MIDI can be added to this device as long as usb-midi.o is onboard, or at least as long as the ability to load modules supporting devices plugged into the USB Host port is not crippled in some way.
i've already got a Virus TI being run by my Zaurus.. it wouldn't take much more to add such devices to Archos, as long as they were open enough about peripheral support.. and thats really my point.
I don't think the hardware is powerful enough to run many softsynths, at least not the ones using large sample libraries. I'm barely scraping by with my Athlon64 and 1GB memory-- but then again, GPO and Stormdrum have much heavier requirements than an analog emulating softsynth.
you'd be surprised at just how much low-power devices can do for audio.. from my own personal experience of course, it doesn't have to be a big bloated machine.. and the problem with your Athlon64/1Gig of memory is that, simply, such machines are pretty bloated for audio work, at least compared to systems running their own kernels..
the ARM+DSP combo in this archos machine is an appealing synthesis platform, really. dual-core setups, with split-functionality as part of inherent architecture, can do lots of very, very nice sounding things.. and its not just all sample-based, either..
{disclaimer: i work for a pro digital audio company.}
as a long-time linux hacker, musician, synthesist, and audio geek, this device screams out for one thing: MIDI.
yes, thats right, MIDI. give me a way to control it from a MIDI keyboard, give me a compiler onboard, stand back and watch the new softsynth plugin realm expand beyond that of VST et al..
course, i've got my own plans for such things too, but i'll save that for a future/. thread..
if you think you're really pulling it off in the deadline set, yet you're not achieving management goals, then you've got a clear and distinct conflict between what it is you have to deliver, what you have delivered, and what you don't need to deliver.
go to all three echelons, ask them these three questions: what is it you have to deliver, how can what you do deliver be better viewed and thus managed, and what do you not strictly have to deliver? compare their answers to the reality of projects you've completed and are not actively working on; don't do this for current, scheduled projects, however. its a strategic assessment you're doing, not a tactical one, so maintain that distinction.
generally, programmer delivery is a dynamically defined subject; going to management serves as advice only inasmuch as you actually get your delivery properly defined. it sounds like you don't quite have it as neat as you may think you do.. that you are asking non-managers how to best communicate with managers indicates that you're definitely off the rails a bit. you and your managers are supposed to be your team, not slashdot.
I didn't see it at Futureshop, Bestbuy, EBGames, Blockbuster or Walmart.
Your slavish devotion to the confines of your consumer/producer-cult box preclude the rest of your comment from serious consideration.
Its the 21st Century, man. Think Global. It no longer matters what you buy at your corner store.
The GP32X can be had cheap from a very large number of places. Sure, it may not be 'selling in the millions', but rarely have big things ever achieved their large vista without humble and unique steps.
You cannot, officially, develop games for the PSP. The PSP homebrew scene sits ever perilously on the edge of oblivion.
For half the price of a PSP, you can get a great game platform for which you are allowed to write your own games. In fact, you're allowed to do whatever you like with it; not just live in the box granted you by your masters.. and that is entirely the point.
At the rate the GP32X is selling, it won't be long before Wal Mart pays attention. I guarantee you it'll start to eat the PSP for lunch when it does.. and I promise you there will be, within 6 months, a thriving new platform for Linux games in the world.. where once it was thought Linux was weak, soon it will be un-deniably emminent.
.. not of PSP, but of GP32X of course [since its an extremely inexpensive open gaming system, ripe for hobby, potent new-market development], and i'll be bunging one of these babies in it which, fortunately for me, are not quite as expensive as the press releases parrot, at least not in decent bulk orders.. a condition undoubtedly set to diminish, as the market floods with bigger and bigger SD cards.
so, i think its a bit passé to be cheery about this hard drive business on PSP. hard drives are terrible things to chuck around, and well.. no game machine worth its salt doesn't get chucked around, or at least thats the way i see game machines. i'd be happier if i could use SD in the PSP, natively, without requiring 3rd-party accessorization, anyway..
i've thought about this question since 1978, as i have encountered over the years since then a grand litany of different ways of describing symbols in such a way that they can be standardly used, and i have come to a very simple answer. humans are stuck on a symbol treadmill with infinitely smooth bearings.
