I believe that they want to remove HDs from peoples homes, and have everyone store their data on MS servers.
I don't think so. It wouldn't be practical. An illustration, here...
Day after tomorrow, I'll go across the country to visit folks - with my Gamecube neatly packed in the suitcase. The memory card will easily fit in my wallet.
Guess if the folks have got themselves a broadband Internet yet?
Guess if I'd be interested in messing around with my Internet settings every few weeks just to get my savegames?
Okay, and then when I'm finally home, comfortably with the DSL and all - guess what I tend to do when the guys in the local ISP router booth trip over the cat5 or something? Maybe try playing stuff with the Gamecube instead of spewing curses at the web browser?
And in 5 or 10 years, what if Microsoft decides that this cool server system would be obsolete and discontinues it? I think the save game batteries in my Zelda 2 cartridge (circa 1988) are still working perfectly even when the rumor said they would only hold for like 10 years...
No, I don't think MS, or anyone else, will ever even think of completely abandoning "local" storage space in one form or another. A networked savegame feature would be cool as a backup, though.
The enmity between Richard Garriott and Trip Hawkins is nearly legendary, with at least one snipe at EA in an early Ultima (2? Maybe 3, but most likely 2) with a pirate character named Pirt Snikwah.
Not to even mention the evil, evil Cube, Sphere and Tetrahedron in U7, and apparently this kind of thing is hidden in other games as well (I heard it's definitely in U8 somewhere).
(And historical bit for those who don't get it: EA's logo used to have a square (E), circle (O) and triangle (A).)
I hope I'll get around publishing the NWN module with the evil Ren'sie who lives in the forbidden dimension of Dlrow-yensid'orue... =)
I don't know. VCRs are used to tape stuff, and can be used for legitimate and illegitimate things. Yet, the P2P networks aren't like VCRs - they're of entirely different purpose. More direct analogy for VCRs here would be grip+xmms, or whatever the heck people use to rip their CDs with and listen to the MP3 files.
P2P apps, with very few hacky exceptions, are not used to consume the digital media. They're used for distribution, and distribution only.
P2P networks, in VCR analogy, would then be a van that you've bought specifically to fill with your illegal videotape copies with and drive around the town and throw the tapes out of the window to random passers-by. "Hey, dude, want a free copy of Robocop 3?" "Sure! It sucked! I wouldn't pay for it!" "Here, catch!"
Of course, you could use the same van to ship your own precious movie creation to the retailers... but you first have to paint over the skull-and-crossbones and "Allied Video Pirates" logo on the side of the van, and think of some nicer company name.
Heh. Which reminds me, there's only like two games that I've played that have real-time clock visible at least at some part of the UI: MechCommander and MOO3. More games should have on-screen clock! Maybe the addictive kind of games should have some sort of alarm system too...
I recently posted on how I feel about the names like "FreeSomething" or "OpenAnything". Here are some of my further thoughts.
I think this stuff is redundant. Freedom or Openness should be in the heart, not the name. I can understand if open source apps want to use unnecessary advertising of the parent project in form of "GNU Something" or "GNOME Anything", because that's just normal kind of titles (not too far from "Microsoft Whatever", which people will then casually call "Whatever".)
But "Free" or "Open" in the title is an unnecessary wart. The "GNU" or whatever titles imply that they're part of a group of applications from a single vendor; there's nothing wrong with that. Yet, "Free" or "Open" implies different kind of relationship: This product vs. a specific product, or this product vs. the rest of the world.
It carries a certain kind of connotation of competition: "This program is Free, the other program isn't, so use this program!" It can be a double-edged sword that's almost like free advertising for the proprietary competition: "Hey, this program is Free, but that other program costs money, so it has to be good!"
Herein lies some duality: It is almost if this "free" program couldn't exist without the competition - We have "FreeBSD" and the "not-so-free UNIXes". We have "OpenOffice.org" and "StarOffice". Yin and Yang.
"Free" or "Open" imply attitude. There's no place for attitude in software names.
