According to this post apparently iSync 1.1 only works with iPods that have firmware 2.0 and up. I can't verify it yet since I'm at work and my iPod is a 30 GB with the 2.0 firmware anyway. Anyone with an older iPod want to give it a try and see?
If true, perhaps this means a new iPod firmware ought to be coming out very soon? I know Apple promised an update for USB 2.0 under Windows in June. But my primary concern is that we get an update that fixes the bugs in the 2.0 firmware (most notably the clicking between tracks).
But then I'm straying a bit off topic here... Hopefully the AAC encoder in QuickTime 6.3 works as well as or better than QT 6.2 for encoding from iTunes. I did a quick comparison before leaving this morning, and while there are byte differences between a 6.2-encoded AAC and a 6.3-encoded file, they are both the same size and I couldn't tell any audible difference (improvement or otherwise) at 160 kbps. The blurb on the website about 6.3 has plenty of marketing-speak about AAC but no real technical details telling whether anything of substance changed.
Well shoot, I didn't notice this topic until now, and most people probably won't read it anymore. But anyway...
I've been working up a little backup system to do just this. So far it's just in the first stage, capturing data for the catalog. I wrote a little perl script that'll traverse the CD's directory structure and spit out the full path of all files, along with type, size, date, owner, etc. So, I pop in a CD, go to/Volumes/CD_Name (OS X), run the script and redirect its output to a text file (~/backups/CD_Name). Eject and pop in the next one. It's a very simple script but I put it here if anyone's interested.
Now, it's probably not so useful to you just yet, because I haven't implemented the next phase of my plan. I want to write a little perl script to take all the text 'catalog' files I generate, and store them in a MySQL database. I should have just done this to begin with, but I was lazy! Once in the database, I can query it pretty easily based on whatever criteria I want, and hopefully find the file(s) I'm looking for. A slick web interface will complete the project. But for now, a simple grep pattern ~/backups/* is good enough.
Of course I label each CD the same as the volume name, or else the whole system would be useless. Then for storage (back to the original topic), I bought some 3-ring binder pages at Staples that hold CDs. Made by CaseLogic I think, and the package had 25 pages to hold a total of 200 discs. I got 2 big binders, and when I'm finished, primary backups and software CDs will go in one, staying at home. Redundant backups of important data will go in the other, in a storage unit I rent.
I also commented on this in the poll the other week. Not that anyone cares.;-)
If so, then it sounds like you must be in the workforce already (and hopefully not unemployed!). If you're one of those who managed to get into a good job/career without a degree, I'd look at companies who have a college tuition reimbursement program. Mine has a very good one, and I forget right now if the limit is $15,000 per year or unlimited. Either way, that can get you quite an education.
Of course, they do this because it benefits them when you bring your enhanced knowledge and skills to the job. I don't know how they'd feel about someone who skips out as soon as the schooling is finished... And you certainly don't want to say in the interview that you're just looking for someone to foot the bill for your education! If going this route, it really ought to be a place where you'd be happy working for some period of time after you finish school. Good karma and all that.;-)
As others have said, a degree can go a long way towards getting a better job, especially if you're not the best at doing interviews, regardless of your actual skills. I'm now about 7 years out of college and getting close to paying off my loans in full. They were set as 10 year loans with low interest rate (as most student loans are) -- I could have paid them off earlier (arguably should have, to save money in the long run) but I didn't. The pace was slow and easy enough that I never had trouble making payments, even when I was making half of what I do now.
I'd take advantage of my company's tuition program for a Masters or something, but I lack the motivation. Life after school is so much nicer, and school + job at the same time would be hell.;-)
This is just an update of an older document, probably for Jaguar. Checking my bookmarks, the old url is now gone. I recall checking it in the last few weeks, so clearly it was just moved and updated.
" Any thing that Root needs to do is done threw the sudo command."
You still need to enable root on OS X, which requires getting into NetInfo Manager
Actually, see the subject line. You do NOT need to enable root unless you want to login as root. Otherwise, you keep root disabled (no password) and use sudo for everything. Need a root shell? sudo -s.
Now, be nice!;-) I don't consider myself an audiophile, just someone who loves music and wants it to sound as good as my ears can possibly hear it. And that's the bottom line, whether my ears can hear a problem, not whether anyone else can claim to hear artifacts. I often listen to lower quality MP3s in the car (I encode them twice when ripping - once at high quality, once at low) because the road noise drowns out any compression artifacts, so I'm totally happy with the sound there. Fits more on a CD that way.
On the other hand, an audiophile will claim:
Vinyl is better than CD (bullcrap, CD has a FAR lower noise floor than vinyl)
MP3 at 320 kbps sounds like shit compared to CD (uh huh, let's see you pass a blind listening test)
CD is inferior quality and should be encoded at 96 kHz and 24-bit (ok whatever, again - listening test)
etc...
To me, being an audiophile is a hobby based primarily around snobbery. They try to make themselves feel superior by telling others (and convincing themselves) that they can hear things better than everyone else. Different people can certainly hear better than others, but this is absurdity with a multi-thousand dollar price tag. It's a lot like people who soup up their cars to drive around in rush hour traffic.
But this is straying off topic (feel free to moderate as such) so I'll just say that you're right, I need to spend the damn buck and see what happens. I've just been too busy the last couple days yet (typing this at work, no Mac here). If I'm happy with what I hear, that's all I care about.
