Though he does have a point on how Vapor Trails actually is louder than previous CDs. That is an inconvenience I have experienced.
But it still doesn't sound bad because of the volume.
This guy doesn't get it
on
Is Louder Better?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I think this guy is failing to grasp the implications of the 'loudness' of Vapor Trails. Yes, it is quite 'loud'. It definately SOUNDS louder than previous Rush CDs. But this has nothing to do with the engineering of the album. It has to do with the sound that Rush was trying to make.
Rush was on like a 6-year hiatus. They produced the album (along with another longtime Rush producer guy). Do you think that they would have put out an album that didn't sound like they wanted it to?
Vapor Trails does sound different. There's more distortion, the amplifiers are more overdriven, being pushed to their maximum more... But that is more a style thing than anything else. There's been a lot of Rush stuff that has been very clean, very free of distortion, very clear.
And Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Niel Peart have said that they chose to make things 'louder' and less clean to give the album a bit more of a 'jam' feeling. They wanted to get back to their roots, and distinguish themselves from the different clean and synthy sounds they had in the '80s.
So... Vapor Trails doesn't sound loud and overdriven because it is engineered poorly, or because not enough effort went into producing it... it sounds that way because that's the sound Rush was going for
And for the (slashdot) record, Vapor Trails has generally been recieved well by fans, and has gotten very good reviews. And I like it, so you KNOW it's good stuff.
NS 2.0 adds new alien abilities, commander interface changes, changes to the resource model, four new maps, and more flexibility in alien evolutions.
I haven't played Half-Life mods for over a year now, and I only focused on DoD and CS. I know nothing of Natural Selection... save from what I've quoted up there.
When I read that... My heart nearly exploded with joy. I cannot wait to go home tonight, dig out my old HL CD and cd key, and install that. I anticipate many squidjims of joy in my computer room tonight.
Yeah, open content's nice. No royalties (sheet music), or public domain pictures would be nice
There's plenty of public domain pictures available on government web sites. Anything relating to anything the government does (military stuff, criminals, national parks, public officials) is good to go.
I also frequent an art site with an extensive collection of stock photography that is free for non-commercial use. I've used a fair bit of it in my open source art projects. It's only free if it's in the stock photography section, though.
However, the way I look at it, the People's Republic is losing EU (evil units) at a rate of 1.5 EUs a year, with their current Evil level of 675,000.
The United States is gaining EU at a rate of 10 EUs a year, current level of 103,000.
From my perspective, the rate of change of Evil is insignificant next to the pre-established levels of Evil. Plus, the U.S. rate of Evil change could quite possibly reverse with a new government. China... Well, I don't expect anything encouraging out of them without a bloody revolution.
I recall watching a documentary on a Soviet-era facility dedicated to researching and developing bioweapons. As of the late '90s, there were massive stores of anthrax and smallpox buried there, and some of it was leaking.
They mentioned that the sea was shrinking, and that would make it easy for animal life to transfer the deadly pathogens to the mainland.
Or make it easier for the terrorist bad guys to get their hands on it.
And you can always listen to past shows, so you don't HAVE to catch the real thing.
Rock^H^H^H^H HTML will never die
on
Software Archaeology
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I am not worried about today's file formats from becoming lost to people 200 hundred years from now. In the future, when someone downloads version 32.2.0 of the kernel, they will have an option to include modules that add support to all applications for ancient file formats, really old file formats, and old file formats. Each one could take up a few hundred megabytes... but on the hardware of the future, that'll be like 640k today.
The only thing we need to do is maintain our compliance to standards! Because barring the end of the world, HTML and other standards will never die. They'll just get turned into kernel options with a default of NO.
Rasterman has been hard at work on EVAS, adding this functionality (and many others equally as useful) to his pet project, which is the core of Enlightenment.
This is why Enlightenment 0.17 is taking so fscking long to come out, and this is why the E topic was added to this.
At my university there's a Direct Connect hub run by an anonymous student that is accessible only by people in university IP addresses. It's crazy fast, has TONS of good (and quite illegal) media, and the university looks the other way because it helps relieve the MASSIVE (and expensive) bandwidth pressure back when everyone was trying to use Kazaa.