My original complaint was about the name "XFree86". It's a pun on "X386", which was what the project was known as over a decade ago. It might have been funny back in the day - "Ooh, it's like X, but it's free!" - but now it just looks silly. "Specification from 1986?"...or "80386 code in my beautiful Macintosh? No way!"
KDE is sweet. The widgets are cleaners, but most of all, things are where a life long windows user like myself expects them to be.
Yeah, but in WindowMaker, all of the stuff is where God intended them to be... =)
I use a strange mixed desktop that mostly consists of GTK+ apps, and most do use GNOME libraries. Quite a few of these apps are still from GTK+/GNOME 1.x days, though - XEmacs GNOME port, Gabber, xlogmaster, xmms, just to list a few. Then there's a whole bunch of GTK+ 2.0 and GNOME 2.x apps: Mozilla Firebird, Nautilus, Dictionary, Logjam, GIMP 1.3, Sodipodi, Ethereal, etc. And then there's GNUMail.app and Terminal.app from GNUStep. There's only one Qt app that I use: Scribus. And then there's always the odd app with most queer and unusual widget sets: ALSAMixerGui (fltk), Blender (GHOST), Acrobat Reader (Motif), TlkEdit (Swing)...
I'm not supporting a single GUI. I'm supporting apps that do the stuff I need. There isn't that much difference between the widget chaos in Linux and the widget chaos in Windows and Mac. Damn it, I click on the app and it does shit, what else do you expect??? Consistent look? Overrated, completely overrated. =)
Type g litigious bastards in the address bar to search for litigious bastards on Google.
I can do precisely that.
I can also do "imdb movie name" to search IMDB. And "e2 nodename" to read about stuff in Everything2.com. "aptget package" finds me some downloads from apt-get.org, "wayback URL" find me historical information, "d word" finds a dictionary.com definition...
...all this thanks to Mozilla Bookmark Keywords! Buy Today! Also Available in Mozilla Firebird!
Never mind about 7z format. 7-zip supports RAR. Decompresses, at least, not sure about compressing but I guess it does that too. And since I didn't see any odd clauses about foreign DLLs there, I'm assuming it's 100% GPLed homegrown code. I didn't check the source code to verify though. But the point is, there's an open-source RAR implementation sitting around here, and it won't run on *NIXes! Imagine the silliness of GNOME File Roller requiring shareware to compress or decompress RARs (it won't work with just the freeware unrar(1), it also needs shareware rar(1))...
Just took a little glance at the 7-zip source code. I'm not a Windows guru, but it smells like MFC??? Errrgh.... Visual Studio stuff. For once I wish they'd port this stuff to C#, at least it'd have a chance to work in Mono =)
Take a look at the readme, particularly the sections concerning the TwinView options. I could get the svideo/composite output to work beautifully for both GF2MX and GF4...
anyone know how they come up with these names? sounds like a fun job, anti-virus virus namer.
Well, usually they seem to just pull some random name from the text inside the virus. For example, "Dark Avenger" was named after the author's nickname, and alternate name "Eddie" comes from the string "Eddie lives... somewhere in time" in virus. Likewise, some virus researchers gave the alias "Shimgapi" to MyDoom because it obviously stored itself in a file named "shimgapi.dll".
Ha. I actually built a reset switch. (Okay, so my father did the soldering.) Too bad it was connected to the serial bus. It worked just fine for VIC-20, but on Commodore 64, it rebooted the disk drive instead, not exactly what we intended. We later used the plug to build a PC printer port cable to "burn D64 images" on floppy =)
For C64, I use The Final Cartridge III which has a nice reset switch, just like all other turbo carts of the day.
PrtScr, in DOS days, sent the contents of the (text mode) screen to the printer. In Windows, it copies the contents of the display to clipboard (some games also map this to internal screenshot command, saving a screenshot to file). In Linux, um, it can be bound to whatever command you need in Hotkeys application or its ilk. I use it to save a screenshot to/tmp/sshot.png.
SysRQ was supposed to be a funky command switching / task management key in any of the cool future PC operating systems. Nobody bothered, except perhaps the Linux developers who envisioned "Magic SysRQ key", useful for tasks like rebooting the computer cleanly if X11 or something has once again messed up the console completely.