My biggest concern with the new music store is the quality of the tracks. To put it simply, I don't want to be able to tell any difference whatsoever between the downloaded tracks and the same off of a retail CD. Under any listening conditions.
Apple states that the 128-kbps AAC "combines sound quality that rivals CDs with smaller files sizes (compared to MP3s)." Someone reported that Apple said during the original PR event that some of the tracks actually sound better than the original CD tracks because they went back to the original master recordings to encode. Ok, I'll buy all that. AAC offers better compression and higher quality at lower bitrates. Fine. If really true, I might even consider re-ripping my CDs to AAC and saving some disk space. IF it's really that good. But as I said, the proof is in whether I can hear a difference. All other technical mumbo jumbo is meaningless.
I previewed a number of songs the first night it was operational and was fairly impressed. Definitely much better than 128 kbps MP3. Then I put my headphones on and started to notice possible compression artifacts. I wasn't sure if I was imagining these or whether I was really hearing something, so I started listening to the previews of tracks I already have, ripped from original CDs. I compared the preview tracks to my MP3 copies, which are high quality VBR averaging a little over 200 kbps. I went back and forth between the store preview and my copy numerous times, and always felt like I heard compression artifacts in the previews. I wanted to setup a true blind test to make absolutely sure I wasn't being biased by knowing which sample was which, but I haven't had time this week.
Apple's Discussion board for iTunes has numerous topics debating the quality of the AACs. Some people swear that the previews are lower quality, and what you get when you buy is perfect. Others say just the opposite. Apple itself says of the previews, "You'll hear a 30-second sample that rivals CD quality sound." Doesn't exactly say that the preview is the same quality as the purchased track, but kind of implies it too. MacInTouch has tons of reader reports that are interesting as well.
I suppose ultimately I'll have to spend $0.99 and see for myself what happens. I'll try to choose a track that I have, and whose preview sounds pretty bad. If the purchased track is indistinguishable from the CD, I'll be a happy camper. But if it's the same as the preview, I'll be severely disappointed. I'd so love for this to take off, as it is the future of music buying. I think Apple has done a good job of balancing consumers' fair use rights with the rights of the copyright holders. If this flops, it'll be more fodder for the RIAA to push legislation through that protects their dying business model. (sorry, had to get political for a second there)
But mainly I'm excited about the prospect of buying music this way. Hopefully in the near future, they'll have liner notes, etc available as a PDF when you buy. And lots more artists, including any that are out of print. That would so rock. So many CDs on my wishlist now are so hard to find, and I'd buy them in a heartbeat if they were available this way now. So please, Apple, don't let us down on quality! And if the quality really is subpar, let's all send them feedback (link at the music store main page) until they listen!
Netflix is actually doing quite a lot to take care of their low-usage customers. I imagine this is a pretty big payoff for them, since they likely make quite a bit more profit on those customers.
My wife and I used to rent 10+ movies a month on the standard 3-out plan. But then we got busier and started watching less and less. Lately we've been lucky to watch 2 or 3 movies in a month, and a few recent months have only seen one. We switched to the 2-out plan sometime last year to save money. I later realized that this plan is not normally offered - our account got flagged and we were offered the plan based on our rental history. Netflix kept a customer and we stayed happy by paying less.
My sister-in-law's story is even more phenomenal. Her financial situation dictated that she cancel completely, which she did. Netflix came begging to get her back, and ultimately agreed to keep her on for a mere $7/month! (I thought it was $7 for 6 months, but this sounds more likely) She's a damn good haggler, so I don't know if this would be common at all; I imagine if they did it too much, they would lose money.
I've always been impressed by the fact that we've been able to get just released movies very quickly. I suppose maybe that's one reason we haven't canceled despite not getting as much out of the service lately. When we do use it, it's always top notch, so Netflix still gets our money. I don't recall having major problems even when we were renting a lot more, but I suppose Netflix has grown considerably since then. I always assumed they kept the service good by expanding to meet customer demand. It'll be interesting to read more comments and see how other people's experiences relate to the study's results. I'd love to see the same thing conducted again with a larger sample size.
Well, as it stands right now, De Beers has a worldwide monopoly on natural diamonds. They have enough stockpiles that they could flood the market at any time and cause diamonds to become cheaper than cubic zirconium. Or so I've read.
In recent years, some scientists have been able to product synthetic diamonds - only distinguishable from "real" diamonds by the fact that the synthetics glow under phosphorescent light (or something like that). I believe the natural diamonds don't do this because of their imperfections. They looked at the possibility of selling synthetics as an alternative in the gemstone market, but De Beers simply threatened to run them out of business with the aforementioned market flooding. The cost of producing synthetics would remain mostly constant, and it wouldn't be worth it if diamond prices took a nosedive.
Now, enter this new possibility (they're still investigating whether it's even true, according to the article). If it becomes economically desirable to produce synthetic diamonds for superconducting purposes, I wonder if that would alter the gemstone diamond market? Perhaps producers could make synthetics primarily for superconducting applications, but slowly insert more into the gemstone market, pulling it out from under De Beers' noses. Eventually they'd be forced to flood the market and the end of an evil, expertly marketed monopoly could come to pass? One can only hope!
The above summary was from memory based on what I've read. I could have gotten some things wrong, so feel free to google for links. I'm too lazy.;-)
As someone else said, this has been around for a long, long time. I tried to update my aftermarket DVR-A03 drive (basically the same thing as the original SuperDrive, but I bought it separately) but this utility wouldn't do it. I found one that did at Pioneer's website. Only drawback was that I had to reboot to OS 9 in order to apply it, but better than screwing up my drive by using newer media!
