Eddie Izzard says it best...
on
A Beautiful Mind
·
· Score: 0, Troll
"J. Edgar Hoover, what a fuckhead he was, when he died they found out he was a Transvestite, they said, 'ah, that explains his weird behaviour'. Yeah, Fuckin Weirdo Transvestite!"
Check out the M-Audio Delta 44 -- it records 4 mono or 2 stereo tracks in. I don't recall if the inputs are unbalanced or not, but noise is almost nonexistent.
I love this thing; recording is simple -- set up whatever I want to record in a single take, run them through the appropriate preamps, and hit record in Cakewalk.
Not USB, though -- you *do* need a PCI slot, but it's got a very sturdy metal breakout box. I believe the converters are in the box, too.
Why not go with a rackmount case? You can find them for the price of a nice full-tower, and you can shove 'em right into your rack for recording/tone generation, etc.
Fencers *were* in danger of being cut from the Olympics.
It's very doubtful that it'll happen now, with the sport growing in popularity worldwide, and fencing federations moving quickly to adapt to the new results-oriented climate demanded by national Olympic Committees.
(Note: This money-for-medals deal is, of course, why the US is spearheading the movement to get Women's Sabre included in 2004...not only out of fairness, but also cause we have a 15 year old sabreuse out in Oregon who can spank all comers!)
I don't think that's necessarily true -- for example, I'm doing three things in parallel: full-time school, 20 hrs of part-time work, and about 15 hours of fencing training a week. Then I go home and start homework, projects, etc.
Which means that I'm driving a heck of a lot.
I'm well aware of the money I can save (or at least, quality I can get for the same money) by cooking, but my time is a much more important commodity than the money I would save -- since going home and preparing food would mean that I am late to [practice|work|class].
Whereas the fast food is on my path and can be greedily consumed en route. I bet that logic applies to many people....
If there's a roach in a proprietary Microsoft BLT, you won't know about it until you've swallowed it and contracted some horrible disease. With open source sandwiches, you can send your changes back to the developer.
Of course, you could just reverse-engineer your sandwich and look to see if there's a bug in it, but that's not legal persuant to the DMCA.
A big store who can afford to print big color ads in the newspaper can also afford to sell CDs as loss-leaders. If they want, they don't have to advertise price. "Call for price!" "So low, we can't print it!" Wow, problem solved.
I think the MAP levels the playing field a bit. But I'm a staunch supporter of my local independent record store -- it's worth paying a bit extra for a knowledgeable guy who knows my name, knows what I like, and can even tell me about artists that I might not have discovered otherwise.
At that time, large department stores and consumer electronics retailers began selling CD's below cost as a "loss leader," in an effort to get people into the stores to buy big-ticket items, labels said.
The labels say they started the MAP policy in an effort to help smaller music retailers compete with chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Circuit City Stores Inc. They say smaller retailers do not have the option of offsetting losses from cut-price CD sales with sales of other products.
Granted, those guys have a way of lying through their teeth, but that sure makes sense to me. If I were running a small music store which only sells CDs, I can't afford to lose money on CDs. A Best Buy can pick up the slack by selling impulse items like CD cases and, ehrm, refrigerators.
The labels say they received no financial gain from the MAP policy. "The wholesale price we charged retailers was the same whether or not they participated in MAP," one label executive said.
But the states claim in their complaint that if a retailer advertized a price below the agreed-upon minimum, the retailer risked "the loss of all promotional funds available from that (label) for a period of 60 to 90 days...(and) would jeopardize promotional funds for an entire chain."
Why exactly is this price-fixing? The instrument industry does the same thing -- they sell instruments at a wholesale $X. They don't allow you to advertise below a certain MSRP in-print, but you can sell it for any price you want, hence the haggling which is an unalienable part of the experience of buying an instrument.
There's nothing wrong with a record label inherently -- they provide a service that an artist is unwilling or incapable of providing.
Not every musician can or wants to handle the details of booking, merchandising, etc. A label can provide that. If they think a musician is promising, they can front them money to help them get their album released, and get it on store shelves and noticed. That's a pretty nice thing to do -- so naturally they want a cut of the profits and rights to leverage the music.
The problem, of course, is when labels begin using their power (they control the money, of course) to influence the music and/or create bad contracts and/or stifle technology.
