About the time I was purchasing them I remember them being around $40. Which was still pretty big bank for a little kid. And yes a huge pile of change.
A quick check of Google shows that the 2600 systems ran $200-$300 new and titles were $30-$50.
If you happen to own the Evil Dead "Book of the Dead Edition" DVD go to the extras and watch Bruce Campbell's highly amusing Fanalysis.
The segment in which Bruce walks along a line of movie viewers signing is outside the Alamo Drafthouse South.
The crazed drunken fans he is wearing his "hide the spilled beer" shirt for are that same group.
The interior shot of people sitting behind wood faced freestanding bar table type arrangements is the inside.
The end of the little documentary is shot from inside the ticket booth as Bruce talks to a girl who thinks people that like Evil Dead are idiots and has no idea who she is talking to.:)
This sounds as though you are referring to the Alamo Drafthouse South (original), not the North.
North has bigger screens and while not perfect audio quality at least it has some sound deadening to kill echoes.
South is like watching a movie in a high school cafeteria. South plays second run features, cult classics, and does special events frequently.
North has 4 screens while South has only 1. North plays 1st run movies and mostly big name movies while occasionally running special events. This may change as Alamo North's indie feature competition in North Austin, The Arbor 7 (a Regal Cinemas property), has been forced out of its yuppie strip mall location (in favor of a Cheesecake Factory). And since the seating and presentation are significantly better than South it is likely that more of the specials will move to North.
Somewhere lost in boxes in my parents' basement for the last 10 years (since the transformer broke) is my 2600 and a paper shopping pag full of games that I had purchased over the years. Since my folks just moved recently maybe they will find it once more.
I miss my Atari.:(
I also miss the look on the faces of sales people when as a kid in the 80's I'd buy a game for my 2600 using an assortment of nickels, pennies, and dimes.
Ok some adiitional info about the Alamo Drafthouse.
Orders are taken before the show and during previews.
Staff are very quiet and make as little noise or visual (crouching once the feature presentation has started) distraction as possible.
One of the theater created bumpers before the show is a clip from the 80's version of "The Blob" where a noisy movie patron is blabbing in a normal conversation tone about what is happening on the screen and gets consumed by the blob. At which point giant block letters come on the screen to inform the Drafthouse crowd that if you talk during the the presentaion, "We'll kick your ass out."
The wireless access is very cool for the drafthouse type crowd that typically arrives 30 minutes to an hour before the showing to get their seats and order and wants something to do while waiting for the movie.
People like the guy that was acting all annoyed about being told to close his notebook are just as bad as the people that feel they have the right to leave their phones on audible ring and talk in loud voices like the theater was their own personal living room. Wireless access does not equate to the right to do whatever you want.
As a movie-aholic that frequents the Alamo Drafthouse among many of the other theaters in Austin there are times when I totally feel like this Real Life comicstrip.
If you can't have basic respect for other people trying to watch the movie stay home, please.
Yes this correct. The Arcade systems had slots under the joystick table for a card where you could store profiles and stats. If I remember correctly the cards were around $150 when new.
One of my friends was still using his a few years ago. If he is lurking I am sure TaliesinWI will provide more information.:)
The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers is one of the best cartoons of the 80's and a very unique production (American written/produced/acted, animated in Japan) that was far more complex than anything else out at the time. Heck as a kid the "Scarecrow" episodes actually managed to creep me out. It is also one of the few shows where the good guys do not always win. Only lasted one season, but 65(!) episodes were produced for that season.
Probably the biggest problem with getting this series re-released in syndication or DVD is that it is almost impossible to describe the concept of the show without getting snickers or laughter.
Then again Cowboy BeBop showed that fairly literal merging of the Old Western and Sci-Fi can work rather well so maybe Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers has a chance at resurrection afterall.
Always amusing to bump into an old friend on Slash. But I must chastise you for getting a Slash nick so late. #454205? You will have to wait till you're 60 years old to moderate.;P
Ok I am thinking you are an old friend of mine as too many little bits seem the same (repeat GenCon attendee, friends moved to a southern state, TaliesinWI as a nick). As a test do these two MIDI Maze related things seem familiar?
I find it interesting that this got posted so near the C64 streaming audio story as there were a few mentions of M.U.L.E. in those threads.
Last time I played M.U.L.E. was about 4 years ago at the GenCon Game Fair in Milwaukee, WI (the RPG convention that TSR started); and it still holds up rather well. It may be simple, but it is a blast to play.
