I find the All Music Database a great way to find new music that I might like. I start with a band I already like, then see what allmusic's "you might also like..." recommendations are. Then I find them with Kazaa. If the music's really worth keeping, I look for the CD (used, if possible).
Some cool bands I've discovered this way:
Doves
At The Drive-In & The Mars Volta
The Hives
The White Stripes (now making it big)
Ladytron
Feeder
Guided By Voices
Powderfinger
Regurgitator
Badly Drawn Boy
Idlewild
Killing Heidi
Screaming Trees
Stereophonics
Terrorvision
The Flaming Lips
Touch & Go
Wilco
Ween
Yo La Tengo
Note that most of these aren't that new - but they were new to me.
I don't know what the hell's happened to alternative radio over the past decade, but it pretty much all sucks.
America's reasons for giving the Iranian government the finger are hardly altruistic. Then again, America has a long history of interfering with Iran, usually to the extreme detriment of the Iranian people.
Qt's biggest weaknesses are its relic called "MOC" and its business orientation.
There is a disturbing trend of recent articles that engage in Qt/KDE bashing.
Agreed. Vague cricisism of MOC sounds more like parroting the GTK+ party line than analysis. MOC is a clean, simple way to add message passing to C++ without sacrificing readability. Those of us who have been through the hell that is MFC know that trying to bitch-slap C++ into doing things it wasn't designed for using macros does not a clean interface make.
Bashing QT for not giving away free Windows support is hardly a valid point. QT wouldn't exist if they couldn't sell their own software. MSVC isn't exactly free, either. Sounds to me like the author is annoyed that he can't find QT/Windows on Kazaa.
The author of the featured article admits to being a CS student who dabbles in UI projects in his spare time. Grow up, kid. Real programmers use the right tool for the right job, not the one with the loudest fan base.
When the 3D effects company I work for finally made the switch from SGI Octane2s to PCs, we decided to go with the ATI FireGL 8800. ATI support assured us that Linux support was excellent. At the time, their Linux support actually WAS actually better than nVidia's.
After a year of frustration involving daily machine hangs, GL glitches and many cursing animators, we switched to nVidia Quadro cards (not sure which one). Since then, we've had almost zero crashes. There are still GL glitches in both Maya and Houdini, but the drivers are of MUCH higher quality.
Even when ATI "officially" supported Linux, that support was in name only. So they're finally dropping even that? Big fuckin' deal.
Don't expect to see nVidia- or ATI-rendered imagery on the big screen anytime soon. Yes, graphics cards are advancing in ability and speed. However, this is largely irrelevant to the world of CGI. No matter how good it looks on a monitor, it's not good enough for film.
Yes, I'm sure a Toy Story 2 quality film could be rendered on one of these cards. However, by the time these cards come out, TS2 will be nearly 3 years old.
The vision of the artists themselves is what drives CGI, and no matter how good the real-time solution is, the brute-force computational solution will be better - simply because it doesn't have to be real-time.
Fast graphics cards definitely make animators lives easier. We (medium-sized visual effects studio) recently switched from SGI Octanes to Intellistations with ATI FireGL 8800s running Linux. Being able to tumble fully-shaded medium res characters in real-time is sweet. But, it's not good enough, even for TV. And, by the time a card exists that IS good enough, the bar will be much higher.
This is what Pixar's Photorealistic RenderMan does RIGHT NOW. link
Now show me that in real-time and I'll marry your ugly Aunt Hilda.
The problem at Microsoft isn't the programming staff not practicing what they preach. It's the fact that schedules, feature lists and release dates are driven by Marketing. Software developers are second-rate citizens after the marketing goons. It doesn't help that the carrot at the end of the stick is a shiny Ship-It award.
I used to work for Microsoft, but I feel much better now.
I used to consider myself lucky to work with SGI machines - and up until a year or two ago, I was. SGI used to be on the cutting edge of speed, both CPU- and graphics-wise. MIPS chips are super-efficient at processing - a MIPS chip gets literally twice as much done with half the clock speed as an INTEL compatible chip. But, MIPS has become the metaphorical ball and chain tied to SGI's leg.
We recently took an SGI Octane 2 (current SGI state-of-the-art) and an IBM Intellistation with a FireGL3 card for a test drive. The SGI Octane 2 was a 400MHz MIPS R14000 chip, and the IBM a P6 @ 1.7 GHz.
The Intellistation is approximately a third the cost of an Octane 2. It also outperformed it by a factor of 2.5. It outperformed our older Octanes (R12000 @ 300MHz) by a factor of 3.5. Not just CPU (renderman & vmantra) but also interactive OpenGL. Same factor across the boards.
Unless MIPS can pull a serious rabbit out of their ass, they're far, far, far behind INTEL, no matter how you slice it.