Hmm, I wonder if that means you can't update an aftermarket drive in the latest PowerMacs, which supposedly do not boot natively to OS 9? Buyer beware, I guess.
Depending on the kids' age, I might recommend BYOND. Somewhere around 12 is about the minimum age I'd recommend for that, though it really depends on the individual. It is certainly not a system designed for kids, but it is easy enough to pick up that some kids with natural tendencies towards programming will probably have no trouble.
The system itself is geared towards creating 2-D games (as someone else already said, making a game can keep it nice and fun), and comes complete with a powerful yet simple object-oriented language. I must say, after using it for a couple of years, I'm really impressed with the language. It's so well designed that many of us there who are seasoned developers have come to the conclusion that it's a superb first language for anyone who's just starting to learn programming. I have personally witnessed a number of young programmers within the BYOND community successfully learn fundamental concepts more easily than they possibly could have at their age, starting with another language. The way the language is designed, new programmers start doing things right away, putting together different pieces; and then suddenly a lightbulb goes on and they advance to the next level.
The only real drawback (from a kids learning standpoint) compared to similar systems is that BYOND doesn't provide any canned graphics/sounds like some others do. It provides the flexibility and framework to add your own, but this also means it's more work to create something nifty right off the bat. I've seen people get frustrated because while they have the programming part down, they may not be good at creating their own graphics and sounds, so they feel like the programming is a waste.
Disclaimer: the guys who created it are personal friends of mine, so yes, I am somewhat biased, but I stand behind my recommendation on the strength of the system.
Or even the other way around! We've got an old Windows machine in a room on one end of the house, and we didn't feel like buying a wireless adapter for it (or stringing 100ft of ethernet cable over there). So the few times it needs to get on the internet, we just bring the iBook over, plug in a cable between the two, and have the iBook set to share its Airport connection to the rest of the house network. Cool thing about newer Mac ethernet ports is that they auto sense the TX/RX lines, eliminating the need for a crossover cable in this case.
This is by no means an ideal solution, but it has worked for me in the past. Simply import the MP3s from the original CD to your library (temporarily rename the library if you don't want the CD's files getting stuck in your main library). Then burn a MP3 CDRW from iTunes and use that for as long as you need it. Erase and reuse when you're done.
If you want to take it a step further, you can do what I did. I burned a MP3 CDRW with the songs I wanted and then looked at the resulting ContentsDB.xml file on the new CD. Then I took that file and edited it to match the file layout I wanted on my target CD, since I didn't want the default layout that iTunes creates. If you needed to do this a lot, I'm sure a perl script to automate it would be pretty easy to whip up.
Like I said, certainly not an ideal solution. Unfortunately I don't know of any way to do this without creating a second CD, but maybe someone else can come up with something better. Or maybe this will help someone think of a better idea.
To add to this, tcsh (the default shell in OS X) makes it pretty easy to type long paths without all the typing. The Tab key expands any partial path out as far as it can be expanded unambiguously. So for example, if I want to open System Preferences from the command line, I would type the following keystrokes:
open[Space]/A[Tab]Sy[Tab]
Which would produce the following result:
open/Applications/System\ Preferences.app/
So all I need to do is hit Enter. If the path cannot be expanded fully when you hit tab (for example, you hit tab after the S, which could expand to Safari.app or Sherlock.app as well), tcsh will beep at you and look stupid. I highly recommend putting set autolist in your.tcshrc file in order to remedy this. Then it will give you a list of possibilities.
I hope this helps someone new to the command line...
Back when the very first modeling amps came out, there was Johnson and Line6. The Johnson had real tubes in the preamp section, and for my money, sounded a lot better. I spent a lot of time comparing the two in guitar shops and the Johnson always came out ahead on pure tone. It was also more expensive, unfortunately. I bought a JM150 back in 1998 and have absolutely loved it.
Since the Line6 products at the time were cheaper, they sold better. Tube amp purists wouldn't touch either product, so it was left to those of us who either didn't care, or weren't irrationally biased against the fledgling technology. I guess to many people, any difference in sound between the products was worth the savings in buying a Line6. Plus, Line6 seemed to have the far superior marketing team. So while Johnson struggled to carve out their little niche, Line6 grew and flourished.
Now, unfortunately, Johnson has all but gone out of business (I believe they were a spin-off of Digitech, which is still going strong). I bought a J-Station about 2 years ago and have loved it as well. Again, I felt it sounded slightly better than the Line6 Pod, but then maybe I was biased for Johnson by then. It's too bad that they didn't have the marketing team to compete better and stay alive - as many of us here say, diversity and competition is always a good thing.
Other companies have been entering the fray in the last couple of years (Fender Cyber-Twin, etc), so certainly there is still some competition and great things to look forward to in the future. I'm just a little sad that I won't get to see what the Johnson engineers might have come up with next. Hopefully they're still working on similar things, either at Digitech or other companies.
One of these days I'll have to pick up a Pod (or whatever the Line6 equivalent is these days) just to add more sounds to my arsenal. Should be great.
Could this be one real reason why they are doing this? Currently I see nothing preventing one from running multiple concurrent copies of the same licensed Windows OS in different virtual machines. Perhaps MS would like tighter control over that aspect of the product to prevent such usage.