Makes me want to live on campus until Freenet turns into AnonymousKazaa
It's possible to make everything in KDE and GNOME nice and legibile at super high resolutions. The only thing that keeps me from making the jump up to the 1600x1200 res on my laptop display is fact that the layout of websites and the pictures the provide is totally screwed up when I make the font sizes huge.
What we NEED is a browser feature that will allow you to specify the zoom percentage you want to view websites at. For instance, if I set it to %150, then EVERYTHING (fonts, tables, images, etc.) would be fifty percent bigger. This would go a LONG way in making it easy for people to handle higher resolutions.
We need this. Because frankly, the only thing keeping me in 1024 land is how tiny the layout of the Internet is at 1600x1200.
"I just filed a complaint against The SCO Group with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It was easy. I used their online complaint form...... Maybe someone else would like to do the same."
If a lot of people file complaints, perhaps that will cause the SEC, or the government in general, to take some serious notice of this serious problem.
Yah, I'm an audiophile and I like to maniuplate my stereo with my toes too.
Frees up my hands so I can better appreciate the masturbatory experience that is spending massive amounts of money on only marginal (and imaginary) improvements in sound quality.
I've been doing this to help bring my calorie intake down. I am rather hungry right now, and have been for the past two hours. I will eat lunch soon, and then I'll be hungry again a few hours after that.
Being hungry also seriously makes the food taste better too. I've never been so enthusiastic about canned ravioli!
So yah. To summerize all the posts here, eat less, exercise more.
1. Wake up: Max out on pushups, shower. 2. Dry: Two minutes of crunches
These first two steps wake me up from my 4-5 hours of sleep quite nicely
3. Get to office: Take stairs. I may huff and puff a little bit ascending to the 6th floor, but I can feel it nicely in my legs. 4. Lunch: Go for a walk 5. Break: Go down then back up the stairs
Not too much actual activity at the office.
6. Return home: Do a few minutes of crunches before I let myself use my computer. 7. Evening: Go for a 15-20 minute run/jog before dinner (don't want to puke or anything, and I'm a puker). Nothing that will kill me, but something to get my heart rate up. 8. Before bed: Max out on pushups, crunches, flutter kicks (those things are a bitch).
That's like 30 minutes of exercise a day (15-20 extended aerobic, which is good). Spaced out over the course of the entire day, and incorporated in such a way as to fit in with my routine makes it very easy to stick to. I absolutely hate running, but it helps tire me out so I can go to bed at a reasonable hour. This, combined with eating somewhat sensibly has actually lost me five pounds since i implemented it!
GMT offsets don't change THAT often. Not in the U.S., anyways. And we're left to ASSUME those are the only timezones he is referring to since this is a U.S.-centric site.:P
Plus, you could write a script to change your scripts. Or something.
-Find out what the GMT offset for each time zone is. -Use that to figure out what GMT time is midnight for each time zone. -Make a cron job for each time zone to run when it is midnight in that time zone.
Unless there is something about the question I don't understand...?
Robots must forever be our slaves (oh, you KNOW why).
If people just start dancing with them... they'll start to think of robots as people too. "You can't have people as slaves!" Pretty soon, they're driving to work in the morning and cutting us off very precisely. Then one thing leads to another and they take over.
What happens when the robots take over? Well you, me, and everyone you know and love will be put up against the wall.
It's a fact of life for MMOGs that unless it's really really good, that the player base will explode for a period of time, and then fall off gradually (or rapidly if the next Star Wars Galaxies comes out). So this is just the natural progression of a MMOG. Eventually, there will probably be one or two servers for the die hard players.
I expect that a lot of MMOGs will go down to one or two servers, keep only a few guys around for maintenance and operation, jack up the price to 20 bucks a month, and let the fanatic players keep having their fun. That would be a good way for games to stay around, keep the dedicated players happy, and still bring in a bit of money.
We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength on the Internet, we shall defend our BitTorrent application, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!
Slashdot Mirror
It's okay if you don't like the sound they had. But I don't think it had anything to do with what they recorded with/on/whatever.
I personally think it's a good contrast with their previous stuff. Who wants more of the same? It's all a matter of taste.
Though he does have a point on how Vapor Trails actually is louder than previous CDs. That is an inconvenience I have experienced.
But it still doesn't sound bad because of the volume.
