I still can't build my own laptop:( Bugger if the component sockets, sizes, mounts and chassis' were as standardized as for desktops, I would happily build my own. I think I won't buy any desktops anymore. Laptops have all the power I need. Flipside indeed is that I'm in the mercy of the manufacturer when it comes to drivers. I cannot get drivers for anything but vista for these components any other way but from the laptops manufacturer: graphics chip, 5-in-1 memory card reader, sound card, bluetooth, webcam. Trying to search the component manufacturers site is pretty much: "Go to your vendors site. We would, but we can't provide drivers for hardware sold by OEM's) Trying to search laptop manufacturer gives: "Holy shit! That is a Vista laptop! Get the Vista back or I'll shoot you!"
If you Vista works just fine for you, you are probably not doing anything "serious" on it. I'm not going to elaborate further. I can already feel the choir of nodders around me.
Yup... Your post actually makes me want to try to install Linux again on desktop and try out how hard it would be to get my hardware working with it. Can't be much harder than getting it to work under Vista.
After that would be fun to try and find alternatives for the audio, video and graphics tools.
Plenty of them also want live recordings from their existing performances, which is where the "recording service" model becomes even more attractive.
Interesting that you mention this. I was just today browsing an online audio equiment store to figure out how much would it cost to start a "mobile studio"-business, where bands could hire someone to come over to what-ever-space-they-have and do recording session on the spot. Turned out it could be done under 5ke, but all the perfectly valid cheap stuff just... looks cheap. In music business one rather pays for 50kg table that looks good rather than the flimsy, plasticy one which would perform perfectly for the purpose. To get the Pro looking stuff one would need to plop down maybe 30ke, and still do some compromises in favour of getting the name brand instead of getting more of the fit-for-the-purpose cheaper stuff.
Consider... t.bone cradle for a mic: 9 euros. Neumann cradle: 350 euros. They both probably do pretty good job for what they do -- isolate the mic from the mic stands vibration. (Yeah... This was the most extreme example I could think of)
Ehum. I just "reduced my noise floor" to -90db (that's almost zero) with behringer eurorack ub, t.bone condenser mics, and a behringer firewire audio interface. This cost me about 200 euros. Digital recording and leaps in mic pregain circuit design has made noise-free audio easy to attain. While I was just testing, I got some odd noise on the meters and got worried. I cranked up the pregains and recorded the noise to find out where it comes from. Ended up being my laptops cooler. I was picking that up from 4 meters away and there was no foreign noise when I listened to it.
All studios are using DAW's nowadays. Only _must have_ expensive equipment is mixing table, room acoustics and monitoring speakers. Even the mixing table is primarily used for routing and grouping for the A/D interface.
And, uh, in conclusion. Your point is valid. It's just that building a studio isn't as expensive as it used to be, so no point paying $200/h when you could get your own adequate one for couple of grand.
I'm running Vista righ now with 1G mem and core2 duo@1.8Ghz. I have Azureus with one download, firefox, mediaplayer with a xivd+ogg video/audio and 2 putty's open. This Mofo sticks and jams all the time when I switch window. God forbid I drop everything wit Win+D; that might cause a 10 second uexplainable jam of the whole UI. I spent two weeks trying to get Reason 3 and Sonar 6 play along. 3DsMax wasn't easy either. Now, if I plug&unplug my firewire audio interface I get a bluescreen. (That's because of 3rd party drivers, but still).
To get my favourite apps work at all, I pretty much had to disable UAC. That beast not only hindered my work all the time, it also caused even worse UI jams. Oh yeah, also had to disable all the new UI goodies which initially were only positive thing about this OS.
I now have a copy of XP on different partition to do anything serious. I still boot to Vista for web surfing and other useless tasks just to force my self to observe the improvement when/if MS fixes these problems.
Also, just a warning. If you buy a HP laptop, "downgrade" to XP and try to get drivers, they pretty much give you a page telling you to fuck off and install Vista back. Even thou I was perfectly cabable of gathering all the necessary XP drivers from their site with half a day of cross-checking between different laptop hardware configuration.
