All applications that our kids use will only work on Windows. Office is the "standard" that they all get taught (yes, I've put OpenOffice on - without teachers wanting to use it, Office is the only thing used). The educational applications that they use every day will only run on Windows (and some maybe on OSX, but we're not rich enough to afford Macs, I'm afraid.)
Ahem. This UK school seems to be very satisfied with its all GNU/Linux set-up, which saved them enough money to take on a new ICT teacher.
As for the "New Bugs for Old" thing, we really don't see it that way. Sure there will be some minor bugs with the OS, but the switch would force us into using a lot of web-based software, which is what we want. That essentially removes our software-related bugs.
Of course a thin client GNU/Linux set-up would also help push you to web-based curriculum software, with the added benefit of all the flexibility that Free Software brings.
However that would save taxpayers' money, resulting in a reduced departmental budget, and we know managers don't like that sort of thing:-/
Can you recommend a place to learn about classical music? At the beginner level. I listen but don't know anything else?
Thirty years ago it was easy: the first Vienese school (the three
"great" classical composers - Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven), plus a little Schubert, followed by the romantic repotoire of Schumann, Brahms and Tchaikovsky.
Nowadays Classical music embraces an amazing soundworld of medieval vocal and instrumental music, right through to very accessible contemporary composers like Tavener, via more music than we have space hear to discuss. It makes it harder to get started, but means there are more rewards for the adventurous.
How to get started? Read books of reviews, or buy magazines, and use them as a guide. Then buy one or two records that are similar to what you know you like to each one you buy that is totally new. Some new ones you'll hate, some you'll love, but you'l know more about what you like:-)
Random recommendations? Klemperer's recording of Mahler's second symphony, Mitsuko Uchida's Mozart Piano Sonatas, download the BBC Beethoven symphonies, try some Tudor music - not just Thomas Tallis, start with Tye.
Hey, me too - even though it was on late at night - eventually at something like three in the morning - in the UK, and I had to work at 7am, I persisted with it. I was always sure it wasn't as bad as it sounded when you tried to describe it to someone else;-)
- Derwen
Posted by michael on 03:59 AM -- Monday September 29 2003
from the back-in-my-day-we-used-ed-and-we-liked-it dept.
fl4m3-0n writes "With the advent of WPs like OOo Write, old-fashioned text-oriented, non-WYSIWYG editors may seem kind of antiquated. Nevertheless, I've been looking around for a good, free (e.g. not Hancom Office, etc.) Text Editor that I can use on Windows and/or UNIX. Any ideas?"
Why is Gnucash unpopular? Because 3 out of every 4 people I've talked with who've wanted to try it couldn't satisfy the dependencies for their distribution (most of these people aren't newbies to Linux either.)
# apt-get install gnucash gnucash-docs
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
guile-1.6 guile-1.6-libs guile-1.6-slib libdate-manip-perl libfinance-quote-perl libguile-ltdl-1 libguppi16
libgwrapguile1 libhtml-tableextract-perl libofx0c102 libosp3c102 libqthreads-12 libzvt2 slib
Suggested packages:
gnucash-sql gnucash guile-1.6-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gnucash gnucash-docs guile-1.6 guile-1.6-libs guile-1.6-slib libdate-manip-perl libfinance-quote-perl
libguile-ltdl-1 libguppi16 libgwrapguile1 libhtml-tableextract-perl libofx0c102 libosp3c102 libqthreads-12
libzvt2 slib
0 packages upgraded, 16 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 8962kB of archives.
After unpacking 30.9MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
[snip]
But... where is the simple programming language? I mean, I could make a stupid game in 10 lines of C64 BASIC. I don't want to have to work in C/C++ to do this today, or I'd just stick to a PC.
From the FAQ:
Q:
How much knowledge of engineering and programming do I need?
A:
No knowledge of electronics or engineering is necessary, but you will need a working knowledge of the C/C++ programming languages to get the full impact. However, those familiar with BASIC alone will be able to develop for it as well. In other words, XGameStation offers something for users of all skill levels!
Why is no-one producing no-contact turntables with semiconductor lasers? Is it just that vinyl is too small a market now?
Finial used to do one, but it now seems to have been bought up by a Japanese company, and is
still available.
I just found an interesting page on it here.
Interestingly gramophone technology has made its way into CD transports - see here and here.