I'm sure once the reference implementation is complete (or even before) a properly optimized C++ version will be attempted. Writing platform independed C++ isn't exactly a walk in the park...
The Berliner Zeitung said proposals had been drafted requiring manufacturers of goods from computers to printers, modems, compact disc "burners" and other devices to pay royalty fees that would then be forwarded to music and film companies.
So in the case of music, we have the following chain of events:
An artist records a demo and shops it around to various record labels.
A label decides they like it and advance the artist money to record in the studio, and provides the artist with an experienced producer.
The CD does reasonably well, and the artist starts to collect around 10c per CD sale.
Eventually the artist manages to pay off their debt to the label, most likely by touring and riding the wave of their new-found success.
Meanwhile, their label is raking in millions from CD sales AND getting paid royalty fees from taxes?
Unsurprisingly, the artist is unlikely to see a cut of those royalties.
And please don't reply with "But for every success story there are hundreds of losers!"
Musicians are rarely wealthy. Corporations almost always. I don't think the recording industry needs corporate welfare, and that's basically what that tax is.
Speaking as someone who has worked for Corel in the past, it's FANTASTIC that Cowpland finally resigned. He may be great at starting a business, but he's terrible at actually running one.
Writing Wordperfect office from scratch in Java was his brainchild. Anyone remember that little gem?
Most people don't know that Corel was writing an office suite for Windows from scratch in the year before they bought Wordperfect. (it was discarded after the Wordperfect purchase).
Cowpland's habit of directing the company to work on ridiculously ambitious projects, then abandoning them when they become obviously stinky has cost them dearly, in both high employee turnover (particularly managers - 4 out of 5 in my area quit when WPforJava was canned) and in taking both talent and focus away from their core product lines (Draw! and Paint!).
Some other examples of Corel side projects (from my personal Corel experience):
Corel Family Tree (team of about 15 people)
- project was sold to another company for a pittance when they finally clued in that the family tree software market wasn't exactly huge.
Corel WEB.DATA (team of about 10)
- wow, use your favourite Paradox database to generate dynamic web pages. (estimated 3 copies sold).
Corel WEB.Forms (team of 5)
- hey, let's ignore JetForm, also based in Ottawa, a company completely devoted to corporate form entry software, and write our own from scratch! Even better, let's tell our programmers to "just write something and develop it from there". Who needs market analysis? To be fair, Cowpland had nothing to do with this one, and the product manager responsible was subsequently sacked... But... Why did he have all this time on his hands in the first place??
Corel has pretended to be a database company (paradox), a web company (Corel Barista), an Office competitor (WP Suite), a video phone maker (CorelVIDEO!).
And I almost forgot about Corel's first foray into hardware...
At one point, everyone in the company had a CorelVIDEO box, a miniature video camera, and a 14" colour TV on their desk. 'Cause everyone needs a video phone!
No one used them after the novelty wore off.
Except of course, for the Pointy Haired Bosses who teleconferenced with the WordPerfect PHBs in Orem, Utah.
Good riddance, Cowpland! Maybe Corel will be able to concentrate on making a decent product instead of flitting from buzzword to buzzword. Bahhhh...
Slashdot Mirror
Some cool bands I've discovered this way:
Note that most of these aren't that new - but they were new to me.
I don't know what the hell's happened to alternative radio over the past decade, but it pretty much all sucks.
America's reasons for giving the Iranian government the finger are hardly altruistic. Then again, America has a long history of interfering with Iran, usually to the extreme detriment of the Iranian people.
Cringely writes about this in his current story.
There is a disturbing trend of recent articles that engage in Qt/KDE bashing.
Agreed. Vague cricisism of MOC sounds more like parroting the GTK+ party line than analysis. MOC is a clean, simple way to add message passing to C++ without sacrificing readability. Those of us who have been through the hell that is MFC know that trying to bitch-slap C++ into doing things it wasn't designed for using macros does not a clean interface make.
Bashing QT for not giving away free Windows support is hardly a valid point. QT wouldn't exist if they couldn't sell their own software. MSVC isn't exactly free, either. Sounds to me like the author is annoyed that he can't find QT/Windows on Kazaa.
The author of the featured article admits to being a CS student who dabbles in UI projects in his spare time. Grow up, kid. Real programmers use the right tool for the right job, not the one with the loudest fan base.
After a year of frustration involving daily machine hangs, GL glitches and many cursing animators, we switched to nVidia Quadro cards (not sure which one). Since then, we've had almost zero crashes. There are still GL glitches in both Maya and Houdini, but the drivers are of MUCH higher quality.
Even when ATI "officially" supported Linux, that support was in name only. So they're finally dropping even that? Big fuckin' deal.
It's a FACT.
Don't expect to see nVidia- or ATI-rendered imagery on the big screen anytime soon. Yes, graphics cards are advancing in ability and speed. However, this is largely irrelevant to the world of CGI. No matter how good it looks on a monitor, it's not good enough for film.
