Steve Albini should know a little about this stuff, he produced Nirvana's In Utero. He was also a member of the band Big Black in the '80s (any Ministry fans should give them a listen) and worked with bands such as the Pixies and the Breeders as well as Seattle stuff like Tad.
"In rock music, the mandolin has been present consistently since the late 60's. English folk-rock, the acoustic-tinged albums of Rod Stewart, and the heady acoustic ballads of Led Zepplin all made the mandolin a familiar sound to rock audiences. Today, the present interest in 'unplugged' music continues to showcase the mandolin."
There is a lot of mandolin in 60s and 70s rock. Heart is another band that comes to mind. One of the lame things about the mandolin is that it's often inserted in a cliche manner just to add an air of melancholy to a track.
As for the concept album thing, big woop. Check Quadrophenia and Tommy by the Who, Pink Floyd's the Wall of course, Rush 2112 etc. And if you want to hear something really scary, the Elder by Kiss.
As for them being punk. Uh, even if you treat them as pop punk, I'd rather have the Descendents thank you.
Given the low cost of the mini, is there really any excuse to do this on a Linux box? Some big, ugly, noisy PC, ugh. The small form factor makes it ideal for projects like this. And it's so quiet you can still hear your cat purring when it sits right on top of the mini. I mean considering the solid BSD based nature of OS X and the elegant Apple aesthetic, I really think the cat would be more likely warm up to a new iFeeder rather than some generic Linux POS box. I think iTunes integration would be pretty easy to do to. This is a serious advantage that no other OS can offer. Then kitty can be informed of cat food refresh by the playback of an appropriate song. Perhaps something by the Jingle Cats? I'm currently working on a mod I call the iFlush which uses the mini to automate the process for toilet flushing. The great thing is how well the mini's white and silver style complement my porcelain and steel bathroom environment.
Uh, after the Xbox is discontinued I wouldn't expect to see a lot of support for it on Xbox Live. Ports of Doom are available for free, if you have a modded Xbox. You still need the original game wad files. I haven't checked out networking support, I'm not sure if any of the ports feature it.
Ever notice how there are more open source programs that run on the console? Ever notice that there are more open source GUI applications with bad GUIs than good? Maybe while open source is appealing to a lot of coder geeks, it isn't so much for people doing game related graphic design, interface design, 3D modeling, sound and music etc. Most people doing these for free are doing it in the Windows mod community. I guess building on an existing engine is much easier than rolling your own.
Yeah because most Mac "gamers" are not diehard gamers, they just want something to play once in awhile. Your real computer gamers are mostly on PCs. That being said, there are a bunch of great games available on the Mac if you look past that top 5. You have:
Call of Duty (and expansion) Battlefield 1942 (and expansions) Unreal Tournament 2004 Neverwinter Nights Rise of Nations Age of Mythology World of Warcraft Civilization 3 Dungeon Siege Halo Medal of Honor Jedi Knight 2 and Jedi Academy
and many more. Still many less than on the PC and the ports tend to come out later. So you may be spending $50 for a game when the PC version is half that. I'm not saying Mac gaming is the way to go (certainly not on a mini as the Radeon 9200 will quickly be overwhelmed by upcoming games) but in comparison to actual native commercial game applications on Linux, the Mac has it pretty good.
There is a version of Unreal called Unreal Championship for the Xbox. The sequel UC 2 is coming out in a couple of months.
Your point about no mods is absolutely valid. Some games are supposedly going to try to fix this, but I can't see it having anywhere near the flexibility of PC modding. Maybe new maps, but no total conversions. The Xbox HD is only 8 gigs after all.
There is freeware for the Xbox! Unfortunately it is also illegal since it hasn't been licensed. And of course to run it you would have to mod your Xbox which is also illegal.
But while I like my Xbox, the RTS and FPS issues are a problem. I love strategy games (turn based too - ever try playing Civilization on Super Nintendo? gah!) and I feel aiming with the mouse is much better than a joypad (it is way more accurate). Low resolution is another huge issue. Try playing Rise of Nations at 640x480.