However the highlight games for Atari machines has to be MIDI Maze for the Atari ST. 16 player networked multiplayer first person shooter over the MIDI port. Basically you ran around a maze as a giant brightly colored smiley face and shot other smiley faces. Simple, but a lot of fun. I don't know if the are doing it anymore but the Milwaukee Atari club was maintaining a collection of Atari's just to run a MIDI Maze competition at GenCon almost every year.
If you go to GenCon see if you can hunt them down in the computer concourse.
16 player networked first person shooter (yes 16 player, played it that way at GenCon many a time, the Milwaukee Atari club usually runs an event there each year) on the Atari ST over the MIDI port. And I'll be damned if it isn't as much fun or more than modern FPS.
Some amusing notes from playing MIDI Maze, one guy always named himself "Says says" (the game always said, " [players name] says: I got you! " or some similar taunt when you were killed) which became irritating as he was rather good and often was the one that killed you. Then there was my friend Chris who put his real name in instead of a handle so you heard midway through the first level from the other end of the table "Chris! Chris! What kind of a name is Chris!?!"
Ah... the good ole VIC-20. I wish I still had mine. Unfortunately it had a dying power supply and my little sister somehow managed to remove it from its shelf in the basement and destroy it.
I still remember playing Adventure on it and having to use the 8k memory upgrade cart to play Quest from the tape drive (and you could go make and begin eating lunch while it loaded). It had a pretty good port of Gorf as well.
My introduction to the idea of programming ( I was a little kid when my father brought home a VIC) was on that beasty.
Almost as frustrating as losing the VIC was losing my Atari 2600. Not sure where that one went. Got lost in a move I think.
The transition from the wildly different and incompatible machines of the 80's to the fairly cross compatible machines of today is an interesting one. I'm curious as to what paths those of us growing up with personal computers in the 80's took to get to where we are today.
As hazily as I can remember it (which means dates could be fairly massively off) mine was:
1983 Commodore VIC-20
198? Atari VCS CX2600 (yeah not a PC but still a big part of my interest in computers in general)
1987 Xerox CP/M ( just like this beasty, we even had the 8 inch floppy drives and a daisy wheel printer that was so energetic that it shook the whole bloody house when it printed at its blazing page every few minutes rate)
1990 Zeos 386SX/16Mhz Notebook w/2MB RAM and a 20MB HDD
1993 486DX2/50Mhz Desktop w/4MB RAM, 212MB HDD and an Advanced Gravis Ultrasound. This system was still using the ironclad daisy wheel printer. Later upgraded to 12MB RAM and a CD-ROM was finally acquired in 1994 in order to play Wing Commander 3. The graphics card was upgraded to a Stealth 64 Video Card to play Descent in 1995. Lost the system to a power supply that decided to go live to the case and fry everything late 1995. This machine was also what I did my first 3D Studio work on. Nothing like waiting 5 minutes per window for the wireframe mesh to draw in.:)
1995 Zeos Pentium 90Mhz Tower w/16MB RAM, 500MB HDD and the Gravis salvaged from the 486. Stealth 64 PCI graphics card.
1997 Cannibalized the P90 to make a P150 w/32MB RAM, 800MB of HDD's, Advanced Gravis Ultrasound Pro. This system would be the first one to get a 3D Accelerator card, the original Diamond Monster Voodoo 3D and would end up at 48MB of RAM as well.
Of course the most odd thing about all these machines is with the exception of the old Atari console, every one of these systems has had a version of Adventure on it at one point in time.
Anyway, that's a roundabout way of saying that we can agree to disagree, but I wish the audiophiles would spend more time listening to the engineers and less time reading glossy magazines.
Actually I agree with just about every point you make. I don't have a problem with the technical description of the performance of a piece of equipment, nor do I find the fuzzy terminology used by many audiophiles to be offensive.
Maybe I represent a weird micro-segment of the market but personally I find both views informative. I do find slavish regurgitation of magazine reviews to be irritating no matter the topic. Especially since many of the magazines in the Audiophile scene are rife with inaccuracies and misleading "facts".
There is also a good deal of the classic "It's more expensive so it must be better" mentality out there. I do not need a $9000 pair of speakers to enjoy my music. But nor do I wish to have a $800 pair of consumer grade Bose speakers when I can get more sonically accurate Vandersteen's for about the same price (or for that matter pay half as much and have a pair of appealing Signet bookshelf units).
Still, as you so clearly demonstrated in your comment regarding your most memorable listening experience, music should ultimately be about the emotions and memories evoked by what you are listening to, not the hardware driving it. Any true music lover (audiophile or not) should appreciate that.
