So in other words you agree with me when I am saying that we owe a lot of the advances in music technology to that which came before it.
I too have been making music since the late 80's and have a collection of analogue synths and drum machines. Although I owe much of my roots to humble beginnings on Ubix music and Octamed on the Amiga. Those early trackers greatly influenced me as a musician and I often go back to them because in many ways the limitations actually spurn creativity. So I find it interesting that you originally stated that you have always hated them and they are only good for game music. I stand by my remarks that your comment was bullshit!
Game Music is still a valid form of music only a musical snob would suggest otherwise! Just because a tune was created one way or another it doesnt make it any more or less valid an artform. If I composed a tune using only a mono Moog would you say that it was crap because Moog's are only good for playing one note at a time?
Why yes Trackers lend themselves to sample based music which is great for games - especially where storage or processing power might be at a minimum.
I have written many pieces of music using tracker software that you would be hard-pushed to tell what sequencer I used.
In addition trackers heritage actually lies in the old "Steptime" hardware sequencers used by the likes of Kraftwerk and other electro luminaries - modern trackers are way more advanced though these days!
So before you make comments like that make sure you know your history, In many ways we owe their heritage to many of the sequencers we have today.
Im not sure there is - But one of the things the Ubuntu team is doing is making it plain and simple for potential users to know which distro is for them! Its also nice that you know all the apps are going to be relevant instead of having a multitude of applications that will never get used and overwhelm the user. This is about keeping things simple and I applaud what they are trying to do!
by keeping their code open (at least internally) and cross platform it really doesnt matter what architecture it is running on. The switch to intel was comparitively quick - relatively speaking.
The reasons for apples switch were made on costing and performance - and undoubtably because IBM failed to deliver.
Of course if something else comes up - I imagine we would see another change.
I use thunderbird - but there was one feature in KMail that saved my life on a couple of times - basically it would scan your email for references like "please find the attached file" (probably just the word attached rather than the whole phrase) but I've lost count of the number of times I have written an email and forgotten to attach a file. KMail would intercept the email send process and ask if you meant to attach a file - giving you a second chance to make the attachment.
Does thunderbird 2 have this great feature? (here's where someone tells me its been in Thunderbird 1 for years!... )
but 2024 is not good enough - I wanna be alive when this happens! I just hope that some other country gets there first or at least does something to accelerate this new space race!
Does anyone know if welll ever see something like WINE but OSX? Like an "Open Source implementation of the OSX API". Not knowing a lot about the subject - but i would imagine now we already have Darwin a big chunk of the kernel level stuff is already done. What would remain would be all the user space stuff , GUI and stuff.
Is a complete lack of understanding of technology. In particular the internet and underlying technologies. The Internet is a peer to peer filesharing network. If one outlaws the sending of files from one computer on a network to another you are effectively making the internet illegal.
I'm a computer professional and I like Linux and it's abilities, but there is no way my mom or dad could use it as far as installing new programs goes.
Fair comment - But when it comes to the crunch you'll be doing admin for mom and pop once every six months to clean all the crap and spyware out with windows. How about switching that "admin" task for the "installing new programs" on a linux distribution. That's what I did - My retired parents run linux day - to - day for browsing the web, doing word processing with Open Office, Watching Video and Radio podcasts. She even runs Family Tree Maker through Wine. The only trouble is they fight over the computer to play Mahjong or Solitaire.
They have zero problems using linux and the software that comes with it. The only issues that do occur are when one or the other finds a dodgy website that needs some obscure plugin, occasionally the printer stops working, since i showed them how to restart the printer via the KDE Control panel im rarely bothered with it. Things might not work in exactly the same way as windows but its no more easier or difficult for them.
The distro I have set my parents up with is Vidalinux - (I've swapped the default WM for KDE though)
I spent the time getting the linux box set-up just right - everything works, video, internet, digital camera's, filesharing, printing. The beauty of it is that the time I invested has really paid off, I havent had to re-install the operating system for at least two years and I havent had to remove a single piece of mal/spyware. On the rare occaision that something does need fixing, I happy to do so. Unlike with windows where I am engulfed with that feeling of dread I when a friend calls with the plea - "Can you come and look at my PC? its gone really slow and I cant connect to the internet";
Swings and Roundabout's you see... Windows makes it easier to install programs - But perhaps that ease is outweighed by the ease and regularity at which non-savvy users can install "free" programs infested with malware - which I then have to go along and fix.
