Oh, come now, they didn't _always_ have pr0n on them...occasionally people would play Xtrek or something along those lines.
From my admittedly rusty memory, Mosaic 1.0 was early 1993 (at least for UNIX, which is the only net-connected OS I was playing on at the time) and Netscape.9 popped up either late '93 or early '94 as the first somewhat usable version.
Re:Another place for good games
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Layoffs at WotC
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· Score: 1
_Unexploded Cow_ is also quite fun. Got a non-gamer fried of mine hooked on it in about five minutes.:) Basically, you can't really go wrong with most of their games, the non-color ones are all less than $10 (or damn close) and the only other things you would need are items you can scavenge from other games you already own: dice, play money, playing pieces, etc. (Which was the whole POINT of Cheapass Games: why jack the price of the game up because they had to injection-mold playing pieces or print color play money? We all have Monopoly, don't we?)
I wonder if John Bedini (mentioned as a genius inventor in the article) bears any relation to Gary Bedini, inventor of the super gee-whiz-bang Bedini Ultra-Clarifier which, in a nutshell, spins around CDs and DVDs between two magnets to "reduce the relaxation noise" and "polarize the polymer in such a way as to maximize the laser's ability to retrieve stored data."
Reading further into the product description is left as an exercise for the reader.
Disclaimer: I've sold high-end audio, I do believe that different pieces of equipment sound different, better cables maker better sound, LPs _can_ sonically outperform CDs, etc, but I _do_ draw the line somewhere. I don't freeze CDs, I don't put green markers on the edge of my CDs, and I sure as hell don't put Mpingo disks all over the freaking place (although there is something to be said for mechanical isolation of certain components within reason.)
I remember Apple having ads in a few PC mags way back (like almost a decade ago) talking about how they were going to port MacOS to the Intel architecture. This would have been when Windows 3.1 was the best Redmond had to offer, but I'm not sure the MacOS of that era would have been much better.:) I'll see if I can find the damn magazines and I'll post issue numbers.
Was that a demand/request of Montalban or was it simply an "in" joke for people paying attention? Or, funnier yet, a complete coincidence - kind of like Arthur Clarke saying that if he had noticed that HAL was one "down" from IBM, he would have changed the name? Remember, this _is_ the same Trek that has gags like on-set pipes and conduit marked "GNDN" (Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing).
Most construction workers I know can leave the job at 5 PM Friday and have absolutely _nothing_ work related to worry about until 9 AM Monday morning.
How many sysadmins do you know who aren't on some form of on call or pseudo-24x7 support? Even if things are running well at their company, you can bet that if the server blows up at 2 AM on a Saturday, they're going to get the call to come in and fix it before the place opens back up on Monday morning.
Do construction workers take training courses (or are expected to teach themselves) about a new hammer/screwdrive/whatever everytime one comes out? Of course not. Learn one hammer, you've pretty much learned all hammers. Now how well do you think a sysadmin would do if he learned _zero_ new knowledge for 1/2/4 years straight? Think about all the mainframers who had to throw out a good chunk of what they knew when they moved to UNIX/C, or microcomputers. The fact that my father (for example) knew the DEC PDP series of minis inside out did him _zero_ good whenever I turned him loose on a modern UNIX system. Not to dis manual labor, but our society places a monetary premimum on professions that require a lot of study up front and/or near-constant re-training over the course of a career. Don't like it? Go to night school. Or crack a book.
I would then proceeded to _format_ that 720K diskette that I converted to 1.44M, and got 10%-20% error rates, and when I _did_ manage to save data to the diskette, it wouldn't always read 100% correctly in other floppy drives. Same with the hole punch trick on the 5 1/4" floppies - I had a TI and an Atari, but the principle was the same. It would hold you for the short term if you needed double the space RIGHT NOW, but don't put important backups on the "other side" of the disk.
Go root around in your disk collection and _find_ a 720K floppy and a 1.44M floppy. Pull back the metal slider and look at a light source thru the actual disk media. Notice that you can _see_ the light source thru the 1.44M media, but the 720K is almost completely opaque. Now tell me again how the media is the "same".
There was a _reason_ the higher density/double sided floppies cost more - they were _rated_ for that kind of use. Different media, denser magnetics, whatever.
Nope, I just live in Wisconsin and am a fan of both Wright and the Arthur legends. I've used Taliesin as my nick for a number of years, but I'm usually found as TaliesinWI because I've run into a few other Taliesins online. I do make it a point to visit as many Wright buildings around here as I can, though.