Just another audio engineer who's always willing to burst the bubble of a potential 'Audiophool'
There seems to be a great deal of animosity held by a fair number of electrical engineers towards the Audiophile world in general. It has gotten to the point where merely mentioning an interest in audiophile grade equipment can get you engaged in full scale flame wars. This gets tiresome fast.
Audiophiles are no more fools than electrical engineers are. Yes many manufacturers make patently absurd claims regarding how a particular component will improve the audio quality of your system, but that does not mean that there is nothing to be gained from some of the more expensive products (even cables) on the market.
The grandiose claims of the marketing for many of these products may be something to deride, but in many cases it is worth the added cost to get a better constructed piece of interconnect. Comments such as "But honestly, how often have you stepped on a cable going from the back of your CD player to your amplifier?" is like saying "seatbelts are great in an accident, but honestly how many times are you going to run into something with your car?". Most $2.00-$10.00 interconnect is built like crap. Yes Monster cable is way over priced (and not really wonderfully built when compared to other similarly priced cables like Audioquest) but the markup in the audio industry has been horrible since day one (typically a minimum of 60% margin on speakers and cabling). And even if you are buying cheap cables you are still being taken for the same ride. It's one of the reasons the audio industry is still fairly healthy while other portions of the electronics industry suffer.
Yes there are a fair number of wealthy people with no clue getting suckered by audio salesmen. However that no more invalidates the market than the number of poor misguided fools getting swindled by computer salesmen negates the high-end Gamer Rig.
From my experience much of the snippy reaction from engineers when it comes to audiophiles stems from the fact that audiophiles have a tendency of describing experiences with certain setups in emotional terms rather than analytical ones. You will hear things like "warm", "bright", "harsh", "muddy" and "crisp" because these feelings are often more effective at communicating what is a fairly complicated mixture of technical issues succinctly. Additionally audiophiles have different tastes. Some prefer the closest thing they can get to accurate sound reproduction. Some prefer the distorting effects of tube based amplifiers (and will pay $8000 for a tube amp that can float a piece of paper with only the thermal coming off of it). But this does not make them fools. If they could get the same components for a tenth the price they would. But they can't and to them having good connectors on extremely well built cables is worth the price differential. As is having speakers that won't melt with a few hundred watts being pushed to them. And speaker cables that won't break internally when someone yanks on them or stands on them (and no matter how you protect you things, be they computer, car, or stereo, if you have friends or family in your home the equipment is going to get abused at some point in time).
The point of this rambling rant (if I have not made it clear by now) is feel free to continue pointing out the fallacies in the marketing of certain materials, but do not denigrate a group of people simply because you do not share the same tastes.
Your technical responses are generally right on the money, Loren, but the snide comments are not necessary. And actually there is a fair bit of engineering that goes into interconnects and speaker cables (and certainly the receivers, amps, speakers, cd players, DVD players, turn tables, etc) that is very much there to solve certain problems specific to stereo systems.
Waits for the inevitable stream of grammar and spelling Nazis to descend gleefully on his post as they seek to prove that their own marginal adherence to the mostly archaic forms of the English language makes them superior.
Hrm. You know I still can't get passed the MPEG artifacting in DVD. On a 27" Sony from 6-8ft away the color shift and general messiness of semi-static scenes is very noticeable.
I mean, I'll be forced to buy DVD eventually, but for now I'll forgoe the "extra features" and stick with my higher quality picture Laser Disc's. (yes I know, DVD has 25 more lines vertical, but I'd rather have a slightly lower resolution picture that was sharp, than a muddled higher resolution picture) I'd rather have the LD Criterion of Ghostbusters than the DVD Special Edition. A lot of the same (good) material, missing some of the (rather pointless) extraneous data.
I guess I wouldn't have as many reservations about DVD if the idiotic recording industry had gone with the earlier proposed DVD standard which was to be Magneto Optical. A better-than-VHS-but-not-as-nice-as-LD format that was recordable would have kicked ass. Instead we have a format attempting (and admittedly succeeding) to occupy the same niche as Laser Disc. And it will be years before home DVD recorders will really be at all common, and even then (unless they change their plans) the format will be essentially DVD-R.
Then find another job. It's not you who should be irritated by them, it's they at you for doing what you do for such a piddling wage and bringing the pay average down. It is not immoral or disloyal to leave a place where you are underpaid and overworked.
Actually I'm in the process of doing exactly that (finding another job that is). And there are certain benefits to the position that I'm in, namely that I have a good deal of lattitude in my schedule and projects, and that as I currently work for a medical institution (a school actually, hence the lower than standard pay) I get absolutly amazing health/dental benefits.