I've met quite a few arrogant stuck-in-their-ways windows zealots in my time. This is just twaddle! Arrogant people are arrogant people and just as many can be found on either side of the fence.
In my experience as a developer I have found it much much easier to get Linux/OSS related help and support from free forums, internet sites and oss project maintainers, for my own development problems and also for oss software that I use. I simply havent found or experienced these levels of assistance for my Windows related problems - I ususally find that when I encounter a problem with something windows related somebody wants to sell me something to solve the problem i am encountering. For me the Linux and open source community is a much friendlier place than this article seems to suggest, and if i can - I always reciprocate this helpfull to others who might be struggling with a Linux problem.
MP3 doesn't retain the very high or very low frequencies as well, in my opinion.
When MiniDisc came out in its first incarnation of Atrak was booed by audiophiles for suffering the EXACT SAME inadequacies (lack of top-end and bottom-end frequencies) as your are describing with regard to MP3, but - just like the Atrack system has improved over the years so has MP3 and the myriad of other codec's floating around these days.
but when I'm sat in a dark room concentrating on the music, or listening to each chord through a decent pair of headphones, it's that sort of thing that i'll pay money to improve. MP3 doesn't cut it for me (yet).... listen to what you are saying - if you heard someone else make a comment like that wouldnt you think they were a twat?
I can understand forking out for a decent music system its easy to tell the difference between a plastic midi-hifi and a decent seperates system!.But your comment is borderline obsessive. You sound so obsessed with the sound quality and the finer intricacies of the sound; Do you actually enjoy music? Good music is good music. Its a shame you judge it chord by chord or frequency by frequency. You sound like an obsessively biased audiophile fanboy who's more interested in tweaking his stereo than actually enjoying music (as opposed to listening to the inadequacies of your set-up). I cant imagine what it must be like to be so distracted by the details of the sound that i couldnt enjoy my music collection!
Actually there were some other reasons. Id bought cheaper mp3 players in the past , the build quality was terrible knackered after not very long. I decided that buying a cheap one was a false economy. I'd seen my brothers and the iPod seemed much better built and bigger capacity. The other reason was this click wheel thing everyone was raving about. Now i'll agree that it does to a certain extent make navigation easier - but the click-wheel could be so much better with the right software to drive it.
I think that the Click wheel needs to be able to do more stuff. I have many thousands of tunes, albums and artists on my iPod. To be quite frank sometimes i have to go round on the click wheel hundreds of times before i can find the tune i am looking for. In my opinion that is not the best interface in the world.
One thing i would change about the iPod is to get rid of the annoying dependancy on iTunes. Why in hell can't i just drag and drop a file onto the thing ala mass-storage device? and vice-versa?
The other thing is that id really like the iPod to have the ability to look for tunes beginning with a specific letter. It would be nice for example if i could click a button and it paged down to the next letter of the alphabet (simple things like this would make the user experience so much nicer). I also think there should be a better, more interactive way of creating play-lists on the move.
Just because the iPod has this cool thing called a "Click Wheel" , it doesnt neccesarily mean that the "Click Wheel" is a good thing no matter how geeky it is. I'd buy a different mp3 player at the drop of the hat if it could sift through my vast collection of music quicker than my iPod can.
I might be barking up the wrong tree here, but once we have a port of elilo for OSX we could probably boot it that way (not that im particularly interested in doing that anyway).
In anycase im not sure Windows has ever supported dual booting - It's been a while since i installed newer versions of windows. In the past installing windows meant rewriting the boot sector regardless - removing any dual boot menu that might be there (lilo or grub) a pain in the ass if you had linux or other on a different partition. If this is still the case then it really isnt news when Microsoft say "It isnt supported". That doesnt mean that its not possible, just that they havent gone to the effort of making it possible.
