This may make me sound like a complete ass, but I have the perfect DVD/CD/CD-R/CD-RW/MP3/VCD player for you: your computer.
[...] It cost about 300-400 bucks to set up, including the cables, nic, DVD, etc. You can't ask for more than that, man.
It's all about the interface, man. And dBW/m^2.
I'd only consider that if I were to have something like a small (12" 800x600 would be enough) touch screen LCD flat panel as the interface, and a case either well shielded for noise (ie, in a rack), or without noisy fans. You don't want it to be the loudest thing in the room when you're not using it.
Plus, you'd want it to have a fair few S/P-DIF ins and a digital out, so you can plug all of your components (eg, minidisc player, 200 disc CD jukebox) digitally into the computer, and feed the output into your high end D/A converter. Most soundcards just can't compare to a dedicated D/A in S/N ratio.
Perhaps then add an ultra low latency control panel with cross-faders, a couple of spinning discs that allow you to scratch/alter the speed of music in real-time and emulate the noise of vinyl when scratched, some automatic beat matching software to make it easier and quicker to mix, DVX interfacing to control the lighting rig, a high resolution projector running layers on layers of X screensavers, xaos -autopilot, MP4 streams etc., and of course a few lasers, a smoke machine and a strobe light. All of your mixing and your entire environment is controlled digitally and you've got the convenience of two SL1200's.
Perhaps then develop an AI engine that controls the whole lot, and can learn tricks from the DJ at the tables. Make the whole thing OpenSource, the rules adaptive and linked to FreeNet, and have the creative talent of the machine exceed that of the world's best DJ.
Unlike an addiction to a drug or one of those trivial ailments, trying to cut down on taking in food has a withdrawal symptom (hunger) that NEVER GOES AWAY. Don't eat, and I'll be hungry from now until I go to bed, and then again when I wake up in the morning.
The solution is simple and timeless, and is a recurring theme in many chinese philosophies.
When hungry, eat. When thirsty, drink. When tired, sleep.
Don't eat until you are full. If you feel full, it is your body telling you that you have eaten too much.
The secret is desiring not to be full, similar to the Taoist paradox of desiring not to desire.
...but McDonalds is a famous name, and it was created (I assume) by a guy named McDonald.
Nope, Ray Kroc (sp?)
IIRC, Ray Kroc created the franchise; the original store (which became popular due to its proliferation of shake machines) was founded by a couple of brothers called Mac and Dick McDonald. Which, incidentally, explains the name "Big Mac", even though Dick invented it.
The strange thing is that I bet any 9 year old computers running FreeBSD have Y2K BIOS issues and will fail in what now, less than 2 weeks?
Gosh, it's a good thing that Linux doesn't allow my servers to suffer from that problem. All kernel versions after circa 1994 will be fine with known non-Y2K compliant RTC hardware.
Re:This article description is very misleading.
on
Intel using FreeBSD
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They do not have an "OS of choice". Intel wants is OS agnostic. They don't care which OS you run, as long as it runs on Intel hardware.
Here, here. They used FreeBSD, because FreeBSD is the best solution for a fileserver. It has been demonstrably slower at some general tasks and demonstrably quicker at some others.
Have Intel invested in a development effort for FreeBSD on Merced? I don't think so... but if FreeBSD were to be more popular I'm sure they would. Hardly grounds to say "FreeBSD is the OS of choice".
Funny, the FreeBSD crowd always seem to point the finger at the Linux crowd for being sensationalist. But then, I guess the/. crew are partly (wholly?) to blame; when will the blantantly inaccurate and unresearched headlines/summaries stop?
Re:You *can* attach a Sun keyboard to a PC!
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Interface Zen
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have a look at http://www.astrogator.se/~flag/
Interesting, but I don't like the approach of emulating the behaviour of a PS/2 keyboard emulating an AT keyboard that's being put through an AT->XT compatibility chip. Sounds a bit crufty. But I can see that it may be advantageous to those that run crappy operating systems that make creating custom input devices difficult and expensive.
Vojtech's method involves two IC's; a TTL to RS-232 level converter (MAX232), and two inverters (which will be on the same IC package). Dead simple. Each key sends a make code and a break code, and all of the translation is done in software. Of course, you need to be running Linux (not knocking any of the other open source OSes, just no-one has added the support yet).