Of course, offering the product themselves as part of a server package at an insane markup is also an attractive incentive...
Eh, that's what happens when you post while doing something else. Meant to say his publishers sued (and got a 6 figure settlement), not that he is suing. I'm not even sure if the guy's still alive?
Not only that, but according to this article (last paragraph), he is suing some guy for plagiarising that piece. My god, this makes the RIAA antics look angelic! Ridiculous.
I'm sure 5 is very optimistic, and occurs only under specific circumstances (hard disk spun down the whole time, low CPU usage, etc -- maybe only possible in OS 9). That said, I've noticed that turning down the LCD brightness a few notches does seem to help. I used my iBook 600 for about 3 1/2 hours the other day while waiting for my car service, and the battery went down to about 20% in that time. I was also using Airport (free 24-hour trial of T-Mobile access at a Starbucks) which does suck a little extra juice. So in theory I could have done a little better with the Airport turned off.
I might as well post this here, in case you come back and see it, or anyone else does while searching the archives. Making a proper enhanced audio CD was a real bitch. If you're thinking of doing that, I have some more specific tips.
The CD needed to meet these requirements:
Readable on all major platforms (Windows, Mac OS 8/9, OS X, other unix) with the proper filenames (no 8.3 truncation)
Auto-start the web browser in as many platforms as possible (Windows and Mac)
Hide Mac-only files from Windows, and vice versa
Play the audio tracks in any regular CD player, without seeing the data track
I have Toast Titanium, which is great, but this proved to be more than it could handle. So I made the unix cdr-tools package my weapon of choice, and after many cycles of trial and error, finally got the perfect burn. In the process, some versions tried to play the data track in audio CD players, some were readable on Windows and OS X but truncated filenames on OS 8/9, one combination even locked (not crashed, but might as well have) OS X.
Here are the main steps:
Record the audio tracks for the CD. My command was this:
Get the multi-session info needed for the data track.
cdrecord -msinfo dev=5,0
In my case, I got back two numbers: 0,108172. Yours should be different.
Layout the CD filesystem. I put all of the common files in a subdirectory named "common". Mac-only files went into the "mac" subdirectory and Windows-only files went into "win". When the CD was created, all three of these appear to be at the root of the CD (ie, there are no "common", "mac" or "win" directories on the CD).
The Mac directory contained an iTunes contents file called ContentsDB.xml. This is what iTunes creates when you burn an MP3 CD. I just burned a test CD from iTunes containing all of the MP3s I wanted on the CD, copied ContentsDB.xml to the hard drive and edited it to fit the actual CD layout. Worked well!
The Windows directory contained the standard autorun.inf, a startme.bat and an icon file which are both referenced by autorun.inf.
Create the data track.
mkisofs -pad -J -R -hfs -v -v -V "Mike and Bev" -hide-joliet-list winhide.lst -hide-hfs-list machide.lst -map map -auto Start.html -hfs-volid "Mike and Bev" -o cd1.iso -C 0,108172 common mac win
winhide.lst and machide.lst are text files listing the files to be hidden from Windows (everything in mac/) or Mac (everything in win/).
map is a small file containing mappings of extensions to file/creator pairs for classic Mac OS:
# EXTN XLate CREATOR TYPE Comment .gif Raw 'TVOD' 'GIFf' "GIF image" .jpg Raw 'TVOD' 'JPEG' "JPEG image" .mov Raw 'TVOD' 'MooV' "QuickTime Movie" .mp3 Raw 'TVOD' 'Mp3 ' "MP3 Song" .m3u Ascii 'hook' 'PLAY' "MP3 Playlist" .pls Ascii 'hook' 'PLAY' "MP3 Playlist" .html Ascii 'MSIE' 'TEXT' "HTML Document"
* Raw 'ttxt' '????' "Unknown"
The -auto option specifies the file which should be auto-opened on a Mac (the main html page in my case). Turns out OS X does not support this, but it works anyway if Classic happens to be running when you insert the CD.
Finally, burn the iso image:
cdrecord dev=5,0 speed=4 -v -pad cd1.iso
After that, you can obviously skip the mkisofs step for any duplicates. You just need the two cdrecord steps to record both sessions.
Whew! Hopefully this helps someone out there. It was a lot of work getting all the options right, but I couldn't be happier with the result.
I agree. I went to a very highly regarded science and engineering school and got a degree in physics. Never got below a B-. Plenty of other people did, but I didn't. In the vast majority of those courses where I got that grade (mostly the harder upper division stuff), I honestly felt that I should have failed. I knew the material ok, but I really didn't understand it in most cases. At best, I should have gotten a D. 6 months after the course was over, I couldn't recall many of the key concepts at all.
In terms of numbers, it was very common to get a test score of 25 out of 50 and still get a B. That's insane! Perhaps the courses really were that much harder than your standard state school, but I don't think that's a good enough excuse. This was supposed to be a really hard school, after all. Those of us (the majority, most of the time) who got those crappy scores got them because we didn't understand the material well enough or couldn't keep up with the accelerated pace of the course. Why should we be rewarded with grades that suggested otherwise?
I do have to say that because I didn't go into graduate school after getting my bachelor's degree, the course details and the grades don't matter much in the real world. What matters the most is that I got a solid foundation in science and technology, and most importantly, problem solving. I also dramatically improved my learning skills, allowing me to quickly pick up new things at my job. Those few details from the courses that apply specifically to my job on a day-to-day basis, I've been able to easily master without the chaos of school surrounding me. Ultimately grades only matter if you plan to go on in education at the next level.