Look at Daemon Records for an example of a benevolent record label.
"Secret" was done by Don Bluth, who used to be a senior animator at Disney, but left during the darker days in the early 80s with a bunch of other folks.
IMHO "Secret of Nimh" is one of the best feature animations ever created. If you enjoyed it, "An American Tail", "All Dogs Go To Heaven" and "Anastasia" (Bluth's latest work) may also float your boat. "Land Before Time" is also a fun movie for any child in the dinosaur-obsessed stage of their life.
Bluth's had quite a few misses, too (anybody remember Rock-A-Doodle, or Thumbelina?), but he's a very talented person.
If you know anybody who was shut off for legal MP3s, have 'em raise a stink about it -- if RIT ever attempted to shut me down for sharing out my own music or other legal files, I'd be on the phone with the press, a lawyer, and firing off e-mails like a fekkin' madman.
A University has a very good right to be scared of a lawsuit from a large organization representing rich people. However, they also need to be scared of lawsuits from people who they trample underfoot.
So, because there is too much technology to handle, you propose a "filter" that will screen out the "bad" technology? I've heard this idea somewhere before...
And who decides what is good, what is bad, and what is too trivial to trifle with? Sure, you won't catch me dead with a pager, cell-phone, or Palmpilot as long as I can get away with it. (After all, if I want to be found, I'll be near a phone or computer.)
With this overabundance of information comes tools for organizing and using it - Slashdot, Freshmeat - they all provide a logical way to sift through information that interests a specific niche.
Face it - the burden of sifting through this stuff is going to rest on our shoulders. You can adapt, and learn to use resources wisely and parse information quickly - weeding out uninteresting stuff and finding nifty stuff, or you can just complain about it and propose that we have a computer do it for us.
IMHO, part of the fun of having a mind is using it.
I think we will soon see the point where digital modeling amplifiers will be able to simulate tubes very closely. The efforts to this point haven't been great, but they've come leaps and bounds from where they were.
I know I won't complain if I can shave 20-30 pounds from my amp, and not have to replace tubes every few months. But still, the tone comes first.
I'd love to play around with their experiment board once they get 'em out, that's for sure.
My grandmother, upon hearing that it was healthy to drink lots of water, put herself in the hospital by drinking several gallons in one day.
Is that to say water is dangerous and should be illegal? I don't think so.
Let's face it, anything not in moderation, or under certain conditions, can be fatal.
But pot-smoking is far from the worst you can do. You'll never hear of anybody getting high, and then taking a baseball bat to their girlfriend's head, unlike with a certain legal and accepted substance.
If you take the forbidden danger element away, you also take the thrill away. The only way marijuana truly causes harm is indirectly - if you're driving with it. So toughen up the DUI and public-intox laws, and let people smoke pot in the comfort of their own home.
Your brain cells - you have the right to waste them however you want.
Speaking of films involving technology, has anybody here seen the Cronenberg flick "eXistenZ," with Jennifer Jason Leigh as a supposed VR video-game designer?
I haven't been able to talk my usual film review suspects into going w/ me to the indie-film theater, but I've heard it's really really good.
The sound quality issue is not FUD. All else being equal, I can hear the difference between a compressed MP3 and the CD from which I ripped it, as long as I'm using my monitors plugged into the computer.
The compression is even more evident when played through a hi-fi stereo.
Does it matter for the newest Britney Spears crap? Probably not. But there is degradation in the sound quality. That's why they call it "lossy" compression.
Slashdot Mirror
"J. Edgar Hoover, what a fuckhead he was, when he died they found out he was a Transvestite, they said, 'ah, that explains his weird behaviour'. Yeah, Fuckin Weirdo Transvestite!"
Check out the M-Audio Delta 44 -- it records 4 mono or 2 stereo tracks in. I don't recall if the inputs are unbalanced or not, but noise is almost nonexistent.
I love this thing; recording is simple -- set up whatever I want to record in a single take, run them through the appropriate preamps, and hit record in Cakewalk.
Not USB, though -- you *do* need a PCI slot, but it's got a very sturdy metal breakout box. I believe the converters are in the box, too.