But the point is they still are _there_. It will be difficult to sell the American public on any new fuel source that involves the word "diesel". The only way you could possibly piss them off faster would be to mention the words "nuclear reactor" and "backyard" in the same sentence. You can point to all the "it's cleaner" data you'd like, they're just going to think you've come up with a new way to pull the wool over their eyes and change the evil diesel particulates into something else. And given that there is no proof that the biodiesel emissions aren't still "harmful", merely "less harmful than current diesel", they may very well be right. Imagine the public backlash that would result when ten or fifteen years from now we say "whoops, looks like the amount and type of the particulates from all the vehicles burning biodiesel are _more harmful_ to breathe than all the buses and trucks that were burning standard diesel were." Why risk it? The average joe American doesn't care if the cars his fellow commuters are driving will or will not cause a greenhouse effect in 100 years (like craploads of CO2 emissions _might_) but he _does_ worry if it will personally give cancer to him or his family members in 30 years.
I completely agree about the "gimmick" mobo moniker. This tube is going to provide a warm glow to the inside of the case more than it's going to affect the sound. I also can't imagine what kind of microphonics (surrounding vibration being transmitted thru the tube and ending up as noise) you'd have here.
And although it's gratifying to see people pointing out the difference in what the tubes are "for" in a tube guitar amp and a home audio amp, there are the people coming out on the whole "pleasant distortion" thing, but then dropping it in the dust without really explaining what they mean.
So, here goes (I'm grossly simplifying to try and keep this brief):
Simply put, tubes add more distortion than transistors. However, tubes add most of their distortion in the even harmonics of a tone, whereas transistors add distortion in the odd harmonics of a tone. Why does this matter? Because the way we humans tell various instruments apart is in the amount of harmonics that the instrument produces for a particular fundamental (this is called timbre). This is why even though a flute and a guitar are both playing A440, they sound radically different. Naturally occuring musical harmonics are "even", that is, even multiples of the fundamental frequency. So, when a tube amp reproduces the sound of a saxophone, it _is_ distorting the signal by amplifying, for example, the second, fourth, and sixth harmonics. Our brain takes these "natural" harmonics and internally boosts the level of the fundamental tone - in other words, we are psychologically reconstructing the musical note as slightly "louder" than it actually is. In comparison, the transistor amps, while producing far less total harmonic distortion (the vaunted THD that we see in so many specs), are actually producing more "unnatural" distortion, because they are affecting the odd harmonics of a given tone, even slightly. Since these harmonics are not "naturally occuring", our ear-brain doesn't compensate for them in the same terms, so it registers as... well, kind of odd. More grain on the sound of a string. Harshness in wind instruments, etc. In some ways, the tube/transistor battle is "pick your poison", kind of like the whole digital/analog debate. Some people argue that music should be reproduced with as little distortion as possible, so transistor/digital is the way to go. Other take the position that distortion-free sound reproduction is impossible, so if you're going to have it, might as well make it the kind that is more "natural" - tube/analog. (Yes, I know I've trivialized lots of the debate - I'm not going to re-fight the audiophile wars here.) In the end, it's what Sounds Better to You.
And for what it's worth, I own both tube and transistor equipment, and own a CD player and a turntable.
Back in the day, I personally recieved a letter from my (slightly daffy, now-dead) grandmother. She couldn't find a stamp, but really wanted to get the letter in the mail (it was for my birthday), so she taped a quarter where the stamp should have been, and dropped it in her porch mailbox. It arrived at my house, three days later, a state away, with the quarter still attached. Of course, nowadays, the automatic sorters would have a fit, etc etc...but this was at least fifteen years ago. Apparently the tech wasn't quite as widespread.:)
He actually _is_ a really nice guy. I met him a few years back at GenCon Game Fair in Milwaukee, WI, where he was one of the guests of honor for SciFi Saturday. It was actually quite humorous hearing a small collective gasp from the majority of the audience (many of whom are a far different brand of "geek" one would find at a Trek convention, for example) when it became apparent that he did _not_ actually have a Scottish accent. In fact, a couple of native Scots stood up at some point and asked him how he had nailed the accent so completely, because he sure had them fooled. He then proceeded to do a few other non-American accents for us, all of which (to these non-expert ears) certainly sounded authentic. He apparently did a lot of listening to his fellow soldiers in WWII and after, and is just exceedingly good at mimicing what he hears.
Alas, GenCon '01 didn't have MIDIMaze, or if it did, I couldn't find it. Last time I DID play MidiMaze at GenCon, I recall that the 16 Ataris they had cobbled together were in barely working shape, and to top it off there was never more than four or five people running around in the mazes at once - which really kills the experience IMHO. As for M.U.L.E., it's pretty much the sole reason I haven't consigned my Atari 800XL to the scrap heap - every so often I drag it out and give it a whirl. Now if I just had LOCAL friends I could get hooked on it - all my old geek friends seemed to have moved to a warm southern state. .
OK, THIS one slipped beneath my radar...there's a new _Hunt for Red October_ in the works? What exactly was wrong with the old one, other than maybe the synth-heavy musical score? Who's directing, the actors, etc? Inquiring minds want to know!