Scroll Lock is used to switch the cursor keys to "scroll mode" in modern apps. Or, to pause terminal output in Linux. Or something similar. Pause/Break is probably so obscure that even the inventors didn't yet know what the heck those were supposed to be used for - "future expansion" in case something needed to be paused or broken, more likely.
People who know what horror and moral terror mean have driven a Lada 1200 on a highway at steadily lethal speed of 120 km/h.
I have.
There's actually nothing at all to fear, except the noise. The NOISE.
The first reaction from my friends, when I told them about this thrill ride, was something along the lines of "they go that fast?" Oh yes, indeed, they do. =)
Lilypond is free, and runs on Linux, but is unlikely to become much of an interchange standard because the UI isn't accessible to the vast majority of musicians, who are as a rule not experts on writing something according to a context-free grammar. Besides, Lilypond is best for typesetting-quality layout, at which it does indeed excel.
I'm not a musician, but I'm definitely a printer (or that's my heart's calling, or some other lame explanation like that). From my point of view, Lilypond rules. It's so far the greatest music app I've ever tried on Linux. Even if there's no "easy" GUI, I'm pretty convinced that it's far easier to work with than any GUI app (If I want that G there, I type "g4" and I'm done with it - I don't want to squint at the screen, wave around with mouse and hope for the best as I hit mouse button!) and it's also very powerful (One piece's guitar arpeggios got a whole lot easier to typeset when I noted that hey, I could just define macros...).
As for convincing musicians, or at least music publishers, to use Lilypond, I recommend everyone to check out Lilypond's "switch" page, and the automated engraving essay. These are so far the most convincing open-source "marketing materials" that I've seen - very interesting and in-depth.
I just yesterday received a book with all of Scott Joplin's piano music in it -- all written before 1915 -- and guess what? It says right on the front page that it is against the law to copy them!
Heh, copyright on modern editions is pain, yes, but I suppose it's the only motivation why old music still gets reprinted. If you spend hours and hours and hours trying to produce the perfect, good-looking reprint of an old piece of music, possibly "interpreting" the original, you deserve some credit for the work and get the reward. Still, the current world-wide copyright system is more than a bit odd anyway, but that's another topic.
MIDI, MOD and like are good for storing events. In other words, they're excellent formats for storing music data intended to be interpreted and played back by computer.
However, they're very bad formats for storing notation, musical information that is intended to be human-readable. It's enough for computers to know "Pause of 0.3 seconds; C-4 note duration 0.6 seconds", but human performers have problems deciphering such notes. And as everyone who has messed around with conversion tools, MIDI-to-notation tools are inferior compared to hand-tweaked notation.
As for "bloat" of storing music in text formats, you can store a single note in GNU Lilypond in three bytes (or, in optimal cases, two, or one); can your MIDI or MOD files do the same? =)
Nay, Lilypond is the true king of open notation formats, even if it isn't XML-based and otherwise buzzword-compliant =)
Yeah, but take a look at the second result pointing to Suburban Blight blog, saying how Google had blocked SCO from being number one. I tried that search a few days ago and that page was the first result...
Google doesn't like bombing. I just don't have any idea why SCO is back on the top spot =)
Bad PR, I think. I've heard Nivas are pretty good for their cost, too.
I've noted one thing about Ladas: They look and sound far worse than they actually are. Older Ladas generally look like they're about to fall apart (especially if they've not been given proper care), but actually could withstand a hydrogen bomb going off next to them. (Soviet engineering. Those folks prepared for everything. =) Also, the Ladas are pretty easy to get going on really cold days. (Siberia probably teaches a thing or two.)
And the newer Ladas (110) are pretty nice, pretty much indistinguishable from any Western cars.
As I've understood it, ZIP compresses files one by one. "Tar and feather" compression, on the other hand, is based on merging the files in an archive and then compressing the whole lot. This may result in a slightly better compression ration because multiple files can be examined at single time (for example, if you're compressing text files, like source code, the similarities in two files might be picked up in a single compressed block).