A bit testy are we? My point was that Apple DITCHED all of the proprietary tech which as you note was better. Rather than make a better bus than PCI, a better USB etc. They used commodity parts which only exist because of the PC market. They threw out all of the lovely Apple made it better hardware and noone noticed. They took out SCSI - why? Because IDE is better? How about because IDE is cheaper. So be happy for the PC commodity market and the open source movement - without either of them you couldn't have the Mac you have today at the price point it sells for.
I'm glad you have found memories of the Macs of the '80s and '90s. I won't argue that the PC hardware was better, and the PC OSes sucked. But so did MacOS.
Did you love Multifinder? How about having to manually adjust memory settings for each application? How about no preemptive multitasking? How about one app crashes and the whole system eats it? Memory fragmentation? My favorite part of all. Troubleshooting MacOS. Oooh look a cannonball! Ooooh type 3 error!
How about extensions? Did you enjoy working with them? Did you enjoy how one would stomp all over the address space of another? Did you like manually swapping extensions out of the system folder (pre extensions manager) to isolate the conflict?
Font conflicts anybody?
Yeah it was a dream OS to work on. Sorry, no thanks I had an Amiga back then. I got to run MacOS on it too for work purposes. In fact it was the cheapest way to run Mac software considering the crazy cost of '80s Macs. Oh yeah and the OS kicked ass. Preemptive multitasking, dynamice memory allocation, GUI and a nice shell.
BTW it isn't and never was my intent to slam the Mac. I'm just trying to say, hey look you benefitted from the diversity in the PC market. Is that so hard to understand?
I do have to ask one question - why is it bad to plug a keyboard into a PS/2 port? BTW my "POS PC" has 6 USB 2.0 (there is a header for more, but that's plenty) and 2 Firewire as well as the PS/2 ports. You know what? It even has an RS232 port! What a piece of shit! There are plenty of legacy free PCs available if those ports offend someone. Does your Mac have an internal 8 way memory card reader? Can you hold 3 hard drives, 2 optical drives, the useless floppy, memory card reader internally? Oh wait, yeah sorry its better to daisy chain them all over the place with firewire. Just like in the old Mac days when it was better to have a SCSI chain of 6 devices sprawling all over your desk.
Relax. I don't really understand why you Mac diehards get so bent out of shape when anyone suggests that there is any benefit to using anything besides a Mac. I can understand brand loyalty but blind fanatacism is silly. I use Macs, I use Windows, I use FreeBSD and I use a couple of Linux distros. In the past I have also used everything from Apple ][s to Amigas. I have yet to find the perfect OS. Some are better than others. Some work better for certain tasks because of the software available. To assert that there is no reason to use anything except one OS be it Mac or Windows or the BeOS for that matter is just stupid.
Yeah I have the Commodore 64 version installed on my Xbox. I still think that is the definative version. If you don't have an old joystick around and you want to get the classic feel - you can always get a Classic Joystick - full Atari style with a USB connector.
Re:Gave up because the installer wouldn't let them
on
iPod Shuffle RAID
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· Score: 1
I don't know the technical details under Windows, but when I ran soft RAID on my Windows NT 4 system, the RAID was configured after the OS install. You setup the system, then enabled the RAID. So what I would imagine happened is that the boot still occured off of the primary drive, the bootloader had the support for the software RAID, brought the RAID up first and then started booting Windows off of it.
Yeah sure it is more difficult. But honestly if you strip the front end stuff (graphics and audio) the core game of Doom 3 is not much more complicated than Serious Sam or hell, Doom 2. Ok I am oversimplifying a bit but really - if game modders can develop a coop mod for Far Cry, I find it hard to believe a network coop for Doom 3 was not possible to do. I think not worth the extra development time, or not put in to give the Xbox version something unique is more likely.
I actually think the G3 blue and white, the G4 powermacs, the original iMac, the eMac and the swivel LCD iMac are all pretty ugly. I especially have the cheap looking plastic on those first gen iMacs and G3, G4s. Ick. The PowerMac G5 is pretty nice looking and quiet too (some G4s are very loud). The iMac G5 is ok, and the Mac mini is nice enough.
