As a long time follower of the different audio encoding technologies, I have to agree with you on your point that the quality of the different formats seems to be quite subjective, but personally, I'm one of the many (few?) whose ears are overwhelmingly in favor of Ogg.
I can't STAND WMA at all... it has a high end ringing screech at pretty much any bitrate, while at the same time, some people swear by WMA. WMA also boosts the volume of the encoded material to give the listener the impression that it's better quality, which is bad form, IMO.
MP3 is pretty impressive nowadays, with all of the work that has gone into LAME... Even 128kbit VBR is passable. But as I said, to my ears at least, they all bow before Ogg. That same passable quality you get at 128kbit with LAME you get at 96kbit with Ogg. And the artifacts are also much less offensive to my ears, but again, that is a matter of opinion.
Anyway, I hear too much completely uninformed Ogg bashing, and I wish everyone would do some objective testing of their own. Go read up on blind ABX testing, and do some yourself. If Ogg isn't the one you think sounds best, that's fine, but just don't say it's crap without giving it a shot!
whining about only getting 3-4 gigs per month of download are, IMO, getting completely ripped off. First of all, just because YOU might only need that much bandwidth, doesn't mean there aren't plenty of legitimate reasons to want/need more. Second of all, if I'm paying $50/month for broadband, I'd better get AT LEAST 2.5 times the monthly bandwidth a $20/month dialup account would give me. So, we'll assume 5k/s on dialup which gives us:
That's the absolute bare minimum I would accept for that price. I dunno what broadband/dialup prices are like in other countries, but if they're similar to those here in America, I wouldn't be giving those crooks a dime. Hell, _I'm_ pissed when I hear stories of 10mbit connections in Asia for ~$25/month and I'm pretty happy with what I've got.
I know this is probably a little late to get read, but seriously... who's funding these kids? I know when I was 10 years old, I didn't have $50 cash that I could just go spend at will. Kids don't have credit cards, so they need cash. And on the rare occasion (birthdays, whatnot) that I did have that much cash, you could be damn sure that my parents knew where it went. No kid should be able to bring home a $50 anything without their parent knowing what it is. By the time the child can get a job and earn the money for themselves, I think they're probably old enough to decide what kind of games they can play.
It's been said before, but I'll say it again anyway. It's the parents' job to take care of their kids, not the government's.
Someone give me an affordable, *legal* way to play those good old games I miss from the past, please. (emphasis mine)
I agree with this completely, and this is the big reason I very rarely buy those compilation packs of old games. When someone's trying to sell me a collection of 10 old Atari games for $30 and there's only maybe 3 of the 10 I actually care about, that's not very good value for my money. Those old games were fun, but not so much that I'd want to spend $10 on each one... that adds up pretty quick when there's 10 games you want. There just isn't that much gameplay in those old games considering you can go pick up two-year-old PS2 games for $20 that give you ALOT more playtime. I'd easily drop $200 on a legit MAME romset. With 2045 unique games (3596 including clones), that comes out to about $0.10 each. Yeah, there's probably quite a few of those (maybe even most) that I wouldn't care a bit about, but I'm still getting alot better value than what's available now. And that's better for all of them because they'd at least be getting _something_ from me, while right now, they're not getting a penny.
Yeah, IE is ridiculously slow sometimes, like right now as I'm trying to load this site... oh wait, that's just because the server is engulfed in flames.
Re:The webpage hasn't been updated but...
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Bochs 2.0 Released
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· Score: 2
Actually, it hasn't been updated with the final 2.0 release info. If you look in the top left corner, it says "Current Release: Bochs 1.4.1" and the link on the front page to the v2.0 info is pre-release info, and all of the links are to download the release candidates. And if you look at the early comments, there's people confused about whether it had actually been released or not. Sorry I tried to help out.:P
The webpage hasn't been updated but...
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Bochs 2.0 Released
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· Score: 3, Informative
If you go to the sourceforge download page, located here, it has links to all of the 2.0 final downloads. Have fun killing the servers... I already got my copy.:)
I hate to be a "me too", but in this case it's entirely true, because I've already put my money where my mouth is. I really haven't bought many CDs lately, because most of the music I've gotten into recently is weird IDM that's really hard to find.
But last week I picked up Aaliyah's new I Care For You album despite not being a big fan of her work, only having liked a couple of her songs. Why? The CD was only $9 AND came with a DVD with 9 of her videos and a 12 minute behind-the-scenes featurette.
Last night, this behavior was repeated when I picked up Chevelle's Wonder What's Next for $6 at Best Buy despite only ever having heard two of their songs, one of which was a couple years ago and thus not on this album. This one, too, came with a video and behind-the-scenes footage, albeit not on a nice shiny DVD. I don't even know whether it's really good yet, but do you see, RIAA? I _am_ willing to pay to try new artists when I'm not making a $15-$20 gamble and there's at least potential for the album to not entirely suck ass.