Also, tar and the future formats are "native" *NIX formats, so the file system metadata is more likely stored correctly. Not necessarily so in formats born in non-*NIX worlds. (ZIP file format, I think, now supports owner/permission info, sorta, I think, at least in infozip's *NIX port; not sure if RAR format does.)
Well, I have a GameCube, and every time I power it down and open the lid, the disc is spinning clockwise...
There have been some seriously tricky rumors about the contents of the disk. What is so far known is that the media is normal 8mm DVD - burnable blanks are available, just rarely and costly. (No idea if the GC drive can read burned discs anyway - as everyone knows some optical drives can only read factory-pressed CDs/DVDs...)
Yet, the disc is not in standard DVD format. And the problem is, the DVD-ROM drives are probably too smart to read disks blindly and just tell what's the situation on some specific spot on the disc surface.
Sort of like the "copy-protected" CDs. The discs are not in standard Redbook format, so "dumb" CD players can read them almost (and barely) without problems, because they essentially do "The groove starts here, read the pits at constant speed from here on and make some noise". The "smart" CD-ROM drives can't read the discs because they're intentionally confused by the bogus data on CD - "Read the disc table of contents to determine track location... what the hell?" or "The disc says this, the error-correction data says that, uh, don't blame me if you're getting a headache from all this, boss". (Nintendo's case is different from broken CDs because this stuff is a comprehensive design from ground up, of course... it just happens to use mini-DVD discs and drive mechanism, not the standard disc layout.)
So obviously, you can't rip the GC discs if your DVD-ROM drive won't even recognize it as a DVD-ROM! I read somewhere people were using really contrived means to examine the disc data, like hooking up an oscilloscope to GameCube disc drive data lines...
Some speculate that there are features on the disc that are absolutely impossible to replicate on consumer DVD+-RW drives. For example, some think the barcode visible on inner part of the disc is relevant to booting the disc, and burning features that are visible to naked eye might be mighty tricky...
And I'm not a GC technical expert, I've only had the machine for less than a month and I've read only a couple of articles on the matter anyway. Hope this helps.
Yeah, I saw it was in emulator. That still doesn't explain the appearance of the text, unless it's a feature of the emulator.
But still, I wonder why anyone would have bothered to specifically use slightly odd screen colors to say the least, 40 column text mode, and on top of all that a Commodore 64 font!
It didn't make much sense to me - it smells of unnecessary tweaking with details to appear to be cool. There might have been some other priorities at the time, such as, oh, trying to get it to boot or something.
I would have rather expected to see 640x480 FB graphics mode with 80x25 text with the ordinary Linux fonts...
So where did the strange text appearance come from? Is it a feature of the Dolwin emulator? (I'm not familiar with this program.) Or was it indeed a purposeful kewlness tweak or a stopgap measure?
Of course, I'm not saying it is a hoax, I'm saying it looks ridiculous and as such it might be. I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation for all this, it just isn't apparent in the screenshot...
Yet, for user's manuals and other very comprehensive and large references, Info is very nice if you have a decent browser. I use XEmacs' Info browser and it works beautifully. (the stand-alone info browser wasn't cool.)
And Texinfo sources and also be TeXed and then printed, which would be handy in some situations.
I think Perl is the only thing I frequently use that doesn't have Info docs even if it should. I think the reason why Perl doesn't have Info files is that everyone knows the Camel Book is so handy thing to have =)
This is good news, I hope things will change to better over time.
I hope this will also be the end of the "XFree86" name/brand. Let's face it, it's not really that great name - Not couting "GNU Anything", I've always disliked names that push the "free software" or "openness" aspect, so names with "Free" in them always sound silly. The ideology should be in the heart, not the name.
Also, the whole name is a joke on something that hasn't been around for a while. I hear it's supposed to be a pun on "x-three-eight-six" - X386, which was what the project was called until 1992. I'm sure whoever came up with "XFree86" name had a good laugh with fellow developers, but now, over a decade later, this obscure fact has been completely buried in sands of time. No new users find it funny because they have no idea where it comes from - it has turned from silly and odd-looking to just plain odd-looking. Kind of like "DivX;-)". Yawn.