Actually, 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn't really a book-to-movie adaptation....Kubrick was writing the screenplay more or less simultaneously with Clarke writing the book, each providing feedback to the other and incorporating story changes from one to the other. In fact, it wasn't even a given that the book was going to come out before or after the movie, eventually the film came out first - and had plot differences from the final book.
2010, in contrast, was written as a sequel by Clarke to the movie version of 2001, and was eventually adapted to a movie in 1984.
Re:Almost all Apples SILENT (Apple 2,Mac+,IIfx,iMa
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PC Fan of the Future?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Don't I recall lots if not all of those early computers having an external AC/DC converter, either as a wall wart or as a box midway up the power cable? IOW, your primary source of heat was moved AWAY from the computer case, and since 6502s really aren't known for their heat problems, of course you wouldn't need a fan. The PC has a switching power supply because it was far more expandible than anything else out there at the time, and the power requirements needed to be more flexible. This was not limited to the IBM - my TI-994/A's external expansion box (circa 1979) had a little power supply in it (don't recall if it had a fan, I think it did) because again, I could put a variety of peripherals in there, and it needed to be able to run them all. Yet, my base TI-994/A ran off of a wall wart.
Recall that until around the 486 DX/2 days, there (in general application) wasn't anything hot enough inside the PC case to warrant its own fan. The fan behind the power supply is/was always meant to cool the *power supply* anyway.
Agreed. I heard the same NPR blurb and they were basically saying that people who are used to 8+ hours' sleep shouldn't start setting their alarm clocks early because of this study. If you're not regularly sleepy during the day, you're getting enough sleep. I don't remember the precise example the speaker used but it was akin to turning a 1 in 100,000 risk into a 1.1 in 100,000 risk - someone correct me if my numbers are off by a factor of 10, please.
Agreed 100%. I'm the sysadmin for an ISP and I'm contracted out to two others. We use ORDB and ORBZ for our open-relay filtering. They're both very good about removing IPs from their list once its provable that the mail server in question is no longer an open relay. There are other lists that seem equally competent, but there are others that seem to be large-type assholes, in stereo (*cough* Dorkslayers *cough*). Before I started using any given list, I would go to the web page for that list. If it was a "we're an ISP with a spamtrap and we list everyone who tickles the spamtrap" I don't use them - I can do the same thing myself. If they're a "once you're on us good freaking luck getting off" I don't use them - they might block more spam but for every additional spam they block over the other guys, I'm going to have one or more pissed off E-mails/calls when someone fixes their server yet these guys won't remove them.
My users have seen probably a 75% or more decrease in spam since I started using open relay lists and spamhaus/spews/spamsites (which are actually the real blockers for some of the more annoying spams). I'd rather submit the other 25% to one of those lists and get them eventually blockes than deal with one of the other lists run by a maniac.
Hey, I've never completely forgiven FOX for cancelling _Profit_...
It was kind of a double whammy though: the average TV viewer didn't have the attention span required to deal with 50 some-odd minutes of Machiavellian twists and turns, AND since the people who DID get it were running to the bathroom/fridge during the commercial breaks, I would guess that the advertisers weren't digging the situation either. I seem to recall it had the dubious distinction of largest negative change of beginning-to-end ratings of any show in recent memory up to that point: something like half of the viewers who were watching any given episode (already small) had tuned out by the 30 minute mark. Ouch.
Not even sure it would have or would currently work on cable; the show actually used the commercial breaks to wonderful effect.
Well, that really depends on what you mean by "upgrade a system" in that the philosophies about what constitutes the OS versus the "packages" or "ports" or "applications" or whatever. I completely agree, I would never attempt to upgrade basic system tools on a BSD, or Slackware Linux, or any other Unix/Unix-ish system I've encountered, without being in single user mode at the console. But in distros like Debian, for example, virtually EVERYTHING is a package, and the package management tools don't rely on anything but themselves to upgrade other packages. Hell, apt can even upgrade _itself_ on Debian. It would take almost deliberate effort to bork something during an automated install,
and it's something that I would imagine happening about as often enough as a disk failure when I'm upgrading a Slackware install in single user mode.:)
All I'm trying to get at with the point I rather long-windedly made in my previous post is that when someone changes Linux distros or from Linux to a BSD or back, it's not just an OS change, it's a philosophy shift, and at that point, there's no "better" or "worse", just what various people prefer. Trying to convert someone to another philosophy because _you_ prefer yours is akin to asking someone who is committed to their religion to switch to yours simply because it is different. This is not the same as suggesting someone look at alternatives that they might not have been aware of before - for example, someone bitching about a particular shortcoming of a UNIX-like OS not being aware that there is another one out there that addresses that problem.
I always tell my coworkers who come to me wanting to learn Linux/UNIX to try all of the "base" distributions they can get their hands on, even if it means setting up multi-boot partitions, so they can play around with the various ways the different distributions handle the same ideas. And yes, this includes the free BSDs, not just Linux. And every one of them have jumped in slightly different ways depending on what they're using the boxes for and what they're willing to put up with. And they're all happy and productive, which in the end, is what we're all after anyway.