fontography is a lesson of symbols.. and the description of these symbols is limited by strict hardware limits: economic, social, cultural elements all have a part to play in the definition of input devices. where i say QWERTYZXCV, you say QWERTZYXCV.
we haven't seen terribly wide-spread specialization of symbols because of the producer-/consumer- cults of USKEY101, and peoples unfamiliarity with alt-numkeypad chops, and Mac vs. PC, and ASCII vs. UTF-8, and XML vs..bin, and "X" vs. "Y", blah blah, ad infinitum..
the fact is, perhaps deep down inside we know we should be grateful for what we've got, and let the "!=" and ">=" expressions, 2 lonely bytes in a vast nasty sea, stand as testament to the human desire to at least, a little bit, get along on the same key. they may not be pretty, but pretty much everyone can get to those two bytes and use them when they need to.. its only a tiny clique can do the alt-numpad thing, and even fewer who choose to jump out of the ASCII pool and towel off..
.. oh, of course.. i still have a bootable windows partition around, for those times when someone sends me something that won't run anywhere else (like today, trying to debug my matrix orbital LCD screen for the first time in 2 years), but for my personal productivity, enjoyment, hacking, study, and preference.. unix is king.
and not just linux either (though i have lots of linux in the house), but OSX too...
for me personally, there really isn't any good reason to run windows these days. i just can't think of one. i've got everything i need in a computing environment, and not a bit of it comes from redmond.
i tend to think its a bit of a myth that one 'has to' use windows, also.. i can't think of one thing i want to do with a computer that requires windows. all my media is on linux, all my content-creation (i'm a musician) is on OSX, all my lifestyle-computing is on my linux machines, heck.. i even have a portable game machine on its way to me which runs linux. what could i possibly need windows for?
and giving all of his IP away for free will fix this?!?
shallow valuation of "passion versus profit" in the short term can radically limit ones result. were he to opt for passion over profit now, perhaps in 5.. or 2.. or even 1.. year(s).. profit will simply come naturally.
releasing this RISCO-OS (the non-MIPS variety, blech) to the GPL crowd could be a seriously powerful maneuver, in this particular moment in computing history. as a commercial vendor of digital equipment requiring an interesting and powerful codebase, i'd be quite intrigued to profer RISC OS as an alternative to the current embedded Linux build i'm able to port my code to..
oh, really? some sort of problem with that, when you're designing multi-million $ stuff, is not gonna deter someone from doing it if thats the way it'll get the app in front of them..
re-invent it, then create a node in the 'new namespace', however that works, and call it "{LEGACY_WINDOWS_REGISTRY_%d}", make it world readable/writeable so we can be rid of it forever..
The problem with convincing people to use open source software is that when they hear "you can't do that" they say "Oh. Darn" and go on with their life. When they hear "you have to learn more to do that" they throw a temper tantrum then throw the computer out the window.
Interesting observation. So, the proper respons might be more effective were it modified slightly: "oh, you can learn how to do that, if you want to..."
i mean, 'can if you want', versus 'have to or its nothing' is quite a different kettle.. no wonder people fuse up over it. "do what you have to or have not" versus "can if you want to, or have not".
first of all, whether or not your girlfriend can use it is a client issue. its bone-dead simple to set up an IRC client as easy to use as an IM one.
second of all, the issue of whether or not someone can get online with your ID can be solved without resorting to complete corporate takeover of the protocol. ChanServ and NickServ are one way; ID-key exchange in the IRC server and client setup process are another. IRC need not be technologically hijacked on that basis alone.
this is one of those 'programmer scratches' that came up, with the whole IM phenom, because it was easier to just 'move on' than try to work on someone elses code. its a rampant problem with software. the not-invented-here/re-write-it-all-to-bloat problem is legit. the only way to bring it under control is better-educated users..
blah blah blah IM is just an IRC ripoff blah blah.
on
Linux Instant Messengers
·
· Score: -1, Troll
look, this isn't a flame. its pretty simple. 'instant messaging' is like, a yuppy-fication of just one/etc/services grep hit. there is no need for 'IM' other than, companies who pimp the whole lame protocol, want strict communication controls for corporate reasons.