As for job-switching...yes I am young(ish, 22) and forced to fight a little harder for work simply because I don't have a degree. Which, while understandable from the employers point of view, unfortunatly makes it supremely difficult to prove my abilities when I can't get my foot in the door. And even years of experience in various entry level tech positions and a year at an ISP weren't helping. Shiny big names work a lot better. Which is why (after a lot of that job-switching crap) I've wound up at my current job. The name (and a couple of years attached to it, along with glowing testimonials from my boss(es) ) should be enough to skip up to a more appropriate pay scale elsewhere.
Basically I've got a plan and am working on it. I was merely (in the original post) trying to point out some of the inherent imbalances in the modern corporate structure where-bye under skilled (but degreed) workers get paid a significantly higher amount for one hell of a lot less work. This kind of "look at all the pretty letters" mentallity is the same that causes the usage of flawed statistics to prove what you want them to, "Look I told you all these good for nothing coders were lazy, let's get rid of these three, save the company some money and give ourselves a raise."
I'm not being cynical. I see this kinda stuff every day.
Oh, and just to avoid potential flames; I'm not knocking higher schooling, just the complete morons that manage to make it through and clog the workplace.
Maybe you're making $25K because you CAN'T FREAKING SPELL!
Sheesh. That'll teach me to type and eat at the same time. I'm actually amused that there weren't more errors in my post. But who really cares how screwed up my english gets so long as my code is clean and functional and everyone's PC's are still running. I'm not writing grants here, I'm fixing PC's and keeping the network alive. Thanks for the slam though, nice to know someone out there is still decent enough to be an anal retentive moron. And while we're being petty and stupid, did you really mean to say, "Arrrrrggggggghhhh!!!!" 'cause that would sound rather wierd. Kinda like a person taking a short fall and then gurgling and hissing on the ground. Perhaps you meant, "Arrrrrrrgh!" And do extra exclamation points really make you louder? Lemme try, "Either get back to the subject or shut the hell up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Gee, that worked.
Two freakin' spelling errors and people jump all over your back. Ok, ok, the "decent/descent" error was italicised and therfore rather obvious, but once again...sheesh
Didn't we just go through this kind of idiotic misreporting and skewing of data with the NT/Linux benchmarks?
As some of the above posters have mentioned, number of LOC is an extremely foolish way to track programmer productivity. The fewer lines of code used to preform a task the better the end product will preform (generally). I mean if they really wanted just mass LOC why not have everyone slapping programs together with Delphi and we'll all have 6MB executables for our terminal emulators.
Besides, if you go to a descent school for CompSci, you should have the idea of less is more drilled into your skull. I dunno it just irrtates me that someone who manages 3-4 Access DB's (little one's with maybe 3 users and a couple thousand pieces of data) gets paid $60K-$120K a year while I'm building a PHP/MySQL backend for 20-30 different DB's in my spare time between trouble shooting the main IS dept's networking f*ckups AND dealing with all the user issues, for a whopping $25K per year. It's this same unbalanced kind of crap that can cause sloppy coders (who generate more LOC) to be promoted/given raises over the more effiecient ones. Heck that's one of the reasons that we're losing the only good people in our main IS dept. The MIS higher ups are making idiotic Dilbert-esque demands on the IS folks and the talented ones are getting so frustrated that they're leaving. Which means that the IS dept is gutted and people such as myself (in another dept.'s IS) wind up having to pickup the slack and double/triple our workload. Meanwhile management hires consultants at $130-$300/hour to do crap like setup new PC's. And the crowning jewel? The consultants screwup constantly and I wind up having to drop everything and go do it right. *rant* *rant*
ip voting won't work for/. users who use a real multi user operating system that has multipul users Or the thousands who get assigned dynamic IP's. I've found that virtually any IP based logging is useless unless your doing something like trying to narrow down the location of a particular spammer.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. This is something I became aware of many years ago... ...after the 2600 had disappeared into the void of basement storage.
About the time I was purchasing them I remember them being around $40. Which was still pretty big bank for a little kid. And yes a huge pile of change.
A quick check of Google shows that the 2600 systems ran $200-$300 new and titles were $30-$50.
One other tidbit.
:)
If you happen to own the Evil Dead "Book of the Dead Edition" DVD go to the extras and watch Bruce Campbell's highly amusing Fanalysis.
The segment in which Bruce walks along a line of movie viewers signing is outside the Alamo Drafthouse South.
The crazed drunken fans he is wearing his "hide the spilled beer" shirt for are that same group.