There's a ton of CDs I'd like to buy, but which I can't and won't buy for the prices they're available for. $9 with a DVD full of extras? I could only wish that were the norm.
Sorry to reply to myself, but now that others have posted the link to the real article, it looks like the link I posted is the original piece referenced in the new article. Still worth a read though...
Maxtor and WD do both offer lines of drives that will retain their 3-year warranty. Luckily for me, the high end line is where I buy my drives.
That said, while this is no more than anecdotal evidence, I've never had more problems with my hard drives until recently. About two years ago, I bought a Maxtor 7200rpm 40 gig drive. About a year later, it had gotten so loud (a high pitched whine) that it was starting to give me headaches. So I called Maxtor, got it replaced, and sure enough about a year later, the replacement was doing the same exact thing. So I called again, got another replacement. Installed it, partitioned it, and when it reached the end of the format, I hear *kachunk, kachunk, kachunk*. Dead. So I call again, get _another_ replacement. This one's held up so far, but time will tell how long that lasts.
Similarly, I decided to buy a WD 120gig 7200 rpm drive back in May. I buy it, take it home, use it for 3 days, and then my motherboard can no longer find the drive during boot. So I return it. Still needing space, I find a sale on the 1200JBs a few weeks later, so I buy one of those. It's been running ok, but just a few days ago, I noticed it's starting to make the same high-pitched whine the Maxtors did. Hopefully WD's support is as hassle-free as Maxtors (I haven't called them yet). I thankfully haven't lost any data yet, but I'm getting really fed up with having to replace my drives all the time.
I've always wondered... couldn't you just have a kid come over and click "I Agree" on any EULA? As long as they're still children, they can't enter a legally binding contract with another party (at least in the US). So couldn't you get around the legalities of the EULA by having a minor click through? Surely not everyone who uses the software can be bound to the EULA if those people never were presented with a licensing agreement to agree to...
G-force is the pressure put on the body when it is suddenly accelerated from a motionless position, resulting in a person's body being pushed back into their seat.
What the author just described here is half nonsense and half the wrong thing. Acceleration from any "position", motionless or not results in a force being applied to bodies going along for a ride. Secondly, the suddenness, or rate of change of acceleration, is jerk, not acceleration. G-forces are acceleration, not jerk.
That said, I personally think the regulation of the g-forces isn't really going to help much. Whenever I ride a rollercoaster, the sudden acceleration making my head knock into the supports is definitely the least fun part to me, and my guess is that's what causes the alleged brain injury, not sustained g-forces.
You can preorder your DC BBA through NCSX, a reputable import gaming retailer, for only $49, less than the original BBA cost from Sega. Their site seems to be undergoing some work right now, but I placed my order a few days ago, $56.13 shipped! No, I don't work for them, but it's a great way for us who can't read Japanese to get in on this deal. I just hope it hits 1000 orders...
I know that pretty much noone is going to see this now, but for those who are still reading this, you can preorder your DC BBA through NCSX, a reputable import gaming retailer, for only $49, less than the original BBA cost from Sega. No, I don't work for them, but it's a great way for us who can't read Japanese to get in on this deal. I just hope it hits 1000 orders...
Even though I knew I wouldn't get the t-shirt... oh well. I'll also probably never really use Blender, though I have been considering just downloading it to fiddle with it. Regardless, I pitched in $5, because I felt it was a good cause. I like the idea of free software... especially the "free" part... but the people who put all the work into projects like this have to eat, and I'm ok with contributing to something that will provide a substantial benefit to the community and world as a whole. Good luck Blender Team, and to all of you fledgling artists, put my $5 to good use.
This is the kind of thing that I'm sure actually will eventually get me to switch to Linux. I've been using DOS/Windows for as long as I can remember. I've tried Linux before, but it's either been too hard to get working (hardware incompatibility, etc.) or it just plain sucked. It feels kludgey, and I just don't feel much incentive to relearn how to use my computer when it works fine the way it is
I admit, I've never purchased one Microsoft product (aside from their awesome mouse and maybe a game or two published by them). Right or wrong, that's the way it is. But eventually, as these licenses get more and more restrictive, I'm seriously getting that much closer to making myself switch. I'm downloading Knoppix right now to see how much has improved since I last tried Linux... I seriously hope it's up to snuff by now... It _sounds_ good, now that Warcraft 3, etc. are playable in Wine, but we'll see.
