If the band aren't that great (live) then yes, you'll have another version of the song you've already got but with more background noise and worse production.
I've got Deep Purple's Made in Japan in the next room. The original versions of the songs are great, but live they're on another level - more punch, more impact, more dramatic playing. And last November I heard Placebo play Wembley Arena - again, performance that just went so far above the stuido ambience.
I've got Depeche Mode's Songs Of Faith And Devotion, and the live version. Which gets listened to more? Live, because it's more energetic, has more presence and just generally sounds better.
Cheap pop bands put together by Simon Cowell often sound rubbish live, and with good reason. Real bands who've built themselves up over time very often sound a lot better live.
I went to university in Reading between 1997 and 2000. Reading's about 15-20 miles from Heathrow, where Concorde operated, and directly under the takeoff flightpath. Concorde used to cross a typical cloudbase roughly over Reading. Most Sunday mornings, at my church, we had to stop the service very briefly around 11AM because the noise from Concorde flying overhead drowned out the PA. This is inside a 1900s brick building with single glazing but windows closed.
Many buildings did successfully block the sound - I rarely heard it when on the university campus, for example - and I never once resented it because Concorde in flight was really, really beautiful so if I heard it and could, I looked up. But I can quite understand why others would have complained on noise grounds.
Slightly OT - I'm a car nut. As I recall, the UK race circuit with the lowest permissible noise levels for track days is Donington Park - literally right under the runway for East Midlands airport. Amuses me, that - maybe the locals really like to hear big jets taking off and don't want classic V8s, V12s and F6s to drown the noise out:-)
I used to be involved in a long-dead project. One of our key goals was to _completely_ separate UI and application.
The idea was to make each application a batch of object libraries exposing handles and methods. You then have a UI definition language (frankly, XUL would be as good as any from what I understand) which simply grabs onto these handles and methods and presents them to the users.
Except that the UI is always user-editable with a tool that's built into the OS, and all its files are absolutely separate from the application code. Think of it as next-generation skinning.
Let's say you want different menus - OK, load up the UI editor, move the items around, add new ones if you want. Or different button icons - again, just load in your new ones and replace the old icons.
That's the basic level. There's nothing whatsoever that says the UI always has to point to _one_ application though. Maybe you think your browser has a rubbish spellchecker but your WP has a good one - OK, so link into the WP's spellchecker object and pick it up. Or for another, I periodically send HTML mail when I want funny formatting - except that Outlook has to be one of the worst WYSIWYG HTML editors I've ever seen. So replace its editor instance with Moz Composer, Dreamweaver, vi even...
Apps are currently way too monolithic (I know I'm using full Moz suite right now, I just prefer its interface) and _really_ fiddly to change. This sort of technology could help hugely with getting computers that work they way _we_ want them to. OK, our grandparents aren't likely to be able to use this feature, but we can and we can help them get their machines set up properly.
I regularly develop Intranet applications so I feel your pain:-) Still like the toolbar though - CSS and image manipulation/highligh functions get used regularly.
The problem with an internal validator is that it'd be locked into the app - you couldn't add more validators or update them as easily.
So, two possibilities spring to mind:
* A plugin (I'd still rather see something that's this focused on developers rather than users kept outside the main branch) * A web validator that takes a POST of HTML. This would have limitations and would need setting up but could then validate non-Internet source to some degree.
I agree. I write web applications for a living and actively push for Moz compatibility in them with colleagues. We're getting there but have some who don't really like playing ball. I'm still not quite sure why they dislike it so strongly as not to find bits like the form inspector and Chris Pederick's web developer toolbar useful.
I can think of three commercial sites I've used that wouldn't work. Dixons group fialed for a while - they don't any more. Argos reckoned it'd be bad enough to actively block - again, they don't any more. In neither case did I buy anything from the sites in that period. Walters Photographic wouldn't let Moz browse their new equipment listings - I told them as much on an order enquiry, was thanked for the feedback and they had a workaround in place within a few days. They now have a complete new site that works happily in either as far as I can see.
It's worth remembering tact with small businesses in particular. They may well not be aware of the issue and have a simple site bought through a local supplier, with no particular in-house expertise. In this case, I courteously explained what I couldn't do (alongside placing an order - I liked them anyway) and got a quick solution. They can now take more orders, I'm a satisfied customer who tells people of this. We all win.