Some of the small but annoying problems I've been bitten with is whenever I'm running a slightly older version of FreeBSD and the ports system wants to go grab a version of a particular package that isn't on the FTP site anymore, because there's a newer version that's come out in the meantime.
What's that, you say? Just CVSup the ports collection and everything will be OK? What if I / the customer needs it working NOW and don't really have time to CVSup or even manually drop in the particular port and all the new dependencies I need for that port to compile? Well, I could have the source handy and compile it from scratch, and I'm certainly not afraid of doing that, but then I've got a system that's part ports-maintained and part manually maintained, so until I have time to go back and make it right, anyone else who comes along will not be in the loop as to what's where, and why.
What's the point of using automated tools when one has to do so many backflips to get around then when they're trying to be Smarter or More Correct than the situation dictates?
And I haven't even touched on upgrading the complete OS. I am aware of _no way_ to do a complete system upgrade under any of the Free/Net/Open BSDs without visiting the box and taking it down to single user mode to "make world" the whole thing.
(If I am wrong or out of date about this, I will humbly accept correction.)
Now, as someone who's been on the Net since 1992 and has been playing with UNIX for about that long, I respect the whole "life is better when you compile from source on your own box" philosophy. You don't have to worry about the guy who built a binary package being a maniac or using bleeding edge versions of libraries or other utilities Just Because, etc. On the other hand, kernel compiles back then were more like kernel LINKS because your vendor didn't give you much access to the source code, so you'd recompile mainly to change something now considered silly like number of simultaneous VTYs or other system-wide settings that everyone now is used to with either sysctls or some other mechanism. But as far as system upgrades go, instead of wandering into the server room at my theoretical company on a Friday afternoon, reminding everyone within earshot on my way there that I had sent out a systemwide memo a week ago saying I was going to be upgrading the system today, walking over to the server, starting the download, bringing down the box, et al (thereby putting out the few hundred people who rely on the box but should have scheduled their day around its downtime anyway), I'm pissing off thousands of users at my theoretical ISP who access the box 24/7 and affecting thousands of other users who are attempting to surf to my customer's web sites, send them mail, etc.
Now, take the same situation with, say, Debian or RedHat. I want to upgrade a package? apt-get or rpm it. That particular program will be down for precisely the amount of time it takes the package manager to replace the appropriate files, which would be a minute or two, TOPS. Want to make my own modifications but still have the package be touchable/upgradeable by the package management system (AKA "The Best of Both Worlds"?) In Debian, it's apt-get source "package name"...I know RedHat has source RPMS but I've forgotten the procedure for RPMing them right now.:) Compile the package with modifications, install as above. Same amount of downtime.
Kernel upgrade? Either do it thru the particular package manager or get the source yourself, compile while the box is running, install, notify users the box will be back in less than five minutes, and you've bought yourself time to reboot the box onto the new kernel and even to regress back to the old kernel if you need to.
Now, I completely understand that there have been stability issues (cough) in the more recent Linux kernels that the BSDs do not have. Without getting into the whole chicken/egg thing of "well, don't upgrade the minute a new kernel comes out!" and "but how are we supposed to KNOW if there are any more bugs if people DON'T upgrade?" But a little user education solves this. For example, several of my boxes are on 2.2.19, and they've been running fine for many moons now. I'm anxious to move up to 2.4, and in some cases have, but IMHO we're beginning to get to the point (at least on the server end) where there aren't too many new features going in that people NEED. Not that they're not useful, but we got along just fine without them. Pre-emptable kernels, kernelspace SMP (as opposed to just userspace) and n(0) schedulers are nice, but I wasn't lusting after them in 2.2. So just following the discussion lists will clue you in if, in general, the new kernels are right for you.
And I will go on record as saying that I WANT a Debian BSD so I can have the same admin tools I have grown to love but I have the oppotunity to play with the BSD kernels without having to put up with all the other differences moving to a BSD distro would make me live with.
I don't knock people who choose to use ANY operating system, unless they made their choices based on FUD or other stupidity. But if someone who could use any (or a least a wide choice of) OS he wants to has chosen a particular one, chances are good he has his own valid reasons and trying to convert him away "because the other one is better" is specious at best. The best OS for someone is one that does what the user wants it to, at the speed the user wants it to, at the price the user can afford.
I'm sure I'm going to be showing my age when I say that I remember the Big Switch from.Z (Compress format) to.gz on most FTP sites. Is.bz2 really becoming that common? The only place I'm really exposed to it are the kernel sites, most other source code repositories are either just.gz or still have legacy.Z stuff lying around...
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Oh, come now, they didn't _always_ have pr0n on them...occasionally people would play Xtrek or something along those lines.