Offtopic side question that you can choose to ignore: Can anyone explain the advantage of Linux having all the different stupid partitions? Isn't an easily configurable swap _file_, etc. just as good as a partition? Partitions are the worst part of the Linux experience, imo, regardless of whether modern installers can set them up automatically or not. I actually like the fact that with FAT32, I can just boot off a disk, deltree the appropriate files and do a fresh install.
I actually haven't done many tests with Ogg 1.0 yet, due to a lack of time, but in the future, when portable devices are available that play Ogg, I really might be interested in ~64 kbps rates. Right now I have a Rio Volt and encode with lame 3.92 set at vbr -q 9. The files usually average a tiny bit under 128kbps. No, they aren't perfect when listened to with a decent sound setup, but they're not real bad.
But in reality, 99% of the reason I bought the Rio Volt was to be able to take one or two CDs in my car and have a decent selection of music. My car has a pretty crappy sound system, and the whole thing is being played through a tape adapter which further mangles the sound, and to be honest, I really can't tell a difference when I'm driving with the noise of the road/wind/AC.
If Ogg made it possible to have 64kbit files at about the same quality as the mp3s I have now, then I could fit twice as much music on one CD, which would put it at around 25+ albums. It'd be fantastic to be able to carry around my entire CD library in one of those 10 or 20 CD cases. Portable devices are where filesize reigns king.
Those must be some short CDs...
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Ogg Vorbis 1.0
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· Score: 2
I know when I was going to rip my CD collection, it was going to take alot more than 15 gigs... if you really ripped all 400 of your CDs to 160kbit mp3s, that would make the average length of your CDs about 31.25 mins long each. I dont know about you, but mine probably average twice that.
That said, the advantage of Ogg would be either A) far better quality at the same size or B) I could get similar quality while using far less space... closer to that 15 gig mark than the 30 gigs it would take to mp3 my similarly sized CD collection at that bitrate. 15 gigs is nothing to sneeze at...
Here's a few I haven't seen mentioned much yet
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Electronic Music 101?
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· Score: 5, Informative
Alot of the stuff people have mentioned here is great, but here's a few that need mentioning. Prolly some repeats here, but I'm not reading through 500+ comments to make sure I'm not duping... This probably won't get read either because there's already so many comments, but what the hell...
Hybrid - Wide(r) Angle - I never ever ever get tired of this CD. The only recent work that I've completely and utterly fell in love with. You may know their song Finished Symphony from the Untracked level of SSX. Please please please, check it out. Their album has seen a couple releases, first Wide Angle, then a 2CD set called Wider Angle. I dunno which is more available, but Wide Angle is just a subset of Wider Angle. Either is fine, as most of Wider Angle is just some live stuff, though there are a couple extra studio tracks.
Plaid - P-Brane EP, Double Figure, Rest Proof Clockwork - Awesome IDM that I've just recently come to love. It's not as hardcore and much more pallatable that most IDM, so it's a great starting point for the genre. Especially check out the P-Brane EP; it's small, cheap, and 4 of their best songs.
Necros, aka Andrew Sega, aka The Alpha Conspiracy - Started out ages ago in the tracker scene. Amazing stuff, most notable Point of Departure and Mechanism 8 (which is actually in Unreal Tournament, I've recently discovered). He now goes by The Alpha Conspiracy and has a proper CD and all which you can sample at mp3.com. Amazing artist who worked from the ground up, and definitely deserved to be checked out for that reason alone.
Air - Moon Safari - A fantastic mellow sound... this is by far their best album, but check out their other stuff for good measure. Tracks of note: Sexy Boy, All I Need, Talisman.
Chicane - Behind The Sun and Far From The Maddening Crowds - Behind The Sun is the newer and better of the two, but both are great. Looks like FFTMC might be going out of print? Doesn't show up on CDNow and has limited availability on Amazon. Get it while you can. Again, a more mellow, laid back sound, but even better than Air. Tracks of note: Saltwater, Leaving Town, Red Skies.
Ayumi Hamasaki - Ayu Trance - She's a well known pop artist in Japan, and some of her original tracks are good (Whatever, Evolution) but more appropriate to electronics are the plethora of remixes of her music, most notably the Ayu Trance collection. M (Above and Beyond Remix) is friggin awesome.
Dune - Expedicion - Again, by far their best album, but I don't see it on CDNow OR Amazon, but it's prolly the best happy hardcore I've heard, though Scooter's really good too, which leads me to... (Tracks of note: Million Miles From Home, Electric Heaven, Hardcore Vibes.)
Scooter -...And The Beat Goes On - I really don't know how this album compares to their others, but it's pretty good. Tracks of note: Fire, Move Your Ass
Faithless - Reverence, Sunday 8pm, Outrospective - Mixed bag of stuff, but the good stuff is really good. Tracks of note: Insomnia, God Is A DJ, Evergreen.
