tried to wire up a rainforest? The point is that the world is divided up into relatively independent subnetworks, which are connected to each other with only a limited number of intercontinental cables. So if the US breaks down, it's too bad the rest of the world can't connect to slashdot anymore, but e-mails to your auntie next door are no problem whatsoever.
Ok boys and girls, take a deep breath and then repeat in unison:
"This is not the great, shocking news some of us make it out to be."
John Carmack is not God. John Carmack is, however, an expert in his field. Moreover, he is an expert who has sold millions of copies of his product. Guess what? That makes him someone even Microsoft will listen to when they're about to release something that will be of interest in his line of work.
In fact, that makes him someone other companies listen to as well (check some other posts for details). If you're a gaming hardware company, you're going to at least want to hear what the lead programmer of one of the most influential gaming companies (yes, yes, other games *may or may not be* more fun to play, but you must admit that Id products have more influence than any others) has to say.
Most likely, they'll buy Carmack another Ferrari just so they can say in their press releases that they have been advised by "The Master Himself".
(disclaimer: I'm a big fan of every game Id has put out so far)
Have you ever used Photoshop in a professional environment? Have you ever used Paintshop? One of them is clearly preferrable if you need it for more than just polishing up your holiday pics in your spare time. And PaintShop 6 sucks compared to both Photoshop and PaintShop 5. It's got a very, very nasty interface, unlike previous incarnations, without the extra useful bits Photoshop has. I'd say the ZDNet review of PaintShop is way, way too positive, but then I've given up on both PaintShop and PhotoShop for serious web-related work (Fireworks is all I need).
Browse through any particular computer (or car, or music or housekeeping) magazine and you'll see that it's ninety percent advertisements (in Europe it's a bit less, cos we're more hypocritical than the average American). Now, I ask you, which is the filler material? The advertisements or the remaining ten percent, which consists of reviews and columns?
Based on the distribution of advertisements and actual content, how large do you think the advertising department is compared to that of the writing staff?
Truth is, for most magazines (both online and offline), the actual content is kind of an afterthought, so they're hesitant to put too much effort and money into them. So the writers either:
Rewrite press releases to make it seem as if they've tested the software/equipment/cars themselves. This costs far less time and hence money than actually testing something.
or
The writers get a computer with software/piece of equipment/car that's been thoroughly prepared by the manufacturer to ensure a smooth ride and hence an easy review. You didn't really expect that journalists who gloat over W2K/Linux ever had to install it themselves, now did you?
or
You've actually stumbled across the one magazine that does in fact test the software/equipment/cars they're sent, but in this case you'll notice as the reviews are always much less positive than those in other magazines.
I only recall, for example, one review of Corel Linux that stated that it was easier to install for newbies than most distributions, but still a long way off from being completely userfriendly (user meaning: my grandma). Game magazines tend to be an exception, as they're run by people who love to play games, which is why there were almost no positive reviews of Daikatana, for example (even though I've seen one magazine that claimed that John Romero was "setting new standards of excellence" hahaha).
This is not news, this is stating the obvious and adding a conspiracy twist to it.
Slashdot Mirror
New board, new cases, new RAM, new peripherals. It happens. It's expensive. Get over it. Do you really want old technology sticking around just because we're stubborn? (ISA, coff coff).
Not quite: the only reason P4's need that enormous heatsink is because it's a P3 overclocked to kingdom come, and therefore running much hotter than it should.
I heard Intel has been putting the following ads out prior to the release of the P4:
Are you an avid overclocker? Did you manage to make your Celeron 333 run at 750 by suspending it in a barrel of liquid nitrogen? Then come work for Intel and turn your hobby into a living!
Intel: show us how it's done.
Endorphins are like opiates: they're painkillers, not stimulants. You can, kinda, get addicted to them, too, or at least train your body to produce more of them given certain stimuli. An example from daily life would be the popularity of spicy food: in reaction to the pepper/chilli/blowtorch, the brain releases some endorphins to lessen the painful sensation you get from ingesting spicy foods. We perceive this release of endorphins to be pleasurable, in much the same way that a junkie perceives his shot of Heroin to be pleasurable. This probably explains the popularity of Mexican/Indian/etc. food.
If you eat a lot of these foods over a prolonged period of time, you begin to become tolerant to the levels of endorphin that are released after each meal. The level of spiciness ("mild", say) you started out with no longer serves to give you your kick. So you move on to "fairly hot" and eventually "blitzkrieg" in order to "keep up your habit".