My first Mac in late 1996 was a PowerMac 7600 with 132 MHz PowerPC 604 with 48 MB memory, 1.2 GB disk. I added a DigiDesign AudioMediaIII sound card as this machine was mainly for my music hobby. In early 2000 I upgraded the CPU to a 350 MHz G3. Also at some points during that time I upgraded the memory to 112 MB (8 slots allow for some crazy combinations!), added 2 disks (1 GB internal, 9 GB external, SCSI), and a USB card.
My second Mac came a year ago, a 733 MHz G4 QuickSilver (newly reduced price for education only after the dual 1-gigs were released, woohoo) with 640 MB of memory and a 40 GB disk. Added an aftermarket SuperDrive (same Pioneer model). After the wedding, with 5 1/2 hours of digital video footage to edit, I added a 120 GB disk.
Also bought an iBook in October for the wife, but I don't consider that really an "upgrade" from anything previous. Great little machine.
The 7600 is still in use today, running OS 8.6 as my primary music workstation. That'll be the case until my main music application comes to OS X "very soon". The machine is in great shape and still does everything I need it to do. I use the G4 as my primary desktop machine for everything but music (web, email, iMovie/iDVD, Gimp, programming, ssh to the FreeBSD box in the corner, etc).
So depending on what you mean by "upgrade" I'm not sure how often I have done so. But certainly, it's happened far less often than the PCs in my life. And so far, I've had zero hardware problems with my Macs (knock on wood). Can't say the same for the PCs, though again mine is but a single data point in the sea of information.
That's a pretty cool idea. The only real problem is getting someone to assemble the pictures, encode any video clips, and burn the CDs while people are still there. If you just dumped the files onto the CDs with no navigation help, the non-geek guests may not know what to do with them. It would certainly help if there's a delay between the ceremony and reception. Otherwise, you need someone who isn't going to mind not being a part of the festivities while attending to this. And if the wedding is fairly large, burn time could become a factor.
We thought about this for our wedding, but ultimately decided it was too much hassle. Besides, the Mac was busy playing our hand-picked playlist of ceremony and reception music.;-) Our favors were just nice little bags of blue and white M&Ms (our wedding colors) that everyone enjoyed. Some of the other suggestions here might have been pretty cool, but that's ok.
Instead, we made up CDs and sent them out with the thankyou notes. That gave us time to put some polish on the CD, making them friendly to our non-geek guests too. Because music is my hobby, I wrote and recorded 5 songs that were used in the ceremony. So we actually made enhanced audio CDs, containing those 5 songs plus a data track with all of the pictures, MP3s of the reception playlist, and a 5-minute video sample from the DVD (still working on completing that). For navigation, we used a mini version of our website pointing to all the files on the CD. The CD was then setup to auto-start the web browser in either Mac or Windows, and we even included QuickTime installers for anyone who might not have it.
We've gotten a lot of compliments, especially from the non-geek guests, so I'm glad we didn't rush something less polished to hand out at the reception.
Slashdot Mirror
If true, perhaps this means a new iPod firmware ought to be coming out very soon? I know Apple promised an update for USB 2.0 under Windows in June. But my primary concern is that we get an update that fixes the bugs in the 2.0 firmware (most notably the clicking between tracks).
But then I'm straying a bit off topic here... Hopefully the AAC encoder in QuickTime 6.3 works as well as or better than QT 6.2 for encoding from iTunes. I did a quick comparison before leaving this morning, and while there are byte differences between a 6.2-encoded AAC and a 6.3-encoded file, they are both the same size and I couldn't tell any audible difference (improvement or otherwise) at 160 kbps. The blurb on the website about 6.3 has plenty of marketing-speak about AAC but no real technical details telling whether anything of substance changed.
Just some random thoughts, back to work!
Apple Store
Google cache
I've been working up a little backup system to do just this. So far it's just in the first stage, capturing data for the catalog. I wrote a little perl script that'll traverse the CD's directory structure and spit out the full path of all files, along with type, size, date, owner, etc. So, I pop in a CD, go to /Volumes/CD_Name (OS X), run the script and redirect its output to a text file (~/backups/CD_Name). Eject and pop in the next one. It's a very simple script but I put it here if anyone's interested.
Now, it's probably not so useful to you just yet, because I haven't implemented the next phase of my plan. I want to write a little perl script to take all the text 'catalog' files I generate, and store them in a MySQL database. I should have just done this to begin with, but I was lazy! Once in the database, I can query it pretty easily based on whatever criteria I want, and hopefully find the file(s) I'm looking for. A slick web interface will complete the project. But for now, a simple grep pattern ~/backups/* is good enough.
Of course I label each CD the same as the volume name, or else the whole system would be useless. Then for storage (back to the original topic), I bought some 3-ring binder pages at Staples that hold CDs. Made by CaseLogic I think, and the package had 25 pages to hold a total of 200 discs. I got 2 big binders, and when I'm finished, primary backups and software CDs will go in one, staying at home. Redundant backups of important data will go in the other, in a storage unit I rent.