You *can* attach a Sun keyboard to a PC!
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Interface Zen
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· Score: 1
Sun's Type 5 keyboards are very nice -- good feel, intelligent key location. I use Suns for this reason when I'm not using my computer.
If this is because physically attaching the Sun keyboard to the PC is difficult, this can be overcome. NCD sell Sun layout keyboards for X-Terminals that have PS/2 connectors, and with a recent kernel you can get them to work under Linux. You can also build a Sun -> serial converter and use Vojtech Pavlik's input patch to make the serial device equivalent to the standard keyboard. See Vojtech's site for more info.
A decidedly western concept, "the Zone", can be roughly the same thing. It is a state of oneness. Of being. Achievable in nearly all forms of action, including simple inaction (meditation). A fun place to be, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Here is my current theory:
All you have to do is keep balance by going through different types of zones with a rhythm. That way, you can always be in at least one zone, and there is no problem with the outside world; you were zoned in there just before, and you know that everything is taken care of.
Then you can live in some zone all the time. Almost everybody leaves the zone, and takes the "easy way out", by relaxing. Generally people lose some sense of being zoned then; the way to do this properly is to zone in on relaxing. Think final feast, and add yoga or meditation. Delight in the simplest of luxuries in this zone.
Ahh, its a wonderful place. How I just need to master the transistion between zones, and being in more than one zone at once;-)
How is that you can still maintain your air of superiority for a "free" distribution if you're distributing the same non-free programs as everyone else, yet still look down on distros such as RedHat solely because they don't keep a seperate non-free section? Would this not fall under the category of hypocrisy?
To give people choices. You don't have to include the non-free sections if you don't want to.
"The best friend Linux ever had was Microsoft," McAllister said. "Microsoft forces people to build to a standard. Microsoft isn't going to slit its throat by changing its hardware standard overnight."
Mmm, I've heard that one of MicroSoft's founding principles is standards. That's why hardware support in Linux and BSD is 100%.
yes, I know the issue is carrier frequency, not modulation scheme.
But that is the issue; at lower frequencies, you don't have the bandwidth to do frequency modulation, so amplitude modulation is the only way to go. Or have only 10 possible radio stations:).
CAT5 is UTP, unshielded twisted pair. See, unshielded, as in, no shielding
The twisting of the cables has a shielding effect (two wires in parallel make a good antenna; but twisted, they do not). So they are effectively shielded, against frequencies whose wavelength is of the order of the length of a single twist.
The problem is that most phone cabling isn't twisted with any consistancy. So that means there are lots of mini-antennae with slightly different resonant frequencies all picking up interference.
No modern distribution is anywhere near using only GPLed stuff. One big non GPLed entity is XFree86 almost used by everybody, and that doesn't make any distribution any more or any less free.
Right. Which is what makes it so hard to get XFree86 to work on Linux/BSD running on architectures to which a version of X has been ported, but the source has not been released.
Actually, no, I'm afraid it would suck:-). Come to one of my Samba talks if you want the gory details why, but essentially the problem is with threads switching user contexts. Think about how Samba provides UNIX security....
I guess the solution to that would be to implement Samba as a kernel module. Then all of the routines that give you UNIX user security are available and well tested.
I know I want it - I just don't know why. Would some Debian users be able to tell me the main differences between Debian and RedHat?
Principally, philosophy and organisation. But here are some very good pragmatic reasons to use Debian:
Updates and upgrades. They work. What's more, the packaging system gets new software straight from your local Debian mirror (if you ask it to). So point your/etc/apt/sources.list at your local mirror, and forget worrying about whether you're up to date.
Installing new software is a breeze. Installing GNOME under Debian was the quickest out of all of the platforms I have tried it - I downloaded and installed it in 5 minutes on my home system, with one command. Whoops, forgot to install xxx? apt-get install xxx. It takes seconds.
Attention to detail. People really care when things don't work, and (most of the time) people that actually use the packages own the packaging of them. They will always report bugs to the upstream source, often fix them, and sometimes even take over the ownership of the actual source code.