Why should a game, any game be wasted on a console? If people want to put the time and effort into creating a good game, why shouldnt they do it? Your statement sound's kinda snobbish to me.
The great thing about consoles is that they are relatively speaking a stationary target, ie the technology stays the same for several years. Its nice to see that despite the age of the PS2 now that its developers are still manging to push the boundaries of the machines capabilities. Perhaps some of the skills learned from making more efficient use of console hardware could be translated to PC games. Lets face it develpers can be a hell of a lot more complacent on the PC platform, especially when Next-Gen 3d cards are being pushed by ATI or NVidia. Limitations and constraints breed creativity and that is a factor that can never be underestimated.
Is this their "Google Killer" ? because if it is - the interface feel's horrendous. Its slow and sluggish - and it seems like a classic case of using AJAX for the sake of using AJAX. That scrollbar is horrific. V.Nasty.
Open Source is a development model with specific licensing requirements, and as such it seems ridiculous to evaluate its suitabilty for "Prime Time" You might just as well pick a selection of random Closed Source software and evaluate the how suitable these are for "Prime Time"
A bunch of developers is a bunch of developers it makes no difference whether the product they work on is Open Source or Closed Source. I dont see how development model can be evaluated in this way. What counts is the end product. There are plenty of examples of Open Source and Closed Source products and solutions being used successfully every day. There are also plenty of examples of Open Source and Closed Source products and solutions not in use due to inadequacy, incompleteness or just poor implementation.
Slashdot Mirror
That people get promoted to a level of incomeptance!
I guess Ballmer is a class example of this.
N.
So in other words you agree with me when I am saying that we owe a lot of the advances in music technology to that which came before it.
I too have been making music since the late 80's and have a collection of analogue synths and drum machines. Although I owe much of my roots to humble beginnings on Ubix music and Octamed on the Amiga. Those early trackers greatly influenced me as a musician and I often go back to them because in many ways the limitations actually spurn creativity. So I find it interesting that you originally stated that you have always hated them and they are only good for game music. I stand by my remarks that your comment was bullshit!
Game Music is still a valid form of music only a musical snob would suggest otherwise! Just because a tune was created one way or another it doesnt make it any more or less valid an artform. If I composed a tune using only a mono Moog would you say that it was crap because Moog's are only good for playing one note at a time?
you are just a snob
N.
That truly is bullshit!
...
Why yes Trackers lend themselves to sample based music which is great for games - especially where storage or processing power might be at a minimum.
I have written many pieces of music using tracker software that you would be hard-pushed to tell what sequencer I used.
In addition trackers heritage actually lies in the old "Steptime" hardware sequencers used by the likes of Kraftwerk and other electro luminaries - modern trackers are way more advanced though these days!
So before you make comments like that make sure you know your history, In many ways we owe their heritage to many of the sequencers we have today.
Nick
Im not sure there is - But one of the things the Ubuntu team is doing is making it plain and simple for potential users to know which distro is for them! Its also nice that you know all the apps are going to be relevant instead of having a multitude of applications that will never get used and overwhelm the user. This is about keeping things simple and I applaud what they are trying to do!
by keeping their code open (at least internally) and cross platform it really doesnt matter what architecture it is running on. The switch to intel was comparitively quick - relatively speaking.
The reasons for apples switch were made on costing and performance - and undoubtably because IBM failed to deliver.
Of course if something else comes up - I imagine we would see another change.
N.
They were not gifts either. I beleive the correct term is BRIBES!
I use thunderbird - but there was one feature in KMail that saved my life on a couple of times - basically it would scan your email for references like "please find the attached file" (probably just the word attached rather than the whole phrase) but I've lost count of the number of times I have written an email and forgotten to attach a file. KMail would intercept the email send process and ask if you meant to attach a file - giving you a second chance to make the attachment.
... )
Does thunderbird 2 have this great feature? (here's where someone tells me its been in Thunderbird 1 for years!
N.
but 2024 is not good enough - I wanna be alive when this happens! I just hope that some other country gets there first or at least does something to accelerate this new space race!