"X11 Public Implementation" sounds nice and technical, however =)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think so. It wouldn't be practical. An illustration, here...
Day after tomorrow, I'll go across the country to visit folks - with my Gamecube neatly packed in the suitcase. The memory card will easily fit in my wallet.
Guess if the folks have got themselves a broadband Internet yet?
Guess if I'd be interested in messing around with my Internet settings every few weeks just to get my savegames?
Okay, and then when I'm finally home, comfortably with the DSL and all - guess what I tend to do when the guys in the local ISP router booth trip over the cat5 or something? Maybe try playing stuff with the Gamecube instead of spewing curses at the web browser?
And in 5 or 10 years, what if Microsoft decides that this cool server system would be obsolete and discontinues it? I think the save game batteries in my Zelda 2 cartridge (circa 1988) are still working perfectly even when the rumor said they would only hold for like 10 years...
No, I don't think MS, or anyone else, will ever even think of completely abandoning "local" storage space in one form or another. A networked savegame feature would be cool as a backup, though.
Not to even mention the evil, evil Cube, Sphere and Tetrahedron in U7, and apparently this kind of thing is hidden in other games as well (I heard it's definitely in U8 somewhere).
(And historical bit for those who don't get it: EA's logo used to have a square (E), circle (O) and triangle (A).)
I hope I'll get around publishing the NWN module with the evil Ren'sie who lives in the forbidden dimension of Dlrow-yensid'orue... =)
I don't know. VCRs are used to tape stuff, and can be used for legitimate and illegitimate things. Yet, the P2P networks aren't like VCRs - they're of entirely different purpose. More direct analogy for VCRs here would be grip+xmms, or whatever the heck people use to rip their CDs with and listen to the MP3 files.
P2P apps, with very few hacky exceptions, are not used to consume the digital media. They're used for distribution, and distribution only.
P2P networks, in VCR analogy, would then be a van that you've bought specifically to fill with your illegal videotape copies with and drive around the town and throw the tapes out of the window to random passers-by. "Hey, dude, want a free copy of Robocop 3?" "Sure! It sucked! I wouldn't pay for it!" "Here, catch!"
Of course, you could use the same van to ship your own precious movie creation to the retailers... but you first have to paint over the skull-and-crossbones and "Allied Video Pirates" logo on the side of the van, and think of some nicer company name.
Heh. Which reminds me, there's only like two games that I've played that have real-time clock visible at least at some part of the UI: MechCommander and MOO3. More games should have on-screen clock! Maybe the addictive kind of games should have some sort of alarm system too...
I recently posted on how I feel about the names like "FreeSomething" or "OpenAnything". Here are some of my further thoughts.
I think this stuff is redundant. Freedom or Openness should be in the heart, not the name. I can understand if open source apps want to use unnecessary advertising of the parent project in form of "GNU Something" or "GNOME Anything", because that's just normal kind of titles (not too far from "Microsoft Whatever", which people will then casually call "Whatever".)
But "Free" or "Open" in the title is an unnecessary wart. The "GNU" or whatever titles imply that they're part of a group of applications from a single vendor; there's nothing wrong with that. Yet, "Free" or "Open" implies different kind of relationship: This product vs. a specific product, or this product vs. the rest of the world.
It carries a certain kind of connotation of competition: "This program is Free, the other program isn't, so use this program!" It can be a double-edged sword that's almost like free advertising for the proprietary competition: "Hey, this program is Free, but that other program costs money, so it has to be good!"
Herein lies some duality: It is almost if this "free" program couldn't exist without the competition - We have "FreeBSD" and the "not-so-free UNIXes". We have "OpenOffice.org" and "StarOffice". Yin and Yang.
"Free" or "Open" imply attitude. There's no place for attitude in software names.