And the cost was about $275.
darius
Why not go with a rackmount case? You can find them for the price of a nice full-tower, and you can shove 'em right into your rack for recording/tone generation, etc.
Steroids could be performance enhancing. Consider that the average male splits a given supply of blood between the brain, and, well...you know.
Consider the effect steroids has on, well...you know.
Voila! More blood for the brain!
Fencers *were* in danger of being cut from the Olympics.
It's very doubtful that it'll happen now, with the sport growing in popularity worldwide, and fencing federations moving quickly to adapt to the new results-oriented climate demanded by national Olympic Committees.
(Note: This money-for-medals deal is, of course, why the US is spearheading the movement to get Women's Sabre included in 2004...not only out of fairness, but also cause we have a 15 year old sabreuse out in Oregon who can spank all comers!)
I don't think that's necessarily true -- for example, I'm doing three things in parallel: full-time school, 20 hrs of part-time work, and about 15 hours of fencing training a week. Then I go home and start homework, projects, etc.
Which means that I'm driving a heck of a lot.
I'm well aware of the money I can save (or at least, quality I can get for the same money) by cooking, but my time is a much more important commodity than the money I would save -- since going home and preparing food would mean that I am late to [practice|work|class].
Whereas the fast food is on my path and can be greedily consumed en route. I bet that logic applies to many people....
Oh, open source sandwiches definitely make sense!
If there's a roach in a proprietary Microsoft BLT, you won't know about it until you've swallowed it and contracted some horrible disease. With open source sandwiches, you can send your changes back to the developer.
Of course, you could just reverse-engineer your sandwich and look to see if there's a bug in it, but that's not legal persuant to the DMCA.
darius
"The ship will use engines made from ceramic materials and burn a mixture of methane and liquid oxygen, generating a maximum 3g of thrust."
3 grams? I'm impressed...
This nearly happened with the 2nd or 3rd Dream Team. They played an exhibition game against an All-Star High School team and nearly lost.
The only shame, of course, is that they didn't.
Actually, yes, I have.
A big store who can afford to print big color ads in the newspaper can also afford to sell CDs as loss-leaders. If they want, they don't have to advertise price. "Call for price!" "So low, we can't print it!" Wow, problem solved.
I think the MAP levels the playing field a bit. But I'm a staunch supporter of my local independent record store -- it's worth paying a bit extra for a knowledgeable guy who knows my name, knows what I like, and can even tell me about artists that I might not have discovered otherwise.
I'm not a real big record company apologist, but:
At that time, large department stores and consumer electronics retailers began selling CD's below cost as a "loss leader," in an effort to get people into the stores to buy big-ticket items, labels said.
The labels say they started the MAP policy in an effort to help smaller music retailers compete with chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Circuit City Stores Inc. They say smaller retailers do not have the option of offsetting losses from cut-price CD sales with sales of other products.
Granted, those guys have a way of lying through their teeth, but that sure makes sense to me. If I were running a small music store which only sells CDs, I can't afford to lose money on CDs. A Best Buy can pick up the slack by selling impulse items like CD cases and, ehrm, refrigerators.
The labels say they received no financial gain from the MAP policy. "The wholesale price we charged retailers was the same whether or not they participated in MAP," one label executive said.
But the states claim in their complaint that if a retailer advertized a price below the agreed-upon minimum, the retailer risked "the loss of all promotional funds available from that (label) for a period of 60 to 90 days...(and) would jeopardize promotional funds for an entire chain."
Why exactly is this price-fixing? The instrument industry does the same thing -- they sell instruments at a wholesale $X. They don't allow you to advertise below a certain MSRP in-print, but you can sell it for any price you want, hence the haggling which is an unalienable part of the experience of buying an instrument.
Doesn't the blame lie on the retailers?
Bull.
There's nothing wrong with a record label inherently -- they provide a service that an artist is unwilling or incapable of providing.
Not every musician can or wants to handle the details of booking, merchandising, etc. A label can provide that. If they think a musician is promising, they can front them money to help them get their album released, and get it on store shelves and noticed. That's a pretty nice thing to do -- so naturally they want a cut of the profits and rights to leverage the music.
The problem, of course, is when labels begin using their power (they control the money, of course) to influence the music and/or create bad contracts and/or stifle technology.