IRC, a public, open, well-supported, super-doodly protocol, maintained now by hardcore and newby alike, on the other hand, rolls on. why is that?
IM is IRC in a corporate sandbox. you don't need to use IM clients. IRC clients, even snappy little bouncy ones, are just as nice to use for the same task, and you'll actually be fighting back on the open, internationally supported, non-corp communication tip.
this protocol creep is nonsense. all this blah about 'friendliness of corpo-protocols' is, pretty much, just media pimping off the back of the linux contro-crowd. grow up, ditch your IM client fix, and find out about IRC. its a bigger, safer, world.
i've been using an AUS$45 cheap motorola cell phone as my main phone now for a year. its not fancy, it doesn't do 3D, color, or Java, but man does it work well as a phone..
and yes, you can buy cell phones in vending machines now. i've seen them in tokyo, i've seen them in germany.. heck in germany you can buy a cell phone at the local Tschibo coffeeshop [boo Euro-starbucks clone, boo!]
no kidding. first, what "is" Muzak, some sort of trademark?
second of all, what sort of draconian homage to Ford requires Muzak be 'piped in' to pacify the workers? i really want to avoid ever having anything to do with such places, if i can, and that includes eschewing buying whatever they're pimping. as a consumer, i demand to know what corporation is a proponent of such misbehaviour on the part of the humanity in its midst..
i've also shot and killed very large feral cats in WA, and i've seen them at least 2/3rds the size of the 'big cat' in the pic.. in the australian desert, you don't breed feral cats without expecting very, large, big ones by the second or third generation..
that said, i also believe there are bigger cats in the australian wilderness. there are tons of things outback we don't know about yet..
Why is that whenever a technology is flawed or otherwise lacking, the blame is put on the end user?
because technology itself is useless. it requires a user to get any use out of technology.
whether that user is another programmer (in the case where a programming language is the product), or if it is a normal joe-blow dude who doesn't really know what he's doing: until someone does something with a computer, its useless. the only significance feasible is that attributed to it through actual use..
ermm.. it is valuable political grandstanding. sure, you can just set up.eu root servers and tell your constituents to start using them.
but if you can blacken the face of the US in the process, by demonstrating militant americanism as 'the reason' for all the fuss, then.. all the better..
f you truly think he is more important, you need to remember that not everyone is Catholic. In fact the large majority are not. The Pope only really matters to Catholics.
heh heh.. okee dookee.. lets count 'americans under senate control', versus 'catholics under pope control' some other time, okay.
the point is, the conclave system is not such a bad way to reflect the will of the people. why shouldn't the process of politics include a degree of duress from the masses of people whose lives will be affected in deep and significant ways by, in the end, such a small group as the elected officials, representatives of us all?
Slashdot Mirror
MIDI can be added to this device as long as usb-midi.o is onboard, or at least as long as the ability to load modules supporting devices plugged into the USB Host port is not crippled in some way.
.. and thats really my point.
i've already got a Virus TI being run by my Zaurus.. it wouldn't take much more to add such devices to Archos, as long as they were open enough about peripheral support
I don't think the hardware is powerful enough to run many softsynths, at least not the ones using large sample libraries. I'm barely scraping by with my Athlon64 and 1GB memory-- but then again, GPO and Stormdrum have much heavier requirements than an analog emulating softsynth.
.. from my own personal experience of course, it doesn't have to be a big bloated machine .. and the problem with your Athlon64/1Gig of memory is that, simply, such machines are pretty bloated for audio work, at least compared to systems running their own kernels ..
