But still, wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to use something a bit more modern to emulate that Commodore
Sure you can emulate it, but you miss so much by simple emulation. The most hailed feature of the C64 was the sid chip (it's still used by some techo artists to make effects)
It all comes down to timing, when you emulate you are forced to the timing of the host system. Emulated sound NEVER sounds as good as the real thing.
I was on the other side of the fence back in the 8-bit days(atari user), we used to call commodore users "Commode Door" users, but I can still relate to them when it comes to sound reproduction. You just cannot get that vintage computer sound without the real thing.
1. Fundamentally, starting from the playback side, the disc consists of data layer 1 (the first layer as played back by the DVD player), backed by a semi-reflective metallic coating (often gold)
OOOOOhhh! I read on slash a while back about people in 3rd world countries pouring acid on the electronic junk we send over there for gold.
Now i'm trying to think of a chemical that could melt a DVD, Anyone? I'd guess turpintine or paint thinner could do it. Jasco definetly could melt it (when I was 5 I ruined our plastic vacuum cleaner by pourin jasco on it)
So you could have like a 1000 of those suckers mailed round to you easily. Make a few phone calls posing as a screwdriver shop (Oh yes, my customers like AOL!)
Now take these 1000 or so AOL DVD's, and put them in a stainless steel container, add in turpintine, jasco, whatever and let it melt.
Hopefull if you can use a thin enough solvent it will be enough for the gold particles to float down to the bottom, drain off the top and you got instant gold.
In this fucked economic downturn i'll cook up all kinds of crazy idea's like this to make a buck.
Heh, funny dude, I just got done watching a VCD of biozombie. I guess you can really only get why the joke is so funny if you watch the movie, but it's got two guys working in a bootleg VCD shop in some Japanese mall (japan i think cause they show a big map of it in the beginning) . A customer walks in and the dialog goes like this.
Customer:Hey there's something wrong with this VCD I wanna return it.
Woody Invincable: Lemme see that! (grabs vcd and puts down game gun controller)
Customer: See you can't even see steven chou's face!
Crazy B: This is very good cinamatography by a very famous director!
Customer: I think these are bootlegs!
(Crazy B and woody invincable jump over the counter and hold their sega dreamcast light guns up to the customers head)
Crazy B: WHAT WHAT ARE YOU THREATENING US BOY?
Woody Invincable: Take any 3 porno's and get the hell outta here, don't come back or we'll kick your ass!
Unionizing the IT sector is the FASTEST way to make companies send these jobs overseas.
I disagree with your post on several levels.
If we formed a union, who will the PHB's have to interface with the outsourced labor? What if tomorrow, all the remaining american english speaking developers said, "Screw you, I'm not going through another line of (insert favorite outsouced country here) produced code till you hire some help.
Basically their development would come to a grinding halt, they would begin to lose money. Although they COULD hire someone to replace them it's unlikely, because it takes at least 3 months to get anyone up to speed on any project.
Now i've bitched that IT workers should have formed a union YEARS before any of this shit went down. I've heard various aruments (Oh you make too much money to be in a union, ect) but don't doctors have to pay yearly dues to belong to a medical board? Don't lawers have to pay state bar fee's? Don't the CEO's and rich fuckers at the top have to pay to belong to a golf course / country club to rub elbows with their fellow fat cats?
Thing is, the people at the top already have a union of sorts, it's very exclusive and the only way you can join is if you have a shitton of money. Why shouldn't IT workers do the same and put those fuckers in their places?
Bottom line is, you can go to school as long as you want, but if you have no bargining power to keep that job, your degree is useless.
Yeah times are tough right now, despite being out of work 2 years (due in part because I live in the hardest hit IT sector in the world, Silicon Valley) I still try. It's not IT's fault that you lost your heart in the work.
2 years not makin that dot com salary, yeah I moan and bitch all the time. Would I ever tell someone *not* to go into IT? Hell no! Several reasons why. After 8 years of dealing with dickheads at a thankless job i'm taking what I learned off them and applying it to a new business. Guess what? Me and 2 other buddies are opening a gamehouse! That's right, after 8 years, buying a house, and building my credit, I finally have enough to get out and make it without some shithead whining about the same shit breaking everyday because he won't let you upgrade his laptop. (Waaa I want all my programs and e-mail the same if you put me from 95 to XP WAAAAAA!)
Now i'll be the first one to admit that it's a pretty thankless job, but the wealth of experience you get if you're smart enough you can apply to your own business, be your own boss, get out. I've gone from a salary of 87k down to 20k@year. I kept my mortgage paid by not eating, building equity in my home.
So i'm done playing with the dumbasses at work, sorry folks, I know coders and IT ppl hang out here, but you have to admit EVERYONE ELSE IN YOUR COMPANY IS DAMN NEAR COMPUTER ILLITERATE! It sucks when you have to be the guy fixin someones PC and they are asking what the problem is before they even let you look at their shit.
The worst one's are the big exec's with the attitudes, for the most part the secrataries and the rest of the underlings are pretty nice to IT folk, but it's those dickheads at the top you just want to knock some sense into them with their monitors.
Remember, when you're in IT, you're not isolated to one paticular part of a company. You interact with all levels of personal and management, and get to see the big picture of how a company runs without being the big boss. You pick up a little from everywhere making your personal knowledge that much more powerful.
30 in 1 month and starting a business I know I will love. I wouldn't have know WTF i'm doing if it wasn't for those years of IT experience.
I've been a smoke for many years, I remember my nicotine addiction starting at 8 when my old man use to let me grab a pinch of beechnut. I remember feeling like crap and being addicted to it for a while, then later on quitting, then becoming addicted to cigerettes at 10 when I went to live with my mom.
So here I am, over 20 years of putting this crap in my body.. The sad thing is when I don't have it.
First sign is nervousness, agitation. Then I go into cold sweats as my body excretes tar and nicotine out from my pours. Third stage i'm rollin up butts from the ashtray.
For those of you that don't understand the nature of addiction, let me tell you, I go through it every night. At least when I sleep, I have nothing to agitate me, but I still go through the physical withdrawel symptoms every night, proof of which is washing the sheets every 3 to 4 days to take out the yellow stain from my tar infused sweat.