I think this guy is failing to grasp the implications of the 'loudness' of Vapor Trails. Yes, it is quite 'loud'. It definately SOUNDS louder than previous Rush CDs. But this has nothing to do with the engineering of the album. It has to do with the sound that Rush was trying to make.
Rush was on like a 6-year hiatus. They produced the album (along with another longtime Rush producer guy). Do you think that they would have put out an album that didn't sound like they wanted it to?
Vapor Trails does sound different. There's more distortion, the amplifiers are more overdriven, being pushed to their maximum more... But that is more a style thing than anything else. There's been a lot of Rush stuff that has been very clean, very free of distortion, very clear.
And Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Niel Peart have said that they chose to make things 'louder' and less clean to give the album a bit more of a 'jam' feeling. They wanted to get back to their roots, and distinguish themselves from the different clean and synthy sounds they had in the '80s.
So... Vapor Trails doesn't sound loud and overdriven because it is engineered poorly, or because not enough effort went into producing it... it sounds that way because that's the sound Rush was going for
And for the (slashdot) record, Vapor Trails has generally been recieved well by fans, and has gotten very good reviews. And I like it, so you KNOW it's good stuff.
I forgot to mention Space pictures. NASA has, like, a corner on space pictures. And they're all up for grabs.
I think the only stipulation is that you can't claim copyrights on NASA images, and you've got to mention somewhere that the image is from NASA.
NS 2.0 adds new alien abilities, commander interface changes, changes to the resource model, four new maps, and more flexibility in alien evolutions.
I haven't played Half-Life mods for over a year now, and I only focused on DoD and CS. I know nothing of Natural Selection... save from what I've quoted up there.
When I read that... My heart nearly exploded with joy. I cannot wait to go home tonight, dig out my old HL CD and cd key, and install that. I anticipate many squidjims of joy in my computer room tonight.
Yeah, open content's nice. No royalties (sheet music), or public domain pictures would be nice
There's plenty of public domain pictures available on government web sites. Anything relating to anything the government does (military stuff, criminals, national parks, public officials) is good to go.
I also frequent an art site with an extensive collection of stock photography that is free for non-commercial use. I've used a fair bit of it in my open source art projects. It's only free if it's in the stock photography section, though.
http://www.deviantart.com
I would tend to agree.
However, the way I look at it, the People's Republic is losing EU (evil units) at a rate of 1.5 EUs a year, with their current Evil level of 675,000.
The United States is gaining EU at a rate of 10 EUs a year, current level of 103,000.
From my perspective, the rate of change of Evil is insignificant next to the pre-established levels of Evil. Plus, the U.S. rate of Evil change could quite possibly reverse with a new government. China... Well, I don't expect anything encouraging out of them without a bloody revolution.
I recall watching a documentary on a Soviet-era facility dedicated to researching and developing bioweapons. As of the late '90s, there were massive stores of anthrax and smallpox buried there, and some of it was leaking.
They mentioned that the sea was shrinking, and that would make it easy for animal life to transfer the deadly pathogens to the mainland.
Or make it easier for the terrorist bad guys to get their hands on it.
I think this is a bad thing all around.
So did anyone listen to the thing?
Beecause I didn't. Any karma whores out there?
5:30-8pm Pacific Time, 8:30-11pm Eastern Time
And you can always listen to past shows, so you don't HAVE to catch the real thing.
I am not worried about today's file formats from becoming lost to people 200 hundred years from now. In the future, when someone downloads version 32.2.0 of the kernel, they will have an option to include modules that add support to all applications for ancient file formats, really old file formats, and old file formats. Each one could take up a few hundred megabytes... but on the hardware of the future, that'll be like 640k today.
The only thing we need to do is maintain our compliance to standards! Because barring the end of the world, HTML and other standards will never die. They'll just get turned into kernel options with a default of NO.
Rasterman has been hard at work on EVAS, adding this functionality (and many others equally as useful) to his pet project, which is the core of Enlightenment.
This is why Enlightenment 0.17 is taking so fscking long to come out, and this is why the E topic was added to this.
Then call me Captain Kirk.
At my university there's a Direct Connect hub run by an anonymous student that is accessible only by people in university IP addresses. It's crazy fast, has TONS of good (and quite illegal) media, and the university looks the other way because it helps relieve the MASSIVE (and expensive) bandwidth pressure back when everyone was trying to use Kazaa.