I also commented on this in the poll the other week. Not that anyone cares. ;-)
Of course, they do this because it benefits them when you bring your enhanced knowledge and skills to the job. I don't know how they'd feel about someone who skips out as soon as the schooling is finished... And you certainly don't want to say in the interview that you're just looking for someone to foot the bill for your education! If going this route, it really ought to be a place where you'd be happy working for some period of time after you finish school. Good karma and all that. ;-)
As others have said, a degree can go a long way towards getting a better job, especially if you're not the best at doing interviews, regardless of your actual skills. I'm now about 7 years out of college and getting close to paying off my loans in full. They were set as 10 year loans with low interest rate (as most student loans are) -- I could have paid them off earlier (arguably should have, to save money in the long run) but I didn't. The pace was slow and easy enough that I never had trouble making payments, even when I was making half of what I do now.
I'd take advantage of my company's tuition program for a Masters or something, but I lack the motivation. Life after school is so much nicer, and school + job at the same time would be hell. ;-)
This is just an update of an older document, probably for Jaguar. Checking my bookmarks, the old url is now gone. I recall checking it in the last few weeks, so clearly it was just moved and updated.
You still need to enable root on OS X, which requires getting into NetInfo Manager
Actually, see the subject line. You do NOT need to enable root unless you want to login as root. Otherwise, you keep root disabled (no password) and use sudo for everything. Need a root shell? sudo -s.
Just a quick correction. ;-)
Now, be nice! ;-) I don't consider myself an audiophile, just someone who loves music and wants it to sound as good as my ears can possibly hear it. And that's the bottom line, whether my ears can hear a problem, not whether anyone else can claim to hear artifacts. I often listen to lower quality MP3s in the car (I encode them twice when ripping - once at high quality, once at low) because the road noise drowns out any compression artifacts, so I'm totally happy with the sound there. Fits more on a CD that way.
On the other hand, an audiophile will claim:
- Vinyl is better than CD (bullcrap, CD has a FAR lower noise floor than vinyl)
- MP3 at 320 kbps sounds like shit compared to CD (uh huh, let's see you pass a blind listening test)
- CD is inferior quality and should be encoded at 96 kHz and 24-bit (ok whatever, again - listening test)
- etc...
To me, being an audiophile is a hobby based primarily around snobbery. They try to make themselves feel superior by telling others (and convincing themselves) that they can hear things better than everyone else. Different people can certainly hear better than others, but this is absurdity with a multi-thousand dollar price tag. It's a lot like people who soup up their cars to drive around in rush hour traffic.But this is straying off topic (feel free to moderate as such) so I'll just say that you're right, I need to spend the damn buck and see what happens. I've just been too busy the last couple days yet (typing this at work, no Mac here). If I'm happy with what I hear, that's all I care about.
I was gone in meetings all day yesterday, and failed to notice Slashdot's story on this very topic. Doofus!
Apple states that the 128-kbps AAC "combines sound quality that rivals CDs with smaller files sizes (compared to MP3s)." Someone reported that Apple said during the original PR event that some of the tracks actually sound better than the original CD tracks because they went back to the original master recordings to encode. Ok, I'll buy all that. AAC offers better compression and higher quality at lower bitrates. Fine. If really true, I might even consider re-ripping my CDs to AAC and saving some disk space. IF it's really that good. But as I said, the proof is in whether I can hear a difference. All other technical mumbo jumbo is meaningless.
I previewed a number of songs the first night it was operational and was fairly impressed. Definitely much better than 128 kbps MP3. Then I put my headphones on and started to notice possible compression artifacts. I wasn't sure if I was imagining these or whether I was really hearing something, so I started listening to the previews of tracks I already have, ripped from original CDs. I compared the preview tracks to my MP3 copies, which are high quality VBR averaging a little over 200 kbps. I went back and forth between the store preview and my copy numerous times, and always felt like I heard compression artifacts in the previews. I wanted to setup a true blind test to make absolutely sure I wasn't being biased by knowing which sample was which, but I haven't had time this week.
Apple's Discussion board for iTunes has numerous topics debating the quality of the AACs. Some people swear that the previews are lower quality, and what you get when you buy is perfect. Others say just the opposite. Apple itself says of the previews, "You'll hear a 30-second sample that rivals CD quality sound." Doesn't exactly say that the preview is the same quality as the purchased track, but kind of implies it too. MacInTouch has tons of reader reports that are interesting as well.
I suppose ultimately I'll have to spend $0.99 and see for myself what happens. I'll try to choose a track that I have, and whose preview sounds pretty bad. If the purchased track is indistinguishable from the CD, I'll be a happy camper. But if it's the same as the preview, I'll be severely disappointed. I'd so love for this to take off, as it is the future of music buying. I think Apple has done a good job of balancing consumers' fair use rights with the rights of the copyright holders. If this flops, it'll be more fodder for the RIAA to push legislation through that protects their dying business model. (sorry, had to get political for a second there)
But mainly I'm excited about the prospect of buying music this way. Hopefully in the near future, they'll have liner notes, etc available as a PDF when you buy. And lots more artists, including any that are out of print. That would so rock. So many CDs on my wishlist now are so hard to find, and I'd buy them in a heartbeat if they were available this way now. So please, Apple, don't let us down on quality! And if the quality really is subpar, let's all send them feedback (link at the music store main page) until they listen!
My wife and I used to rent 10+ movies a month on the standard 3-out plan. But then we got busier and started watching less and less. Lately we've been lucky to watch 2 or 3 movies in a month, and a few recent months have only seen one. We switched to the 2-out plan sometime last year to save money. I later realized that this plan is not normally offered - our account got flagged and we were offered the plan based on our rental history. Netflix kept a customer and we stayed happy by paying less.