Future Sound of London - anything... FSOL is somewhat of a classic... they've been around a while, so they have plenty to check out. Papua New Guinea, Landmass, Expander (remix).
Hooverphonic - Blue Wonder Power Milk - Not sure how to describe them, and I'm getting tired of describing groups:) but their somewhat classic too... Tracks: Battersea, Eden, 2Wicky.
Lamb - Lamb and Fear Of Fours - Kinda a mix of electronic and alternative, with a very unique sound. The vocalist has a very unusual sound which you will either like or hate, but give them a shot. Tracks: Softly, Lusty, Gorecki, B-Line.
Utah Saints - Utah Saints and Two - A rough, sample-based sound, but worth checking out. Most known for their remix of the Mortal Kombat Theme, but that is far from their best work. Tracks: Ohio, Something Good, Techknowledgy.
Sneaker Pimps, Gus Gus, Freefall, Beam and Yanou, Mr. Oizo, Technique, Etienne De Crecy.
Stuff that's been mentioned but is worth mentioning again:
DJ Shadow/UNKLE - I have a love/hate relationship with DJ Shadow... either his stuff is incredibly good or incredibly boring, but it's more than worth it for the good stuff. He actually uses drums for more than just background, constantly mixing the beats up, making any DJ Shadow piece noticable. Midnight In A Perfect World hooked me to him instantly and Fixed Income and You Can't Go Home Again from his new album The Private Press hooked my gf. Notable tracks from UNKLE (his other project with... someone whose name I can't remember right now) are Lonely Soul, Rabbit In Your Headlights.
Orbital - plenty of stuff to check out besides their well-known Halcyon + On + On. Midnight from Orbital, Lush3 and Monday from Orbital 2, The Box (check out part 2 of the 28 minute version from the single!), The Girl With The Sun In Hear Head, hell the whole album from In Sides, Know Where To Run and Style from The Middle Of Nowhere, and Funny Break and Doctor from their new The Altogether.
Aphex Twin - Windowlicker, Come To Daddy, all the ones people have mentioned.
Paul Van Dyk, BT, Crystal Method (Vegas is much better than their new album), Adam F, Carl Cox.
For mixes, go with DJ Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold, and Armin Van Buuren.
That was soooo much more than I intended to write, and doesn't even scratch the surface of what's out there, but this should be a great starting point.
I'm really not into the a-fan-for-everything movement going on. Motherboards, video cards, etc. The only things I really want in my PC with the fan are the CPU and the power supply, and if I could do without those, it would be even better. ATI would have a winner in my eyes if it could use two lower-clocked fanless chips together to deliver performance on-par with the rest of the one chip cards. Driver issues or not (I'm on an All-In-Wonder 128 right now... don't even get me started), it would definitely get a buy consideration from me.
My girlfriend and I went and saw the 12:01am showing Wednesday night, so we did see it at night, but she took off work the next day because we didn't get back to her apartment until 3:15 and she normally gets up at 4:30 for work. I'm sure a large number of the people who skipped out on work did so for a similar reason.
There are many, many debates over what is art and is not. Many people argue that paintings by Piet Mondrian are just lines, and music my John Cage is just noise, or not even that. Cage's 4'33" is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Alot of his other work was created completely by random. He would literally do something like roll a die or flip a coin to compose his piece. So is the art in the fundamental pieces of the work, or the process? Or is it something more than either of those?
Cage, Reich, Stockhausen, all use found sounds in their works. They take samples of anything, people talking, jet engines, whatever, and use that to make their music, so creative, original fundamental components must not be a criteria.
Again, with Cage, his practice of indeterminacy, using chance to compose doesn't sound like it takes much creativity on his part. Basically, it comes down to intent, as it does with all art. Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" was just a urinal he bought and signed his name on. Obviously some creativity went into the actual construction of the urinal, but Duchamp didn't do any of that work.
While this is completely arguable, it seems to me that pretty much _anything_ can be taken as art as long as the artist says it is. While the pieces or processes may not be original or creative, it's the insight of the "artist" to USE those particular pieces and processes, and the intent behind them that makes it art.
So, basically what my point is, is who are we to judge what is or isn't art? It would seem to me that just the idea of turning the DNA sequences into music is a creative idea, and can even be done a number of ways. Maybe each G, A, T, and C would be encoded as a single note. Or each pair could be expressed as a pair of notes. There are any number of creative ways the sequence could be expressed musically.
Anyways, I could go on, but I think I've made my point. While I definitely think this practice would be a horrible abuse of the copyright system (copyright was created to promote creativity, not control the entire known world with an iron fist), I don't think you can really say the result wouldn't be art.