Certain people are genetically made up in such a way that their bodies produce a larger amount of endorphins for a certain stimulus than others. I'm sure everyone knows someone who can take pain better that everyone else. This is not because they are real live macho's, but simply because they release so much endorphins they feel the pain less.
...is probably the same reason a lot of major commercial apps don't get ported to Linux: 90 percent of all desktop pc's (or thereabouts, I think Linux and iMacs are improving their marketshare a bit these days) run Windows. Game companies probably figure it isn't worth it to port to the other 10 percent because pc gamers will most likely use Windows anyway, seeing as that it's standard and that there are more games available. Now on Windows, using OpenGL doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since the chance that hardware manufacturers make their products compatible with DirectX (Windows, and thus: standard) is much larger than the chance of them ensuring their stuff works *well* with OpenGL.
From an economic perspective this makes perfect sense: programmer time is scarce and extremely valuable, so for any commercial outlet it's probably wiser not to waste scarce resources on ensuring compliance with "the other 3D platform" as well and concentrate on dominant DirectX instead.
So, basically, gaming companies and hardware companies don't *care* whether or not OpenGL is better or worse than DirectX and use the latter instead.
IANAB (I am not a biologist), but isn't one of the reasons why animals reproduce the fact that it feels good (for one of the available sexes, at least; have you ever seen ducks mating in a pond? I doubt the females enjoy almost getting drowned whenever three males jump them)? Probably the only way you can model a "biological" form of reproduction in a machine is by giving it some reward for it. I wonder what a bunch of bits would find pleasurable...
will emotionless machines kill their offspring if they cease to be of value and start consuming more than they're producing?
Apparently, lots of animals have no qualms about eating their offspring: crocodiles being one, famous, example. Still, crocodiles as a species seem to thrive no less despite this. And since most artificial life hasn't been endowed with a great emotive power anyways, why should it matter that our little robots develop this kind of behavior? I seriously doubt the parents will have moral qualms over eating their children, and I don't think the children will realise they're eaten by their parents.
(BTW, does anybody else remember the Discovery -stuff to watch while you eat- documentary about robot bugs built out of spare walkman parts that learned how to walk around and avoid obstacles without being told how? Now *that* was cool).
, I'll argue 'till my last breath that the statement "Linux is not ready for the desktop" is only made by people expecting the Windows interface when they sit down a computer.
I doubt it. Most people find Windows to be as arcane and confusing as Macs. The deeper system stuff doesn't interest them at all. Most Windows users have never seen the Control Panel in action.
Personally, I think BeOS is a good example of a desktop OS that gets most things right, but then I am very familiar with the Control panel (unfortunately) and happen to think that a good Unix-esque shell is a better environment for the types of endeavors you'd undertake there. I'm willing to bet, though, that most users like BeOS just as little as they like Windows.
On a side-note: why can't we just leave off the "make Linux ready for the desktop" drill and concentrate on what made it good/popular in the first place? A nice, stable OS for servers, databases, print- and file servers and all purpose Geekboxen and leave it at that? Thank you.
BTW, as a European, I find this American tendency to "sue everything that moves" rather laughable. In this case especially. It's like me sueing (sp?) our local greengrocer because he's too expensive, even though I could take my lazy ass to a cheaper supermarket on the edge of town with very little extra effort.
Then again, maybe it would work with the higher-end hardware that's available today. Maybe Roland/Korg/Akai else economise on harddisks and cpu's. You would have to standardize the hardware, though. Build special boxes that do *only* audio recording/processing and write the drivers in such a way that they maximize the performance that can be got out of the components. Also leave out the stuff that deals with playing FreeCell. Write a non-obtrusive OS (to stay ontopic...QNX might be adapted so that it's up to the task), tweak the apps until they take full advantage of the available hardware-potential and you've got...A VS8xxx on speed.
BUT as much as I would like to see such a device, I can see a number of problems with such a scenario:
So while I'd probably get one of these devices, I'd always keep a "normal" pc on the side for the quirks. That is, unless such a system would be hackable on "normal" machines using "normal" tools as well, meaning it would be more or less standard, just with drivers and an OS that's finetuned. Say a Dell Multimedia Plus that's not just a piece of muck with a fancy name, but a box that is *really* optimized for multimedia (well, audio, at least) performance and that can work with day to day apps, just giving them enough of an edge to make them usable. Now that would be cool.