To me, their place in the browser market gives them two wins:
* If they can hold a significant majority with a somewhat incompatible application, they encourage an awful lot of applications to work to their standards. As they can release for whatever platforms they choose, they can help ensure other platforms maintain a reputation in the public eye for not being quite compatible with the Internet. Result, extra sales for Windows.
* If another brand starts achieving name recognition, it can potentially be put on bundled software lists by vendors building Linspire / standard Linux machines, thus building further user confidence that these things will be fine. Result, less sales for Windows.
Either way, I don't think they're this daft and complacent. Moz / Firefox (I still actually prefer the full suite) is a nice product and with almost no advertising and no bundled distrubution on top of a previous low level, it's accelerating pretty fast all things considered. It could bite them if they don't get a reaction upgrade out there to compete - and if market share for this can reach and hold at least 20% or so, application designers will have to start considering alternatives. At which point we're back with the W3C standards to provide cross-browser sites and that genie will be hard to put back in the bottle.
When I saw this, I thought 'hang on, I can now register for an account!'. No, hang on, this makes sense...
Much of my office communicates using MSN Messenger. I don't like it but never mind... I had never signed up for an account because, with Passport around, I didn't want to provide them with the slightest additional encouragement and blip in their userbase statistics that might help persuade another site to join their unholy alliance. Now that possibility appears thoroughly dead, I can sign up for one in peace and be able to send quick messages to colleagues more efficiently than through e-mail.
(Am a Brit, just used US in absence of anything else from probability)
Aah, so you are talking the game edition that costs nearly double its normal price in the comparison then... Still, sounds like you get a good deal on DVDs!
I agree with the argument but the difference is much, much lower, my friend.
Re:Government sponsered, privately built
on
Honda Updates ASIMO
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· Score: 1
Speaking as a trumpet player, it sounds really, really bad - but I'm still impressed they've managed it.
Quite why they're bothering I'm not sure. I mean, knowing how Japanese companies like to make themselves appear squeaky clean, I'm curious what use they think they'll ever have for strong, precisely controllable robot lips...
Yes, but for something that trivial when you're not 100% familiar with the language it's often quicker to write your own than look up the standard one.
Well, there's already Meccano (Erector) Difference Engines out there... http://www.meccano.us/difference_engines/rde_1/ and http://www.steamengine.com.au/misc/models/babbage/
I'm sure I've heard about analytical engines in the planning stages but don't think there's anything out there yet.
To be honest, clocks are relatively common in Meccano - you can buy a plan to build a grandfather clock from a no. 10 set, I believe. The one I thought of in particular, though, was made about 20 years ago by Noel Ta'Bois, entirely out of plastic meccano (kiddy junior stuff), which I believe kept accurate time for 25 hours. Sadly due to its age I don't have references:-(
Using full Moz over here so it should be slower. PII 400, 192MB RAM, W2k. Perfectly usable, significantly faster than IE. For a while I ran it on my old work machine which was a PII 350 with 256MB and W98.
Yes, but if credible evidence is found of electoral fraud having been committed and having changed the result, how long would you honestly expect the perpetrators to stay at liberty for? They'd be hounded into jail very, very quickly.
Aside from 7-11's chart only showing 31 states and therefore being of less significance than it might appear (and also assuming their locations are evenly distributed and frequented - given then have Bush taking California I wouldn't bank on that), I've just been playing with electoral colleges with it.
Bearing in mind my head's not quite straight at the moment so these numbers may not be quite right (like I may have moved a few states - sorry, Brit!) the thing that really bothers me is that a 2.18% popular vote lead has been translated, in electoral college votes, into a 14.6% lead. That's disgusting.
(Yes, British elections are terrible in their own way too - I'd much rather we had proper proportional representation for Westminster).
We need preferential elections and decent, modern vote counting systems, counting voter verifiable physical objects. The thought that a mandate as easily disputable as the one next Tuesday is likely to produce could trigger the scale of change it may is horrifying.
Sorry to hear you had problems but fundamentally no, I don't find that at all, after several years of setting these things up now. VB.Net maybe - ASP no, it just flies straight in and works.
If you're building stuff to run your own systems, go for it. If you're building stuff to resell to corporate / government clients that they want to be able to install as a turnkey, _you_ try getting them to install PHP...
