I do computer-based recording with Cakewalk Pro Audio and Alesis QSR. I sequence drums and keyboards and do live bass, guitar, and vocals. Haven't been too active lately, though.
I'm waiting for driver support and a "killer app" for BeOS to come out so I can move out of the land of blue screens...
...Microsoft is releasing Windows Millennium and has decided to launch an advertising campaign which features a contest. In this contest, points are generated by a CPU-intensive program which only runs on Windows Millennium, each point is tagged with a unique identifier which you register with M$. Let's say a P2-400 running the contest's program can generate 1 point every hour. Microsoft keeps the contest open for a year (Windows Millennium SE will come out about that time). They say the grand prize is one of Bill Gates' houses, which one must redeem 40,000 points to win.
Let's say the fastest processor the contest's program ran on was an Athlon-600Mhz. During the year, clock speeds on the Athlon increase to 1.5GHz. Some geek builds a system based on this and supercools it, enabling it to run at 2.5GHz. He racks up the required points and wants the keys to the house.
Count me among the 1202-VLZ owners. Perfect for the amateur recording/mixing I do. I hook up my two computers, MiniDisc deck, CD player, Bass amp, and a few mikes, all at the same time. Mackie kicks.
It all depends on how many users need to access the CD library at one time. Any solution utiliting a changer/jukebox mechanism inherently limits the amount of users who can connect to the library simultaneously.
I don't think I'm mistaken. If the architect of the solution specifies the amount of concurrent accesses supported and it is acceptable, more power to them.
Unless you're dealing with an audience of one, or very occasional usage, why would an admin even consider serving up CDROM's with a changer?
That's the kind of things people lose their jobs over... or at least a lot of respect.
The idea of putting the CD images on HD-based shares is perfect. If the content/apps can be served from a shared CD, they should work from shared HD as well.
SMP support is in the chipset in question, for example, the Intel 440BX. On dual processor motherboards, you don't set the number of processors in the CMOS - the chipset scans the processor bus and determines itself how many CPUs are present.
When I said "in cooperation", I guess I should have said "with the permission of". The cable was laid with the allowance of local authorities just as any other public utility is. Does the phone company own the land where a telephone pole is standing? Do they even own the telephone pole?
My point is that if the company which owns the network is connecting it to the Internet but stifling public access to the service because they want to be the only ISP is doing a disservice to the public. One company can only handle so much demand, and not all ISPs are created equal.
Outside of Pittsburgh and Philly, broadband access in PA seems nonexistant. Here in Harrisburg it seems like Bell-Atlantic is too scared to roll out ADSL because of local cable-modem rollouts, which are slowly starting to occur. Of course, Bell and my cable provider continue to assure me that I'll have options "real soon now".
I'd like to see an adventurous startup move into to town and offer some sort of two-way wireless broadband access, scooping up all the business that neither the phone nor cable companies wants right now. I'm consciously avoiding any one-way satellite solution.
I won't speak for their internal modems, but my Sportster X2 (now v.90) External has worked flawlessly since day one. Part of this is because I've picked ISP's that use USR/3Com hardware. If the average consumer was made more aware of the K56flex/X2 compatibility issues and how they have spilled into v.90, perhaps less of them would be dissatisfied with their modem's performance. Another thing that would help is if the average consumer avoided internal modems (and as a bonus: sidestepping WinModem issues).
What's next? Consumers sue 10BT NIC manufacturers becuase they don't actually achieve 10mbits/sec throughput?
Tyans have worked great for me. My two current systems are based on Tyan: one is a Tomcat IIID (P-166, 96MB), and one is a Thunder 2 ATX (P2-300, 128MB). I got the Thunder for $110 at Computer Geeks just after the BX version came out - that's a steal for a motherboard with an onboard AHA-3940UW!
Many people have recommended the Tiger 100 as a great low-end SMP 440BX-based board. A friend of mine got one and it's worked great for him.