But what the hell. I will start using the Vista when all my hardware and software work fine on it. Untill then, I keep on checking. I'm not hating this thing out of spite. I just want it to work in a consistent manner and not getting on my way. And that's not bitching about UAC. I think the idea is great. the implementation is just terrible. It's just yet another pop-up everyone will ignore and click haphazardly because it is getting on the way.
I'm by no means an expert, but won't the whole micro/monolithic design also make porting of drivers rather difficult between existing popular free kernels and Hurd? It would a big boon if one could plop Linux/BSD drivers into hurd with little effort.
Here in Finland we already went all digital at the beginning of this month. Nothing spectacular happened. Going all digital does not mean getting rid of broadcast. In our scattered population it is quite common to only have antenna on the roof and no cable. The digital signal travels through the air just fine. You just need different kind of decoder for aerial and cable thou. (For reasons I am yet to understand. You actually need yet another type for satellite dish...)
I perhaps should mention that we also have ridiculously small amount of channels here. Before digital there were just five nation wide channels.
Flamebait? What kind of retard modded this flamebait? Whee, I think I have finally managed to gather my own following of haters who will flamebait anything I say just because I usually write in inflammatory style.
These kids at/. just have no clue how true pofessionals work. On the first 6 month reporting time I would ask for extra two weeks to prepare my report!
Don't pack so much energy into such small package! Use conventional lead batteries instead!
Seriously, the problem is that the technology has excellent properties of low internal resistance and high capacity per mass. If the pack shorts for reason or another, all the energy is released in short order, causing it to practically explode.
There is also another problem. The charging. The Li-Ion/Polymer batteries will not chemically stop charging when they are "full" in terms of what it is supposed to hold. You can overcharge the pack until it gets unstable and finally shorts itself, again causing the explosion.
There is nothing you can do to the electrochemical pair without losing its positive characteristics. External safe guards, such as charge cutters and current limiters can only do so much. The pack can still short internally.
Why not ditch the whole laborious plant parenting thing and nano engineer out stakes and bread straight from molecules? I mean, if we are talking about 10k year span here, anything can happen.
Heh, what's with labeling secretaries as "personal assistants" nowadays? I'd much rather be a secretary than "personal assistant". The latter sounds like someone who helps the CEO poop and pushes him around in wheel chair.
These fucking ragheads should get a grip and be a bit less sensitive of their silly religion. I don't see Jews, Christians or any other religious group for that matter, suicide bombing a play school each time someone offends their sensibilities.
And by suicide bombig a play school, I imply also the whining and protesting of the official groups. Your religion is not special. It's equally subject to ridicule with the rest of the religions.
They cannot cancel the service for no reason. The contract has two parties. If you are paying for a service, you are eligible for the service within terms of the contract. The correct way to handle this would be the update the contract to include some vague clause about "excessive use" as a reason for terminating a contract or limiting use.
And yes. I could sue my provider for damages were they to drop my connection. I do most of my work from home but need almost constant VPN to the office. However, I'm pretty sure my contract is a standard private person one, where claims of damage are limited to the cost of the connection. If that clause is enforceable in my legislation is entirely different matter.
The problem isn't the prices per se. The problem is that American cars, excluding the most luxurious exclusive ones, are shit.
I'd much rather have a new Mazda 3 with tight suspension and decent engine for the cars weight, than huge American tin cow which handles like a shopping cart and has a ridiculous MPG.
I would also pay more for the Mazda. They are actually rated most reliable car brand in Finland at the moment.
The stories were/are always total bulshit. He has no clue about what he is writing about. He just spews out shit that sounds interesting but has no substance. This particular article was interesting. He has just pictures and just couple of words but still manages to write bullshit. Namely, the pictures are nothing exclusive as pointed out elsewhere in the comments here.
Slashdot Mirror
I still can't build my own laptop :(
Bugger if the component sockets, sizes, mounts and chassis' were as standardized as for desktops, I would happily build my own. I think I won't buy any desktops anymore. Laptops have all the power I need. Flipside indeed is that I'm in the mercy of the manufacturer when it comes to drivers. I cannot get drivers for anything but vista for these components any other way but from the laptops manufacturer: graphics chip, 5-in-1 memory card reader, sound card, bluetooth, webcam.