(Speaking as an ASP coder. Complex monopolies in action, guys...)
OK, let's see how long the record industry could make _that_ argument stick for.
Explaining to the average computer user that using Windows Media Player's inbuilt functions to convert your CDs for playing on your computer, or that copying your legally purchased CDs to your iPod/generic MP3 player is illegal will get howls of derision and a very quick change in the law.
OK, I'm having to recode an application at the moment for an upgrade. I'd love to be able to search for all files that contain X AND Y AND NOT Z.
Much as I hate to say it, this still sounds a useful technology to me.
Re:Have it do something worthwhile
on
Palmtop Nirvana?
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· Score: 1
PDAs suck if you buy ones without decent keyboards. Try a Psion 5 (as our story poster did) and you'll realise how wonderful they can be.
Honestly, I've had both and rapidly got fed up with my Palm - screen resolution too low to do anything useful, slow an inaccurate data entry. Looks good in the shops because it's lighter and cheaper but you don't realise how poor the handwriting recognition is and how much better a proper keyboard is.
My Psion 5mx regularly gets used for taking meeting notes live, for writing letters and reports on the move and so on. It's great and I wish more people had recognised this when they still sold them so Psion could have kept making them:-(
For the last 3-4 months I've got a similar spam volume and profile on my personal ISP mailbox, active 3.5 years now with little spam before that. My suspicion is it came through a Majordomo mailinglist. Nothing to do with personal websites or catch-all e-mail addresses, though - it's not the address above this post or even at that ISP.
Fortunately I don't seem to get the _illegal_ porn spam like I do at my webmail box... Not very nice clearing your spam folder and finding mails for child / violent / animal porn. Never sure whether I should turn off all image downloads just in case and open them to forward on to the proper autorities or just delete.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on the band.
If the band aren't that great (live) then yes, you'll have another version of the song you've already got but with more background noise and worse production.
I've got Deep Purple's Made in Japan in the next room. The original versions of the songs are great, but live they're on another level - more punch, more impact, more dramatic playing. And last November I heard Placebo play Wembley Arena - again, performance that just went so far above the stuido ambience.
I've got Depeche Mode's Songs Of Faith And Devotion, and the live version. Which gets listened to more? Live, because it's more energetic, has more presence and just generally sounds better.
Cheap pop bands put together by Simon Cowell often sound rubbish live, and with good reason. Real bands who've built themselves up over time very often sound a lot better live.
(Feeding a troll?)
:-)
Show me a 500 capacity CD case that fits in my pocket and I might think about it...
MP3 players are great for indecisive people with large CD collections
I disagree.
:-)
I went to university in Reading between 1997 and 2000. Reading's about 15-20 miles from Heathrow, where Concorde operated, and directly under the takeoff flightpath. Concorde used to cross a typical cloudbase roughly over Reading. Most Sunday mornings, at my church, we had to stop the service very briefly around 11AM because the noise from Concorde flying overhead drowned out the PA. This is inside a 1900s brick building with single glazing but windows closed.
Many buildings did successfully block the sound - I rarely heard it when on the university campus, for example - and I never once resented it because Concorde in flight was really, really beautiful so if I heard it and could, I looked up. But I can quite understand why others would have complained on noise grounds.
Slightly OT - I'm a car nut. As I recall, the UK race circuit with the lowest permissible noise levels for track days is Donington Park - literally right under the runway for East Midlands airport. Amuses me, that - maybe the locals really like to hear big jets taking off and don't want classic V8s, V12s and F6s to drown the noise out
I used to be involved in a long-dead project. One of our key goals was to _completely_ separate UI and application.
The idea was to make each application a batch of object libraries exposing handles and methods. You then have a UI definition language (frankly, XUL would be as good as any from what I understand) which simply grabs onto these handles and methods and presents them to the users.
Except that the UI is always user-editable with a tool that's built into the OS, and all its files are absolutely separate from the application code. Think of it as next-generation skinning.
Let's say you want different menus - OK, load up the UI editor, move the items around, add new ones if you want. Or different button icons - again, just load in your new ones and replace the old icons.