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As a long time follower of the different audio encoding technologies, I have to agree with you on your point that the quality of the different formats seems to be quite subjective, but personally, I'm one of the many (few?) whose ears are overwhelmingly in favor of Ogg.
I can't STAND WMA at all... it has a high end ringing screech at pretty much any bitrate, while at the same time, some people swear by WMA. WMA also boosts the volume of the encoded material to give the listener the impression that it's better quality, which is bad form, IMO.
MP3 is pretty impressive nowadays, with all of the work that has gone into LAME... Even 128kbit VBR is passable. But as I said, to my ears at least, they all bow before Ogg. That same passable quality you get at 128kbit with LAME you get at 96kbit with Ogg. And the artifacts are also much less offensive to my ears, but again, that is a matter of opinion.
Anyway, I hear too much completely uninformed Ogg bashing, and I wish everyone would do some objective testing of their own. Go read up on blind ABX testing, and do some yourself. If Ogg isn't the one you think sounds best, that's fine, but just don't say it's crap without giving it a shot!
whining about only getting 3-4 gigs per month of download are, IMO, getting completely ripped off. First of all, just because YOU might only need that much bandwidth, doesn't mean there aren't plenty of legitimate reasons to want/need more. Second of all, if I'm paying $50/month for broadband, I'd better get AT LEAST 2.5 times the monthly bandwidth a $20/month dialup account would give me. So, we'll assume 5k/s on dialup which gives us:
5k/s * 3600 seconds/hour * 24 hours/day * 30 days/month = 12.96 gigs/month
12.96 gigs/month * 2.5 = 32.4 gigs/month.
That's the absolute bare minimum I would accept for that price. I dunno what broadband/dialup prices are like in other countries, but if they're similar to those here in America, I wouldn't be giving those crooks a dime. Hell, _I'm_ pissed when I hear stories of 10mbit connections in Asia for ~$25/month and I'm pretty happy with what I've got.
I know this is probably a little late to get read, but seriously... who's funding these kids? I know when I was 10 years old, I didn't have $50 cash that I could just go spend at will. Kids don't have credit cards, so they need cash. And on the rare occasion (birthdays, whatnot) that I did have that much cash, you could be damn sure that my parents knew where it went. No kid should be able to bring home a $50 anything without their parent knowing what it is. By the time the child can get a job and earn the money for themselves, I think they're probably old enough to decide what kind of games they can play.
It's been said before, but I'll say it again anyway. It's the parents' job to take care of their kids, not the government's.
Someone give me an affordable, *legal* way to play those good old games I miss from the past, please. (emphasis mine)
I agree with this completely, and this is the big reason I very rarely buy those compilation packs of old games. When someone's trying to sell me a collection of 10 old Atari games for $30 and there's only maybe 3 of the 10 I actually care about, that's not very good value for my money. Those old games were fun, but not so much that I'd want to spend $10 on each one... that adds up pretty quick when there's 10 games you want. There just isn't that much gameplay in those old games considering you can go pick up two-year-old PS2 games for $20 that give you ALOT more playtime. I'd easily drop $200 on a legit MAME romset. With 2045 unique games (3596 including clones), that comes out to about $0.10 each. Yeah, there's probably quite a few of those (maybe even most) that I wouldn't care a bit about, but I'm still getting alot better value than what's available now. And that's better for all of them because they'd at least be getting _something_ from me, while right now, they're not getting a penny.
Yeah, IE is ridiculously slow sometimes, like right now as I'm trying to load this site... oh wait, that's just because the server is engulfed in flames.
Actually, it hasn't been updated with the final 2.0 release info. If you look in the top left corner, it says "Current Release: Bochs 1.4.1" and the link on the front page to the v2.0 info is pre-release info, and all of the links are to download the release candidates. And if you look at the early comments, there's people confused about whether it had actually been released or not. Sorry I tried to help out. :P
If you go to the sourceforge download page, located here, it has links to all of the 2.0 final downloads. Have fun killing the servers... I already got my copy. :)
I hate to be a "me too", but in this case it's entirely true, because I've already put my money where my mouth is. I really haven't bought many CDs lately, because most of the music I've gotten into recently is weird IDM that's really hard to find.
But last week I picked up Aaliyah's new I Care For You album despite not being a big fan of her work, only having liked a couple of her songs. Why? The CD was only $9 AND came with a DVD with 9 of her videos and a 12 minute behind-the-scenes featurette.
Last night, this behavior was repeated when I picked up Chevelle's Wonder What's Next for $6 at Best Buy despite only ever having heard two of their songs, one of which was a couple years ago and thus not on this album. This one, too, came with a video and behind-the-scenes footage, albeit not on a nice shiny DVD. I don't even know whether it's really good yet, but do you see, RIAA? I _am_ willing to pay to try new artists when I'm not making a $15-$20 gamble and there's at least potential for the album to not entirely suck ass.