Trying to search the component manufacturers site is pretty much: "Go to your vendors site. We would, but we can't provide drivers for hardware sold by OEM's)
Trying to search laptop manufacturer gives: "Holy shit! That is a Vista laptop! Get the Vista back or I'll shoot you!"
If you Vista works just fine for you, you are probably not doing anything "serious" on it.
I'm not going to elaborate further. I can already feel the choir of nodders around me.
Yup...
Your post actually makes me want to try to install Linux again on desktop and try out how hard it would be to get my hardware working with it.
Can't be much harder than getting it to work under Vista.
After that would be fun to try and find alternatives for the audio, video and graphics tools.
Wish I had mod points.
:))
People should just read this comment before saying anything.
(No, I will not resort to changing subject to MOD PARENT UP, because that annoyes me
Interesting that you mention this. I was just today browsing an online audio equiment store to figure out how much would it cost to start a "mobile studio"-business, where bands could hire someone to come over to what-ever-space-they-have and do recording session on the spot.
Turned out it could be done under 5ke, but all the perfectly valid cheap stuff just... looks cheap. In music business one rather pays for 50kg table that looks good rather than the flimsy, plasticy one which would perform perfectly for the purpose.
To get the Pro looking stuff one would need to plop down maybe 30ke, and still do some compromises in favour of getting the name brand instead of getting more of the fit-for-the-purpose cheaper stuff.
Consider... t.bone cradle for a mic: 9 euros. Neumann cradle: 350 euros.
They both probably do pretty good job for what they do -- isolate the mic from the mic stands vibration. (Yeah... This was the most extreme example I could think of)
Ehum. I just "reduced my noise floor" to -90db (that's almost zero) with behringer eurorack ub, t.bone condenser mics, and a behringer firewire audio interface. This cost me about 200 euros.
Digital recording and leaps in mic pregain circuit design has made noise-free audio easy to attain.
While I was just testing, I got some odd noise on the meters and got worried. I cranked up the pregains and recorded the noise to find out where it comes from. Ended up being my laptops cooler. I was picking that up from 4 meters away and there was no foreign noise when I listened to it.
All studios are using DAW's nowadays. Only _must have_ expensive equipment is mixing table, room acoustics and monitoring speakers. Even the mixing table is primarily used for routing and grouping for the A/D interface.
And, uh, in conclusion. Your point is valid.
It's just that building a studio isn't as expensive as it used to be, so no point paying $200/h when you could get your own adequate one for couple of grand.
I'm running Vista righ now with 1G mem and core2 duo@1.8Ghz.
I have Azureus with one download, firefox, mediaplayer with a xivd+ogg video/audio and 2 putty's open. This Mofo sticks and jams all the time when I switch window. God forbid I drop everything wit Win+D; that might cause a 10 second uexplainable jam of the whole UI.
I spent two weeks trying to get Reason 3 and Sonar 6 play along. 3DsMax wasn't easy either. Now, if I plug&unplug my firewire audio interface I get a bluescreen. (That's because of 3rd party drivers, but still).
To get my favourite apps work at all, I pretty much had to disable UAC. That beast not only hindered my work all the time, it also caused even worse UI jams. Oh yeah, also had to disable all the new UI goodies which initially were only positive thing about this OS.
I now have a copy of XP on different partition to do anything serious. I still boot to Vista for web surfing and other useless tasks just to force my self to observe the improvement when/if MS fixes these problems.
Also, just a warning. If you buy a HP laptop, "downgrade" to XP and try to get drivers, they pretty much give you a page telling you to fuck off and install Vista back. Even thou I was perfectly cabable of gathering all the necessary XP drivers from their site with half a day of cross-checking between different laptop hardware configuration.
But what the hell. I will start using the Vista when all my hardware and software work fine on it. Untill then, I keep on checking. I'm not hating this thing out of spite. I just want it to work in a consistent manner and not getting on my way. And that's not bitching about UAC. I think the idea is great. the implementation is just terrible. It's just yet another pop-up everyone will ignore and click haphazardly because it is getting on the way.