.9 popped up either late '93 or early '94 as the first somewhat usable version.
From my admittedly rusty memory, Mosaic 1.0 was early 1993 (at least for UNIX, which is the only net-connected OS I was playing on at the time) and Netscape
_Unexploded Cow_ is also quite fun. Got a non-gamer fried of mine hooked on it in about five minutes. :) Basically, you can't really go wrong with most of their games, the non-color ones are all less than $10 (or damn close) and the only other things you would need are items you can scavenge from other games you already own: dice, play money, playing pieces, etc. (Which was the whole POINT of Cheapass Games: why jack the price of the game up because they had to injection-mold playing pieces or print color play money? We all have Monopoly, don't we?)
I wonder if John Bedini (mentioned as a genius inventor in the article) bears any relation to Gary Bedini, inventor of the super gee-whiz-bang
Bedini Ultra-Clarifier which, in a nutshell, spins around CDs and DVDs between two magnets to "reduce the relaxation noise" and "polarize the polymer in such a way as to maximize the laser's ability to retrieve stored data."
Reading further into the product description is left as an exercise for the reader.
Disclaimer: I've sold high-end audio, I do believe that different pieces of equipment sound different, better cables maker better sound, LPs _can_ sonically outperform CDs, etc, but I _do_ draw the line somewhere. I don't freeze CDs, I don't put green markers on the edge of my CDs, and I sure as hell don't put Mpingo disks all over the freaking place (although there is something to be said for mechanical isolation of certain components within reason.)
I remember Apple having ads in a few PC mags way back (like almost a decade ago) talking about how they were going to port MacOS to the Intel architecture. This would have been when Windows 3.1 was the best Redmond had to offer, but I'm not sure the MacOS of that era would have been much better. :)
I'll see if I can find the damn magazines and I'll post issue numbers.
Was that a demand/request of Montalban or was it simply an "in" joke for people paying attention? Or, funnier yet, a complete coincidence - kind of like Arthur Clarke saying that if he had noticed that HAL was one "down" from IBM, he would have changed the name?
Remember, this _is_ the same Trek that has gags like on-set pipes and conduit marked "GNDN" (Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing).
Most construction workers I know can leave the job at 5 PM Friday and have absolutely _nothing_ work related to worry about until 9 AM Monday morning.
How many sysadmins do you know who aren't on some form of on call or pseudo-24x7 support? Even if things are running well at their company, you can bet that if the server blows up at 2 AM on a Saturday, they're going to get the call to come in and fix it before the place opens back up on Monday morning.
Do construction workers take training courses (or are expected to teach themselves) about a new hammer/screwdrive/whatever everytime one comes out? Of course not. Learn one hammer, you've pretty much learned all hammers. Now how well do you think a sysadmin would do if he learned _zero_ new knowledge for 1/2/4 years straight? Think about all the mainframers who had to throw out a good chunk of what they knew when they moved to UNIX/C, or microcomputers. The fact that my father (for example) knew the DEC PDP series of minis inside out did him _zero_ good whenever I turned him loose on a modern UNIX system.
Not to dis manual labor, but our society places a monetary premimum on professions that require a lot of study up front and/or near-constant re-training over the course of a career. Don't like it? Go to night school. Or crack a book.
I would then proceeded to _format_ that 720K diskette that I converted to 1.44M, and got 10%-20% error rates, and when I _did_ manage to save data to the diskette, it wouldn't always read 100% correctly in other floppy drives.
Same with the hole punch trick on the 5 1/4" floppies - I had a TI and an Atari, but the principle was the same. It would hold you for the short term if you needed double the space RIGHT NOW, but don't put important backups on the "other side" of the disk.
Go root around in your disk collection and _find_ a 720K floppy and a 1.44M floppy. Pull back the metal slider and look at a light source thru the actual disk media. Notice that you can _see_ the light source thru the 1.44M media, but the 720K is almost completely opaque. Now tell me again how the media is the "same".
There was a _reason_ the higher density/double sided floppies cost more - they were _rated_ for that kind of use. Different media, denser magnetics, whatever.
Wouldn't NWN look a touch nicer with shadowing and light sources on, with the res bumped down to 1024*768 or even 800*600?
Nope, I just live in Wisconsin and am a fan of both Wright and the Arthur legends. I've used Taliesin as my nick for a number of years, but I'm usually found as TaliesinWI because I've run into a few other Taliesins online.
I do make it a point to visit as many Wright buildings around here as I can, though.
Yes. That and M.U.L.E. are the two reasons I still own a 800XL.
But the point is they still are _there_. It will be difficult to sell the American public on any new fuel source that involves the word "diesel". The only way you could possibly piss them off faster would be to mention the words "nuclear reactor" and "backyard" in the same sentence.