I hate cigs, they are a tax on my life and my health, and I feel that the addictive traits of nicotine has been played down to avoid lawsuits. I've even developed shakes at times, no different than any heroin junkie.
I tried quittin new years cold turkey. I just bought a carton of marlboro reds today for 30 bucks. Previously I tried patches, gum, and hypnosis.
I have heard of anesthetic therapy for herion users. Sorry for no link but I remember seeing it on dateline NBC, search there produced too many results. The premise is simple, hook a needle up to the patients arm with a drip bag of sodium penathol and let them sleep through their withdrawels.
As neat as this genetic amish tobacco sounds, it just won't cut it for people who have been smoking as long as I have. Over 2/3's of my life I've had this shit running through my brain. I need rest.
This idea is just plain silly. First, consider who is creating this standard? Who is promoting this standard? Is this in any way necessary? Are there any benefits that can't be realized with current technology?
Read the specs, it's all open. Biggest advantage will be user created software synths, better compression/normalization, it's adaptation of highly availiable technology and it's open sourceness (which I know the mods will love me for mentioning)
The one major weakness with midi is it's ring topology. This is just straight up ethernet, any topology that ethernet supports this new standard will.
Here's a quote from the PDF specification.
1. Physical Layer : consists of the mechanical and electrical specifications required to form the physical network. This layer is compatible with the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet physical layer. 2. Data Link Layer : as defined by the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet protocol. It views bits transported by the Physical Layer as defined sequences called frames that can be transported across any standard Ethernet-compatible network. 3. MaGIC Application Layer : uses the frames transported by the Data Link Layer to encapsulate MaGIC-specific information into packets that allow MaGIC devices to exchange real-time bi-directional audio and control data. The MaGIC application layer is independent of the two layers under it thereby providing the ability to easily change the mode of physical transport based on available technology.
As you can see, it uses just good old 802.3 Here is a list of what Mechanical interfaces it works on.
2.4 Mechanical Interface The MaGIC protocol is suitable for a variety of physical interfaces. Examples include: the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet physical layer, the high-speed multi-link Optical Interface, wireless interfaces, the Ethernet Gigabit-based physical layer, etc. This specification only describes the MaGIC Link based on the IEEE 802.3 100-Megabit Ethernet physical layer, which uses standard Category 5 (Cat 5) cables, and RJ-45
I could go on and on about why it's so much better than midi. Check out the pdf, it's got more info than the videos.
They also go into why they chose cat5. It has something to do with packet and jitter control.
Apparently it's compatible with all existing ethernet devices. So in theory you could connect any kind of tranciever you wish. Want Fiber? Just get a tranciever, want wireless? Just buy a tranciever. Want to route it across the internet through a tunnel.. Holy sheep shit batman!
I know a lot of bands, the worst problem they have is finding a studio to practice in. You could set up a "virtual studio" just by tunneling and building VPN's between their houses.
Things like latency could be transformed into delay effects..
Anyways, sounds really cool. I'm gonna post the story on my site and try and get an interview.
Re:Kill michael he is not one of us-Hi Mikee
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Superbowl XXXVII
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· Score: 1
Do you like being called Mike, Mikee? What Mikee doesn't like the fact that people are saying, no posting "It doesn't make you un-american if you're not watching football?"
So let me guess dude, you're sitting at malda's house, watching the big screen, modding comments on your Dell Inspiron loaded up with mame roms over 802.11 on the couch. Probably sucking coronas and having little side conversations laughing about things like "I wonder how weird this user is IRL?" Why the fuck should I be downmodded because I don't fit your definition of a "nerd" Fuck you, I am by definition, what I percieve myself to be. I think therefore I am.
I've got my threshhold set at -1, and i'm seeing many comments similiar to mine being downmodded. Look, we KNOW there isn't enough mod points in the user base to distribute the amount of mod's i've seen today.
Anyways, keep it up and pretty soon those MS visual studio ads are going to be useless, because the only people that will read your site will be retarded ignorant dumbasses that want to put THEIR definition of what they think the scene is all about.
And I can say this with much authority, outside of the computers that do motion capture for NFL gameday, and the sports medicine, there isn't much nerd stuff I can apply to football. It's all a game of who's linebackers took the most steroids and whos running backs snorted the most coke.
Kill michael he is not one of us
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Superbowl XXXVII
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· Score: 0
Funny, I wrote in my journal about this very same subject before it was posted. I thought this was news for nerds, not news for jocks. Malda, I used to think your site was cool, but I think i'm going to look for greener pastures, anyways here's my opinion of super fucking bowl sunday.
Fuck superbowl...
Seriously, I thought about it for a minute. I never even liked football, all that running around proves what? Someone is physically strong? Big woop. I know who's playing, practically every fucking football head and television has burned it into my head through both audio and visual assaults.
I read, I would hide inside the library at recess. I read everything I could about science, lots of good childrens fiction (Runaway ralph is a classic) and generally just sat in front of something with text until the advent of my first computer.
Socially speaking, I watch it because of people like my neighbor, WTF IS A MATTER WITH YOU? SOMETHING WRONG WITH SOMEONE THAT DOESN'T WATCH FOOTBALL He likes to tease a lot, I snapped back, YEAH IT'S ASSHOLES LIKE YOU THAT TURN ME OFF TO IT! We always have a good roast like that over a soda. We'll sit in his garage with the door wide open, enjoying the day throwing caps back and forth.
I mean sure, football is a national pastime and everything, but America has so many more national pastimes now, like battlebots (still don't watch it, don't like the eat what's on your plate interface of TV Ok. Ok. So maybe not battlebots, but definetly computer science, writing, authoring stuff, mechanical design and others. I just don't like anything but computers.
I don't like generalizing what I like about computers too much anymore either. What do I do? I take old shit and turn it into routers or simple internet terminals, I draw stuff in truespace, I set up networks, I download shit on p2p networks, I set up p2p networks like bittorrent, I build BSD based webservers with apache/mysql/php and load up php/mysql apps, I solder stuff together, I make pringle cans 802.11 antennas, I burn cd's, I install OS's, I configure e-mail, I build open mosix clusters.