The interior shot of people sitting behind wood faced freestanding bar table type arrangements is the inside.
The end of the little documentary is shot from inside the ticket booth as Bruce talks to a girl who thinks people that like Evil Dead are idiots and has no idea who she is talking to.
This sounds as though you are referring to the Alamo Drafthouse South (original), not the North.
North has bigger screens and while not perfect audio quality at least it has some sound deadening to kill echoes.
South is like watching a movie in a high school cafeteria. South plays second run features, cult classics, and does special events frequently.
North has 4 screens while South has only 1. North plays 1st run movies and mostly big name movies while occasionally running special events. This may change as Alamo North's indie feature competition in North Austin, The Arbor 7 (a Regal Cinemas property), has been forced out of its yuppie strip mall location (in favor of a Cheesecake Factory). And since the seating and presentation are significantly better than South it is likely that more of the specials will move to North.
Somewhere lost in boxes in my parents' basement for the last 10 years (since the transformer broke) is my 2600 and a paper shopping pag full of games that I had purchased over the years. Since my folks just moved recently maybe they will find it once more.
:(
I miss my Atari.
I also miss the look on the faces of sales people when as a kid in the 80's I'd buy a game for my 2600 using an assortment of nickels, pennies, and dimes.
The allowance of months for a Combat cartridge!
:)
Ok some adiitional info about the Alamo Drafthouse.
Orders are taken before the show and during previews.
Staff are very quiet and make as little noise or visual (crouching once the feature presentation has started) distraction as possible.
One of the theater created bumpers before the show is a clip from the 80's version of "The Blob" where a noisy movie patron is blabbing in a normal conversation tone about what is happening on the screen and gets consumed by the blob. At which point giant block letters come on the screen to inform the Drafthouse crowd that if you talk during the the presentaion, "We'll kick your ass out."
The wireless access is very cool for the drafthouse type crowd that typically arrives 30 minutes to an hour before the showing to get their seats and order and wants something to do while waiting for the movie.
People like the guy that was acting all annoyed about being told to close his notebook are just as bad as the people that feel they have the right to leave their phones on audible ring and talk in loud voices like the theater was their own personal living room. Wireless access does not equate to the right to do whatever you want.
As a movie-aholic that frequents the Alamo Drafthouse among many of the other theaters in Austin there are times when I totally feel like this Real Life comicstrip.
If you can't have basic respect for other people trying to watch the movie stay home, please.
I believe this is the card. It worked in both the home system and the Neo Geo MVS Cabinets (basically the home system in an arcade cabinet).
Yes this correct. The Arcade systems had slots under the joystick table for a card where you could store profiles and stats. If I remember correctly the cards were around $150 when new.
:)
One of my friends was still using his a few years ago. If he is lurking I am sure TaliesinWI will provide more information.
HELL YEAH!
The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers is one of the best cartoons of the 80's and a very unique production (American written/produced/acted, animated in Japan) that was far more complex than anything else out at the time. Heck as a kid the "Scarecrow" episodes actually managed to creep me out. It is also one of the few shows where the good guys do not always win. Only lasted one season, but 65(!) episodes were produced for that season.
Probably the biggest problem with getting this series re-released in syndication or DVD is that it is almost impossible to describe the concept of the show without getting snickers or laughter.
Then again Cowboy BeBop showed that fairly literal merging of the Old Western and Sci-Fi can work rather well so maybe Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers has a chance at resurrection afterall.
ROFLMAO
;P
It IS you.
heh
Always amusing to bump into an old friend on Slash. But I must chastise you for getting a Slash nick so late. #454205? You will have to wait till you're 60 years old to moderate.
Also of note is many large scale climate changes are the result of plate tectonics and the volcanic eruptions they cause.
The ash and gas spewed into the sky by some of the larger eruptions on their own has been enough to shift temperatures worldwide temporarily.
*stares suspiciously at your nick*
Ok I am thinking you are an old friend of mine as too many little bits seem the same (repeat GenCon attendee, friends moved to a southern state, TaliesinWI as a nick). As a test do these two MIDI Maze related things seem familiar?
"Says says says:"
or
"Chris!? Chris!? What kind of a name is Chris!?!"
I find it interesting that this got posted so near the C64 streaming audio story as there were a few mentions of M.U.L.E. in those threads.
Last time I played M.U.L.E. was about 4 years ago at the GenCon Game Fair in Milwaukee, WI (the RPG convention that TSR started); and it still holds up rather well. It may be simple, but it is a blast to play.