N
Wow ... no-ones ever thought of an mp3 player or a games console before ! way to go microsoft.
So Microsoft are after Money for nothing - the question is are they going to get the chicks for free?
Nick...
And they said Titanic was unsinkable.
...
Nick
Yeah, well i kinda meant that compatibility would be like one of the main goals.
Does anyone know if welll ever see something like WINE but OSX? Like an "Open Source implementation of the OSX API". Not knowing a lot about the subject - but i would imagine now we already have Darwin a big chunk of the kernel level stuff is already done. What would remain would be all the user space stuff , GUI and stuff.
Im sure there are some much better kernel panic ideas than a BSOD?
...
How about a Guru Meditation ? http://guru.simon.net.nz/
There must be some other cool ones out there?
Nick
hey were close to getting a monopoly last generation, they were certainly the undisputed market leaders.
... who would you rather had a monopoly? Microsoft or Sony ?
Question is
Is a complete lack of understanding of technology. In particular the internet and underlying technologies. The Internet is a peer to peer filesharing network. If one outlaws the sending of files from one computer on a network to another you are effectively making the internet illegal.
I'm a computer professional and I like Linux and it's abilities, but there is no way my mom or dad could use it as far as installing new programs goes.
... Windows makes it easier to install programs - But perhaps that ease is outweighed by the ease and regularity at which non-savvy users can install "free" programs infested with malware - which I then have to go along and fix.
...
Fair comment - But when it comes to the crunch you'll be doing admin for mom and pop once every six months to clean all the crap and spyware out with windows. How about switching that "admin" task for the "installing new programs" on a linux distribution. That's what I did - My retired parents run linux day - to - day for browsing the web, doing word processing with Open Office, Watching Video and Radio podcasts. She even runs Family Tree Maker through Wine. The only trouble is they fight over the computer to play Mahjong or Solitaire.
They have zero problems using linux and the software that comes with it. The only issues that do occur are when one or the other finds a dodgy website that needs some obscure plugin, occasionally the printer stops working, since i showed them how to restart the printer via the KDE Control panel im rarely bothered with it. Things might not work in exactly the same way as windows but its no more easier or difficult for them.
The distro I have set my parents up with is Vidalinux - (I've swapped the default WM for KDE though)
I spent the time getting the linux box set-up just right - everything works, video, internet, digital camera's, filesharing, printing. The beauty of it is that the time I invested has really paid off, I havent had to re-install the operating system for at least two years and I havent had to remove a single piece of mal/spyware. On the rare occaision that something does need fixing, I happy to do so. Unlike with windows where I am engulfed with that feeling of dread I when a friend calls with the plea - "Can you come and look at my PC? its gone really slow and I cant connect to the internet";
Swings and Roundabout's you see
Nick
I've met quite a few arrogant stuck-in-their-ways windows zealots in my time. This is just twaddle!
Arrogant people are arrogant people and just as many can be found on either side of the fence.
In my experience as a developer I have found it much much easier to get Linux/OSS related help and support from free forums, internet sites and oss project maintainers, for my own development problems and also for oss software that I use. I simply havent found or experienced these levels of assistance for my Windows related problems - I ususally find that when I encounter a problem with something windows related somebody wants to sell me something to solve the problem i am encountering. For me the Linux and open source community is a much friendlier place than this article seems to suggest, and if i can - I always reciprocate this helpfull to others who might be struggling with a Linux problem.
MP3 doesn't retain the very high or very low frequencies as well, in my opinion.
... listen to what you are saying - if you heard someone else make a comment like that wouldnt you think they were a twat?
...
When MiniDisc came out in its first incarnation of Atrak was booed by audiophiles for suffering the EXACT SAME inadequacies (lack of top-end and bottom-end frequencies) as your are describing with regard to MP3, but - just like the Atrack system has improved over the years so has MP3 and the myriad of other codec's floating around these days.
but when I'm sat in a dark room concentrating on the music, or listening to each chord through a decent pair of headphones, it's that sort of thing that i'll pay money to improve. MP3 doesn't cut it for me (yet).