I used to get paid doing this stuff, but now I do it just to keep me busy and my mind focused. Sure it ain't watching football, but it's a helluva lot more fun.
Re:For the most part, looks like the exhibit sucks
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Review: Illegal Art
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· Score: 1
Well then that's just a difference between opinions then. Let me lay out a few examples of what this guy could have done to make it art (IMHO)
a. Glue the CD's together to form a pyramid or some other object. Simply displaying these in a case gives it no form.
b. Extracted the bits from a cd (Let's say mettallica) and then go through bolding, italisizing the 1's and 0's in a text editor to form a mosaic picture (I would do a hand with the middle finger extended)
What this guy did was the minimal effort to make a political statement, his motive was just to make a statement, not to create art.
Re:For the most part, looks like the exhibit sucks
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Review: Illegal Art
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· Score: 1
Ouch! -troll on my parent? Jeesh! Hey mods look, i'm entitled to critique right? Everything doen't have to be "OOOh wonderful story, yes it's wonderful!" Sorry if you don't agree with my opinion but hey i'm calling mod abuse!
Art isn't just "sending a message" What makes art is original technique used by the artist. Art can be political yes, but in this case I see no originality. The technique used to create what you are calling "art" took no more effort that clicking a few buttons.
From Dictionary.com art1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ärt) n. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.
The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium. The study of these activities. The product of these activities; human works of beauty considered as a group. High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value. A field or category of art, such as music, ballet, or literature. A nonscientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.
A system of principles and methods employed in the performance of a set of activities: the art of building. A trade or craft that applies such a system of principles and methods: the art of the lexicographer.
Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation: the art of the baker; the blacksmith's art. Skill arising from the exercise of intuitive faculties: "Self-criticism is an art not many are qualified to practice" (Joyce Carol Oates).
arts Artful devices, stratagems, and tricks. Artful contrivance; cunning. Printing. Illustrative material.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin ars, art-. See ar- in Indo-European Roots.] Synonyms: art, 1craft, expertise, knack, know-how, technique These nouns denote skill in doing or performing that is attained by study, practice, or observation: the art of rhetoric; pottery that reveals an artist's craft; political expertise; a knack for teaching; mechanical know-how; a precise diving technique.
Clearly by definition, art is defined by "technique" what it doesn't mention is what is the measure of great art?
Personally, I think art is only as good as the effort put into it. Look at the classics like Monet, or architectual/artistic achievements such as the Sistine Chapel. These took tremoundous amounts of effort on the part of the artist to create them, which is why they are "timeless peices of art"
And I just don't limit art to the old school either, I think the visual effect team for LOTR are genuinely artists. It took a tremendous amount of effort and artistic technique to produce the first 2 films. Not to mention I see some coders as artist.
But a guy that could have just used a Pioneer standalone CD copier and pressed the button 20 times, Sorry, despite the political statement I KNOW he's trying to make, it just doesn't muster much effort on his part. Sort of reminds me of a 6th grade project I had to do 2nd day of school.
Our 6th grade teacher had given each of her students a 4"x8" peice of wood with the instructions, "Take it home, turn it into whatever you want and bring it back to class" I don't know what her motive was..
I went home trying to think of something cool I could do, that year I had discovered the miricles of baking soda and vinagar so I thought "Volcano!" I cut a 1" diameter plastic hair spray bottle down to about 3 inches. I glued it to the board and went out back. I made some mud, then started piling it around the board and the tube in the center.
The next day I came to class with a small bottle of vinagar, a bag of baking soda, and my mud pie on a stick. The kids were definetly split into a few seperate categories, some came back with keyhooks carved in the shape of the word "Keys" (I bet $20 daddy did it for them) Others had nails in them and wrapped glitter sting in spirograph patterns. 2 had mini jigsaw puzzles. Here I was with my mud pie on a stick.
The mud was good and dry, I had left it to dry overnight next to the water heater. By the look on my teachers face (Yes Mrs Dunworth you scarred me for life) and her words "What (straining not to say "the fuck" is that?"
"It an erupting volcano!"
The oohs and ahhs came across the classroom. The clicks stopped their little group chats and stared at the center of the room in silence as I unvieled my mudly mess of volcanic eruption.
"WATCH THIS MRS DUNWORTH!"
I mixed the baking soda and vinagar just as I had planned, what I hadn't counted on was the surface of my volcano was extremely pourus and started collecting the solution as it started running over the side. The whole thing melted back into mud and I could tell the teach was doing her best to maintain as the class erupted into laughter.
"TAKE THAT MESS OUTSIDE NOW" She snapped as I cleaned up my mess and left the laughing classroom behind me.
For a while, I heald it against them all, thinking, gee what was it that didn't make that art? I pondered the question over and over untill I came up with the answer...
It was my lack of effort that made it art. Sure my technique of making it into a scientific diorama with a chemical reaction was cool, but simply piling mud on top of a board was not enough, I should have at least used crepe paper and chicken wire.
And that's how I tie this back into my "opinionated critique" of this art exhibit. I just don't see any effort in copying cd's and labeling them with a sharpie. I'm sorry if you mods don't agree with me but I know I make a very valid point, so fuck you.
For the most part, looks like the exhibit sucks
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Review: Illegal Art
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· Score: 1, Interesting
The disney orgy, I give a +5, funny shit, same goes for the "Dysfunctional Family circus" (BTW RTFA it says that that the DFC author was approached by Bill Keane personally to stop the parodies after a heart to heart talk)
Other than that though, I thought everything else was pretty stupid and didn't really classify as art.
One of the worst exhibits on the page is of some cat that copied his cd collection. Big fuckin w00p, what's so artistic about that? So copying my stuff to CDR suddenly makes me an artist?
Of course, this is all opinion, by which I know some people may disagree with me. So the question bears to mind what is art? I don't think CD duplication is an art, it's just a bunch of mouse clicks or a command line with a few switches. Fuck if that's the case i'm an artist in spades.
Yah out of all the rockets I built, for some reason that paticular model had the best flight characteristics. It even outperformed my 'D' class rockets.