You can point to all the "it's cleaner" data you'd like, they're just going to think you've come up with a new way to pull the wool over their eyes and change the evil diesel particulates into something else. And given that there is no proof that the biodiesel emissions aren't still "harmful", merely "less harmful than current diesel", they may very well be right. Imagine the public backlash that would result when ten or fifteen years from now we say "whoops, looks like the amount and type of the particulates from all the vehicles burning biodiesel are _more harmful_ to breathe than all the buses and trucks that were burning standard diesel were." Why risk it?
The average joe American doesn't care if the cars his fellow commuters are driving will or will not cause a greenhouse effect in 100 years (like craploads of CO2 emissions _might_) but he _does_ worry if it will personally give cancer to him or his family members in 30 years.
I completely agree about the "gimmick" mobo moniker. This tube is going to provide a warm glow to the inside of the case more than it's going to affect the sound.
I also can't imagine what kind of microphonics (surrounding vibration being transmitted thru the tube and ending up as noise) you'd have here.
And although it's gratifying to see people pointing out the difference in what the tubes are "for" in a tube guitar amp and a home audio amp, there are the people coming out on the whole "pleasant distortion" thing, but then dropping it in the dust without really explaining what they mean.
So, here goes (I'm grossly simplifying to try and keep this brief):
Simply put, tubes add more distortion than transistors. However, tubes add most of their distortion in the even harmonics of a tone, whereas transistors add distortion in the odd harmonics of a tone. Why does this matter? Because the way we humans tell various instruments apart is in the amount of harmonics that the instrument produces for a particular fundamental (this is called timbre). This is why even though a flute and a guitar are both playing A440, they sound radically different. Naturally occuring musical harmonics are "even", that is, even multiples of the fundamental frequency.
So, when a tube amp reproduces the sound of a saxophone, it _is_ distorting the signal by amplifying, for example, the second, fourth, and sixth harmonics. Our brain takes these "natural" harmonics and internally boosts the level of the fundamental tone - in other words, we are psychologically reconstructing the musical note as slightly "louder" than it actually is.
In comparison, the transistor amps, while producing far less total harmonic distortion (the vaunted THD that we see in so many specs), are actually producing more "unnatural" distortion, because they are affecting the odd harmonics of a given tone, even slightly. Since these harmonics are not "naturally occuring", our ear-brain doesn't compensate for them in the same terms, so it registers as... well, kind of odd. More grain on the sound of a string. Harshness in wind instruments, etc.
In some ways, the tube/transistor battle is "pick your poison", kind of like the whole digital/analog debate. Some people argue that music should be reproduced with as little distortion as possible, so transistor/digital is the way to go. Other take the position that distortion-free sound reproduction is impossible, so if you're going to have it, might as well make it the kind that is more "natural" - tube/analog.
(Yes, I know I've trivialized lots of the debate - I'm not going to re-fight the audiophile wars here.)
In the end, it's what Sounds Better to You.
And for what it's worth, I own both tube and transistor equipment, and own a CD player and a turntable.
Back in the day, I personally recieved a letter from my (slightly daffy, now-dead) grandmother. She couldn't find a stamp, but really wanted to get the letter in the mail (it was for my birthday), so she taped a quarter where the stamp should have been, and dropped it in her porch mailbox. :)
It arrived at my house, three days later, a state away, with the quarter still attached.
Of course, nowadays, the automatic sorters would have a fit, etc etc...but this was at least fifteen years ago. Apparently the tech wasn't quite as widespread.
He actually _is_ a really nice guy. I met him a few years back at GenCon Game Fair in Milwaukee, WI, where he was one of the guests of honor for SciFi Saturday. It was actually quite humorous hearing a small collective gasp from the majority of the audience (many of whom are a far different brand of "geek" one would find at a Trek convention, for example) when it became apparent that he did _not_ actually have a Scottish accent. In fact, a couple of native Scots stood up at some point and asked him how he had nailed the accent so completely, because he sure had them fooled. He then proceeded to do a few other non-American accents for us, all of which (to these non-expert ears) certainly sounded authentic. He apparently did a lot of listening to his fellow soldiers in WWII and after, and is just exceedingly good at mimicing what he hears.
Anyhoo, back to the thread...
Four words:
Strike Commander exorcist bug.
Four more words:
Radio controlled Death Horizon.
Alas, GenCon '01 didn't have MIDIMaze, or if it did, I couldn't find it. Last time I DID play MidiMaze at GenCon, I recall that the 16 Ataris they had cobbled together were in barely working shape, and to top it off there was never more than four or five people running around in the mazes at once - which really kills the experience IMHO.
As for M.U.L.E., it's pretty much the sole reason I haven't consigned my Atari 800XL to the scrap heap - every so often I drag it out and give it a whirl. Now if I just had LOCAL friends I could get hooked on it - all my old geek friends seemed to have moved to a warm southern state. .