However the highlight games for Atari machines has to be MIDI Maze for the Atari ST. 16 player networked multiplayer first person shooter over the MIDI port. Basically you ran around a maze as a giant brightly colored smiley face and shot other smiley faces. Simple, but a lot of fun. I don't know if the are doing it anymore but the Milwaukee Atari club was maintaining a collection of Atari's just to run a MIDI Maze competition at GenCon almost every year.
If you go to GenCon see if you can hunt them down in the computer concourse.
M.U.L.E. nothing.
How about MIDI Maze?
16 player networked first person shooter (yes 16 player, played it that way at GenCon many a time, the Milwaukee Atari club usually runs an event there each year) on the Atari ST over the MIDI port. And I'll be damned if it isn't as much fun or more than modern FPS.
Some amusing notes from playing MIDI Maze, one guy always named himself "Says says" (the game always said, " [players name] says: I got you! " or some similar taunt when you were killed) which became irritating as he was rather good and often was the one that killed you. Then there was my friend Chris who put his real name in instead of a handle so you heard midway through the first level from the other end of the table "Chris! Chris! What kind of a name is Chris!?!"
Ah... the good ole VIC-20. I wish I still had mine. Unfortunately it had a dying power supply and my little sister somehow managed to remove it from its shelf in the basement and destroy it.
:)
I still remember playing Adventure on it and having to use the 8k memory upgrade cart to play Quest from the tape drive (and you could go make and begin eating lunch while it loaded). It had a pretty good port of Gorf as well.
My introduction to the idea of programming ( I was a little kid when my father brought home a VIC) was on that beasty.
Almost as frustrating as losing the VIC was losing my Atari 2600. Not sure where that one went. Got lost in a move I think.
The transition from the wildly different and incompatible machines of the 80's to the fairly cross compatible machines of today is an interesting one. I'm curious as to what paths those of us growing up with personal computers in the 80's took to get to where we are today.
As hazily as I can remember it (which means dates could be fairly massively off) mine was:
1983 Commodore VIC-20
198? Atari VCS CX2600 (yeah not a PC but still a big part of my interest in computers in general)
1987 Xerox CP/M ( just like this beasty, we even had the 8 inch floppy drives and a daisy wheel printer that was so energetic that it shook the whole bloody house when it printed at its blazing page every few minutes rate)
1990 Zeos 386SX/16Mhz Notebook w/2MB RAM and a 20MB HDD
1993 486DX2/50Mhz Desktop w/4MB RAM, 212MB HDD and an Advanced Gravis Ultrasound. This system was still using the ironclad daisy wheel printer. Later upgraded to 12MB RAM and a CD-ROM was finally acquired in 1994 in order to play Wing Commander 3. The graphics card was upgraded to a Stealth 64 Video Card to play Descent in 1995. Lost the system to a power supply that decided to go live to the case and fry everything late 1995. This machine was also what I did my first 3D Studio work on. Nothing like waiting 5 minutes per window for the wireframe mesh to draw in.
1995 Zeos Pentium 90Mhz Tower w/16MB RAM, 500MB HDD and the Gravis salvaged from the 486. Stealth 64 PCI graphics card.
1997 Cannibalized the P90 to make a P150 w/32MB RAM, 800MB of HDD's, Advanced Gravis Ultrasound Pro. This system would be the first one to get a 3D Accelerator card, the original Diamond Monster Voodoo 3D and would end up at 48MB of RAM as well.
2001 Athlon 1.2Ghz w/512MB RAM, 30GB HDD, Geforce 3 AGP Reference Card - Primary Display, Geforce 2 MX PCI secondary display, SB Live!, 8X SCSI CD-R (leftover part), DVD-ROM, etc.
Of course the most odd thing about all these machines is with the exception of the old Atari console, every one of these systems has had a version of Adventure on it at one point in time.
More like "total protonic reversal" bad.
"Egon this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole through your head."
"That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me."
Anyway, that's a roundabout way of saying that we can agree to disagree, but I wish the audiophiles would spend more time listening to the engineers and less time reading glossy magazines.
Actually I agree with just about every point you make. I don't have a problem with the technical description of the performance of a piece of equipment, nor do I find the fuzzy terminology used by many audiophiles to be offensive.
Maybe I represent a weird micro-segment of the market but personally I find both views informative. I do find slavish regurgitation of magazine reviews to be irritating no matter the topic. Especially since many of the magazines in the Audiophile scene are rife with inaccuracies and misleading "facts".