The last two systems I've built are duals (P166, P2-300) and both run NT and Linux quite well. I'm quite pleased to see an SMP version of Q3A since it will help to extend the life of my dual P2 for a while longer. Thanks to John Carmack from one of the 1%!!!
Now, if Matrox would just release an NT OpenGL ICD for the G200 before I buy a TNT2 Ultra...
The money lost as a result of one engineer being unable to work on a drawing for a few hours shouldn't make a huge dent in TCO. Are you regurgitating generic statements which are made about how costly downtime of mission-critical servers can be?
Most of the TCO polls I've seen lately deal with fleets of x86 desktops/laptops that are running various versions of Windows. I haven't seen any study comparing the TCO of Sparcs and NTW boxen, but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist. I would assume the TCO of any UNIX- or Linux-based desktop would be higher than a Windows one. With a UNIX workstation, there is higher initial cost, higher support cost, but lower HW upgrade cost. With Linux, there is low initial cost, but higher support cost, and probably average HW upgrade cost (got to have more Mhz and memory!!). Hardware/Software cost can sometimes be lower than 10% of the total TCO over 3-5 years depending on the support/upgrade regimen of the profiled users.
There is no spinning read/write head like with helical-scan tape systems, but DLT tape does contact its read/write head. Plus it goes around 6 rollers and winds up on a temporary spool while in use.
I disagree. The threatening letter from GDP lawyers doesn't address any profit motive the owners of Deadabase may have. It just cites the difference between trading recordings by hand and by the Internet, and quotes supposedly appropriate legislation which was drafted to protect copyrighted material from being distributed over the Internet.
Personally, I think it's foolish for GDP to ignore copyright law in many circumstances, but to want it enforced when it comes to the Internet. Perhaps a bunch of geeks downloading shows from the Deadabase doesn't conform to their ideas of "community". 8)
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I do computer-based recording with Cakewalk Pro Audio and Alesis QSR. I sequence drums and keyboards and do live bass, guitar, and vocals. Haven't been too active lately, though.
I'm waiting for driver support and a "killer app" for BeOS to come out so I can move out of the land of blue screens...
...Microsoft is releasing Windows Millennium and has decided to launch an advertising campaign which features a contest. In this contest, points are generated by a CPU-intensive program which only runs on Windows Millennium, each point is tagged with a unique identifier which you register with M$. Let's say a P2-400 running the contest's program can generate 1 point every hour. Microsoft keeps the contest open for a year (Windows Millennium SE will come out about that time). They say the grand prize is one of Bill Gates' houses, which one must redeem 40,000 points to win.
Let's say the fastest processor the contest's program ran on was an Athlon-600Mhz. During the year, clock speeds on the Athlon increase to 1.5GHz. Some geek builds a system based on this and supercools it, enabling it to run at 2.5GHz. He racks up the required points and wants the keys to the house.
Do you think he deserves the house?
Count me among the 1202-VLZ owners. Perfect for the amateur recording/mixing I do. I hook up my two computers, MiniDisc deck, CD player, Bass amp, and a few mikes, all at the same time. Mackie kicks.
It all depends on how many users need to access the CD library at one time. Any solution utiliting a changer/jukebox mechanism inherently limits the amount of users who can connect to the library simultaneously.
I don't think I'm mistaken. If the architect of the solution specifies the amount of concurrent accesses supported and it is acceptable, more power to them.
Unless you're dealing with an audience of one, or very occasional usage, why would an admin even consider serving up CDROM's with a changer?
That's the kind of things people lose their jobs over... or at least a lot of respect.
The idea of putting the CD images on HD-based shares is perfect. If the content/apps can be served from a shared CD, they should work from shared HD as well.
SMP support is in the chipset in question, for example, the Intel 440BX. On dual processor motherboards, you don't set the number of processors in the CMOS - the chipset scans the processor bus and determines itself how many CPUs are present.
When I said "in cooperation", I guess I should have said "with the permission of". The cable was laid with the allowance of local authorities just as any other public utility is. Does the phone company own the land where a telephone pole is standing? Do they even own the telephone pole?