OK, THIS one slipped beneath my radar...there's a new _Hunt for Red October_ in the works? What exactly was wrong with the old one, other than maybe the synth-heavy musical score? Who's directing, the actors, etc? Inquiring minds want to know!
Actually, 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn't really a book-to-movie adaptation....Kubrick was writing the screenplay more or less simultaneously with Clarke writing the book, each providing feedback to the other and incorporating story changes from one to the other. In fact, it wasn't even a given that the book was going to come out before or after the movie, eventually the film came out first - and had plot differences from the final book.
2010, in contrast, was written as a sequel by Clarke to the movie version of 2001, and was eventually adapted to a movie in 1984.
Don't I recall lots if not all of those early computers having an external AC/DC converter, either as a wall wart or as a box midway up the power cable? IOW, your primary source of heat was moved AWAY from the computer case, and since 6502s really aren't known for their heat problems, of course you wouldn't need a fan. The PC has a switching power supply because it was far more expandible than anything else out there at the time, and the power requirements needed to be more flexible. This was not limited to the IBM - my TI-994/A's external expansion box (circa 1979) had a little power supply in it (don't recall if it had a fan, I think it did) because again, I could put a variety of peripherals in there, and it needed to be able to run them all.
Yet, my base TI-994/A ran off of a wall wart.
Recall that until around the 486 DX/2 days, there (in general application) wasn't anything hot enough inside the PC case to warrant its own fan. The fan behind the power supply is/was always meant to cool the *power supply* anyway.
Agreed. I heard the same NPR blurb and they were basically saying that people who are used to 8+ hours' sleep shouldn't start setting their alarm clocks early because of this study. If you're not regularly sleepy during the day, you're getting enough sleep. I don't remember the precise example the speaker used but it was akin to turning a 1 in 100,000 risk into a 1.1 in 100,000 risk - someone correct me if my numbers are off by a factor of 10, please.
Agreed 100%. I'm the sysadmin for an ISP and I'm contracted out to two others. We use ORDB and ORBZ for our open-relay filtering. They're both very good about removing IPs from their list once its provable that the mail server in question is no longer an open relay. There are other lists that seem equally competent, but there are others that seem to be large-type assholes, in stereo (*cough* Dorkslayers *cough*). Before I started using any given list, I would go to the web page for that list. If it was a "we're an ISP with a spamtrap and we list everyone who tickles the spamtrap" I don't use them - I can do the same thing myself. If they're a "once you're on us good freaking luck getting off" I don't use them - they might block more spam but for every additional spam they block over the other guys, I'm going to have one or more pissed off E-mails/calls when someone fixes their server yet these guys won't remove them.
My users have seen probably a 75% or more decrease in spam since I started using open relay lists and spamhaus/spews/spamsites (which are actually the real blockers for some of the more annoying spams). I'd rather submit the other 25% to one of those lists and get them eventually blockes than deal with one of the other lists run by a maniac.
Hey, I've never completely forgiven FOX for cancelling _Profit_...
It was kind of a double whammy though: the average TV viewer didn't have the attention span required to deal with 50 some-odd minutes of Machiavellian twists and turns, AND since the people who DID get it were running to the bathroom/fridge during the commercial breaks, I would guess that the advertisers weren't digging the situation either. I seem to recall it had the dubious distinction of largest negative change of beginning-to-end ratings of any show in recent memory up to that point: something like half of the viewers who were watching any given episode (already small) had tuned out by the 30 minute mark. Ouch.
Not even sure it would have or would currently work on cable; the show actually used the commercial breaks to wonderful effect.
Back to lurking...
Well, that really depends on what you mean by "upgrade a system" in that the philosophies about what constitutes the OS versus the "packages" or "ports" or "applications" or whatever. I completely agree, I would never attempt to upgrade basic system tools on a BSD, or Slackware Linux, or any other Unix/Unix-ish system I've encountered, without being in single user mode at the console. But in distros like Debian, for example, virtually EVERYTHING is a package, and the package management tools don't rely on anything but themselves to upgrade other packages. Hell, apt can even upgrade _itself_ on Debian. It would take almost deliberate effort to bork something during an automated install, :)
and it's something that I would imagine happening about as often enough as a disk failure when I'm upgrading a Slackware install in single user mode.
All I'm trying to get at with the point I rather long-windedly made in my previous post is that when someone changes Linux distros or from Linux to a BSD or back, it's not just an OS change, it's a philosophy shift, and at that point, there's no "better" or "worse", just what various people prefer. Trying to convert someone to another philosophy because _you_ prefer yours is akin to asking someone who is committed to their religion to switch to yours simply because it is different. This is not the same as suggesting someone look at alternatives that they might not have been aware of before - for example, someone bitching about a particular shortcoming of a UNIX-like OS not being aware that there is another one out there that addresses that problem.