The Nord Modular doesn't do the actual synthesis in software, though. It uses a number of dedicated dsp chips for. You only use the GUI to put together the patches, which then get stored on the chips. There's not much that's time critical about that.
It's a really cool system, btw, and the fileformat for the patches is public, so nothing's stopping you from writing a gui frontend for Linux. If I'm not mistaken, someone wrote a PalmOS version as well.
No respectful disagreements this time. Yes, neither Windows nor MacOS is really good, but one is worse than the other. For synthesis, Windows is fine. It involves no syncing, just playback and number crunching and you don't really notice it if tiny deviations occur. I'll be the first to agree with you, however, that harddisk recording is somewhat of a problem. I once recorded some vocals over an existing track and the recording process slowed down the playback process, making the singer out of sync with the preconstructed bits. Nasty as f***. Maybe, though, the problem is with current hardware. If your disks get faster, possibly the problem would go away by the time MacOS XX or Windows 3000 comes out. I don't know of *any* system where harddisk recording works. Even dedicated stand-alone recording devices such as the Roland VS series can't do it without data compression (ughh).
Allow me to respectfully disagree with you:
Comparing MacOS Rebirth to Windows Rebirth simply isn't fair, as the program originated on a Mac, was finetuned for a Mac and never quite adapted well to Windows/Direct X. Compare it to FruityLoops instead. It packs way more functionality in the drum department, a huge number of 303-like devices (pretty good clones, and the amount you can use is only limited by your hardware and eight groups of effects together (plus master group) in realtime, without *any* latency problems.
I dislike Windows as much as the next guy (really!), as it's unstable, messy and a product of the Evil Empire and all that, but the awful truth is that it's plain better for realtime audio than MacOS. Possibly OS X will put Apple back on track, but for now, they're being surpassed.
I'd love to use BeOS, though, but I'm not aware of any *serious* *good-quality* music software for it.
In my experience, most softsynthesis takes place on, well, uhm, sorry...Windows. I think there you have at least a partial answer to your question. Before people start screaming that the only reason for this is that Windows has a larger userbase: most (semi-) professional musicians, i.e. people who can afford the steep costs of a reasonably good software synth (at USD 500 they're not exactly toy software) prefer Macs. So I guess this must mean that there's something about Windows that makes it very suitable for real-time audio manipulation. I'm further guessing that this has something to do with Direct X, which lets software access the hardware directly. If you compare the Mac version of Acid to the Windows version (which is heavily optimized for Direct X), for example, you'll find that it's much less responsive and capable of handling *large* mixes. A similar situation occurs with name audio programs like CuBase, Wavelab and Logic, which contain almost no Win/Direct X platform-specific optimizations (sp?). They're clumsy and slow. So, to answer part of your questions, between the two major desktop OS-es (notice I said *desktop OS*, and not just *OS*), Windows wins because there's already a more or less stable way to handle the hardware side of things gracefully.
I'm guessing that Linux will *never* be suited for hardware-intensive tasks like audio. There isn't, as of yet, a way to circumvent X and the kernel.
And as for BeOS: well, from what I've seen from it, it could actually be good, if there was any software for it. For a Media OS it has surprisingly little substantive software. Demos of thirty mp3's playing simultaneously do make it look promising, though. I'm guessing they've designed the OS specifically so that it puts as few barriers as possible between the app and the media subsystem. Unfortunately, it is such a niche-system no manufacturer in their right mind would spend the millions of dollars needed to write an app. to specifically take advantage of the system.
Finally, QNX: from what I've learnt about it in the past five minutes, it looks kinda promising because it's supposedly fast as hell. Still, though, no one is using it, so there won't be any serious software for it in the near future. Maybe what *will* happen, though, is that hardware manufacturers start using it as an os for virtual analog synths, because it would take away the need to develop a new OS specifically for a certain device. That would be pretty cool, actually: imagine being able to play tetris on your synth while the guitarist takes a ten minute solo!
The lack of end user applications is *part* of the issue, yes. There is no Office for Linux yet (StarOffice stinks. Sorry, it does) and there is no stable browser yet, either (Netscape isn't stable, it's just dying a slow and painful death). I'd love to see this otherwise, because it would be good for Microsoft to see some competition, but it's not. However, newer versions of StarOffice and Netscape (that would have to be Mozilla, then) might correct this issue and from what it looks like now, they probably will.