There's a ton of CDs I'd like to buy, but which I can't and won't buy for the prices they're available for. $9 with a DVD full of extras? I could only wish that were the norm.
Sorry to reply to myself, but now that others have posted the link to the real article, it looks like the link I posted is the original piece referenced in the new article. Still worth a read though...
Being that the editors didn't provide one... I don't know if this is the same article, as it's dated July 3, but it's from MSNBC and relevant.
Link
It stinks!
Maxtor and WD do both offer lines of drives that will retain their 3-year warranty. Luckily for me, the high end line is where I buy my drives.
That said, while this is no more than anecdotal evidence, I've never had more problems with my hard drives until recently. About two years ago, I bought a Maxtor 7200rpm 40 gig drive. About a year later, it had gotten so loud (a high pitched whine) that it was starting to give me headaches. So I called Maxtor, got it replaced, and sure enough about a year later, the replacement was doing the same exact thing. So I called again, got another replacement. Installed it, partitioned it, and when it reached the end of the format, I hear *kachunk, kachunk, kachunk*. Dead. So I call again, get _another_ replacement. This one's held up so far, but time will tell how long that lasts.
Similarly, I decided to buy a WD 120gig 7200 rpm drive back in May. I buy it, take it home, use it for 3 days, and then my motherboard can no longer find the drive during boot. So I return it. Still needing space, I find a sale on the 1200JBs a few weeks later, so I buy one of those. It's been running ok, but just a few days ago, I noticed it's starting to make the same high-pitched whine the Maxtors did. Hopefully WD's support is as hassle-free as Maxtors (I haven't called them yet). I thankfully haven't lost any data yet, but I'm getting really fed up with having to replace my drives all the time.
I've always wondered... couldn't you just have a kid come over and click "I Agree" on any EULA? As long as they're still children, they can't enter a legally binding contract with another party (at least in the US). So couldn't you get around the legalities of the EULA by having a minor click through? Surely not everyone who uses the software can be bound to the EULA if those people never were presented with a licensing agreement to agree to...
From the article:
G-force is the pressure put on the body when it is suddenly accelerated from a motionless position, resulting in a person's body being pushed back into their seat.
What the author just described here is half nonsense and half the wrong thing. Acceleration from any "position", motionless or not results in a force being applied to bodies going along for a ride. Secondly, the suddenness, or rate of change of acceleration, is jerk, not acceleration. G-forces are acceleration, not jerk.
That said, I personally think the regulation of the g-forces isn't really going to help much. Whenever I ride a rollercoaster, the sudden acceleration making my head knock into the supports is definitely the least fun part to me, and my guess is that's what causes the alleged brain injury, not sustained g-forces.
Just a quick update... NCSX is back up and running... get those orders in!
You can preorder your DC BBA through NCSX, a reputable import gaming retailer, for only $49, less than the original BBA cost from Sega. Their site seems to be undergoing some work right now, but I placed my order a few days ago, $56.13 shipped! No, I don't work for them, but it's a great way for us who can't read Japanese to get in on this deal. I just hope it hits 1000 orders...
I know that pretty much noone is going to see this now, but for those who are still reading this, you can preorder your DC BBA through NCSX, a reputable import gaming retailer, for only $49, less than the original BBA cost from Sega. No, I don't work for them, but it's a great way for us who can't read Japanese to get in on this deal. I just hope it hits 1000 orders...
Even though I knew I wouldn't get the t-shirt... oh well. I'll also probably never really use Blender, though I have been considering just downloading it to fiddle with it. Regardless, I pitched in $5, because I felt it was a good cause. I like the idea of free software... especially the "free" part... but the people who put all the work into projects like this have to eat, and I'm ok with contributing to something that will provide a substantial benefit to the community and world as a whole. Good luck Blender Team, and to all of you fledgling artists, put my $5 to good use.
This is the kind of thing that I'm sure actually will eventually get me to switch to Linux. I've been using DOS/Windows for as long as I can remember. I've tried Linux before, but it's either been too hard to get working (hardware incompatibility, etc.) or it just plain sucked. It feels kludgey, and I just don't feel much incentive to relearn how to use my computer when it works fine the way it is
I admit, I've never purchased one Microsoft product (aside from their awesome mouse and maybe a game or two published by them). Right or wrong, that's the way it is. But eventually, as these licenses get more and more restrictive, I'm seriously getting that much closer to making myself switch. I'm downloading Knoppix right now to see how much has improved since I last tried Linux... I seriously hope it's up to snuff by now... It _sounds_ good, now that Warcraft 3, etc. are playable in Wine, but we'll see.