Personally, I don't really see an issue with Potato slipping. You can still install packages from Potato; libc upgrades on Potato actually work, no messing around, no reboot. It can be a little embarrassing telling people that they have to download an extra 10MB of files to get support for their brand spanking Matrox G200, but at least the option is there.
To summarise all this: With Debian, you spend less time searching, installing and debugging software, which gives you more time to actually use it. If I really want to spend lots of time mucking around with software installation, I'll install Slackware. And if I wanted to spend lots of times debugging problems with the way software is installed, I'd install RedHat.
You mean people actually want those? They're only ~1.54Mbps raw, folks. Compare this to ~52Mbps over cable (shared) or the ~6Mbps down/~1Mbps up rates of ADSL, and the only attraction of a T1 is that it is usually better supported than an xDSL or Cable modem. But that support usually comes with a nasty price.
Now, an OC3 or OC12, that's where its at:-). OC3 is 155Mbps, and an OC12 622Mbps. In Wellington, New Zealand, if you live in a central enough area, you can get an OC12 for a mere ~NZ$12,000 connection fee and ~$200/month + traffic... pretty damn cheap. Then you can have bandwidth to your own machine about equivalent to the sum total of all the pipes into the country!
I don't like the idea of having to let the FCC know my email address if I don't want spam. I would just like all spam to require a certain standard header that indicates it to be bulk email, so that I can filter it out.
I'm doing a (free) organism (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like God) for Carbon based lifeforms. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in human life, as my design resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the DNA (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I've currently ported hearing (though only wombat-level) and sight (sort of wall-eyed at present), and things seem to work.
This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them:-)
Tinus Lorvarlds.
PS. Yes - it's free of any real-life code, and it has multi-threaded reproduction.
It is NOT protable (uses DNA sequencing etc), and it probably never will support anything other than Carbon-based soups, as that's all I have:-(.
I'm actually curious to see what the resource requirements are to support a bunch of these things deployed in a company. One box per 5 clients? 25 clients? 50 clients?
Look around at your average office - how many people are really using their machines, actively, solidly? Not many.
One Sun technician I was talking to about this product (some time ago) said that empirically you can get 25 or so power users per CPU. Sun servers scale up to 72 processors. You do the math:-)
I believe Nyquist's Theorem states that to reproduce a frequency N, you need to take *AT LEAST* 2N samples/sec.
No, you need exactly 2N samples/sec, and any more are superfluous. This is what makes Nyquist's Theorem so useful.
Say I make a low frequency wave, say 1hz to keep things simple. Make it a nice gentle sine wave, with peak values of +/- 1. Say I'm lucky, and using a 2hz sampling frequency, I sample right at the peaks (and troughs). The sampled stream is 1,-1,1,-1,1,-1... which, if played back, represents a *triangle* wave [...]
What you are doing here is (incorrectly) interpolating values between samples. If you don't do that, and assume that it is a sine wave, you don't have this problem, and the signal is exactly reproduced with no errors. Re-read Fourier:-)
Theoretically, the "best" digital sound would require an infinite sample rate, which would cause any wave to be reproduced exactly.
Only if you are interested in inaudible frequencies. I'm all for overkill in this regard, but even 50-60kHz is overkill. 96kHz was probably chosen because it is an even multiple of 48kHz (the DAT sampling frequency).
(generally, it's better to take more bits than necessary and chop off the least significant, since the ADC process isn't perfect, and there's an error of 1/2 LSB).
Bear in mind that a very high end ADC might give you a 120dB range, which is almost 20 bits. Also, simply "chopping" the bits isn't a very good idea either. Apogee's web site have some quite good info on this; check it out for more information.
IIRC ATRAC only yields about 5:1 compression on a MiniDisc, which substantially tilts the field in its favor.
Noted, but this only half the compression of 128kbps MP3 and about the same as 256kbps. It would be nice to know how close a 256kbps MP3 can get to the original. Then I might finally get around to putting together a linux box to play MP3's in my stereo:-)
Slashdot Mirror
My point exactly :-).
"A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five."
It's all about the interface, man. And dBW/m^2.
I'd only consider that if I were to have something like a small (12" 800x600 would be enough) touch screen LCD flat panel as the interface, and a case either well shielded for noise (ie, in a rack), or without noisy fans. You don't want it to be the loudest thing in the room when you're not using it.