Newts in space! (space space space)
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Ants... In... Space
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· Score: 5, Funny
I think slash needs a new mod point (weird) anyways..
When I was 12-14 I was really into model rockets. I lived with my grandmother at the time and her yard had all kinds of newts and salamanders in it.
"OOH ASTRONEWTS!" Was the first thing that popped into my head.
I forget the model number, but it was an estes rocket with a clear payload chamber on it. I placed my "ASTRONEWT!" into the payload chamber, taped the fuse on the bottom of my C6-7 engine and then backed up for safety.
"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, BEGINNING FINAL COUNTDOWN FOR LAUNCH!" I could see the little critter had no idea he was about to be launched into the stratosphere as he wiggled and squirmed inside of his cramped quarters.
"5-4-3-2-1 MAIN ENGINES ARE GO YOU HAVE CLEARED THE TOWER" This was about the 10th rocket I had built that year, everything on it was perfect, the wings had been sanded down and painted in 2 coats, same went for the body. This thing had to be the most arodynamically sound rocket I had ever built in my life because it just kept climbing and climbing.
"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, WE ARE SHOWING YOU HAVE DEPLOYED YOUR RE-ENTRY PARACHUTES"
The rocket had flown so high I had to hop on my bike and chase it down. It ended up about 1/2 mile from where it had launched.
"HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM"
I looked at the rocket, and inside the poor newt wasn't squirming anymore. I don't know if he had died from shock, g forces, or what, but he was dead. I would have guess G forces from the condition of the corpse.
Well, after that I ended the astronewt program. Yeah it was a fucked up thing to do, and I regret it as an adult, but we were talking about animal experiments in space right?
I think slash needs a new mod point (weird) anyways..
When I was 12-14 I was really into model rockets. I lived with my grandmother at the time and her yard had all kinds of newts and salamanders in it.
"OOH ASTRONEWTS!" Was the first thing that popped into my head.
I forget the model number, but it was an estes rocket with a clear payload chamber on it. I placed my "ASTRONEWT!" into the payload chamber, taped the fuse on the bottom of my C6-7 engine and then backed up for safety.
"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, BEGINNING FINAL COUNTDOWN FOR LAUNCH!" I could see the little critter had no idea he was about to be launched into the stratosphere as he wiggled and squirmed inside of his cramped quarters.
"5-4-3-2-1 MAIN ENGINES ARE GO YOU HAVE CLEARED THE TOWER" This was about the 10th rocket I had built that year, everything on it was perfect, the wings had been sanded down and painted in 2 coats, same went for the body. This thing had to be the most arodynamically sound rocket I had ever built in my life because it just kept climbing and climbing.
"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, WE ARE SHOWING YOU HAVE DEPLOYED YOUR RE-ENTRY PARACHUTES"
The rocket had flown so high I had to hop on my bike and chase it down. It ended up about 1/2 mile from where it had launched.
"HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM"
I looked at the rocket, and inside the poor newt wasn't squirming anymore. I don't know if he had died from shock, g forces, or what, but he was dead. I would have guess G forces from the condition of the corpse.
Well, after that I ended the astronewt program. Yeah it was a fucked up thing to do, and I regret it as an adult, but we were talking about animal experiments in space right?
When you try to act on this problem, you end up making the productive members of society give away huge amounts of their earnings because the only way to *prevent war*
I live in the bay area, not quite a warzone, but parts like oakland, east palo alto, ect are pretty bad..
During the boom, the murder rates in these places drop to pretty much nil. Why? Because when people are well off, they don't fight, they have too much to lose.
After the crash, both EPA and Oaklands murder rates went right back up.
Civilization is the answer, not war. Giving people something productive to do instead of sitting in their house all day dwelling on their problems is how you *prevent war*.
If all these AK toting kids were givin jobs at the oilfields, and were paid what an american was paid, then there wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately American run oil wells in the Saudi nations employ imported Americans, not naitives.
Basically if you wanted to end war with these people, give them something to do OTHER than think about war. They need to have too much to lose so they don't want to risk losing it in a war.
These people are desperate, the war on Iraq is just a ploy so GWB can get peoples attention off our current domestic situation, and line the pockets of his oil buddies in texas with Saudi dollars. Sure we only use %2 of saudi oil, but we process %20 of it for export into other countries. It's the texan refineries pushing for this war and not the people.
It would be interesting to see slashdot actually run a poll on this. I'm curious how many other slashers don't want this war. Too bad Rob is too much of a chicken shit to do it though.
or corrupted chunks of data which carry the same name and have the same size as originals.
Isn't there some magical algorithm that produces an unique checksum number for a file, and if it were missing chunks wouldn't that reflect in that magical number? Don't most P2P networks use this magical MD5 checksum algorithm to ensure files aren't screwed up?
Gee, you would think the patent office would realize they just awarded a patent to the same guy that sells server pixie dust.
Jobless, and too smart for my own good, i'm tempted to try and find some routers. Just tempted, I never do bad stuff like comprimise others networks.
Why didn't sprint fix this quietly and quickly though? It seems to me it would have been easy just to write a script to go to each modem, change the password to something random, store it somewhere safe like a customer info database and been done with it.
Now that it's been published on wired, and worse yet here, the exploit is going to be used by many people who want to just break in because they are "bored"
At least I *think* it is. This is all just personal opinion so I might as well be pulling it out my ass.
Every person I know with an Xbox owns a PC and plays CS. I'm trying to think of one Xbox owner that doesn't own a PC...
Nope, out of the people I know can't think of any off hand.
The Xbox only has 800k units in the US right? PS2 has like 2million. Can I think of any PS2 owners without a PC? Hmm, yea I can name about 6 or 7 off the top of my head. Mainly people under 12 or so.
So with that in mind, why would MS restrict itself to the Xbox only? I don't think they would shoot themselves in the foot by excluding PC players, it's their biggest market right now, and it sells 2 products.
Windows- Which only costs them the duplication costs of a CD The game- Self explanitory.
Software will always be Infinetly cheaper to distribute than hardware, the Xbox is just a distraction from a DRM windows.