Can you RAID between an internal IDE and a firewire drive? Even if you can that would be a kind of a weird setup. He had 2 250GB drives in a RAID 1 configuration. One of his stated goals was to use it for backing up his main computer via rsync.
Uh. Well if you wanted to do this to increase the speed of the drive in your Mac Mini - wireless isn't goint to help you. You would be getting at max 54Mbps (megabits per second) to the NAS unit (in reality less) where as with a decent 7200RPM HD you are looking at more like 50MBps (megaBYTES per second).
Right because choice is a bad thing. How about this? Since there are all manner of components at all manner of price points you can purchase or build a machine to suit your particular needs and pocketbook. And you have multiple vendors to choose from. So it doesn't matter that I can build the machine I want for the price I want? So competition such as AMD vs Intel doesn't matter? It isn't a good thing? Diversity of hardware and diversity of software you can run on it is bad?
Also do you realize how the Macintosh has capitalized on the commodity PC component market? You would not have your current Macs at that cost if it wasn't for standard PC parts. Let's see:
PCI bus AGP slot Standard PC style video (onboard Radeons or AGP cards) with VGA / DVI out ATA and SATA drives DIMM memory USB
Do you remember the Mac's of the '80s and '90s?
NuBus NuBus video card with Mac video out Often times special Apple SIMMs SCSI drives ADB
One of the first things Jobs did when he came back on board was to recreate the Mac with industry standard components. This saved a ton of money on parts and on R&D. The next thing he did was cut models so you have a few choices. You don't want an overpowered low end Mac or else professionals will slap a 20 inch monitor on it and use it for their work. So what do you do? Create an all in one integrated Mac with built in monitor that doesn't jeopardize your high end market. Create a high end Mac that is fast and expandable for pros to use. And now recently, create an el cheapo Mac with very limited expansion and the previous generation processor. (And for all the people saying you can do pro level work on a Mac Mini - you can, but you would stupid to save your pennies there when the G5 will increase workflow efficiency.) On the OS side - Jobs threw out the old Mac OS (good riddance, but it was a difficult and expensive transition for the professional market) and then leveraged the open source community to pack OSX with features. Once again reducing R&D costs. No need to recreate what was already there. All very smart marketing decisions by Apple. However, I still can't get a Mac to match my $1500 P4 without spending at least $2500. Why? Because Apple has total price control over it's hardware and will only sell you a computer whose specifications fit into Apple's market stratification. So while Apple may benefit from using commodity PC parts - you - the purchaser only get the choices that Jobs thinks you should have. Call it a benevolent dictatorship but unless his choices are inline with your needs it can be a bummer. How about a G5 iMac without the built in screen? I would pay for that, but I can't buy it. And component wise - even OS wise that modern Mac is closer in both hardware and software than any Macintosh computer in history. You may as well say you like Aqua, PowerPC and the industrial design. Those are the key differentiating factors.
And by the way your slam on BSD is pretty silly. Certainly in the server arena BSD is very well deployed (ISPs especially). I use both BSD and Linux on the server side. You also left out a few operating systems: MS DOS and FreeDOS (I run FreeDOS for compatibility in Virtual PC with old games), Solaris x86 and of course the greatest of them all SCO UNIX.
Actually it was comparing IBM to the totalitarian regime in the book 1984. I always though it was interesting that the Mac which was bringing elightenment was so drab with it's beige color and gray scale screen. Interesting now that the PC clone world is filled with all manner of diversity and the Mac is only offered in very particular market driven configurations (i.e. lowest end mini, mid range all in one and high end tower).
How come when a game company like Blizzard says "it will be released when it's ready" everyone applauds their restraint, yet when Windows release dates are up in the air everyone slams Microsoft?
Oh, maybe it's because Windows still won't be ready when it's shipped...
Slashdot Mirror
The Problem with Music by Steve Albini
Steve Albini should know a little about this stuff, he produced Nirvana's In Utero. He was also a member of the band Big Black in the '80s (any Ministry fans should give them a listen) and worked with bands such as the Pixies and the Breeders as well as Seattle stuff like Tad.