Suppose this happens, though, there's still not much that will draw Joe User to Linux. Not because there's an inordinate amount of arcane Finnish magic to be performed, but simply because in certain situations it's necessary to just "mess around" and see what happens. "Messing around to see what happens", however, is a mindset that only comes natural to those who already have an interest in computers, not to those who see computers as a tool they need to get their office work done (those people would be afraid they'd "break something"). Unfortunately, it's a mindset that's indispensible when working with Linux the way it's currently set up. Linux is, after all, still somewhat of a geek toy. That's why it's extremely popular in geek fields, such as science and webhosting, but not in decidedly geek-unfriendly fields such as accounting. If Linux is to "conquer" the world, it needs to lose this geek toy aspect (which would be a shame) or it needs to hide it very well from the casual user. Maybe we shouldn't be wondering why no one is using Linux on the desktop (well, apparently, four percent of computer users do, but...), but if it's worth it to let it come to that.
Disclaimer: Personally, I use Windows in situations where I don't want to be bothered with the working of the system (design, writing long pieces of text) and Linux for everything else. So maybe my personal habits have taken on the status of dogma in my mind.
- OEM licences for Windows are much cheaper than the licences you buy in a store, probably very close to the cost of an OEM licence from Red Hat (which is not exactly the cheapest distro anyways)
- It takes more time (and hence money) to set up Linux than it does to set up Windows. Flame away, my brethern, if you must, but 't is a fact, that is to say, 't is fact if you want to set up Linux as a desktop OS (which it was not exactly meant to be).
Having said that, I'd of course much prefer them not to install anything, be it Windows or Linux, because I'm one of those control freaks who'd rather keep everything in their own hands. I'd much rather put stuff on my harddisk in a way that makes sense to *me* (and probably no one else) than to dig through an entire 13.7 Gig HD trying to find out where Dell has put the sources to the kernel.Sure, the photoshop brand of tabbed palettes were kinda, uhm, well, innovative when they first came out, but so was all that nifty stuff done by Xerox PARC way back when. Too bad for Adobe good ideas tend to become more or less public domain after a while, because everyone starts ripping them off after a while (3D Studio Max uses them as well, now). It's very difficult to uphold a patent that's as vague and general as this. Just change some of the little details and the party sueing hasn't got a leg to stand on in court. I'd really like to see them try, though. It's always amusing to see the death spasms of an obsolete moloch.
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Which is precisely what's going on here, I think. Adobe is losing the lucrative webmarket very fast to those nice, slick and Internet-savvy boys and girls from Macromedia. I'm not very much inclined to worship huge companies that sell their stuff at outrageous prices, but if you're doing webgraphics, the stuff Macromedia puts out is just way, way better. The fancy-ass photo manipulation you can do with Photoshop is something that I at least don't use for day to day web work. If I have to do a site, I just stick with Fireworks. Then there's the Adobe joke that's called Illustrator: sure, you can do nice stuff with that, but they can't even get their own (both AI and EPS) file format right, making your artwork completely useless except, maybe (I wouldn't know) for print. Basically what is happening is that there's a very lucrative and very big new market emerging in the graphic sector and Adobe isn't getting as much of it as they would like. Sure, the people doing print work will probably stick with Adobe for a while yet, but what happens when every designer makes most of his/her income from webgraphics? You think they'll pay the extra money just to get pantone calibrated stuff from Adobe when the Macromedia software they already own performs more or less equally good?
And we all know what happens when big companies start running into trouble:
Sue the bastards.
Am I the only one to see striking parallels with the way the RIAA is behaving right now?
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This just fyi:
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Linux is apparently becoming the OS of choice in many third world countries. The Chinese government publicly stating they'll only use Linux from now on is only one, very obvious example. I know for a fact that a lot of Indonesians use Linux, but I'm sure it's popular in other, similar, countries as well. It's cheap (even though Indonesians, at least, don't really care about copyright that much...God, I miss the days a new game was the price of the floppy and 25 cents USD), because copies are easily made without running the risk of an occasional gov't crackdown on piracy. But you can bet those installs aren't counted.
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Let's see..desktop use for a computer would be to:
OK..start screaming how you use StarOffice/Whatever all the time and how it serves all you needs - for most normal users, it doesn't. As much as I (a non-normal user, I guess) like Linux, I hate typing long letters in X because the font thing is so screwed up it gets painful on the eyes after a while. Add to that the fact that for most average users, setting up X is a nasty adventure at best and the fact that, like it or not, MS Word is the dominant file format, Linux isn't very well suited for this area. The same holds true for accounting: most medium to small offices use Excel because "everyone else does." So guess what an office worker uses to do their household budget? Hell, it's something they know from work already.