Slashdot Mirror
But still, wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to use something a bit more modern to emulate that Commodore
Sure you can emulate it, but you miss so much by simple emulation. The most hailed feature of the C64 was the sid chip (it's still used by some techo artists to make effects)
It all comes down to timing, when you emulate you are forced to the timing of the host system. Emulated sound NEVER sounds as good as the real thing.
I was on the other side of the fence back in the 8-bit days(atari user), we used to call commodore users "Commode Door" users, but I can still relate to them when it comes to sound reproduction. You just cannot get that vintage computer sound without the real thing.
1. Fundamentally, starting from the playback side, the disc consists of data layer 1 (the first layer as played back by the DVD player), backed by a semi-reflective metallic coating (often gold)
OOOOOhhh! I read on slash a while back about people in 3rd world countries pouring acid on the electronic junk we send over there for gold.
Now i'm trying to think of a chemical that could melt a DVD, Anyone? I'd guess turpintine or paint thinner could do it. Jasco definetly could melt it (when I was 5 I ruined our plastic vacuum cleaner by pourin jasco on it)
So you could have like a 1000 of those suckers mailed round to you easily. Make a few phone calls posing as a screwdriver shop (Oh yes, my customers like AOL!)
Now take these 1000 or so AOL DVD's, and put them in a stainless steel container, add in turpintine, jasco, whatever and let it melt.
Hopefull if you can use a thin enough solvent it will be enough for the gold particles to float down to the bottom, drain off the top and you got instant gold.
In this fucked economic downturn i'll cook up all kinds of crazy idea's like this to make a buck.
Heh, funny dude, I just got done watching a VCD of
biozombie. I guess you can really only get why the joke is so funny if you
watch the movie, but it's got two guys working in a bootleg VCD shop in some
Japanese mall (japan i think cause they show a big map of it in the
beginning) . A customer walks in and the dialog goes like this.
Customer :Hey there's something wrong with this VCD I wanna
return it.
Woody Invincable: Lemme see that! (grabs vcd and puts down
game gun controller)
Customer: See you can't even see steven chou's face!
Crazy B: This is very good cinamatography by a very famous
director!
Customer: I think these are bootlegs!
(Crazy B and woody invincable jump over the counter and
hold their sega dreamcast light guns up to the customers head)
Crazy B: WHAT WHAT ARE YOU THREATENING US BOY?
Woody Invincable: Take any 3 porno's and get the hell outta
here, don't come back or we'll kick your ass!
Unionizing the IT sector is the FASTEST way to make companies send these jobs overseas.
I disagree with your post on several levels.
If we formed a union, who will the PHB's have to interface with the outsourced labor? What if tomorrow, all the remaining american english speaking developers said, "Screw you, I'm not going through another line of (insert favorite outsouced country here) produced code till you hire some help.
Basically their development would come to a grinding halt, they would begin to lose money. Although they COULD hire someone to replace them it's unlikely, because it takes at least 3 months to get anyone up to speed on any project.
Now i've bitched that IT workers should have formed a union YEARS before any of this shit went down. I've heard various aruments (Oh you make too much money to be in a union, ect) but don't doctors have to pay yearly dues to belong to a medical board? Don't lawers have to pay state bar fee's? Don't the CEO's and rich fuckers at the top have to pay to belong to a golf course / country club to rub elbows with their fellow fat cats?
Thing is, the people at the top already have a union of sorts, it's very exclusive and the only way you can join is if you have a shitton of money. Why shouldn't IT workers do the same and put those fuckers in their places?
Bottom line is, you can go to school as long as you want, but if you have no bargining power to keep that job, your degree is useless.
I'll bite.
Yeah times are tough right now, despite being out of work 2 years (due in part because I live in the hardest hit IT sector in the world, Silicon Valley) I still try. It's not IT's fault that you lost your heart in the work.
2 years not makin that dot com salary, yeah I moan and bitch all the time. Would I ever tell someone *not* to go into IT? Hell no! Several reasons why. After 8 years of dealing with dickheads at a thankless job i'm taking what I learned off them and applying it to a new business. Guess what? Me and 2 other buddies are opening a gamehouse! That's right, after 8 years, buying a house, and building my credit, I finally have enough to get out and make it without some shithead whining about the same shit breaking everyday because he won't let you upgrade his laptop. (Waaa I want all my programs and e-mail the same if you put me from 95 to XP WAAAAAA!)
Now i'll be the first one to admit that it's a pretty thankless job, but the wealth of experience you get if you're smart enough you can apply to your own business, be your own boss, get out. I've gone from a salary of 87k down to 20k@year. I kept my mortgage paid by not eating, building equity in my home.
So i'm done playing with the dumbasses at work, sorry folks, I know coders and IT ppl hang out here, but you have to admit EVERYONE ELSE IN YOUR COMPANY IS DAMN NEAR COMPUTER ILLITERATE! It sucks when you have to be the guy fixin someones PC and they are asking what the problem is before they even let you look at their shit.
The worst one's are the big exec's with the attitudes, for the most part the secrataries and the rest of the underlings are pretty nice to IT folk, but it's those dickheads at the top you just want to knock some sense into them with their monitors.
Remember, when you're in IT, you're not isolated to one paticular part of a company. You interact with all levels of personal and management, and get to see the big picture of how a company runs without being the big boss. You pick up a little from everywhere making your personal knowledge that much more powerful.
30 in 1 month and starting a business I know I will love. I wouldn't have know WTF i'm doing if it wasn't for those years of IT experience.
I've been a smoke for many years, I remember my nicotine addiction starting at 8 when my old man use to let me grab a pinch of beechnut. I remember feeling like crap and being addicted to it for a while, then later on quitting, then becoming addicted to cigerettes at 10 when I went to live with my mom.
So here I am, over 20 years of putting this crap in my body.. The sad thing is when I don't have it.
First sign is nervousness, agitation. Then I go into cold sweats as my body excretes tar and nicotine out from my pours. Third stage i'm rollin up butts from the ashtray.
For those of you that don't understand the nature of addiction, let me tell you, I go through it every night. At least when I sleep, I have nothing to agitate me, but I still go through the physical withdrawel symptoms every night, proof of which is washing the sheets every 3 to 4 days to take out the yellow stain from my tar infused sweat.