My sister-in-law's story is even more phenomenal. Her financial situation dictated that she cancel completely, which she did. Netflix came begging to get her back, and ultimately agreed to keep her on for a mere $7/month! (I thought it was $7 for 6 months, but this sounds more likely) She's a damn good haggler, so I don't know if this would be common at all; I imagine if they did it too much, they would lose money.
I've always been impressed by the fact that we've been able to get just released movies very quickly. I suppose maybe that's one reason we haven't canceled despite not getting as much out of the service lately. When we do use it, it's always top notch, so Netflix still gets our money. I don't recall having major problems even when we were renting a lot more, but I suppose Netflix has grown considerably since then. I always assumed they kept the service good by expanding to meet customer demand. It'll be interesting to read more comments and see how other people's experiences relate to the study's results. I'd love to see the same thing conducted again with a larger sample size.
In recent years, some scientists have been able to product synthetic diamonds - only distinguishable from "real" diamonds by the fact that the synthetics glow under phosphorescent light (or something like that). I believe the natural diamonds don't do this because of their imperfections. They looked at the possibility of selling synthetics as an alternative in the gemstone market, but De Beers simply threatened to run them out of business with the aforementioned market flooding. The cost of producing synthetics would remain mostly constant, and it wouldn't be worth it if diamond prices took a nosedive.
Now, enter this new possibility (they're still investigating whether it's even true, according to the article). If it becomes economically desirable to produce synthetic diamonds for superconducting purposes, I wonder if that would alter the gemstone diamond market? Perhaps producers could make synthetics primarily for superconducting applications, but slowly insert more into the gemstone market, pulling it out from under De Beers' noses. Eventually they'd be forced to flood the market and the end of an evil, expertly marketed monopoly could come to pass? One can only hope!
The above summary was from memory based on what I've read. I could have gotten some things wrong, so feel free to google for links. I'm too lazy. ;-)
Hmm, I wonder if that means you can't update an aftermarket drive in the latest PowerMacs, which supposedly do not boot natively to OS 9? Buyer beware, I guess.
The system itself is geared towards creating 2-D games (as someone else already said, making a game can keep it nice and fun), and comes complete with a powerful yet simple object-oriented language. I must say, after using it for a couple of years, I'm really impressed with the language. It's so well designed that many of us there who are seasoned developers have come to the conclusion that it's a superb first language for anyone who's just starting to learn programming. I have personally witnessed a number of young programmers within the BYOND community successfully learn fundamental concepts more easily than they possibly could have at their age, starting with another language. The way the language is designed, new programmers start doing things right away, putting together different pieces; and then suddenly a lightbulb goes on and they advance to the next level.
The only real drawback (from a kids learning standpoint) compared to similar systems is that BYOND doesn't provide any canned graphics/sounds like some others do. It provides the flexibility and framework to add your own, but this also means it's more work to create something nifty right off the bat. I've seen people get frustrated because while they have the programming part down, they may not be good at creating their own graphics and sounds, so they feel like the programming is a waste.
Disclaimer: the guys who created it are personal friends of mine, so yes, I am somewhat biased, but I stand behind my recommendation on the strength of the system.
Or even the other way around! We've got an old Windows machine in a room on one end of the house, and we didn't feel like buying a wireless adapter for it (or stringing 100ft of ethernet cable over there). So the few times it needs to get on the internet, we just bring the iBook over, plug in a cable between the two, and have the iBook set to share its Airport connection to the rest of the house network. Cool thing about newer Mac ethernet ports is that they auto sense the TX/RX lines, eliminating the need for a crossover cable in this case.
If you want to take it a step further, you can do what I did. I burned a MP3 CDRW with the songs I wanted and then looked at the resulting ContentsDB.xml file on the new CD. Then I took that file and edited it to match the file layout I wanted on my target CD, since I didn't want the default layout that iTunes creates. If you needed to do this a lot, I'm sure a perl script to automate it would be pretty easy to whip up.
Like I said, certainly not an ideal solution. Unfortunately I don't know of any way to do this without creating a second CD, but maybe someone else can come up with something better. Or maybe this will help someone think of a better idea.
Which would produce the following result:
So all I need to do is hit Enter. If the path cannot be expanded fully when you hit tab (for example, you hit tab after the S, which could expand to Safari.app or Sherlock.app as well), tcsh will beep at you and look stupid. I highly recommend putting set autolist in your .tcshrc file in order to remedy this. Then it will give you a list of possibilities.
I hope this helps someone new to the command line...
Since the Line6 products at the time were cheaper, they sold better. Tube amp purists wouldn't touch either product, so it was left to those of us who either didn't care, or weren't irrationally biased against the fledgling technology. I guess to many people, any difference in sound between the products was worth the savings in buying a Line6. Plus, Line6 seemed to have the far superior marketing team. So while Johnson struggled to carve out their little niche, Line6 grew and flourished.
Now, unfortunately, Johnson has all but gone out of business (I believe they were a spin-off of Digitech, which is still going strong). I bought a J-Station about 2 years ago and have loved it as well. Again, I felt it sounded slightly better than the Line6 Pod, but then maybe I was biased for Johnson by then. It's too bad that they didn't have the marketing team to compete better and stay alive - as many of us here say, diversity and competition is always a good thing.