There is also a good deal of the classic "It's more expensive so it must be better" mentality out there. I do not need a $9000 pair of speakers to enjoy my music. But nor do I wish to have a $800 pair of consumer grade Bose speakers when I can get more sonically accurate Vandersteen's for about the same price (or for that matter pay half as much and have a pair of appealing Signet bookshelf units).
Still, as you so clearly demonstrated in your comment regarding your most memorable listening experience, music should ultimately be about the emotions and memories evoked by what you are listening to, not the hardware driving it. Any true music lover (audiophile or not) should appreciate that.
Just another audio engineer who's always willing to burst the bubble of a potential 'Audiophool'
There seems to be a great deal of animosity held by a fair number of electrical engineers towards the Audiophile world in general. It has gotten to the point where merely mentioning an interest in audiophile grade equipment can get you engaged in full scale flame wars. This gets tiresome fast.
Audiophiles are no more fools than electrical engineers are. Yes many manufacturers make patently absurd claims regarding how a particular component will improve the audio quality of your system, but that does not mean that there is nothing to be gained from some of the more expensive products (even cables) on the market. The grandiose claims of the marketing for many of these products may be something to deride, but in many cases it is worth the added cost to get a better constructed piece of interconnect. Comments such as "But honestly, how often have you stepped on a cable going from the back of your CD player to your amplifier?" is like saying "seatbelts are great in an accident, but honestly how many times are you going to run into something with your car?". Most $2.00-$10.00 interconnect is built like crap. Yes Monster cable is way over priced (and not really wonderfully built when compared to other similarly priced cables like Audioquest) but the markup in the audio industry has been horrible since day one (typically a minimum of 60% margin on speakers and cabling). And even if you are buying cheap cables you are still being taken for the same ride. It's one of the reasons the audio industry is still fairly healthy while other portions of the electronics industry suffer.
Yes there are a fair number of wealthy people with no clue getting suckered by audio salesmen. However that no more invalidates the market than the number of poor misguided fools getting swindled by computer salesmen negates the high-end Gamer Rig.
From my experience much of the snippy reaction from engineers when it comes to audiophiles stems from the fact that audiophiles have a tendency of describing experiences with certain setups in emotional terms rather than analytical ones. You will hear things like "warm", "bright", "harsh", "muddy" and "crisp" because these feelings are often more effective at communicating what is a fairly complicated mixture of technical issues succinctly. Additionally audiophiles have different tastes. Some prefer the closest thing they can get to accurate sound reproduction. Some prefer the distorting effects of tube based amplifiers (and will pay $8000 for a tube amp that can float a piece of paper with only the thermal coming off of it). But this does not make them fools. If they could get the same components for a tenth the price they would. But they can't and to them having good connectors on extremely well built cables is worth the price differential. As is having speakers that won't melt with a few hundred watts being pushed to them. And speaker cables that won't break internally when someone yanks on them or stands on them (and no matter how you protect you things, be they computer, car, or stereo, if you have friends or family in your home the equipment is going to get abused at some point in time).
The point of this rambling rant (if I have not made it clear by now) is feel free to continue pointing out the fallacies in the marketing of certain materials, but do not denigrate a group of people simply because you do not share the same tastes.
Your technical responses are generally right on the money, Loren, but the snide comments are not necessary. And actually there is a fair bit of engineering that goes into interconnects and speaker cables (and certainly the receivers, amps, speakers, cd players, DVD players, turn tables, etc) that is very much there to solve certain problems specific to stereo systems.
Waits for the inevitable stream of grammar and spelling Nazis to descend gleefully on his post as they seek to prove that their own marginal adherence to the mostly archaic forms of the English language makes them superior.
Hrm. You know I still can't get passed the MPEG artifacting in DVD. On a 27" Sony from 6-8ft away the color shift and general messiness of semi-static scenes is very noticeable.
I mean, I'll be forced to buy DVD eventually, but for now I'll forgoe the "extra features" and stick with my higher quality picture Laser Disc's. (yes I know, DVD has 25 more lines vertical, but I'd rather have a slightly lower resolution picture that was sharp, than a muddled higher resolution picture) I'd rather have the LD Criterion of Ghostbusters than the DVD Special Edition. A lot of the same (good) material, missing some of the (rather pointless) extraneous data.
I guess I wouldn't have as many reservations about DVD if the idiotic recording industry had gone with the earlier proposed DVD standard which was to be Magneto Optical. A better-than-VHS-but-not-as-nice-as-LD format that was recordable would have kicked ass. Instead we have a format attempting (and admittedly succeeding) to occupy the same niche as Laser Disc. And it will be years before home DVD recorders will really be at all common, and even then (unless they change their plans) the format will be essentially DVD-R.