That's the basic level. There's nothing whatsoever that says the UI always has to point to _one_ application though. Maybe you think your browser has a rubbish spellchecker but your WP has a good one - OK, so link into the WP's spellchecker object and pick it up. Or for another, I periodically send HTML mail when I want funny formatting - except that Outlook has to be one of the worst WYSIWYG HTML editors I've ever seen. So replace its editor instance with Moz Composer, Dreamweaver, vi even...
Apps are currently way too monolithic (I know I'm using full Moz suite right now, I just prefer its interface) and _really_ fiddly to change. This sort of technology could help hugely with getting computers that work they way _we_ want them to. OK, our grandparents aren't likely to be able to use this feature, but we can and we can help them get their machines set up properly.
I regularly develop Intranet applications so I feel your pain :-) Still like the toolbar though - CSS and image manipulation/highligh functions get used regularly.
The problem with an internal validator is that it'd be locked into the app - you couldn't add more validators or update them as easily.
So, two possibilities spring to mind:
* A plugin (I'd still rather see something that's this focused on developers rather than users kept outside the main branch)
* A web validator that takes a POST of HTML. This would have limitations and would need setting up but could then validate non-Internet source to some degree.
Try Chris Pederick's developer toolbar - built in validator plus a bunch of other bits. I love it, makes my job lots easier :-)
I use the browser and the mail client, I much prefer Moz's interface to Firefox. I've never seen Thunderbird.
What would I gain from Firefox & Thunderbird?
(I'd personally rather they sort of went in the middle and became modular but tightly linked and bundled. Help each drive adoption of the other.)
I agree. I write web applications for a living and actively push for Moz compatibility in them with colleagues. We're getting there but have some who don't really like playing ball. I'm still not quite sure why they dislike it so strongly as not to find bits like the form inspector and Chris Pederick's web developer toolbar useful.
I can think of three commercial sites I've used that wouldn't work. Dixons group fialed for a while - they don't any more. Argos reckoned it'd be bad enough to actively block - again, they don't any more. In neither case did I buy anything from the sites in that period. Walters Photographic wouldn't let Moz browse their new equipment listings - I told them as much on an order enquiry, was thanked for the feedback and they had a workaround in place within a few days. They now have a complete new site that works happily in either as far as I can see.
It's worth remembering tact with small businesses in particular. They may well not be aware of the issue and have a simple site bought through a local supplier, with no particular in-house expertise. In this case, I courteously explained what I couldn't do (alongside placing an order - I liked them anyway) and got a quick solution. They can now take more orders, I'm a satisfied customer who tells people of this. We all win.
To me, their place in the browser market gives them two wins:
* If they can hold a significant majority with a somewhat incompatible application, they encourage an awful lot of applications to work to their standards. As they can release for whatever platforms they choose, they can help ensure other platforms maintain a reputation in the public eye for not being quite compatible with the Internet. Result, extra sales for Windows.
* If another brand starts achieving name recognition, it can potentially be put on bundled software lists by vendors building Linspire / standard Linux machines, thus building further user confidence that these things will be fine. Result, less sales for Windows.
Either way, I don't think they're this daft and complacent. Moz / Firefox (I still actually prefer the full suite) is a nice product and with almost no advertising and no bundled distrubution on top of a previous low level, it's accelerating pretty fast all things considered. It could bite them if they don't get a reaction upgrade out there to compete - and if market share for this can reach and hold at least 20% or so, application designers will have to start considering alternatives. At which point we're back with the W3C standards to provide cross-browser sites and that genie will be hard to put back in the bottle.
When I saw this, I thought 'hang on, I can now register for an account!'. No, hang on, this makes sense...
Much of my office communicates using MSN Messenger. I don't like it but never mind... I had never signed up for an account because, with Passport around, I didn't want to provide them with the slightest additional encouragement and blip in their userbase statistics that might help persuade another site to join their unholy alliance. Now that possibility appears thoroughly dead, I can sign up for one in peace and be able to send quick messages to colleagues more efficiently than through e-mail.
(Am a Brit, just used US in absence of anything else from probability)
Aah, so you are talking the game edition that costs nearly double its normal price in the comparison then... Still, sounds like you get a good deal on DVDs!
Where?
& bt nG=Search+Froogle
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=half+life+2
I agree with the argument but the difference is much, much lower, my friend.
Speaking as a trumpet player, it sounds really, really bad - but I'm still impressed they've managed it.