- Derwen
... in fact, it's probably the noise in the recording that helps. Some of the noise that is maybe removed or lost in recordings is breathing sounds and natural air movement, and also just plain hiss can add to a recording of stringed instruments by interacting with the harmonics and all that
That sounds plausible, if not acceptable;-)
All I know is that to my (average) ears, vinyl sounds better than 16-bit CD, where 'better' equates to sounding like being in a concert hall or a room with a bunch of instruments.
I accept that this may not be relevant for electric instruments - and certainly has no relevance to portable music (that's another debate, for those who've owned a Sony WMD6C;^).
I have no axe to grind on behalf of vinyl - I gave up hoping the CD would go away long ago;-/
Well, yeah, I do go a little overboard for my favorite bands. I just love the packaging as well as the music, really.
It's funny how over and above the music itself, the LP gave an ideal 'package' - with its covers, sleeve notes and booklets, that people now miss as much as the sound. The CD-sized booklets that feature the libretto in 4 different languages per view that come with discs now are depressing to behold and a pain to use:-(
Besides, there comes a point where you're buying enough copies of the genuine album that you absolutely refuse to feel guilty about having the odd live bootleg as well. They get enough of my cash off the proper releases to be able to cope with me occasionally owning things they don't want to release properly as well.
Sorry, you're far to well-balanced and sensible to be on/.;-P
A lot of the "warmth" that supposed audiophiles go on about is probably "rumble" anyway (that is, the 50 or 60Hz drone that comes from the platter's electric motor and is passed to the needle, and other artifacts created by the rotation of the record in slightly less than perfect circles, etc).
This wouldn't produce 'warmth', but pitch variation:o(
The best thing about good analogue recordings is the 'air' around the instruments. The soi-disant clean sound of solo string instruments on many CDs bears little resemblance to the sound of a real instrument in a real space.
...although I do have solid state electronics in the system... which old wind up 78rpm players didn't have. I bet some people claimed they sounded better than the newer 33rpm records with electric motors and all that, too.
It is unlikely that such a claim would be made. However early 78s benefit from predating the adoption of microphones (circa 1927?) - and voice recordings of this era certainly benefit, as you can hear on the CD rereleases;-P
- Derwen
The new Blur just had to be bought in the lovely book CD, normal CD for the other artwork and the gatefold double vinyl as well for instance, and I'll end up with every format that the new Radiohead comes out in too.
Yeah, but did you hear the ripped mp3? You can barely tell what it is.
Back before CDs came along, a UK childrens TV programme (Blue Peter) had on a guest who could
'read' the music between the grooves.
The presenters handed him a bunch of LPs (with the labels covered) and he proceded to correctly hum or sing all of the tunes on them.
Try doing that with your HD full of MP3s;-P
Some suggested defining the meter as the length of a pendulum having a half-period of one second; others suggested defining the meter as one ten-millionth of the length of the earth's meridian along a quadrant (one fourth the circumference of the earth). In 1791, soon after the French Revolution, the French Academy of Sciences chose the meridian definition over the pendulum definition because the force of gravity varies slightly over the surface of the earth, affecting the period of the pendulum.
"And so in June 1792, just as the Terror was beginning to crank into its dreadful gear, two eminent French astronomers set out in opposite directions from Paris. Their aim was to measure the distance of the meridian arc between Dunkirk and Barcelona: once obtained, this distance would be divided by 10 million to give a definitive and utterly impartial length for the new metre. Pierre Méchain travelled south to Barcelona, while Jean-Baptiste Delambre went north to Dunkirk. The savants were to work towards each other, reunite in the middle of France, do their sums and present the revolutionary government with the most classless unit of measurement conceivable. The whole business was to take them no more than a year."
But of course it went wrong:
"Somewhere near Barcelona, at the very start of his triangulations, Méchain made a small error of computation. Once this error had entered his system, it was impossible to eradicate it. For years the knowledge of this error haunted Méchain - the thought that he alone had managed to falsify what was intended to become 'the fundamental scientific value, the measure which would for ever more serve as the foundation for all scientific and commercial exchange'. In 1804, suffering from acute depression apparently brought on by guilt, Méchain returned to the Valencian coast to try to atone for his error. There he caught malaria and died."
Read more in The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey that Transformed the World
by Ken Adler
- Derwen
no, 12 bit is best for the BRITISH patriot. Bring back the good old imperial measurements...It's only the EU making us use the french system.