My point is that if the company which owns the network is connecting it to the Internet but stifling public access to the service because they want to be the only ISP is doing a disservice to the public. One company can only handle so much demand, and not all ISPs are created equal.
Outside of Pittsburgh and Philly, broadband access in PA seems nonexistant. Here in Harrisburg it seems like Bell-Atlantic is too scared to roll out ADSL because of local cable-modem rollouts, which are slowly starting to occur. Of course, Bell and my cable provider continue to assure me that I'll have options "real soon now".
I'd like to see an adventurous startup move into to town and offer some sort of two-way wireless broadband access, scooping up all the business that neither the phone nor cable companies wants right now. I'm consciously avoiding any one-way satellite solution.
Do any other PA natives feel this way?
I won't speak for their internal modems, but my Sportster X2 (now v.90) External has worked flawlessly since day one. Part of this is because I've picked ISP's that use USR/3Com hardware. If the average consumer was made more aware of the K56flex/X2 compatibility issues and how they have spilled into v.90, perhaps less of them would be dissatisfied with their modem's performance. Another thing that would help is if the average consumer avoided internal modems (and as a bonus: sidestepping WinModem issues).
What's next? Consumers sue 10BT NIC manufacturers becuase they don't actually achieve 10mbits/sec throughput?
Tyans have worked great for me. My two current systems are based on Tyan: one is a Tomcat IIID (P-166, 96MB), and one is a Thunder 2 ATX (P2-300, 128MB). I got the Thunder for $110 at Computer Geeks just after the BX version came out - that's a steal for a motherboard with an onboard AHA-3940UW!
Many people have recommended the Tiger 100 as a great low-end SMP 440BX-based board. A friend of mine got one and it's worked great for him.
The last two systems I've built are duals (P166, P2-300) and both run NT and Linux quite well. I'm quite pleased to see an SMP version of Q3A since it will help to extend the life of my dual P2 for a while longer. Thanks to John Carmack from one of the 1%!!!
Now, if Matrox would just release an NT OpenGL ICD for the G200 before I buy a TNT2 Ultra...
The inclusion of the word "already" is the kicker.
The money lost as a result of one engineer being unable to work on a drawing for a few hours shouldn't make a huge dent in TCO. Are you regurgitating generic statements which are made about how costly downtime of mission-critical servers can be?
Unfortunately AOL doesn't endear themselves to the technically inclined when they repeatedly run a commercial where the actor says:
"Why would I need America Online? I've already got a computer!"
Which is analogous to the statement:
"Why would I need a road? I've already got a car!"
AOL users are not stupid, but a stupid person was responsible for that ad.
Most of the TCO polls I've seen lately deal with fleets of x86 desktops/laptops that are running various versions of Windows. I haven't seen any study comparing the TCO of Sparcs and NTW boxen, but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist. I would assume the TCO of any UNIX- or Linux-based desktop would be higher than a Windows one. With a UNIX workstation, there is higher initial cost, higher support cost, but lower HW upgrade cost. With Linux, there is low initial cost, but higher support cost, and probably average HW upgrade cost (got to have more Mhz and memory!!). Hardware/Software cost can sometimes be lower than 10% of the total TCO over 3-5 years depending on the support/upgrade regimen of the profiled users.
The test server with storage probably costs at least $50K.
There is no spinning read/write head like with helical-scan tape systems, but DLT tape does contact its read/write head. Plus it goes around 6 rollers and winds up on a temporary spool while in use.
I disagree. The threatening letter from GDP lawyers doesn't address any profit motive the owners of Deadabase may have. It just cites the difference between trading recordings by hand and by the Internet, and quotes supposedly appropriate legislation which was drafted to protect copyrighted material from being distributed over the Internet.
Personally, I think it's foolish for GDP to ignore copyright law in many circumstances, but to want it enforced when it comes to the Internet. Perhaps a bunch of geeks downloading shows from the Deadabase doesn't conform to their ideas of "community". 8)