And we show exactly how open minded we are and how we love freedom of speech so much. Like when the FCC levies fines for an exposed boob.
A Brief History of the Mandolin
There is a lot of mandolin in 60s and 70s rock. Heart is another band that comes to mind. One of the lame things about the mandolin is that it's often inserted in a cliche manner just to add an air of melancholy to a track.
As for the concept album thing, big woop. Check Quadrophenia and Tommy by the Who, Pink Floyd's the Wall of course, Rush 2112 etc. And if you want to hear something really scary, the Elder by Kiss.
As for them being punk. Uh, even if you treat them as pop punk, I'd rather have the Descendents thank you.
Given the low cost of the mini, is there really any excuse to do this on a Linux box?
Some big, ugly, noisy PC, ugh.
The small form factor makes it ideal for projects like this. And it's so quiet you can still hear your cat purring when it sits right on top of the mini.
I mean considering the solid BSD based nature of OS X and the elegant Apple aesthetic, I really think the cat would be more likely warm up to a new iFeeder rather than some generic Linux POS box.
I think iTunes integration would be pretty easy to do to. This is a serious advantage that no other OS can offer. Then kitty can be informed of cat food refresh by the playback of an appropriate song. Perhaps something by the Jingle Cats?
I'm currently working on a mod I call the iFlush which uses the mini to automate the process for toilet flushing. The great thing is how well the mini's white and silver style complement my porcelain and steel bathroom environment.
MS pumpet? Um. He's the CEO of Microsoft, what would you expect him to say? Would you expect Steve Jobs to me impartial concerning Apple?
That's easy. Doggy style. Bowmp-chika-Wowmp!
Uh, after the Xbox is discontinued I wouldn't expect to see a lot of support for it on Xbox Live.
Ports of Doom are available for free, if you have a modded Xbox. You still need the original game wad files. I haven't checked out networking support, I'm not sure if any of the ports feature it.
Ever notice how there are more open source programs that run on the console? Ever notice that there are more open source GUI applications with bad GUIs than good?
Maybe while open source is appealing to a lot of coder geeks, it isn't so much for people doing game related graphic design, interface design, 3D modeling, sound and music etc. Most people doing these for free are doing it in the Windows mod community.
I guess building on an existing engine is much easier than rolling your own.
Yeah because most Mac "gamers" are not diehard gamers, they just want something to play once in awhile. Your real computer gamers are mostly on PCs.
That being said, there are a bunch of great games available on the Mac if you look past that top 5.
You have:
Call of Duty (and expansion)
Battlefield 1942 (and expansions)
Unreal Tournament 2004
Neverwinter Nights
Rise of Nations
Age of Mythology
World of Warcraft
Civilization 3
Dungeon Siege
Halo
Medal of Honor
Jedi Knight 2 and Jedi Academy
and many more. Still many less than on the PC and the ports tend to come out later. So you may be spending $50 for a game when the PC version is half that.
I'm not saying Mac gaming is the way to go (certainly not on a mini as the Radeon 9200 will quickly be overwhelmed by upcoming games) but in comparison to actual native commercial game applications on Linux, the Mac has it pretty good.
Almost correct:
There is a version of Unreal called Unreal Championship for the Xbox. The sequel UC 2 is coming out in a couple of months.
Your point about no mods is absolutely valid. Some games are supposedly going to try to fix this, but I can't see it having anywhere near the flexibility of PC modding. Maybe new maps, but no total conversions. The Xbox HD is only 8 gigs after all.
There is freeware for the Xbox! Unfortunately it is also illegal since it hasn't been licensed. And of course to run it you would have to mod your Xbox which is also illegal.
But while I like my Xbox, the RTS and FPS issues are a problem. I love strategy games (turn based too - ever try playing Civilization on Super Nintendo? gah!) and I feel aiming with the mouse is much better than a joypad (it is way more accurate). Low resolution is another huge issue. Try playing Rise of Nations at 640x480.