Quite why they're bothering I'm not sure. I mean, knowing how Japanese companies like to make themselves appear squeaky clean, I'm curious what use they think they'll ever have for strong, precisely controllable robot lips...
(bit OT)
Yes, but for something that trivial when you're not 100% familiar with the language it's often quicker to write your own than look up the standard one.
Well, there's already Meccano (Erector) Difference Engines out there... http://www.meccano.us/difference_engines/rde_1/ and http://www.steamengine.com.au/misc/models/babbage/
:-(
I'm sure I've heard about analytical engines in the planning stages but don't think there's anything out there yet.
To be honest, clocks are relatively common in Meccano - you can buy a plan to build a grandfather clock from a no. 10 set, I believe. The one I thought of in particular, though, was made about 20 years ago by Noel Ta'Bois, entirely out of plastic meccano (kiddy junior stuff), which I believe kept accurate time for 25 hours. Sadly due to its age I don't have references
Want a small, efficient four seater? Try a Honda Jazz or Renault Modus.
Using full Moz over here so it should be slower. PII 400, 192MB RAM, W2k. Perfectly usable, significantly faster than IE. For a while I ran it on my old work machine which was a PII 350 with 256MB and W98.
Yes, but if credible evidence is found of electoral fraud having been committed and having changed the result, how long would you honestly expect the perpetrators to stay at liberty for? They'd be hounded into jail very, very quickly.
Off work ill and bored...
Aside from 7-11's chart only showing 31 states and therefore being of less significance than it might appear (and also assuming their locations are evenly distributed and frequented - given then have Bush taking California I wouldn't bank on that), I've just been playing with electoral colleges with it.
Bearing in mind my head's not quite straight at the moment so these numbers may not be quite right (like I may have moved a few states - sorry, Brit!) the thing that really bothers me is that a 2.18% popular vote lead has been translated, in electoral college votes, into a 14.6% lead. That's disgusting.
(Yes, British elections are terrible in their own way too - I'd much rather we had proper proportional representation for Westminster).
We need preferential elections and decent, modern vote counting systems, counting voter verifiable physical objects. The thought that a mandate as easily disputable as the one next Tuesday is likely to produce could trigger the scale of change it may is horrifying.
Sorry to hear you had problems but fundamentally no, I don't find that at all, after several years of setting these things up now. VB.Net maybe - ASP no, it just flies straight in and works.
(MS bugs excepted, of course...)
If you're building stuff to run your own systems, go for it. If you're building stuff to resell to corporate / government clients that they want to be able to install as a turnkey, _you_ try getting them to install PHP...
(Speaking as an ASP coder. Complex monopolies in action, guys...)
OK, let's see how long the record industry could make _that_ argument stick for.
Explaining to the average computer user that using Windows Media Player's inbuilt functions to convert your CDs for playing on your computer, or that copying your legally purchased CDs to your iPod/generic MP3 player is illegal will get howls of derision and a very quick change in the law.
OK, I'm having to recode an application at the moment for an upgrade. I'd love to be able to search for all files that contain X AND Y AND NOT Z.
Much as I hate to say it, this still sounds a useful technology to me.
PDAs suck if you buy ones without decent keyboards. Try a Psion 5 (as our story poster did) and you'll realise how wonderful they can be.
:-(
Honestly, I've had both and rapidly got fed up with my Palm - screen resolution too low to do anything useful, slow an inaccurate data entry. Looks good in the shops because it's lighter and cheaper but you don't realise how poor the handwriting recognition is and how much better a proper keyboard is.
My Psion 5mx regularly gets used for taking meeting notes live, for writing letters and reports on the move and so on. It's great and I wish more people had recognised this when they still sold them so Psion could have kept making them
For the last 3-4 months I've got a similar spam volume and profile on my personal ISP mailbox, active 3.5 years now with little spam before that. My suspicion is it came through a Majordomo mailinglist. Nothing to do with personal websites or catch-all e-mail addresses, though - it's not the address above this post or even at that ISP.
Fortunately I don't seem to get the _illegal_ porn spam like I do at my webmail box... Not very nice clearing your spam folder and finding mails for child / violent / animal porn. Never sure whether I should turn off all image downloads just in case and open them to forward on to the proper autorities or just delete.