My original complaint was about the name "XFree86". It's a pun on "X386", which was what the project was known as over a decade ago. It might have been funny back in the day - "Ooh, it's like X, but it's free!" - but now it just looks silly. "Specification from 1986?" ...or "80386 code in my beautiful Macintosh? No way!"
Yeah, but in WindowMaker, all of the stuff is where God intended them to be... =)
I use a strange mixed desktop that mostly consists of GTK+ apps, and most do use GNOME libraries. Quite a few of these apps are still from GTK+/GNOME 1.x days, though - XEmacs GNOME port, Gabber, xlogmaster, xmms, just to list a few. Then there's a whole bunch of GTK+ 2.0 and GNOME 2.x apps: Mozilla Firebird, Nautilus, Dictionary, Logjam, GIMP 1.3, Sodipodi, Ethereal, etc. And then there's GNUMail.app and Terminal.app from GNUStep. There's only one Qt app that I use: Scribus. And then there's always the odd app with most queer and unusual widget sets: ALSAMixerGui (fltk), Blender (GHOST), Acrobat Reader (Motif), TlkEdit (Swing)...
I'm not supporting a single GUI. I'm supporting apps that do the stuff I need. There isn't that much difference between the widget chaos in Linux and the widget chaos in Windows and Mac. Damn it, I click on the app and it does shit, what else do you expect??? Consistent look? Overrated, completely overrated. =)
I can do precisely that.
I can also do "imdb movie name" to search IMDB. And "e2 nodename" to read about stuff in Everything2.com. "aptget package" finds me some downloads from apt-get.org, "wayback URL" find me historical information, "d word" finds a dictionary.com definition...
...all this thanks to Mozilla Bookmark Keywords! Buy Today! Also Available in Mozilla Firebird!
I guess it's very likely, considering they're supporting Windows, Mac and Linux versions on the current Q3A versions.
Well, I'm off to download RTCW:ET, finally =)
Never mind about 7z format. 7-zip supports RAR. Decompresses, at least, not sure about compressing but I guess it does that too. And since I didn't see any odd clauses about foreign DLLs there, I'm assuming it's 100% GPLed homegrown code. I didn't check the source code to verify though. But the point is, there's an open-source RAR implementation sitting around here, and it won't run on *NIXes! Imagine the silliness of GNOME File Roller requiring shareware to compress or decompress RARs (it won't work with just the freeware unrar(1), it also needs shareware rar(1))...
Just took a little glance at the 7-zip source code. I'm not a Windows guru, but it smells like MFC??? Errrgh.... Visual Studio stuff. For once I wish they'd port this stuff to C#, at least it'd have a chance to work in Mono =)
Take a look at the readme, particularly the sections concerning the TwinView options. I could get the svideo/composite output to work beautifully for both GF2MX and GF4...
Well, usually they seem to just pull some random name from the text inside the virus. For example, "Dark Avenger" was named after the author's nickname, and alternate name "Eddie" comes from the string "Eddie lives... somewhere in time" in virus. Likewise, some virus researchers gave the alias "Shimgapi" to MyDoom because it obviously stored itself in a file named "shimgapi.dll".
As for coming up with the names, here's a an interesting article about virus naming
, discussing some of the problems with getting the virus name nailed down...Ha. I actually built a reset switch. (Okay, so my father did the soldering.) Too bad it was connected to the serial bus. It worked just fine for VIC-20, but on Commodore 64, it rebooted the disk drive instead, not exactly what we intended. We later used the plug to build a PC printer port cable to "burn D64 images" on floppy =)
For C64, I use The Final Cartridge III which has a nice reset switch, just like all other turbo carts of the day.
PrtScr, in DOS days, sent the contents of the (text mode) screen to the printer. In Windows, it copies the contents of the display to clipboard (some games also map this to internal screenshot command, saving a screenshot to file). In Linux, um, it can be bound to whatever command you need in Hotkeys application or its ilk. I use it to save a screenshot to /tmp/sshot.png.
SysRQ was supposed to be a funky command switching / task management key in any of the cool future PC operating systems. Nobody bothered, except perhaps the Linux developers who envisioned "Magic SysRQ key", useful for tasks like rebooting the computer cleanly if X11 or something has once again messed up the console completely.