Plus, you'd want it to have a fair few S/P-DIF ins and a digital out, so you can plug all of your components (eg, minidisc player, 200 disc CD jukebox) digitally into the computer, and feed the output into your high end D/A converter. Most soundcards just can't compare to a dedicated D/A in S/N ratio.
Perhaps then add an ultra low latency control panel with cross-faders, a couple of spinning discs that allow you to scratch/alter the speed of music in real-time and emulate the noise of vinyl when scratched, some automatic beat matching software to make it easier and quicker to mix, DVX interfacing to control the lighting rig, a high resolution projector running layers on layers of X screensavers, xaos -autopilot, MP4 streams etc., and of course a few lasers, a smoke machine and a strobe light. All of your mixing and your entire environment is controlled digitally and you've got the convenience of two SL1200's.
Perhaps then develop an AI engine that controls the whole lot, and can learn tricks from the DJ at the tables. Make the whole thing OpenSource, the rules adaptive and linked to FreeNet, and have the creative talent of the machine exceed that of the world's best DJ.
Then you'd be cooking with gas.
The solution is simple and timeless, and is a recurring theme in many chinese philosophies.
When hungry, eat. When thirsty, drink. When tired, sleep.
Don't eat until you are full. If you feel full, it is your body telling you that you have eaten too much.
The secret is desiring not to be full, similar to the Taoist paradox of desiring not to desire.
IIRC, Ray Kroc created the franchise; the original store (which became popular due to its proliferation of shake machines) was founded by a couple of brothers called Mac and Dick McDonald. Which, incidentally, explains the name "Big Mac", even though Dick invented it.
Gosh, it's a good thing that Linux doesn't allow my servers to suffer from that problem. All kernel versions after circa 1994 will be fine with known non-Y2K compliant RTC hardware.
Here, here. They used FreeBSD, because FreeBSD is the best solution for a fileserver. It has been demonstrably slower at some general tasks and demonstrably quicker at some others.
Have Intel invested in a development effort for FreeBSD on Merced? I don't think so... but if FreeBSD were to be more popular I'm sure they would. Hardly grounds to say "FreeBSD is the OS of choice".
Funny, the FreeBSD crowd always seem to point the finger at the Linux crowd for being sensationalist. But then, I guess the /. crew are partly (wholly?) to blame; when will the blantantly inaccurate and unresearched headlines/summaries stop?
I as ked about this on the OpenBSD tech mailing list, and Theo de Raadt as sured me that it didn't.
Interesting, but I don't like the approach of emulating the behaviour of a PS/2 keyboard emulating an AT keyboard that's being put through an AT->XT compatibility chip. Sounds a bit crufty. But I can see that it may be advantageous to those that run crappy operating systems that make creating custom input devices difficult and expensive.
Vojtech's method involves two IC's; a TTL to RS-232 level converter (MAX232), and two inverters (which will be on the same IC package). Dead simple. Each key sends a make code and a break code, and all of the translation is done in software. Of course, you need to be running Linux (not knocking any of the other open source OSes, just no-one has added the support yet).
If this is because physically attaching the Sun keyboard to the PC is difficult, this can be overcome. NCD sell Sun layout keyboards for X-Terminals that have PS/2 connectors, and with a recent kernel you can get them to work under Linux. You can also build a Sun -> serial converter and use Vojtech Pavlik's input patch to make the serial device equivalent to the standard keyboard. See Vojtech's site for more info.
Here is my current theory:
All you have to do is keep balance by going through different types of zones with a rhythm. That way, you can always be in at least one zone, and there is no problem with the outside world; you were zoned in there just before, and you know that everything is taken care of.
Then you can live in some zone all the time. Almost everybody leaves the zone, and takes the "easy way out", by relaxing. Generally people lose some sense of being zoned then; the way to do this properly is to zone in on relaxing. Think final feast, and add yoga or meditation. Delight in the simplest of luxuries in this zone.
Ahh, its a wonderful place. How I just need to master the transistion between zones, and being in more than one zone at once ;-)
To give people choices. You don't have to include the non-free sections if you don't want to.
Mmm, I've heard that one of MicroSoft's founding principles is standards. That's why hardware support in Linux and BSD is 100%.