Look at Daemon Records for an example of a benevolent record label.
There was a little band around for a while called Led Zeppelin.
"Secret" was done by Don Bluth, who used to be a senior animator at Disney, but left during the darker days in the early 80s with a bunch of other folks.
IMHO "Secret of Nimh" is one of the best feature animations ever created. If you enjoyed it, "An American Tail", "All Dogs Go To Heaven" and "Anastasia" (Bluth's latest work) may also float your boat. "Land Before Time" is also a fun movie for any child in the dinosaur-obsessed stage of their life.
Bluth's had quite a few misses, too (anybody remember Rock-A-Doodle, or Thumbelina?), but he's a very talented person.
darius
If you know anybody who was shut off for legal MP3s, have 'em raise a stink about it -- if RIT ever attempted to shut me down for sharing out my own music or other legal files, I'd be on the phone with the press, a lawyer, and firing off e-mails like a fekkin' madman.
A University has a very good right to be scared of a lawsuit from a large organization representing rich people. However, they also need to be scared of lawsuits from people who they trample underfoot.
So, because there is too much technology to handle, you propose a "filter" that will screen out the "bad" technology? I've heard this idea somewhere before...
And who decides what is good, what is bad, and what is too trivial to trifle with? Sure, you won't catch me dead with a pager, cell-phone, or Palmpilot as long as I can get away with it. (After all, if I want to be found, I'll be near a phone or computer.)
With this overabundance of information comes tools for organizing and using it - Slashdot, Freshmeat - they all provide a logical way to sift through information that interests a specific niche.
Face it - the burden of sifting through this stuff is going to rest on our shoulders. You can adapt, and learn to use resources wisely and parse information quickly - weeding out uninteresting stuff and finding nifty stuff, or you can just complain about it and propose that we have a computer do it for us.
IMHO, part of the fun of having a mind is using it.
I think we will soon see the point where digital modeling amplifiers will be able to simulate tubes very closely. The efforts to this point haven't been great, but they've come leaps and bounds from where they were.
I know I won't complain if I can shave 20-30 pounds from my amp, and not have to replace tubes every few months. But still, the tone comes first.
I'd love to play around with their experiment board once they get 'em out, that's for sure.
darius
My grandmother, upon hearing that it was healthy to drink lots of water, put herself in the hospital by drinking several gallons in one day.
Is that to say water is dangerous and should be illegal? I don't think so.
Let's face it, anything not in moderation, or under certain conditions, can be fatal.
But pot-smoking is far from the worst you can do. You'll never hear of anybody getting high, and then taking a baseball bat to their girlfriend's head, unlike with a certain legal and accepted substance.
If you take the forbidden danger element away, you also take the thrill away. The only way marijuana truly causes harm is indirectly - if you're driving with it. So toughen up the DUI and public-intox laws, and let people smoke pot in the comfort of their own home.
Your brain cells - you have the right to waste them however you want.
darius
Unfortunately, so far all the sequencing things I've run across for linux have been toys compared to what Cakewalk and Cubase can do for Windows.
BeOS is looking extremely interesting though, with companies like Event and Steinberg pledging support.
>Although the phrase "pocket cluster" makes me a >little uneasy....
"It's not a tumor!"
Shindig? You guys aren't even going to be bold enough to declare it a full-fledged hootenanny?! C'mon, have confidence!!
darius
"my ma always told me too much book-learnin'll make you stupid."
Actually, Kodak's in the digital photography game, too. They make some pretty sweet cameras.
darius
Everybody, sing along now!!
"It's like raaaaa--aiin..."
Ok, that was enough of that. Back to your status quo!
Speaking of films involving technology, has anybody here seen the Cronenberg flick "eXistenZ," with Jennifer Jason Leigh as a supposed VR video-game designer?
I haven't been able to talk my usual film review suspects into going w/ me to the indie-film theater, but I've heard it's really really good.
The sound quality issue is not FUD. All else being equal, I can hear the difference between a compressed MP3 and the CD from which I ripped it, as long as I'm using my monitors plugged into the computer.
The compression is even more evident when played through a hi-fi stereo.
Does it matter for the newest Britney Spears crap? Probably not. But there is degradation in the sound quality. That's why they call it "lossy" compression.
darius