Yes, I'm sure a Toy Story 2 quality film could be rendered on one of these cards. However, by the time these cards come out, TS2 will be nearly 3 years old.
The vision of the artists themselves is what drives CGI, and no matter how good the real-time solution is, the brute-force computational solution will be better - simply because it doesn't have to be real-time.
Fast graphics cards definitely make animators lives easier. We (medium-sized visual effects studio) recently switched from SGI Octanes to Intellistations with ATI FireGL 8800s running Linux. Being able to tumble fully-shaded medium res characters in real-time is sweet. But, it's not good enough, even for TV. And, by the time a card exists that IS good enough, the bar will be much higher.
This is what Pixar's Photorealistic RenderMan does RIGHT NOW. link
Now show me that in real-time and I'll marry your ugly Aunt Hilda.
The problem at Microsoft isn't the programming staff not practicing what they preach. It's the fact that schedules, feature lists and release dates are driven by Marketing. Software developers are second-rate citizens after the marketing goons. It doesn't help that the carrot at the end of the stick is a shiny Ship-It award.
I used to work for Microsoft, but I feel much better now.
- name and address withheld by request
We recently took an SGI Octane 2 (current SGI state-of-the-art) and an IBM Intellistation with a FireGL3 card for a test drive. The SGI Octane 2 was a 400MHz MIPS R14000 chip, and the IBM a P6 @ 1.7 GHz.
The Intellistation is approximately a third the cost of an Octane 2. It also outperformed it by a factor of 2.5. It outperformed our older Octanes (R12000 @ 300MHz) by a factor of 3.5. Not just CPU (renderman & vmantra) but also interactive OpenGL. Same factor across the boards.
Unless MIPS can pull a serious rabbit out of their ass, they're far, far, far behind INTEL, no matter how you slice it.
Hello!
It's called a "reference implementation".
Why Java?
I'm sure once the reference implementation is complete (or even before) a properly optimized C++ version will be attempted. Writing platform independed C++ isn't exactly a walk in the park...
So in the case of music, we have the following chain of events:
An artist records a demo and shops it around to various record labels.
A label decides they like it and advance the artist money to record in the studio, and provides the artist with an experienced producer.
The CD does reasonably well, and the artist starts to collect around 10c per CD sale.
Eventually the artist manages to pay off their debt to the label, most likely by touring and riding the wave of their new-found success.
Meanwhile, their label is raking in millions from CD sales AND getting paid royalty fees from taxes?
Unsurprisingly, the artist is unlikely to see a cut of those royalties.
And please don't reply with "But for every success story there are hundreds of losers!"
Musicians are rarely wealthy. Corporations almost always. I don't think the recording industry needs corporate welfare, and that's basically what that tax is.
Speaking as someone who has worked for Corel in the past, it's FANTASTIC that Cowpland finally resigned. He may be great at starting a business, but he's terrible at actually running one. Writing Wordperfect office from scratch in Java was his brainchild. Anyone remember that little gem? Most people don't know that Corel was writing an office suite for Windows from scratch in the year before they bought Wordperfect. (it was discarded after the Wordperfect purchase). Cowpland's habit of directing the company to work on ridiculously ambitious projects, then abandoning them when they become obviously stinky has cost them dearly, in both high employee turnover (particularly managers - 4 out of 5 in my area quit when WPforJava was canned) and in taking both talent and focus away from their core product lines (Draw! and Paint!). Some other examples of Corel side projects (from my personal Corel experience): Corel Family Tree (team of about 15 people) - project was sold to another company for a pittance when they finally clued in that the family tree software market wasn't exactly huge. Corel WEB.DATA (team of about 10) - wow, use your favourite Paradox database to generate dynamic web pages. (estimated 3 copies sold). Corel WEB.Forms (team of 5) - hey, let's ignore JetForm, also based in Ottawa, a company completely devoted to corporate form entry software, and write our own from scratch! Even better, let's tell our programmers to "just write something and develop it from there". Who needs market analysis? To be fair, Cowpland had nothing to do with this one, and the product manager responsible was subsequently sacked... But... Why did he have all this time on his hands in the first place?? Corel has pretended to be a database company (paradox), a web company (Corel Barista), an Office competitor (WP Suite), a video phone maker (CorelVIDEO!). And I almost forgot about Corel's first foray into hardware... At one point, everyone in the company had a CorelVIDEO box, a miniature video camera, and a 14" colour TV on their desk. 'Cause everyone needs a video phone! No one used them after the novelty wore off. Except of course, for the Pointy Haired Bosses who teleconferenced with the WordPerfect PHBs in Orem, Utah. Good riddance, Cowpland! Maybe Corel will be able to concentrate on making a decent product instead of flitting from buzzword to buzzword. Bahhhh...