My Jolida CD player has tubes in the output stage. It does color the sound, but not in a way I find annoying. In fact, crappy recordings tend to sound better with a little tube "smoothing." Good records sound... well, good.
My preamp and amp are both solid state, FWIW.
Oh yeah, if memory serves it was only about $1000, not $20K.
--jmike
(Who also has a tube headphone amp in the mail, which will hopefully open up his Grado headphones. Err... which are often hooked up to an iPod, to tie this back to the long-lost thread.)
I was working on my wife's 1.4Ghz Pentium M notebook (roughly comparable to a 2Ghz P4, from what I've read) for a while before I upgraded my Cube to a 1.2GHz G4. In terms of compilation and execution, they're roughly equivalent. A new PowerBook should outperform the Cube due to bigger caches and pipes and *much* better graphics (Rage 128 on the Cube).
However, IDE (IntelliJ IDEA) performance isn't quite as good on the Mac as on the PC. It's a big Swing app, so there are a lot of software layers there that may be bottlenecks. Lack of a decent video card is probably killing me there as well.
This is all just butt benchmarking; I don't have any real numbers to back it up, except for compilation times and JBoss lauch times, which were, as I said, pretty much the same.
That said, I put the new 2.4GHz P4 I got at work in the corner and am still using the Cube. And the dual G5 at home, well... that sucka just plain flies through anything I've tried other than 3D-intensive games originally written for Windows.
I might be going out on a limb here, but I would venture to say that there's a much bigger threat because the dude could just kick my door down and take my entire computer away with him.
Are you kidding? You're thinking he's more likely to uncurl his claw-shaped hands from his keyboard and mouse, put down his Mt. Dew and Fritos, get up from his butt-shaped chair, go outside (and thereby risk exposure to sunlight) wheeze over to your door, kick it down and take your Mac?
Ha. The PPC Linux distros may be cool but hell, we're talking physical exertion here!
Just pointing out that this isn't the only guy in the world to think of the idea; in fact he's rather late to the table.
My brother-on-law sells on CD Baby and seems pleased. Not sure how they structure the deal, but the basic idea is to allow independent artists to get most of the money.
None of these sites solve the much larger problem of artist marketing, IMO. That's the one service that the record companies offer to the artists that no one else can get close to (in part because they lock competitors out of radio access, for example). There's room in the market for someone to do that, but they're going to have to find other means of getting to the customer other than radio (sites like Epitonic.com are a good step in that direction).
Once MS start forcing people to use only MS-approved software, prevent you ripping CDs and copying MP3s, force you to use even more and more MS proprietary formats and extortionate licensing models, how many people do you think will still like to use MS Software?
As many as do now and more. People don't care. The vast majority don't anyway. Mob computing mentality rules. To do something different (Linux, Mac) requires thought, consideration of risks (does the software I need exist? will this platform be dead in two years? can I get my data to where I need it to be? how much time will I spend not using, but instead trying to make work?). Most people aren't up to that challenge.
And the alternatives aren't good for the average user. Linux is far too difficult for most people. Mac hardware costs too much and application presence is far from guaranteed (though the existence of Office X has saved their ass thus far, and you can bet that Microsoft knows they're holding the kill switch!). Other Unices? Again, too hard and even less application support.
None of this is news, though there's a fair number of folks around here who seem to believe that kernel compilation should be taught in grade school.
I rate software on cost, reliability and useability. MS's current stuff doesn't rate too highly on any of the above.
Most people rate software on price, presence and the ability to accomplish boring, repetitive tasks, browse the web and view the latest stupid WMV link from their cousin Susan in Florida.
Caveat: IANAWDTG (I am not a Windows Developer Thank God)
Right. Or better, leave the DLLs that implement the embedded views that the OS uses (for example, go to Add/Remove Programs on a Win2K machine--that scrollpane appears to be an HTML view), but remove the.EXE files that comprise the programs in question (IEXPLORE.EXE, etc.).