Scroll Lock is used to switch the cursor keys to "scroll mode" in modern apps. Or, to pause terminal output in Linux. Or something similar. Pause/Break is probably so obscure that even the inventors didn't yet know what the heck those were supposed to be used for - "future expansion" in case something needed to be paused or broken, more likely.
People who know what horror and moral terror mean have driven a Lada 1200 on a highway at steadily lethal speed of 120 km/h.
I have.
There's actually nothing at all to fear, except the noise. The NOISE.
The first reaction from my friends, when I told them about this thrill ride, was something along the lines of "they go that fast?" Oh yes, indeed, they do. =)
I'm not a musician, but I'm definitely a printer (or that's my heart's calling, or some other lame explanation like that). From my point of view, Lilypond rules. It's so far the greatest music app I've ever tried on Linux. Even if there's no "easy" GUI, I'm pretty convinced that it's far easier to work with than any GUI app (If I want that G there, I type "g4" and I'm done with it - I don't want to squint at the screen, wave around with mouse and hope for the best as I hit mouse button!) and it's also very powerful (One piece's guitar arpeggios got a whole lot easier to typeset when I noted that hey, I could just define macros...).
As for convincing musicians, or at least music publishers, to use Lilypond, I recommend everyone to check out Lilypond's "switch" page, and the automated engraving essay. These are so far the most convincing open-source "marketing materials" that I've seen - very interesting and in-depth.
Heh, copyright on modern editions is pain, yes, but I suppose it's the only motivation why old music still gets reprinted. If you spend hours and hours and hours trying to produce the perfect, good-looking reprint of an old piece of music, possibly "interpreting" the original, you deserve some credit for the work and get the reward. Still, the current world-wide copyright system is more than a bit odd anyway, but that's another topic.
MIDI, MOD and like are good for storing events. In other words, they're excellent formats for storing music data intended to be interpreted and played back by computer.
However, they're very bad formats for storing notation, musical information that is intended to be human-readable. It's enough for computers to know "Pause of 0.3 seconds; C-4 note duration 0.6 seconds", but human performers have problems deciphering such notes. And as everyone who has messed around with conversion tools, MIDI-to-notation tools are inferior compared to hand-tweaked notation.
As for "bloat" of storing music in text formats, you can store a single note in GNU Lilypond in three bytes (or, in optimal cases, two, or one); can your MIDI or MOD files do the same? =)
Nay, Lilypond is the true king of open notation formats, even if it isn't XML-based and otherwise buzzword-compliant =)
Yeah, but take a look at the second result pointing to Suburban Blight blog, saying how Google had blocked SCO from being number one. I tried that search a few days ago and that page was the first result...
Google doesn't like bombing. I just don't have any idea why SCO is back on the top spot =)
Bad PR, I think. I've heard Nivas are pretty good for their cost, too.
I've noted one thing about Ladas: They look and sound far worse than they actually are. Older Ladas generally look like they're about to fall apart (especially if they've not been given proper care), but actually could withstand a hydrogen bomb going off next to them. (Soviet engineering. Those folks prepared for everything. =) Also, the Ladas are pretty easy to get going on really cold days. (Siberia probably teaches a thing or two.)
And the newer Ladas (110) are pretty nice, pretty much indistinguishable from any Western cars.
As I've understood it, ZIP compresses files one by one. "Tar and feather" compression, on the other hand, is based on merging the files in an archive and then compressing the whole lot. This may result in a slightly better compression ration because multiple files can be examined at single time (for example, if you're compressing text files, like source code, the similarities in two files might be picked up in a single compressed block).
Also, tar and the future formats are "native" *NIX formats, so the file system metadata is more likely stored correctly. Not necessarily so in formats born in non-*NIX worlds. (ZIP file format, I think, now supports owner/permission info, sorta, I think, at least in infozip's *NIX port; not sure if RAR format does.)
Well, I have a GameCube, and every time I power it down and open the lid, the disc is spinning clockwise...