I hate cigs, they are a tax on my life and my health, and I feel that the addictive traits of nicotine has been played down to avoid lawsuits. I've even developed shakes at times, no different than any heroin junkie.
I tried quittin new years cold turkey. I just bought a carton of marlboro reds today for 30 bucks. Previously I tried patches, gum, and hypnosis.
I have heard of anesthetic therapy for herion users. Sorry for no link but I remember seeing it on dateline NBC, search there produced too many results. The premise is simple, hook a needle up to the patients arm with a drip bag of sodium penathol and let them sleep through their withdrawels.
As neat as this genetic amish tobacco sounds, it just won't cut it for people who have been smoking as long as I have. Over 2/3's of my life I've had this shit running through my brain. I need rest.
You must still be working. Good for you!
This idea is just plain silly. First, consider who is creating this standard? Who is promoting this standard? Is this in any way necessary? Are there any benefits that can't be realized with current technology?
Read the specs, it's all open. Biggest advantage will be user created software synths, better compression/normalization, it's adaptation of highly availiable technology and it's open sourceness (which I know the mods will love me for mentioning)
The one major weakness with midi is it's ring topology. This is just straight up ethernet, any topology that ethernet supports this new standard will.
Here's a quote from the PDF specification.
1.
Physical Layer
: consists of the mechanical and electrical specifications required
to form the physical network. This layer is compatible with the IEEE 802.3
Ethernet physical layer.
2.
Data Link Layer
: as defined by the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet protocol. It views bits
transported by the Physical Layer as defined sequences called frames that can be
transported across any standard Ethernet-compatible network.
3.
MaGIC Application Layer
: uses the frames transported by the Data Link Layer to
encapsulate MaGIC-specific information into packets that allow MaGIC devices
to exchange real-time bi-directional audio and control data.
The MaGIC application layer is independent of the two layers under it thereby providing
the ability to easily change the mode of physical transport based on available technology.
As you can see, it uses just good old 802.3 Here is a list of what Mechanical interfaces it works on.
2.4 Mechanical Interface
The MaGIC protocol is suitable for a variety of physical interfaces. Examples include:
the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet physical layer, the high-speed multi-link Optical Interface,
wireless interfaces, the Ethernet Gigabit-based physical layer, etc.
This specification only describes the MaGIC Link based on the IEEE 802.3 100-Megabit
Ethernet physical layer, which uses standard Category 5 (Cat 5) cables, and RJ-45
I could go on and on about why it's so much better than midi. Check out the pdf, it's got more info than the videos.
They also go into why they chose cat5. It has something to do with packet and jitter control.
Apparently it's compatible with all existing ethernet devices. So in theory you could connect any kind of tranciever you wish. Want Fiber? Just get a tranciever, want wireless? Just buy a tranciever. Want to route it across the internet through a tunnel.. Holy sheep shit batman!
I know a lot of bands, the worst problem they have is finding a studio to practice in. You could set up a "virtual studio" just by tunneling and building VPN's between their houses.
Things like latency could be transformed into delay effects..
Anyways, sounds really cool. I'm gonna post the story on my site and try and get an interview.
Do you like being called Mike, Mikee? What Mikee doesn't like the fact that people are saying, no posting "It doesn't make you un-american if you're not watching football?"
So let me guess dude, you're sitting at malda's house, watching the big screen, modding comments on your Dell Inspiron loaded up with mame roms over 802.11 on the couch. Probably sucking coronas and having little side conversations laughing about things like "I wonder how weird this user is IRL?" Why the fuck should I be downmodded because I don't fit your definition of a "nerd" Fuck you, I am by definition, what I percieve myself to be. I think therefore I am.
I've got my threshhold set at -1, and i'm seeing many comments similiar to mine being downmodded. Look, we KNOW there isn't enough mod points in the user base to distribute the amount of mod's i've seen today.
Anyways, keep it up and pretty soon those MS visual studio ads are going to be useless, because the only people that will read your site will be retarded ignorant dumbasses that want to put THEIR definition of what they think the scene is all about.
And I can say this with much authority, outside of the computers that do motion capture for NFL gameday, and the sports medicine, there isn't much nerd stuff I can apply to football. It's all a game of who's linebackers took the most steroids and whos running backs snorted the most coke.
Funny, I wrote in my journal
about this very same subject before it was posted. I thought this was news
for nerds, not news for jocks. Malda, I used to think your site was cool,
but I think i'm going to look for greener pastures, anyways here's my opinion of
super fucking bowl sunday.
Fuck superbowl...
Seriously, I thought about it for a minute. I never even liked football, all
that running around proves what? Someone is physically strong? Big woop. I know
who's playing, practically every fucking football head and television has burned
it into my head through both audio and visual assaults.
I read, I would hide inside the library at recess. I read everything I could
about science, lots of good childrens fiction (Runaway ralph is a classic) and
generally just sat in front of something with text until the advent of my first
computer.
Socially speaking, I watch it because of people like my neighbor, WTF IS A
MATTER WITH YOU? SOMETHING WRONG WITH SOMEONE THAT DOESN'T WATCH FOOTBALL He
likes to tease a lot, I snapped back, YEAH IT'S ASSHOLES LIKE YOU THAT TURN ME
OFF TO IT! We always have a good roast like that over a soda. We'll sit in his
garage with the door wide open, enjoying the day throwing caps back and forth.
I mean sure, football is a national pastime and everything, but America has so
many more national pastimes now, like battlebots (still don't watch it, don't
like the eat what's on your plate interface of TV Ok. Ok. So maybe not
battlebots, but definetly computer science, writing, authoring stuff, mechanical
design and others. I just don't like anything but computers.
I don't like generalizing what I like about computers too much anymore either.
What do I do? I take old shit and turn it into routers or simple internet
terminals, I draw stuff in truespace, I set up networks, I download shit on p2p
networks, I set up p2p networks like bittorrent, I build BSD based webservers
with apache/mysql/php and load up php/mysql apps, I solder stuff together, I
make pringle cans 802.11 antennas, I burn cd's, I install OS's, I configure
e-mail, I build open mosix clusters.