A bit testy are we? My point was that Apple DITCHED all of the proprietary tech which as you note was better. Rather than make a better bus than PCI, a better USB etc. They used commodity parts which only exist because of the PC market. They threw out all of the lovely Apple made it better hardware and noone noticed. They took out SCSI - why? Because IDE is better? How about because IDE is cheaper. So be happy for the PC commodity market and the open source movement - without either of them you couldn't have the Mac you have today at the price point it sells for.
I'm glad you have found memories of the Macs of the '80s and '90s. I won't argue that the PC hardware was better, and the PC OSes sucked. But so did MacOS.
Did you love Multifinder? How about having to manually adjust memory settings for each application? How about no preemptive multitasking? How about one app crashes and the whole system eats it? Memory fragmentation?
My favorite part of all. Troubleshooting MacOS. Oooh look a cannonball! Ooooh type 3 error!
How about extensions? Did you enjoy working with them? Did you enjoy how one would stomp all over the address space of another? Did you like manually swapping extensions out of the system folder (pre extensions manager) to isolate the conflict?
Font conflicts anybody?
Yeah it was a dream OS to work on. Sorry, no thanks I had an Amiga back then. I got to run MacOS on it too for work purposes. In fact it was the cheapest way to run Mac software considering the crazy cost of '80s Macs. Oh yeah and the OS kicked ass. Preemptive multitasking, dynamice memory allocation, GUI and a nice shell.
BTW it isn't and never was my intent to slam the Mac. I'm just trying to say, hey look you benefitted from the diversity in the PC market. Is that so hard to understand?
I do have to ask one question - why is it bad to plug a keyboard into a PS/2 port? BTW my "POS PC" has 6 USB 2.0 (there is a header for more, but that's plenty) and 2 Firewire as well as the PS/2 ports. You know what? It even has an RS232 port! What a piece of shit! There are plenty of legacy free PCs available if those ports offend someone.
Does your Mac have an internal 8 way memory card reader? Can you hold 3 hard drives, 2 optical drives, the useless floppy, memory card reader internally? Oh wait, yeah sorry its better to daisy chain them all over the place with firewire. Just like in the old Mac days when it was better to have a SCSI chain of 6 devices sprawling all over your desk.
Relax. I don't really understand why you Mac diehards get so bent out of shape when anyone suggests that there is any benefit to using anything besides a Mac. I can understand brand loyalty but blind fanatacism is silly.
I use Macs, I use Windows, I use FreeBSD and I use a couple of Linux distros. In the past I have also used everything from Apple ][s to Amigas.
I have yet to find the perfect OS. Some are better than others. Some work better for certain tasks because of the software available. To assert that there is no reason to use anything except one OS be it Mac or Windows or the BeOS for that matter is just stupid.
Yeah I have the Commodore 64 version installed on my Xbox. I still think that is the definative version.
If you don't have an old joystick around and you want to get the classic feel - you can always get a Classic Joystick - full Atari style with a USB connector.
I don't know the technical details under Windows, but when I ran soft RAID on my Windows NT 4 system, the RAID was configured after the OS install. You setup the system, then enabled the RAID. So what I would imagine happened is that the boot still occured off of the primary drive, the bootloader had the support for the software RAID, brought the RAID up first and then started booting Windows off of it.
Yeah sure it is more difficult. But honestly if you strip the front end stuff (graphics and audio) the core game of Doom 3 is not much more complicated than Serious Sam or hell, Doom 2. Ok I am oversimplifying a bit but really - if game modders can develop a coop mod for Far Cry, I find it hard to believe a network coop for Doom 3 was not possible to do.
I think not worth the extra development time, or not put in to give the Xbox version something unique is more likely.
Wow! What an amazing and unique choice of setting! I wonder if it will look like the discovered depths of the Mars base.
I actually think the G3 blue and white, the G4 powermacs, the original iMac, the eMac and the swivel LCD iMac are all pretty ugly. I especially have the cheap looking plastic on those first gen iMacs and G3, G4s. Ick.
The PowerMac G5 is pretty nice looking and quiet too (some G4s are very loud). The iMac G5 is ok, and the Mac mini is nice enough.