But that is the issue; at lower frequencies, you don't have the bandwidth to do frequency modulation, so amplitude modulation is the only way to go. Or have only 10 possible radio stations :).
The twisting of the cables has a shielding effect (two wires in parallel make a good antenna; but twisted, they do not). So they are effectively shielded, against frequencies whose wavelength is of the order of the length of a single twist.
The problem is that most phone cabling isn't twisted with any consistancy. So that means there are lots of mini-antennae with slightly different resonant frequencies all picking up interference.
Right. Which is what makes it so hard to get XFree86 to work on Linux/BSD running on architectures to which a version of X has been ported, but the source has not been released.
This is a good thing?
I guess the solution to that would be to implement Samba as a kernel module. Then all of the routines that give you UNIX user security are available and well tested.
Well, get on with it! ;-)
Principally, philosophy and organisation. But here are some very good pragmatic reasons to use Debian:
Personally, I don't really see an issue with Potato slipping. You can still install packages from Potato; libc upgrades on Potato actually work, no messing around, no reboot. It can be a little embarrassing telling people that they have to download an extra 10MB of files to get support for their brand spanking Matrox G200, but at least the option is there.
To summarise all this: With Debian, you spend less time searching, installing and debugging software, which gives you more time to actually use it. If I really want to spend lots of time mucking around with software installation, I'll install Slackware. And if I wanted to spend lots of times debugging problems with the way software is installed, I'd install RedHat.
Auckland. And it was only Central City, at night.
Um, New Zealand is a First World country. Compare that to America as a Second World country.
You mean people actually want those? They're only ~1.54Mbps raw, folks. Compare this to ~52Mbps over cable (shared) or the ~6Mbps down/~1Mbps up rates of ADSL, and the only attraction of a T1 is that it is usually better supported than an xDSL or Cable modem. But that support usually comes with a nasty price.
Now, an OC3 or OC12, that's where its at :-). OC3 is 155Mbps, and an OC12 622Mbps. In Wellington, New Zealand, if you live in a central enough area, you can get an OC12 for a mere ~NZ$12,000 connection fee and ~$200/month + traffic... pretty damn cheap. Then you can have bandwidth to your own machine about equivalent to the sum total of all the pipes into the country!
I don't like the idea of having to let the FCC know my email address if I don't want spam. I would just like all spam to require a certain standard header that indicates it to be bulk email, so that I can filter it out.
I guess everyone is just sick of the NSI then ;-)
Announcement seen on sci.biotech.life:
Hello everybody out there using life -
I'm doing a (free) organism (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like God) for Carbon based lifeforms. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in human life, as my design resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the DNA (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I've currently ported hearing (though only wombat-level) and sight (sort of wall-eyed at present), and things seem to work.
This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
PS. Yes - it's free of any real-life code, and it has multi-threaded reproduction.
It is NOT protable (uses DNA sequencing etc), and it probably never will support anything other than Carbon-based soups, as that's all I have :-(.
...and that's where it all started ;-)
Look around at your average office - how many people are really using their machines, actively, solidly? Not many.
One Sun technician I was talking to about this product (some time ago) said that empirically you can get 25 or so power users per CPU. Sun servers scale up to 72 processors. You do the math :-)
No, you need exactly 2N samples/sec, and any more are superfluous. This is what makes Nyquist's Theorem so useful.
What you are doing here is (incorrectly) interpolating values between samples. If you don't do that, and assume that it is a sine wave, you don't have this problem, and the signal is exactly reproduced with no errors. Re-read Fourier :-)
Only if you are interested in inaudible frequencies. I'm all for overkill in this regard, but even 50-60kHz is overkill. 96kHz was probably chosen because it is an even multiple of 48kHz (the DAT sampling frequency).
Bear in mind that a very high end ADC might give you a 120dB range, which is almost 20 bits. Also, simply "chopping" the bits isn't a very good idea either. Apogee's web site have some quite good info on this; check it out for more information.
Noted, but this only half the compression of 128kbps MP3 and about the same as 256kbps. It would be nice to know how close a 256kbps MP3 can get to the original. Then I might finally get around to putting together a linux box to play MP3's in my stereo :-)