I used to get paid doing this stuff, but now I do it just to keep me busy and my
mind focused. Sure it ain't watching football, but it's a helluva lot more fun.
Well then that's just a difference between opinions then. Let me lay out a few examples of what this guy could have done to make it art (IMHO)
a. Glue the CD's together to form a pyramid or some other object. Simply displaying these in a case gives it no form.
b. Extracted the bits from a cd (Let's say mettallica) and then go through bolding, italisizing the 1's and 0's in a text editor to form a mosaic picture (I would do a hand with the middle finger extended)
What this guy did was the minimal effort to make a political statement, his motive was just to make a statement, not to create art.
Ouch! -troll on my parent? Jeesh! Hey mods look, i'm entitled to critique right? Everything doen't have to be "OOOh wonderful story, yes it's wonderful!" Sorry if you don't agree with my opinion but hey i'm calling mod abuse!
Art isn't just "sending a message" What makes art is original technique used by the artist. Art can be political yes, but in this case I see no originality. The technique used to create what you are calling "art" took no more effort that clicking a few buttons.
From Dictionary.com
art1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ärt)
n.
Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.
The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.
The study of these activities.
The product of these activities; human works of beauty considered as a group.
High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value.
A field or category of art, such as music, ballet, or literature.
A nonscientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.
A system of principles and methods employed in the performance of a set of activities: the art of building.
A trade or craft that applies such a system of principles and methods: the art of the lexicographer.
Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation: the art of the baker; the blacksmith's art.
Skill arising from the exercise of intuitive faculties: "Self-criticism is an art not many are qualified to practice" (Joyce Carol Oates).
arts Artful devices, stratagems, and tricks.
Artful contrivance; cunning.
Printing. Illustrative material.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin ars, art-. See ar- in Indo-European Roots.]
Synonyms: art, 1craft, expertise, knack, know-how, technique
These nouns denote skill in doing or performing that is attained by study, practice, or observation: the art of rhetoric; pottery that reveals an artist's craft; political expertise; a knack for teaching; mechanical know-how; a precise diving technique.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Clearly by definition, art is defined by "technique" what it doesn't mention is what is the measure of great art?
Personally, I think art is only as good as the effort put into it. Look at the classics like Monet, or architectual/artistic achievements such as the Sistine Chapel. These took tremoundous amounts of effort on the part of the artist to create them, which is why they are "timeless peices of art"
And I just don't limit art to the old school either, I think the visual effect team for LOTR are genuinely artists. It took a tremendous amount of effort and artistic technique to produce the first 2 films. Not to mention I see some coders as artist.
But a guy that could have just used a Pioneer standalone CD copier and pressed the button 20 times, Sorry, despite the political statement I KNOW he's trying to make, it just doesn't muster much effort on his part. Sort of reminds me of a 6th grade project I had to do 2nd day of school.
Our 6th grade teacher had given each of her students a 4"x8" peice of wood with the instructions, "Take it home, turn it into whatever you want and bring it back to class" I don't know what her motive was..
I went home trying to think of something cool I could do, that year I had discovered the miricles of baking soda and vinagar so I thought "Volcano!" I cut a 1" diameter plastic hair spray bottle down to about 3 inches. I glued it to the board and went out back. I made some mud, then started piling it around the board and the tube in the center.
The next day I came to class with a small bottle of vinagar, a bag of baking soda, and my mud pie on a stick. The kids were definetly split into a few seperate categories, some came back with keyhooks carved in the shape of the word "Keys" (I bet $20 daddy did it for them) Others had nails in them and wrapped glitter sting in spirograph patterns. 2 had mini jigsaw puzzles. Here I was with my mud pie on a stick.
The mud was good and dry, I had left it to dry overnight next to the water heater. By the look on my teachers face (Yes Mrs Dunworth you scarred me for life) and her words "What (straining not to say "the fuck" is that?"
"It an erupting volcano!"
The oohs and ahhs came across the classroom. The clicks stopped their little group chats and stared at the center of the room in silence as I unvieled my mudly mess of volcanic eruption.
"WATCH THIS MRS DUNWORTH!"
I mixed the baking soda and vinagar just as I had planned, what I hadn't counted on was the surface of my volcano was extremely pourus and started collecting the solution as it started running over the side. The whole thing melted back into mud and I could tell the teach was doing her best to maintain as the class erupted into laughter.
"TAKE THAT MESS OUTSIDE NOW" She snapped as I cleaned up my mess and left the laughing classroom behind me.
For a while, I heald it against them all, thinking, gee what was it that didn't make that art? I pondered the question over and over untill I came up with the answer...
It was my lack of effort that made it art. Sure my technique of making it into a scientific diorama with a chemical reaction was cool, but simply piling mud on top of a board was not enough, I should have at least used crepe paper and chicken wire.
And that's how I tie this back into my "opinionated critique" of this art exhibit. I just don't see any effort in copying cd's and labeling them with a sharpie. I'm sorry if you mods don't agree with me but I know I make a very valid point, so fuck you.
The disney orgy, I give a +5, funny shit, same goes for the "Dysfunctional Family circus" (BTW RTFA it says that that the DFC author was approached by Bill Keane personally to stop the parodies after a heart to heart talk)
Other than that though, I thought everything else was pretty stupid and didn't really classify as art.
One of the worst exhibits on the page is of some cat that copied his cd collection. Big fuckin w00p, what's so artistic about that? So copying my stuff to CDR suddenly makes me an artist?
Of course, this is all opinion, by which I know some people may disagree with me. So the question bears to mind what is art? I don't think CD duplication is an art, it's just a bunch of mouse clicks or a command line with a few switches. Fuck if that's the case i'm an artist in spades.
Yah out of all the rockets I built, for some reason that paticular model had the best flight characteristics. It even outperformed my 'D' class rockets.
I think slash needs a new mod point (weird) anyways..
When I was 12-14 I was really into model rockets. I lived with my grandmother at the time and her yard had all kinds of newts and salamanders in it.
"OOH ASTRONEWTS!" Was the first thing that popped into my head.