Can you RAID between an internal IDE and a firewire drive? Even if you can that would be a kind of a weird setup.
He had 2 250GB drives in a RAID 1 configuration. One of his stated goals was to use it for backing up his main computer via rsync.
Uh. Well if you wanted to do this to increase the speed of the drive in your Mac Mini - wireless isn't goint to help you. You would be getting at max 54Mbps (megabits per second) to the NAS unit (in reality less) where as with a decent 7200RPM HD you are looking at more like 50MBps (megaBYTES per second).
Sure. But those models are no longer available. I know the last generation PowerMac G4 was available at the Apple Store - but I can't find it anymore.
Right because choice is a bad thing. How about this? Since there are all manner of components at all manner of price points you can purchase or build a machine to suit your particular needs and pocketbook. And you have multiple vendors to choose from. So it doesn't matter that I can build the machine I want for the price I want?
So competition such as AMD vs Intel doesn't matter? It isn't a good thing? Diversity of hardware and diversity of software you can run on it is bad?
Also do you realize how the Macintosh has capitalized on the commodity PC component market? You would not have your current Macs at that cost if it wasn't for standard PC parts. Let's see:
PCI bus
AGP slot
Standard PC style video (onboard Radeons or AGP cards) with VGA / DVI out
ATA and SATA drives
DIMM memory
USB
Do you remember the Mac's of the '80s and '90s?
NuBus
NuBus video card with Mac video out
Often times special Apple SIMMs
SCSI drives
ADB
One of the first things Jobs did when he came back on board was to recreate the Mac with industry standard components. This saved a ton of money on parts and on R&D.
The next thing he did was cut models so you have a few choices. You don't want an overpowered low end Mac or else professionals will slap a 20 inch monitor on it and use it for their work. So what do you do?
Create an all in one integrated Mac with built in monitor that doesn't jeopardize your high end market.
Create a high end Mac that is fast and expandable for pros to use.
And now recently, create an el cheapo Mac with very limited expansion and the previous generation processor. (And for all the people saying you can do pro level work on a Mac Mini - you can, but you would stupid to save your pennies there when the G5 will increase workflow efficiency.)
On the OS side - Jobs threw out the old Mac OS (good riddance, but it was a difficult and expensive transition for the professional market) and then leveraged the open source community to pack OSX with features. Once again reducing R&D costs. No need to recreate what was already there.
All very smart marketing decisions by Apple. However, I still can't get a Mac to match my $1500 P4 without spending at least $2500. Why? Because Apple has total price control over it's hardware and will only sell you a computer whose specifications fit into Apple's market stratification. So while Apple may benefit from using commodity PC parts - you - the purchaser only get the choices that Jobs thinks you should have. Call it a benevolent dictatorship but unless his choices are inline with your needs it can be a bummer. How about a G5 iMac without the built in screen? I would pay for that, but I can't buy it.
And component wise - even OS wise that modern Mac is closer in both hardware and software than any
Macintosh computer in history. You may as well say you like Aqua, PowerPC and the industrial design. Those are the key differentiating factors.
And by the way your slam on BSD is pretty silly. Certainly in the server arena BSD is very well deployed (ISPs especially). I use both BSD and Linux on the server side.
You also left out a few operating systems: MS DOS and FreeDOS (I run FreeDOS for compatibility in Virtual PC with old games), Solaris x86 and of course the greatest of them all SCO UNIX.
Most parent post up as redundant.
Hmmmmmm. Were you using the Gimp in MS Paint emulation mode?
Actually it was comparing IBM to the totalitarian regime in the book 1984. I always though it was interesting that the Mac which was bringing elightenment was so drab with it's beige color and gray scale screen.
Interesting now that the PC clone world is filled with all manner of diversity and the Mac is only offered in very particular market driven configurations (i.e. lowest end mini, mid range all in one and high end tower).
How come when a game company like Blizzard says "it will be released when it's ready" everyone applauds their restraint, yet when Windows release dates are up in the air everyone slams Microsoft?
Oh, maybe it's because Windows still won't be ready when it's shipped...
How Oracle is "Unbreakable"?