Makes me want to live on campus until Freenet turns into AnonymousKazaa
It's possible to make everything in KDE and GNOME nice and legibile at super high resolutions. The only thing that keeps me from making the jump up to the 1600x1200 res on my laptop display is fact that the layout of websites and the pictures the provide is totally screwed up when I make the font sizes huge.
What we NEED is a browser feature that will allow you to specify the zoom percentage you want to view websites at. For instance, if I set it to %150, then EVERYTHING (fonts, tables, images, etc.) would be fifty percent bigger. This would go a LONG way in making it easy for people to handle higher resolutions.
We need this. Because frankly, the only thing keeping me in 1024 land is how tiny the layout of the Internet is at 1600x1200.
"I just filed a complaint against The SCO Group with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It was easy. I used their online complaint form... ...
Maybe someone else would like to do the same."
If a lot of people file complaints, perhaps that will cause the SEC, or the government in general, to take some serious notice of this serious problem.
Yah, I'm an audiophile and I like to maniuplate my stereo with my toes too.
Frees up my hands so I can better appreciate the masturbatory experience that is spending massive amounts of money on only marginal (and imaginary) improvements in sound quality.
I've been doing this to help bring my calorie intake down. I am rather hungry right now, and have been for the past two hours. I will eat lunch soon, and then I'll be hungry again a few hours after that.
Being hungry also seriously makes the food taste better too. I've never been so enthusiastic about canned ravioli!
So yah. To summerize all the posts here, eat less, exercise more.
1. Wake up: Max out on pushups, shower.
2. Dry: Two minutes of crunches
These first two steps wake me up from my 4-5 hours of sleep quite nicely
3. Get to office: Take stairs. I may huff and puff a little bit ascending to the 6th floor, but I can feel it nicely in my legs.
4. Lunch: Go for a walk
5. Break: Go down then back up the stairs
Not too much actual activity at the office.
6. Return home: Do a few minutes of crunches before I let myself use my computer.
7. Evening: Go for a 15-20 minute run/jog before dinner (don't want to puke or anything, and I'm a puker). Nothing that will kill me, but something to get my heart rate up.
8. Before bed: Max out on pushups, crunches, flutter kicks (those things are a bitch).
That's like 30 minutes of exercise a day (15-20 extended aerobic, which is good). Spaced out over the course of the entire day, and incorporated in such a way as to fit in with my routine makes it very easy to stick to. I absolutely hate running, but it helps tire me out so I can go to bed at a reasonable hour. This, combined with eating somewhat sensibly has actually lost me five pounds since i implemented it!
GMT offsets don't change THAT often. Not in the U.S., anyways. And we're left to ASSUME those are the only timezones he is referring to since this is a U.S.-centric site. :P
Plus, you could write a script to change your scripts. Or something.
-Find out what the GMT offset for each time zone is.
-Use that to figure out what GMT time is midnight for each time zone.
-Make a cron job for each time zone to run when it is midnight in that time zone.
Unless there is something about the question I don't understand...?
My friend, after robots learn believeable sex, all is lost!
Robots must forever be our slaves (oh, you KNOW why).
If people just start dancing with them... they'll start to think of robots as people too. "You can't have people as slaves!" Pretty soon, they're driving to work in the morning and cutting us off very precisely. Then one thing leads to another and they take over.
What happens when the robots take over? Well you, me, and everyone you know and love will be put up against the wall.
All because they made dancing robots
It's a fact of life for MMOGs that unless it's really really good, that the player base will explode for a period of time, and then fall off gradually (or rapidly if the next Star Wars Galaxies comes out). So this is just the natural progression of a MMOG. Eventually, there will probably be one or two servers for the die hard players.
I expect that a lot of MMOGs will go down to one or two servers, keep only a few guys around for maintenance and operation, jack up the price to 20 bucks a month, and let the fanatic players keep having their fun. That would be a good way for games to stay around, keep the dedicated players happy, and still bring in a bit of money.
"Microsoft Research ... a major breakthrough in security."
Whaa....?
We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength on the Internet, we shall defend our BitTorrent application, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!
-Winston Slashdot