Ahem... PCM WAV is not "compression"
Christ...
Your link was even worse.
Holy shit. How many attrocities have they committed?
I'm by no means an expert, but won't the whole micro/monolithic design also make porting of drivers rather difficult between existing popular free kernels and Hurd? It would a big boon if one could plop Linux/BSD drivers into hurd with little effort.
Here in Finland we already went all digital at the beginning of this month. Nothing spectacular happened.
Going all digital does not mean getting rid of broadcast. In our scattered population it is quite common to only have antenna on the roof and no cable. The digital signal travels through the air just fine. You just need different kind of decoder for aerial and cable thou. (For reasons I am yet to understand. You actually need yet another type for satellite dish...)
I perhaps should mention that we also have ridiculously small amount of channels here. Before digital there were just five nation wide channels.
Well, they do have nukes...
Flamebait? What kind of retard modded this flamebait?
Whee, I think I have finally managed to gather my own following of haters who will flamebait anything I say just because I usually write in inflammatory style.
Flamebait? What the fuck?
/. just have no clue how true pofessionals work.
These kids at
On the first 6 month reporting time I would ask for extra two weeks to prepare my report!
Don't pack so much energy into such small package! Use conventional lead batteries instead!
Seriously, the problem is that the technology has excellent properties of low internal resistance and high capacity per mass. If the pack shorts for reason or another, all the energy is released in short order, causing it to practically explode.
There is also another problem. The charging. The Li-Ion/Polymer batteries will not chemically stop charging when they are "full" in terms of what it is supposed to hold. You can overcharge the pack until it gets unstable and finally shorts itself, again causing the explosion.
There is nothing you can do to the electrochemical pair without losing its positive characteristics. External safe guards, such as charge cutters and current limiters can only do so much. The pack can still short internally.
Why not ditch the whole laborious plant parenting thing and nano engineer out stakes and bread straight from molecules? I mean, if we are talking about 10k year span here, anything can happen.
Heh, what's with labeling secretaries as "personal assistants" nowadays? I'd much rather be a secretary than "personal assistant". The latter sounds like someone who helps the CEO poop and pushes him around in wheel chair.
Oh...
I get it...
These fucking ragheads should get a grip and be a bit less sensitive of their silly religion.
I don't see Jews, Christians or any other religious group for that matter, suicide bombing a play school each time someone offends their sensibilities.
And by suicide bombig a play school, I imply also the whining and protesting of the official groups. Your religion is not special. It's equally subject to ridicule with the rest of the religions.
Yes. I think "to not to object" can be interpreted as "ignore". Not actively objecting to it...
OTOH: English is not my primary language.
Wait what? Dead wrong?
I interpreted you and GP exactly the same way.
Heh, I didn't know that.
Thank you for edumacation.
They cannot cancel the service for no reason.
The contract has two parties. If you are paying for a service, you are eligible for the service within terms of the contract.
The correct way to handle this would be the update the contract to include some vague clause about "excessive use" as a reason for terminating a contract or limiting use.
And yes. I could sue my provider for damages were they to drop my connection. I do most of my work from home but need almost constant VPN to the office. However, I'm pretty sure my contract is a standard private person one, where claims of damage are limited to the cost of the connection. If that clause is enforceable in my legislation is entirely different matter.
The problem isn't the prices per se.
The problem is that American cars, excluding the most luxurious exclusive ones, are shit.
I'd much rather have a new Mazda 3 with tight suspension and decent engine for the cars weight, than huge American tin cow which handles like a shopping cart and has a ridiculous MPG.
I would also pay more for the Mazda. They are actually rated most reliable car brand in Finland at the moment.
The stories were/are always total bulshit. He has no clue about what he is writing about. He just spews out shit that sounds interesting but has no substance.
This particular article was interesting. He has just pictures and just couple of words but still manages to write bullshit. Namely, the pictures are nothing exclusive as pointed out elsewhere in the comments here.
_o/
Shit, the game sucks. Well, there's no game to speak of.
"Here's an engine. Build content and prosper (sp?) (and give us some money)"