Other companies have been entering the fray in the last couple of years (Fender Cyber-Twin, etc), so certainly there is still some competition and great things to look forward to in the future. I'm just a little sad that I won't get to see what the Johnson engineers might have come up with next. Hopefully they're still working on similar things, either at Digitech or other companies.
One of these days I'll have to pick up a Pod (or whatever the Line6 equivalent is these days) just to add more sounds to my arsenal. Should be great.
Of course, offering the product themselves as part of a server package at an insane markup is also an attractive incentive...
Eh, that's what happens when you post while doing something else. Meant to say his publishers sued (and got a 6 figure settlement), not that he is suing. I'm not even sure if the guy's still alive?
Not only that, but according to this article (last paragraph), he is suing some guy for plagiarising that piece. My god, this makes the RIAA antics look angelic! Ridiculous.
I'm sure 5 is very optimistic, and occurs only under specific circumstances (hard disk spun down the whole time, low CPU usage, etc -- maybe only possible in OS 9). That said, I've noticed that turning down the LCD brightness a few notches does seem to help. I used my iBook 600 for about 3 1/2 hours the other day while waiting for my car service, and the battery went down to about 20% in that time. I was also using Airport (free 24-hour trial of T-Mobile access at a Starbucks) which does suck a little extra juice. So in theory I could have done a little better with the Airport turned off.
The CD needed to meet these requirements:
I have Toast Titanium, which is great, but this proved to be more than it could handle. So I made the unix cdr-tools package my weapon of choice, and after many cycles of trial and error, finally got the perfect burn. In the process, some versions tried to play the data track in audio CD players, some were readable on Windows and OS X but truncated filenames on OS 8/9, one combination even locked (not crashed, but might as well have) OS X.
Here are the main steps:
* Raw 'ttxt' '????' "Unknown"
After that, you can obviously skip the mkisofs step for any duplicates. You just need the two cdrecord steps to record both sessions.
Whew! Hopefully this helps someone out there. It was a lot of work getting all the options right, but I couldn't be happier with the result.
In terms of numbers, it was very common to get a test score of 25 out of 50 and still get a B. That's insane! Perhaps the courses really were that much harder than your standard state school, but I don't think that's a good enough excuse. This was supposed to be a really hard school, after all. Those of us (the majority, most of the time) who got those crappy scores got them because we didn't understand the material well enough or couldn't keep up with the accelerated pace of the course. Why should we be rewarded with grades that suggested otherwise?
I do have to say that because I didn't go into graduate school after getting my bachelor's degree, the course details and the grades don't matter much in the real world. What matters the most is that I got a solid foundation in science and technology, and most importantly, problem solving. I also dramatically improved my learning skills, allowing me to quickly pick up new things at my job. Those few details from the courses that apply specifically to my job on a day-to-day basis, I've been able to easily master without the chaos of school surrounding me. Ultimately grades only matter if you plan to go on in education at the next level.
My first Mac in late 1996 was a PowerMac 7600 with 132 MHz PowerPC 604 with 48 MB memory, 1.2 GB disk. I added a DigiDesign AudioMediaIII sound card as this machine was mainly for my music hobby. In early 2000 I upgraded the CPU to a 350 MHz G3. Also at some points during that time I upgraded the memory to 112 MB (8 slots allow for some crazy combinations!), added 2 disks (1 GB internal, 9 GB external, SCSI), and a USB card.
My second Mac came a year ago, a 733 MHz G4 QuickSilver (newly reduced price for education only after the dual 1-gigs were released, woohoo) with 640 MB of memory and a 40 GB disk. Added an aftermarket SuperDrive (same Pioneer model). After the wedding, with 5 1/2 hours of digital video footage to edit, I added a 120 GB disk.
Also bought an iBook in October for the wife, but I don't consider that really an "upgrade" from anything previous. Great little machine.
The 7600 is still in use today, running OS 8.6 as my primary music workstation. That'll be the case until my main music application comes to OS X "very soon". The machine is in great shape and still does everything I need it to do. I use the G4 as my primary desktop machine for everything but music (web, email, iMovie/iDVD, Gimp, programming, ssh to the FreeBSD box in the corner, etc).
So depending on what you mean by "upgrade" I'm not sure how often I have done so. But certainly, it's happened far less often than the PCs in my life. And so far, I've had zero hardware problems with my Macs (knock on wood). Can't say the same for the PCs, though again mine is but a single data point in the sea of information.
We thought about this for our wedding, but ultimately decided it was too much hassle. Besides, the Mac was busy playing our hand-picked playlist of ceremony and reception music. ;-) Our favors were just nice little bags of blue and white M&Ms (our wedding colors) that everyone enjoyed. Some of the other suggestions here might have been pretty cool, but that's ok.
Instead, we made up CDs and sent them out with the thankyou notes. That gave us time to put some polish on the CD, making them friendly to our non-geek guests too. Because music is my hobby, I wrote and recorded 5 songs that were used in the ceremony. So we actually made enhanced audio CDs, containing those 5 songs plus a data track with all of the pictures, MP3s of the reception playlist, and a 5-minute video sample from the DVD (still working on completing that). For navigation, we used a mini version of our website pointing to all the files on the CD. The CD was then setup to auto-start the web browser in either Mac or Windows, and we even included QuickTime installers for anyone who might not have it.
We've gotten a lot of compliments, especially from the non-geek guests, so I'm glad we didn't rush something less polished to hand out at the reception.