Then there's the games...even though there's a lot of progress being made in Linux gaming, it still has a long way to go.
That leaves browsing/the e-mail thing. Now *that* is something that actually works quite nicely under Linux. But is that enough for millions of home/desktop users to switch to a new OS in an age where even your *fridge* is connected to the Internet? Hardly.
Like I said, considering this, it is very surprising Linux has even 4.1 percent marketshare. So I guess this is good news.
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Not really. Almost all new classical music is completely independent of the major labels; in fact, most of the major levels have completely ceased their classical operations aside from cruft such as Charlotte Church and the like. Naxos, which is a highly respected budget label, puts out great quality new music for $6 / CD,
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Well, you're partially correct...Naxos does have a huge catalogue of established names in classical music. If you're out to get some Mozart or some Stravinsky, you'd be completely nuts to get any other version but the Naxos one (in Europe, at least, I don't know if their stuff comes out in the US as well). I'm not so sure if they're not RIAA-afilliated in some way, though - their distribution is extremely well put together, much better than that of your average independent company. This is just a suspicion, however.
though most of the classical minors are more expensive.
The classical minors tend to be released on very small independent labels only (and yes, you're right, they're hideously expensive. I'd be swimming in Stockhausen cd's if this weren't the case), which more or less proves my point that truly independent music tends to be of interest only to a small group of people. Here in Holland you can get Bach at your local drugstore, but you'll have to search long and hard to pick up anything by John Cage (canonical though he may be) or Xenakis.
Of course, it is also the most meaningful and emotion music in production!
Let's not get into that, now shall we? I personally find both Mozart's 40th symphony and Husker Du's Diane equally emotional and meaningful, albeit in different ways.
Music such as folk and bluegrass is also almost completely independent of major labels (bluegrass, in particular, is perhaps the most commercially uncompromising music of the 20th century
But again, these are fringe styles that are not very popular with a wide audience and hence there's not a whole lot of money to be made from it, just like there's not that many people who are into Zimbabwean goth or Turkmeni grindcore.
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You're right, most underground music and punkrock is non-RIAA, but you're giving the wrong examples. Epitaph was sold to Sony a long, long time ago, and as for Fat Wreck, well, they're RIAA-afilliated (sp?).
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You have to be very careful with this kind of thing - a lot of so-called independents are really just subsidiaries of major labels such as Sony or Warner. Roadrunner a nice, independent metal outlet? Forget it, they're a sub of, I think, Sony. Creation? Nope, sold to EMI. Sub pop? Warner. Mo'Wax? EMI. Etc. Etc.
If you want to avoid RIAA and the majors, you'll have to dig very, very deep to find your music, and the music you'll find may actually not be very much to your liking. Most underground music is underground for a very good reason: it only appeals to a very small group of people. If you're into Zimbabwean goth played on bagpipes or Turkmeni grindcore, you could live a very happy, fulfilled life having nothing to do with the RIAA, but if your taste is slightly more mainstream, you'll have somewhat of a problem.
Don't forget, the majors didn't become major for no reason: they gave ninetynine percent of the people what they wanted to hear. If it turned out that, say, twenty percent of the people all of a sudden wanted to hear something else (Nirvana), they simply went out to buy that something else and mass-market that. Remember grunge? Remember skate-punk? Or, in the UK, the Asian craze? If fifteen percent of American teenagers decides tomorrow that from now on it's extremely cool to be into avantgarde electronica, you can be sure Warner will buy up everyone on the A-musik roster without even thinking about it.
That'll be the day...
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Actually, I read it in a Dutch PC-hobbyists magazine (PCM), in an article about making your own digital movies. It kinda surprised me as well, although if you think about it it's quite a sensible position really, seeing as that there's no way they're losing money. No one who isn't going to be able to charge customers for their expensive software (or who isn't deadly serious about their hobby, which I would think would be a minority) is going to buy software that expensive anyways.
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Maybe, though, they're only going after companies who use pirated versions of their software, leaving the little guys alone.