Napoleon introduced the metric system to Europe to replace the French imperial system. Nevertheless you will still find fruit sold by the pound in parts of rural France.:-)
- Derwen
Americans use sensible systems like 14 pounds (abbreviated sensibly to lbs as pounds clearly contains the letter l)
the "Lb" is short for Libra (Latin for pound), the same reason that the pound sign for British currency is a fancy L (crossed with one or two lines).
- Derwen
Slashdot Mirror
There's a direct petition to the Prime Minister at the number 10 website: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/End-of-privacy/
Ahem. This UK school seems to be very satisfied with its all GNU/Linux set-up, which saved them enough money to take on a new ICT teacher.
Of course a thin client GNU/Linux set-up would also help push you to web-based curriculum software, with the added benefit of all the flexibility that Free Software brings.
However that would save taxpayers' money, resulting in a reduced departmental budget, and we know managers don't like that sort of thing :-/
Thirty years ago it was easy: the first Vienese school (the three "great" classical composers - Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven), plus a little Schubert, followed by the romantic repotoire of Schumann, Brahms and Tchaikovsky.
Nowadays Classical music embraces an amazing soundworld of medieval vocal and instrumental music, right through to very accessible contemporary composers like Tavener, via more music than we have space hear to discuss. It makes it harder to get started, but means there are more rewards for the adventurous.
How to get started? Read books of reviews, or buy magazines, and use them as a guide. Then buy one or two records that are similar to what you know you like to each one you buy that is totally new. Some new ones you'll hate, some you'll love, but you'l know more about what you like :-)
Random recommendations? Klemperer's recording of Mahler's second symphony, Mitsuko Uchida's Mozart Piano Sonatas, download the BBC Beethoven symphonies, try some Tudor music - not just Thomas Tallis, start with Tye.
- Derwen
- Derwen
Laden or unladen?
fl4m3-0n writes "With the advent of WPs like OOo Write, old-fashioned text-oriented, non-WYSIWYG editors may seem kind of antiquated. Nevertheless, I've been looking around for a good, free (e.g. not Hancom Office, etc.) Text Editor that I can use on Windows and/or UNIX. Any ideas?"
Simple
- Derwen
Q:
How much knowledge of engineering and programming do I need?
A: No knowledge of electronics or engineering is necessary, but you will need a working knowledge of the C/C++ programming languages to get the full impact. However, those familiar with BASIC alone will be able to develop for it as well. In other words, XGameStation offers something for users of all skill levels!
- Derwen
All I know is that to my (average) ears, vinyl sounds better than 16-bit CD, where 'better' equates to sounding like being in a concert hall or a room with a bunch of instruments.
I accept that this may not be relevant for electric instruments - and certainly has no relevance to portable music (that's another debate, for those who've owned a Sony WMD6C
I have no axe to grind on behalf of vinyl - I gave up hoping the CD would go away long ago
- Derwen
- Derwen
The best thing about good analogue recordings is the 'air' around the instruments. The soi-disant clean sound of solo string instruments on many CDs bears little resemblance to the sound of a real instrument in a real space. It is unlikely that such a claim would be made. However early 78s benefit from predating the adoption of microphones (circa 1927?) - and voice recordings of this era certainly benefit, as you can hear on the CD rereleases
- Derwen
Back before CDs came along, a UK childrens TV programme (Blue Peter) had on a guest who could 'read' the music between the grooves.
The presenters handed him a bunch of LPs (with the labels covered) and he proceded to correctly hum or sing all of the tunes on them.
Try doing that with your HD full of MP3s
- Derwen
- Derwen (a Welsh scouser)
- Derwen
If they'd picked JSB, then 48 would have been much easier
- Derwen
But of course it went wrong:
"Somewhere near Barcelona, at the very start of his triangulations, Méchain made a small error of computation. Once this error had entered his system, it was impossible to eradicate it. For years the knowledge of this error haunted Méchain - the thought that he alone had managed to falsify what was intended to become 'the fundamental scientific value, the measure which would for ever more serve as the foundation for all scientific and commercial exchange'. In 1804, suffering from acute depression apparently brought on by guilt, Méchain returned to the Valencian coast to try to atone for his error. There he caught malaria and died."
Read more in The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey that Transformed the World by Ken Adler
- Derwen
- Derwen
- Derwen
http://www.storever.com/product/openbrick/openbri
- Derwen
Get on down to your local comic store.