Of course, this means that Internet Explorer will still run faster and load quicker than other browsers and have a download size of like 89K to Mozilla's/Netscape's many megabytes...:-/
Actually, as the son of one of the authors, I know that this book was actually in the pipeline well before the bubble burst. I think the title may have changed, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Must have been a windy day on planet Earth!
http://www.sail-world.com/USA/New-World-Speed-Record---Macquarie-Innovation-breaks-50--hits-54-knots/55222
--jmike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointy_Haired_Boss
My Jolida CD player has tubes in the output stage. It does color the sound, but not in a way I find annoying. In fact, crappy recordings tend to sound better with a little tube "smoothing." Good records sound... well, good.
My preamp and amp are both solid state, FWIW.
Oh yeah, if memory serves it was only about $1000, not $20K.
--jmike
(Who also has a tube headphone amp in the mail, which will hopefully open up his Grado headphones. Err... which are often hooked up to an iPod, to tie this back to the long-lost thread.)
I was working on my wife's 1.4Ghz Pentium M notebook (roughly comparable to a 2Ghz P4, from what I've read) for a while before I upgraded my Cube to a 1.2GHz G4. In terms of compilation and execution, they're roughly equivalent. A new PowerBook should outperform the Cube due to bigger caches and pipes and *much* better graphics (Rage 128 on the Cube).
However, IDE (IntelliJ IDEA) performance isn't quite as good on the Mac as on the PC. It's a big Swing app, so there are a lot of software layers there that may be bottlenecks. Lack of a decent video card is probably killing me there as well.
This is all just butt benchmarking; I don't have any real numbers to back it up, except for compilation times and JBoss lauch times, which were, as I said, pretty much the same.
That said, I put the new 2.4GHz P4 I got at work in the corner and am still using the Cube. And the dual G5 at home, well... that sucka just plain flies through anything I've tried other than 3D-intensive games originally written for Windows.
Are you kidding? You're thinking he's more likely to uncurl his claw-shaped hands from his keyboard and mouse, put down his Mt. Dew and Fritos, get up from his butt-shaped chair, go outside (and thereby risk exposure to sunlight) wheeze over to your door, kick it down and take your Mac?
Ha. The PPC Linux distros may be cool but hell, we're talking physical exertion here!
My brother-on-law sells on CD Baby and seems pleased. Not sure how they structure the deal, but the basic idea is to allow independent artists to get most of the money.
None of these sites solve the much larger problem of artist marketing, IMO. That's the one service that the record companies offer to the artists that no one else can get close to (in part because they lock competitors out of radio access, for example). There's room in the market for someone to do that, but they're going to have to find other means of getting to the customer other than radio (sites like Epitonic.com are a good step in that direction).
As many as do now and more. People don't care. The vast majority don't anyway. Mob computing mentality rules. To do something different (Linux, Mac) requires thought, consideration of risks (does the software I need exist? will this platform be dead in two years? can I get my data to where I need it to be? how much time will I spend not using, but instead trying to make work?). Most people aren't up to that challenge.
And the alternatives aren't good for the average user. Linux is far too difficult for most people. Mac hardware costs too much and application presence is far from guaranteed (though the existence of Office X has saved their ass thus far, and you can bet that Microsoft knows they're holding the kill switch!). Other Unices? Again, too hard and even less application support.
None of this is news, though there's a fair number of folks around here who seem to believe that kernel compilation should be taught in grade school.
I rate software on cost, reliability and useability. MS's current stuff doesn't rate too highly on any of the above.
Most people rate software on price, presence and the ability to accomplish boring, repetitive tasks, browse the web and view the latest stupid WMV link from their cousin Susan in Florida.
Right. Or better, leave the DLLs that implement the embedded views that the OS uses (for example, go to Add/Remove Programs on a Win2K machine--that scrollpane appears to be an HTML view), but remove the .EXE files that comprise the programs in question (IEXPLORE.EXE, etc.).
Of course, this means that Internet Explorer will still run faster and load quicker than other browsers and have a download size of like 89K to Mozilla's/Netscape's many megabytes... :-/
Called himself "Johnny Cash."
You're assuming that they've already manufactured all of the boxes they plan to sell.
$100 loss per item * 100,000 (total sales) > $200 loss per item * 10,000 (initial run).
Actually, as the son of one of the authors, I know that this book was actually in the pipeline well before the bubble burst. I think the title may have changed, though.