Offtopic side question that you can choose to ignore: Can anyone explain the advantage of Linux having all the different stupid partitions? Isn't an easily configurable swap _file_, etc. just as good as a partition? Partitions are the worst part of the Linux experience, imo, regardless of whether modern installers can set them up automatically or not. I actually like the fact that with FAT32, I can just boot off a disk, deltree the appropriate files and do a fresh install.
I actually haven't done many tests with Ogg 1.0 yet, due to a lack of time, but in the future, when portable devices are available that play Ogg, I really might be interested in ~64 kbps rates. Right now I have a Rio Volt and encode with lame 3.92 set at vbr -q 9. The files usually average a tiny bit under 128kbps. No, they aren't perfect when listened to with a decent sound setup, but they're not real bad.
But in reality, 99% of the reason I bought the Rio Volt was to be able to take one or two CDs in my car and have a decent selection of music. My car has a pretty crappy sound system, and the whole thing is being played through a tape adapter which further mangles the sound, and to be honest, I really can't tell a difference when I'm driving with the noise of the road/wind/AC.
If Ogg made it possible to have 64kbit files at about the same quality as the mp3s I have now, then I could fit twice as much music on one CD, which would put it at around 25+ albums. It'd be fantastic to be able to carry around my entire CD library in one of those 10 or 20 CD cases. Portable devices are where filesize reigns king.
I know when I was going to rip my CD collection, it was going to take alot more than 15 gigs... if you really ripped all 400 of your CDs to 160kbit mp3s, that would make the average length of your CDs about 31.25 mins long each. I dont know about you, but mine probably average twice that.
That said, the advantage of Ogg would be either A) far better quality at the same size or B) I could get similar quality while using far less space... closer to that 15 gig mark than the 30 gigs it would take to mp3 my similarly sized CD collection at that bitrate. 15 gigs is nothing to sneeze at...
Alot of the stuff people have mentioned here is great, but here's a few that need mentioning. Prolly some repeats here, but I'm not reading through 500+ comments to make sure I'm not duping... This probably won't get read either because there's already so many comments, but what the hell...
...And The Beat Goes On - I really don't know how this album compares to their others, but it's pretty good. Tracks of note: Fire, Move Your Ass
:) but their somewhat classic too... Tracks: Battersea, Eden, 2Wicky.
Hybrid - Wide(r) Angle - I never ever ever get tired of this CD. The only recent work that I've completely and utterly fell in love with. You may know their song Finished Symphony from the Untracked level of SSX. Please please please, check it out. Their album has seen a couple releases, first Wide Angle, then a 2CD set called Wider Angle. I dunno which is more available, but Wide Angle is just a subset of Wider Angle. Either is fine, as most of Wider Angle is just some live stuff, though there are a couple extra studio tracks.
Plaid - P-Brane EP, Double Figure, Rest Proof Clockwork - Awesome IDM that I've just recently come to love. It's not as hardcore and much more pallatable that most IDM, so it's a great starting point for the genre. Especially check out the P-Brane EP; it's small, cheap, and 4 of their best songs.
Necros, aka Andrew Sega, aka The Alpha Conspiracy - Started out ages ago in the tracker scene. Amazing stuff, most notable Point of Departure and Mechanism 8 (which is actually in Unreal Tournament, I've recently discovered). He now goes by The Alpha Conspiracy and has a proper CD and all which you can sample at mp3.com. Amazing artist who worked from the ground up, and definitely deserved to be checked out for that reason alone.
Air - Moon Safari - A fantastic mellow sound... this is by far their best album, but check out their other stuff for good measure. Tracks of note: Sexy Boy, All I Need, Talisman.
Chicane - Behind The Sun and Far From The Maddening Crowds - Behind The Sun is the newer and better of the two, but both are great. Looks like FFTMC might be going out of print? Doesn't show up on CDNow and has limited availability on Amazon. Get it while you can. Again, a more mellow, laid back sound, but even better than Air. Tracks of note: Saltwater, Leaving Town, Red Skies.
Ayumi Hamasaki - Ayu Trance - She's a well known pop artist in Japan, and some of her original tracks are good (Whatever, Evolution) but more appropriate to electronics are the plethora of remixes of her music, most notably the Ayu Trance collection. M (Above and Beyond Remix) is friggin awesome.
Dune - Expedicion - Again, by far their best album, but I don't see it on CDNow OR Amazon, but it's prolly the best happy hardcore I've heard, though Scooter's really good too, which leads me to... (Tracks of note: Million Miles From Home, Electric Heaven, Hardcore Vibes.)