Oh well. GB rocks. DVD disappoints me.
Then find another job. It's not you who should be irritated by them, it's they at you for doing what you do for such a piddling wage and bringing the pay average down. It is not immoral or disloyal to leave a place where you are underpaid and overworked.
Actually I'm in the process of doing exactly that (finding another job that is). And there are certain benefits to the position that I'm in, namely that I have a good deal of lattitude in my schedule and projects, and that as I currently work for a medical institution (a school actually, hence the lower than standard pay) I get absolutly amazing health/dental benefits.
As for job-switching...yes I am young(ish, 22) and forced to fight a little harder for work simply because I don't have a degree. Which, while understandable from the employers point of view, unfortunatly makes it supremely difficult to prove my abilities when I can't get my foot in the door. And even years of experience in various entry level tech positions and a year at an ISP weren't helping. Shiny big names work a lot better. Which is why (after a lot of that job-switching crap) I've wound up at my current job. The name (and a couple of years attached to it, along with glowing testimonials from my boss(es) ) should be enough to skip up to a more appropriate pay scale elsewhere.
Basically I've got a plan and am working on it. I was merely (in the original post) trying to point out some of the inherent imbalances in the modern corporate structure where-bye under skilled (but degreed) workers get paid a significantly higher amount for one hell of a lot less work. This kind of "look at all the pretty letters" mentallity is the same that causes the usage of flawed statistics to prove what you want them to, "Look I told you all these good for nothing coders were lazy, let's get rid of these three, save the company some money and give ourselves a raise."
I'm not being cynical. I see this kinda stuff every day.
Oh, and just to avoid potential flames; I'm not knocking higher schooling, just the complete morons that manage to make it through and clog the workplace.
Damnit. Typo.
...was italicised and therfore rather...
Should be: therefore
*sigh*
Maybe you're making $25K because you CAN'T FREAKING SPELL!
Sheesh. That'll teach me to type and eat at the same time. I'm actually amused that there weren't more errors in my post. But who really cares how screwed up my english gets so long as my code is clean and functional and everyone's PC's are still running. I'm not writing grants here, I'm fixing PC's and keeping the network alive. Thanks for the slam though, nice to know someone out there is still decent enough to be an anal retentive moron. And while we're being petty and stupid, did you really mean to say, "Arrrrrggggggghhhh!!!!" 'cause that would sound rather wierd. Kinda like a person taking a short fall and then gurgling and hissing on the ground. Perhaps you meant, "Arrrrrrrgh!" And do extra exclamation points really make you louder? Lemme try, "Either get back to the subject or shut the hell up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Gee, that worked.
Two freakin' spelling errors and people jump all over your back. Ok, ok, the "decent/descent" error was italicised and therfore rather obvious, but once again...sheesh
Didn't we just go through this kind of idiotic misreporting and skewing of data with the NT/Linux benchmarks?
As some of the above posters have mentioned, number of LOC is an extremely foolish way to track programmer productivity. The fewer lines of code used to preform a task the better the end product will preform (generally). I mean if they really wanted just mass LOC why not have everyone slapping programs together with Delphi and we'll all have 6MB executables for our terminal emulators.
Besides, if you go to a descent school for CompSci, you should have the idea of less is more drilled into your skull. I dunno it just irrtates me that someone who manages 3-4 Access DB's (little one's with maybe 3 users and a couple thousand pieces of data) gets paid $60K-$120K a year while I'm building a PHP/MySQL backend for 20-30 different DB's in my spare time between trouble shooting the main IS dept's networking f*ckups AND dealing with all the user issues, for a whopping $25K per year. It's this same unbalanced kind of crap that can cause sloppy coders (who generate more LOC) to be promoted/given raises over the more effiecient ones. Heck that's one of the reasons that we're losing the only good people in our main IS dept. The MIS higher ups are making idiotic Dilbert-esque demands on the IS folks and the talented ones are getting so frustrated that they're leaving. Which means that the IS dept is gutted and people such as myself (in another dept.'s IS) wind up having to pickup the slack and double/triple our workload. Meanwhile management hires consultants at $130-$300/hour to do crap like setup new PC's. And the crowning jewel? The consultants screwup constantly and I wind up having to drop everything and go do it right.
*rant* *rant*
ip voting won't work for /. users who use a real multi user operating system that has multipul users Or the thousands who get assigned dynamic IP's. I've found that virtually any IP based logging is useless unless your doing something like trying to narrow down the location of a particular spammer.