I always tell my coworkers who come to me wanting to learn Linux/UNIX to try all of the "base" distributions they can get their hands on, even if it means setting up multi-boot partitions, so they can play around with the various ways the different distributions handle the same ideas. And yes, this includes the free BSDs, not just Linux. And every one of them have jumped in slightly different ways depending on what they're using the boxes for and what they're willing to put up with. And they're all happy and productive, which in the end, is what we're all after anyway.
Some of the small but annoying problems I've been bitten with is whenever I'm running a slightly older version of FreeBSD and the ports system wants to go grab a version of a particular package that isn't on the FTP site anymore, because there's a newer version that's come out in the meantime.
:) Compile the package with modifications, install as above. Same amount of downtime.
What's that, you say? Just CVSup the ports collection and everything will be OK? What if I / the customer needs it working NOW and don't really have time to CVSup or even manually drop in the particular port and all the new dependencies I need for that port to compile? Well, I could have the source handy and compile it from scratch, and I'm certainly not afraid of doing that, but then I've got a system that's part ports-maintained and part manually maintained, so until I have time to go back and make it right, anyone else who comes along will not be in the loop as to what's where, and why.
What's the point of using automated tools when one has to do so many backflips to get around then when they're trying to be Smarter or More Correct than the situation dictates?
And I haven't even touched on upgrading the complete OS. I am aware of _no way_ to do a complete system upgrade under any of the Free/Net/Open BSDs without visiting the box and taking it down to single user mode to "make world" the whole thing.
(If I am wrong or out of date about this, I will humbly accept correction.)
Now, as someone who's been on the Net since 1992 and has been playing with UNIX for about that long, I respect the whole "life is better when you compile from source on your own box" philosophy. You don't have to worry about the guy who built a binary package being a maniac or using bleeding edge versions of libraries or other utilities Just Because, etc. On the other hand, kernel compiles back then were more like kernel LINKS because your vendor didn't give you much access to the source code, so you'd recompile mainly to change something now considered silly like number of simultaneous VTYs or other system-wide settings that everyone now is used to with either sysctls or some other mechanism. But as far as system upgrades go, instead of wandering into the server room at my theoretical company on a Friday afternoon, reminding everyone within earshot on my way there that I had sent out a systemwide memo a week ago saying I was going to be upgrading the system today, walking over to the server, starting the download, bringing down the box, et al (thereby putting out the few hundred people who rely on the box but should have scheduled their day around its downtime anyway), I'm pissing off thousands of users at my theoretical ISP who access the box 24/7 and affecting thousands of other users who are attempting to surf to my customer's web sites, send them mail, etc.
Now, take the same situation with, say, Debian or RedHat. I want to upgrade a package? apt-get or rpm it. That particular program will be down for precisely the amount of time it takes the package manager to replace the appropriate files, which would be a minute or two, TOPS. Want to make my own modifications but still have the package be touchable/upgradeable by the package management system (AKA "The Best of Both Worlds"?) In Debian, it's apt-get source "package name"...I know RedHat has source RPMS but I've forgotten the procedure for RPMing them right now.
Kernel upgrade? Either do it thru the particular package manager or get the source yourself, compile while the box is running, install, notify users the box will be back in less than five minutes, and you've bought yourself time to reboot the box onto the new kernel and even to regress back to the old kernel if you need to.
Now, I completely understand that there have been stability issues (cough) in the more recent Linux kernels that the BSDs do not have. Without getting into the whole chicken/egg thing of "well, don't upgrade the minute a new kernel comes out!" and "but how are we supposed to KNOW if there are any more bugs if people DON'T upgrade?" But a little user education solves this. For example, several of my boxes are on 2.2.19, and they've been running fine for many moons now. I'm anxious to move up to 2.4, and in some cases have, but IMHO we're beginning to get to the point (at least on the server end) where there aren't too many new features going in that people NEED. Not that they're not useful, but we got along just fine without them. Pre-emptable kernels, kernelspace SMP (as opposed to just userspace) and n(0) schedulers are nice, but I wasn't lusting after them in 2.2. So just following the discussion lists will clue you in if, in general, the new kernels are right for you.
And I will go on record as saying that I WANT a Debian BSD so I can have the same admin tools I have grown to love but I have the oppotunity to play with the BSD kernels without having to put up with all the other differences moving to a BSD distro would make me live with.
I don't knock people who choose to use ANY operating system, unless they made their choices based on FUD or other stupidity. But if someone who could use any (or a least a wide choice of) OS he wants to has chosen a particular one, chances are good he has his own valid reasons and trying to convert him away "because the other one is better" is specious at best. The best OS for someone is one that does what the user wants it to, at the speed the user wants it to, at the price the user can afford.
I'm sure I'm going to be showing my age when I say that I remember the Big Switch from .Z (Compress format) to .gz on most FTP sites. Is .bz2 really becoming that common? The only place I'm really exposed to it are the kernel sites, most other source code repositories are either just .gz or still have legacy .Z stuff lying around...