I forget the model number, but it was an estes rocket with a clear payload chamber on it. I placed my "ASTRONEWT!" into the payload chamber, taped the fuse on the bottom of my C6-7 engine and then backed up for safety.
"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, BEGINNING FINAL COUNTDOWN FOR LAUNCH!" I could see the little critter had no idea he was about to be launched into the stratosphere as he wiggled and squirmed inside of his cramped quarters.
"5-4-3-2-1 MAIN ENGINES ARE GO YOU HAVE CLEARED THE TOWER" This was about the 10th rocket I had built that year, everything on it was perfect, the wings had been sanded down and painted in 2 coats, same went for the body. This thing had to be the most arodynamically sound rocket I had ever built in my life because it just kept climbing and climbing.
"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, WE ARE SHOWING YOU HAVE DEPLOYED YOUR RE-ENTRY PARACHUTES"
The rocket had flown so high I had to hop on my bike and chase it down. It ended up about 1/2 mile from where it had launched.
"HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM"
I looked at the rocket, and inside the poor newt wasn't squirming anymore. I don't know if he had died from shock, g forces, or what, but he was dead. I would have guess G forces from the condition of the corpse.
Well, after that I ended the astronewt program. Yeah it was a fucked up thing to do, and I regret it as an adult, but we were talking about animal experiments in space right?
I think slash needs a new mod point (weird) anyways..
When I was 12-14 I was really into model rockets. I lived with my grandmother at the time and her yard had all kinds of newts and salamanders in it.
"OOH ASTRONEWTS!" Was the first thing that popped into my head.
I forget the model number, but it was an estes rocket with a clear payload chamber on it. I placed my "ASTRONEWT!" into the payload chamber, taped the fuse on the bottom of my C6-7 engine and then backed up for safety.
"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, BEGINNING FINAL COUNTDOWN FOR LAUNCH!" I could see the little critter had no idea he was about to be launched into the stratosphere as he wiggled and squirmed inside of his cramped quarters.
"5-4-3-2-1 MAIN ENGINES ARE GO YOU HAVE CLEARED THE TOWER" This was about the 10th rocket I had built that year, everything on it was perfect, the wings had been sanded down and painted in 2 coats, same went for the body. This thing had to be the most arodynamically sound rocket I had ever built in my life because it just kept climbing and climbing.
"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, WE ARE SHOWING YOU HAVE DEPLOYED YOUR RE-ENTRY PARACHUTES"
The rocket had flown so high I had to hop on my bike and chase it down. It ended up about 1/2 mile from where it had launched.
"HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM"
I looked at the rocket, and inside the poor newt wasn't squirming anymore. I don't know if he had died from shock, g forces, or what, but he was dead. I would have guess G forces from the condition of the corpse.
Well, after that I ended the astronewt program. Yeah it was a fucked up thing to do, and I regret it as an adult, but we were talking about animal experiments in space right?
When you try to act on this problem, you end up making the productive members of society give away huge amounts of their earnings because the only way to *prevent war*
I live in the bay area, not quite a warzone, but parts like oakland, east palo alto, ect are pretty bad..
During the boom, the murder rates in these places drop to pretty much nil. Why? Because when people are well off, they don't fight, they have too much to lose.
After the crash, both EPA and Oaklands murder rates went right back up.
Civilization is the answer, not war. Giving people something productive to do instead of sitting in their house all day dwelling on their problems is how you *prevent war*.
If all these AK toting kids were givin jobs at the oilfields, and were paid what an american was paid, then there wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately American run oil wells in the Saudi nations employ imported Americans, not naitives.
Basically if you wanted to end war with these people, give them something to do OTHER than think about war. They need to have too much to lose so they don't want to risk losing it in a war.
These people are desperate, the war on Iraq is just a ploy so GWB can get peoples attention off our current domestic situation, and line the pockets of his oil buddies in texas with Saudi dollars. Sure we only use %2 of saudi oil, but we process %20 of it for export into other countries. It's the texan refineries pushing for this war and not the people.
It would be interesting to see slashdot actually run a poll on this. I'm curious how many other slashers don't want this war. Too bad Rob is too much of a chicken shit to do it though.
or corrupted chunks of data which carry the same name and have the same size as originals.
Isn't there some magical algorithm that produces an unique checksum number for a file, and if it were missing chunks wouldn't that reflect in that magical number? Don't most P2P networks use this magical MD5 checksum algorithm to ensure files aren't screwed up?
Gee, you would think the patent office would realize they just awarded a patent to the same guy that sells server pixie dust.
Mod parent up!
Robin reminds me of Erin Brockovitch. Nothing wrong with anyone flaunting their good looks (man or woman) to accomplish good deeds.
Like the original poster said, you go girl!
and hot natelie portman grits on your tits motherfuckers!
Jobless, and too smart for my own good, i'm tempted to try and find some routers. Just tempted, I never do bad stuff like comprimise others networks.
Why didn't sprint fix this quietly and quickly though? It seems to me it would have been easy just to write a script to go to each modem, change the password to something random, store it somewhere safe like a customer info database and been done with it.
Now that it's been published on wired, and worse yet here, the exploit is going to be used by many people who want to just break in because they are "bored"
isn't that song copyrighted? I'm going to have to sue you under the DMCA... blah blah blah
Actually, copyrights run out after 50 or so years, it's why you can download elvis without worry now.
He would actually make a cool president. Mod parent up!
At least I *think* it is. This is all just personal opinion so I might as well be pulling it out my ass.
Every person I know with an Xbox owns a PC and plays CS. I'm trying to think of one Xbox owner that doesn't own a PC...
Nope, out of the people I know can't think of any off hand.
The Xbox only has 800k units in the US right? PS2 has like 2million. Can I think of any PS2 owners without a PC? Hmm, yea I can name about 6 or 7 off the top of my head. Mainly people under 12 or so.
So with that in mind, why would MS restrict itself to the Xbox only? I don't think they would shoot themselves in the foot by excluding PC players, it's their biggest market right now, and it sells 2 products.
Windows- Which only costs them the duplication costs of a CD
The game- Self explanitory.
Software will always be Infinetly cheaper to distribute than hardware, the Xbox is just a distraction from a DRM windows.