There have been some seriously tricky rumors about the contents of the disk. What is so far known is that the media is normal 8mm DVD - burnable blanks are available, just rarely and costly. (No idea if the GC drive can read burned discs anyway - as everyone knows some optical drives can only read factory-pressed CDs/DVDs...)
Yet, the disc is not in standard DVD format. And the problem is, the DVD-ROM drives are probably too smart to read disks blindly and just tell what's the situation on some specific spot on the disc surface.
Sort of like the "copy-protected" CDs. The discs are not in standard Redbook format, so "dumb" CD players can read them almost (and barely) without problems, because they essentially do "The groove starts here, read the pits at constant speed from here on and make some noise". The "smart" CD-ROM drives can't read the discs because they're intentionally confused by the bogus data on CD - "Read the disc table of contents to determine track location... what the hell?" or "The disc says this, the error-correction data says that, uh, don't blame me if you're getting a headache from all this, boss". (Nintendo's case is different from broken CDs because this stuff is a comprehensive design from ground up, of course... it just happens to use mini-DVD discs and drive mechanism, not the standard disc layout.)
So obviously, you can't rip the GC discs if your DVD-ROM drive won't even recognize it as a DVD-ROM! I read somewhere people were using really contrived means to examine the disc data, like hooking up an oscilloscope to GameCube disc drive data lines...
Some speculate that there are features on the disc that are absolutely impossible to replicate on consumer DVD+-RW drives. For example, some think the barcode visible on inner part of the disc is relevant to booting the disc, and burning features that are visible to naked eye might be mighty tricky...
And I'm not a GC technical expert, I've only had the machine for less than a month and I've read only a couple of articles on the matter anyway. Hope this helps.
Yeah, I saw it was in emulator. That still doesn't explain the appearance of the text, unless it's a feature of the emulator.
But still, I wonder why anyone would have bothered to specifically use slightly odd screen colors to say the least, 40 column text mode, and on top of all that a Commodore 64 font!
It didn't make much sense to me - it smells of unnecessary tweaking with details to appear to be cool. There might have been some other priorities at the time, such as, oh, trying to get it to boot or something.
I would have rather expected to see 640x480 FB graphics mode with 80x25 text with the ordinary Linux fonts...
So where did the strange text appearance come from? Is it a feature of the Dolwin emulator? (I'm not familiar with this program.) Or was it indeed a purposeful kewlness tweak or a stopgap measure?
Of course, I'm not saying it is a hoax, I'm saying it looks ridiculous and as such it might be. I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation for all this, it just isn't apparent in the screenshot...
Man rules for individual proggy information.
Yet, for user's manuals and other very comprehensive and large references, Info is very nice if you have a decent browser. I use XEmacs' Info browser and it works beautifully. (the stand-alone info browser wasn't cool.)
And Texinfo sources and also be TeXed and then printed, which would be handy in some situations.
I think Perl is the only thing I frequently use that doesn't have Info docs even if it should. I think the reason why Perl doesn't have Info files is that everyone knows the Camel Book is so handy thing to have =)
First prealpha booting in 40 column mode, complete with Commodore 64 font??? Where can I get a Linux framebuffer patch to do that?
Smells mighty suspicious...
Wikipedia article describing everything you'll ever need.
This is good news, I hope things will change to better over time.
I hope this will also be the end of the "XFree86" name/brand. Let's face it, it's not really that great name - Not couting "GNU Anything", I've always disliked names that push the "free software" or "openness" aspect, so names with "Free" in them always sound silly. The ideology should be in the heart, not the name.
Also, the whole name is a joke on something that hasn't been around for a while. I hear it's supposed to be a pun on "x-three-eight-six" - X386, which was what the project was called until 1992. I'm sure whoever came up with "XFree86" name had a good laugh with fellow developers, but now, over a decade later, this obscure fact has been completely buried in sands of time. No new users find it funny because they have no idea where it comes from - it has turned from silly and odd-looking to just plain odd-looking. Kind of like "DivX ;-)". Yawn.
"X11 Public Implementation" sounds nice and technical, however =)