I can understand forking out for a decent music system its easy to tell the difference between a plastic midi-hifi and a decent seperates system!.But your comment is borderline obsessive. You sound so obsessed with the sound quality and the finer intricacies of the sound; Do you actually enjoy music? Good music is good music. Its a shame you judge it chord by chord or frequency by frequency. You sound like an obsessively biased audiophile fanboy who's more interested in tweaking his stereo than actually enjoying music (as opposed to listening to the inadequacies of your set-up). I cant imagine what it must be like to be so distracted by the details of the sound that i couldnt enjoy my music collection!
Nick
Shoes are more popular than television sets.
I have an iPod - I admit it, im a fashion victim.
Actually there were some other reasons. Id bought cheaper mp3 players in the past , the build quality was terrible knackered after not very long. I decided that buying a cheap one was a false economy. I'd seen my brothers and the iPod seemed much better built and bigger capacity. The other reason was this click wheel thing everyone was raving about. Now i'll agree that it does to a certain extent make navigation easier - but the click-wheel could be so much better with the right software to drive it.
I think that the Click wheel needs to be able to do more stuff. I have many thousands of tunes, albums and artists on my iPod. To be quite frank sometimes i have to go round on the click wheel hundreds of times before i can find the tune i am looking for. In my opinion that is not the best interface in the world.
One thing i would change about the iPod is to get rid of the annoying dependancy on iTunes. Why in hell can't i just drag and drop a file onto the thing ala mass-storage device? and vice-versa?
The other thing is that id really like the iPod to have the ability to look for tunes beginning with a specific letter. It would be nice for example if i could click a button and it paged down to the next letter of the alphabet (simple things like this would make the user experience so much nicer). I also think there should be a better, more interactive way of creating play-lists on the move.
Just because the iPod has this cool thing called a "Click Wheel" , it doesnt neccesarily mean that the "Click Wheel" is a good thing no matter how geeky it is. I'd buy a different mp3 player at the drop of the hat if it could sift through my vast collection of music quicker than my iPod can.
Nick...
I might be barking up the wrong tree here, but once we have a port of elilo for OSX we could probably boot it that way (not that im particularly interested in doing that anyway).
In anycase im not sure Windows has ever supported dual booting - It's been a while since i installed newer versions of windows. In the past installing windows meant rewriting the boot sector regardless - removing any dual boot menu that might be there (lilo or grub) a pain in the ass if you had linux or other on a different partition. If this is still the case then it really isnt news when Microsoft say "It isnt supported". That doesnt mean that its not possible, just that they havent gone to the effort of making it possible.
Why should a game, any game be wasted on a console? If people want to put the time and effort into creating a good game, why shouldnt they do it? Your statement sound's kinda snobbish to me.
The great thing about consoles is that they are relatively speaking a stationary target, ie the technology stays the same for several years. Its nice to see that despite the age of the PS2 now that its developers are still manging to push the boundaries of the machines capabilities. Perhaps some of the skills learned from making more efficient use of console hardware could be translated to PC games. Lets face it develpers can be a hell of a lot more complacent on the PC platform, especially when Next-Gen 3d cards are being pushed by ATI or NVidia. Limitations and constraints breed creativity and that is a factor that can never be underestimated.
Is this their "Google Killer" ? because if it is - the interface feel's horrendous. Its slow and sluggish - and it seems like a classic case of using AJAX for the sake of using AJAX. That scrollbar is horrific. V.Nasty.
Open Source is a development model with specific licensing requirements, and as such it seems ridiculous to evaluate its suitabilty for "Prime Time" You might just as well pick a selection of random Closed Source software and evaluate the how suitable these are for "Prime Time"
...
A bunch of developers is a bunch of developers it makes no difference whether the product they work on is Open Source or Closed Source. I dont see how development model can be evaluated in this way. What counts is the end product. There are plenty of examples of Open Source and Closed Source products and solutions being used successfully every day. There are also plenty of examples of Open Source and Closed Source products and solutions not in use due to inadequacy, incompleteness or just poor implementation.
Nick