Scooter -
Faithless - Reverence, Sunday 8pm, Outrospective - Mixed bag of stuff, but the good stuff is really good. Tracks of note: Insomnia, God Is A DJ, Evergreen.
Future Sound of London - anything... FSOL is somewhat of a classic... they've been around a while, so they have plenty to check out. Papua New Guinea, Landmass, Expander (remix).
Hooverphonic - Blue Wonder Power Milk - Not sure how to describe them, and I'm getting tired of describing groups
Lamb - Lamb and Fear Of Fours - Kinda a mix of electronic and alternative, with a very unique sound. The vocalist has a very unusual sound which you will either like or hate, but give them a shot. Tracks: Softly, Lusty, Gorecki, B-Line.
Utah Saints - Utah Saints and Two - A rough, sample-based sound, but worth checking out. Most known for their remix of the Mortal Kombat Theme, but that is far from their best work. Tracks: Ohio, Something Good, Techknowledgy.
Sneaker Pimps, Gus Gus, Freefall, Beam and Yanou, Mr. Oizo, Technique, Etienne De Crecy.
Stuff that's been mentioned but is worth mentioning again:
DJ Shadow/UNKLE - I have a love/hate relationship with DJ Shadow... either his stuff is incredibly good or incredibly boring, but it's more than worth it for the good stuff. He actually uses drums for more than just background, constantly mixing the beats up, making any DJ Shadow piece noticable. Midnight In A Perfect World hooked me to him instantly and Fixed Income and You Can't Go Home Again from his new album The Private Press hooked my gf. Notable tracks from UNKLE (his other project with... someone whose name I can't remember right now) are Lonely Soul, Rabbit In Your Headlights.
Orbital - plenty of stuff to check out besides their well-known Halcyon + On + On. Midnight from Orbital, Lush3 and Monday from Orbital 2, The Box (check out part 2 of the 28 minute version from the single!), The Girl With The Sun In Hear Head, hell the whole album from In Sides, Know Where To Run and Style from The Middle Of Nowhere, and Funny Break and Doctor from their new The Altogether.
Aphex Twin - Windowlicker, Come To Daddy, all the ones people have mentioned.
Paul Van Dyk, BT, Crystal Method (Vegas is much better than their new album), Adam F, Carl Cox.
For mixes, go with DJ Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold, and Armin Van Buuren.
That was soooo much more than I intended to write, and doesn't even scratch the surface of what's out there, but this should be a great starting point.
I'm really not into the a-fan-for-everything movement going on. Motherboards, video cards, etc. The only things I really want in my PC with the fan are the CPU and the power supply, and if I could do without those, it would be even better. ATI would have a winner in my eyes if it could use two lower-clocked fanless chips together to deliver performance on-par with the rest of the one chip cards. Driver issues or not (I'm on an All-In-Wonder 128 right now... don't even get me started), it would definitely get a buy consideration from me.
My girlfriend and I went and saw the 12:01am showing Wednesday night, so we did see it at night, but she took off work the next day because we didn't get back to her apartment until 3:15 and she normally gets up at 4:30 for work. I'm sure a large number of the people who skipped out on work did so for a similar reason.
There are many, many debates over what is art and is not. Many people argue that paintings by Piet Mondrian are just lines, and music my John Cage is just noise, or not even that. Cage's 4'33" is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Alot of his other work was created completely by random. He would literally do something like roll a die or flip a coin to compose his piece. So is the art in the fundamental pieces of the work, or the process? Or is it something more than either of those?
Cage, Reich, Stockhausen, all use found sounds in their works. They take samples of anything, people talking, jet engines, whatever, and use that to make their music, so creative, original fundamental components must not be a criteria.
Again, with Cage, his practice of indeterminacy, using chance to compose doesn't sound like it takes much creativity on his part. Basically, it comes down to intent, as it does with all art. Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" was just a urinal he bought and signed his name on. Obviously some creativity went into the actual construction of the urinal, but Duchamp didn't do any of that work.
While this is completely arguable, it seems to me that pretty much _anything_ can be taken as art as long as the artist says it is. While the pieces or processes may not be original or creative, it's the insight of the "artist" to USE those particular pieces and processes, and the intent behind them that makes it art.
So, basically what my point is, is who are we to judge what is or isn't art? It would seem to me that just the idea of turning the DNA sequences into music is a creative idea, and can even be done a number of ways. Maybe each G, A, T, and C would be encoded as a single note. Or each pair could be expressed as a pair of notes. There are any number of creative ways the sequence could be expressed musically.
Anyways, I could go on, but I think I've made my point. While I definitely think this practice would be a horrible abuse of the copyright system (copyright was created to promote creativity, not control the entire known world with an iron fist), I don't think you can really say the result wouldn't be art.