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What the press release says is that they will a release a stripped-down version of 3DSMAX:
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"to game players for no charge on the web"
It's free, is what that means. However, if you're a game developers, you will have to pay a licence fee if you want to release this stripped down MAX with your game as a level/model editor. And for quite a large (I would imagine) extra sum, AutoDesk/Kinetix/Discreet will customize the stripped down MAX to work with your particular game.
So it is good news, especially for people with shares in the company, as this stunt will no doubt increase the position of 3DSMAX in the very lucrative gaming industry.
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it's always easier to use software your employees already know, of course. Damn.
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Actually, Kinetix/AutoDesk have been saying for years that they don't mind you using a warez-copy of 3DSMAX as long as you don't use it commercially (quite a sensible attitude, btw).
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They probably make most of their money from things like support and training anyways, so why should they really care about giving away their software (also the same principle by which a number of linux companies make their money, btw)?
As an added bonus, a lot of people who end up working in the games industry nowadays start out by making player models and building levels for their own enjoyment. Once they join a certain company, it's in AutoDesk's best interest to have them be familiar with 3DSMAX, as it's always easier to use software your employers already know (that's the way WordPerfect made it big in the 80's, remember?)
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...and where your traffic is going. For example, most of Europe is pretty self-sufficient now, as far as Internet connections are concerned. So as long as you limit your traffic to Europe (not very unlikely, because of time differences), you should have no problem.
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I'm told Southeast Asia is pretty self-sufficient as well, they'd only have a problem if someone nuked Singapore.
Africa and Latin America I'm not too sure of, however. From what I know about Africa, they don't even have normal cross-continent telephone lines, let alone optical fiber. I'm guessing Latin America is only slightly better: have you ever tried to wire up a rainforest?
The point is that the world is divided up into relatively independent subnetworks, which are connected to each other with only a limited number of intercontinental cables. So if the US breaks down, it's too bad the rest of the world can't connect to slashdot anymore, but e-mails to your auntie next door are no problem whatsoever.
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Ok boys and girls, take a deep breath and then repeat in unison:
"This is not the great, shocking news some of us make it out to be."
John Carmack is not God. John Carmack is, however, an expert in his field. Moreover, he is an expert who has sold millions of copies of his product. Guess what? That makes him someone even Microsoft will listen to when they're about to release something that will be of interest in his line of work.
In fact, that makes him someone other companies listen to as well (check some other posts for details). If you're a gaming hardware company, you're going to at least want to hear what the lead programmer of one of the most influential gaming companies (yes, yes, other games *may or may not be* more fun to play, but you must admit that Id products have more influence than any others) has to say.
Most likely, they'll buy Carmack another Ferrari just so they can say in their press releases that they have been advised by "The Master Himself".
(disclaimer: I'm a big fan of every game Id has put out so far)
Have you ever used Photoshop in a professional environment? Have you ever used Paintshop? One of them is clearly preferrable if you need it for more than just polishing up your holiday pics in your spare time.
And PaintShop 6 sucks compared to both Photoshop and PaintShop 5. It's got a very, very nasty interface, unlike previous incarnations, without the extra useful bits Photoshop has.
I'd say the ZDNet review of PaintShop is way, way too positive, but then I've given up on both PaintShop and PhotoShop for serious web-related work (Fireworks is all I need).
Based on the distribution of advertisements and actual content, how large do you think the advertising department is compared to that of the writing staff?
Truth is, for most magazines (both online and offline), the actual content is kind of an afterthought, so they're hesitant to put too much effort and money into them. So the writers either:
- Rewrite press releases to make it seem as if they've tested the software/equipment/cars themselves. This costs far less time and hence money than actually testing something.
or- The writers get a computer with software/piece of equipment/car that's been thoroughly prepared by the manufacturer to ensure a smooth ride and hence an easy review. You didn't really expect that journalists who gloat over W2K/Linux ever had to install it themselves, now did you?
or- You've actually stumbled across the one magazine that does in fact test the software/equipment/cars they're sent, but in this case you'll notice as the reviews are always much less positive than those in other magazines.
I only recall, for example, one review of Corel Linux that stated that it was easier to install for newbies than most distributions, but still a long way off from being completely userfriendly (user meaning: my grandma). Game magazines tend to be an exception, as they're run by people who love to play games, which is why there were almost no positive reviews of Daikatana, for example (even though I've seen one magazine that claimed that John Romero was "setting new standards of excellence" hahaha).This is not news, this is stating the obvious and adding a conspiracy twist to it.