.. and its not just all sample-based, either ..
you'd be surprised at just how much low-power devices can do for audio
the ARM+DSP combo in this archos machine is an appealing synthesis platform, really. dual-core setups, with split-functionality as part of inherent architecture, can do lots of very, very nice sounding things
{disclaimer: i work for a pro digital audio company.}
/. thread ..
as a long-time linux hacker, musician, synthesist, and audio geek, this device screams out for one thing: MIDI.
yes, thats right, MIDI. give me a way to control it from a MIDI keyboard, give me a compiler onboard, stand back and watch the new softsynth plugin realm expand beyond that of VST et al..
course, i've got my own plans for such things too, but i'll save that for a future
if you think you're really pulling it off in the deadline set, yet you're not achieving management goals, then you've got a clear and distinct conflict between what it is you have to deliver, what you have delivered, and what you don't need to deliver.
.. that you are asking non-managers how to best communicate with managers indicates that you're definitely off the rails a bit. you and your managers are supposed to be your team, not slashdot.
go to all three echelons, ask them these three questions: what is it you have to deliver, how can what you do deliver be better viewed and thus managed, and what do you not strictly have to deliver? compare their answers to the reality of projects you've completed and are not actively working on; don't do this for current, scheduled projects, however. its a strategic assessment you're doing, not a tactical one, so maintain that distinction.
generally, programmer delivery is a dynamically defined subject; going to management serves as advice only inasmuch as you actually get your delivery properly defined. it sounds like you don't quite have it as neat as you may think you do
I didn't see it at Futureshop, Bestbuy, EBGames, Blockbuster or Walmart.
.. and that is entirely the point.
.. and I promise you there will be, within 6 months, a thriving new platform for Linux games in the world .. where once it was thought Linux was weak, soon it will be un-deniably emminent.
Your slavish devotion to the confines of your consumer/producer-cult box preclude the rest of your comment from serious consideration.
Its the 21st Century, man. Think Global. It no longer matters what you buy at your corner store.
The GP32X can be had cheap from a very large number of places. Sure, it may not be 'selling in the millions', but rarely have big things ever achieved their large vista without humble and unique steps.
You cannot, officially, develop games for the PSP. The PSP homebrew scene sits ever perilously on the edge of oblivion.
For half the price of a PSP, you can get a great game platform for which you are allowed to write your own games. In fact, you're allowed to do whatever you like with it; not just live in the box granted you by your masters
At the rate the GP32X is selling, it won't be long before Wal Mart pays attention. I guarantee you it'll start to eat the PSP for lunch when it does
.. not of PSP, but of GP32X of course [since its an extremely inexpensive open gaming system, ripe for hobby, potent new-market development], and i'll be bunging one of these babies in it which, fortunately for me, are not quite as expensive as the press releases parrot, at least not in decent bulk orders .. a condition undoubtedly set to diminish, as the market floods with bigger and bigger SD cards.
.. no game machine worth its salt doesn't get chucked around, or at least thats the way i see game machines. i'd be happier if i could use SD in the PSP, natively, without requiring 3rd-party accessorization, anyway ..
so, i think its a bit passé to be cheery about this hard drive business on PSP. hard drives are terrible things to chuck around, and well
{disclaimer: i'm a closet fontographer.}
.. and the description of these symbols is limited by strict hardware limits: economic, social, cultural elements all have a part to play in the definition of input devices. where i say QWERTYZXCV, you say QWERTZYXCV.
.bin, and "X" vs. "Y", blah blah, ad infinitum..
.. its only a tiny clique can do the alt-numpad thing, and even fewer who choose to jump out of the ASCII pool and towel off..
i've thought about this question since 1978, as i have encountered over the years since then a grand litany of different ways of describing symbols in such a way that they can be standardly used, and i have come to a very simple answer. humans are stuck on a symbol treadmill with infinitely smooth bearings.
fontography is a lesson of symbols
we haven't seen terribly wide-spread specialization of symbols because of the producer-/consumer- cults of USKEY101, and peoples unfamiliarity with alt-numkeypad chops, and Mac vs. PC, and ASCII vs. UTF-8, and XML vs.
the fact is, perhaps deep down inside we know we should be grateful for what we've got, and let the "!=" and ">=" expressions, 2 lonely bytes in a vast nasty sea, stand as testament to the human desire to at least, a little bit, get along on the same key. they may not be pretty, but pretty much everyone can get to those two bytes and use them when they need to
.. oh, of course .. i still have a bootable windows partition around, for those times when someone sends me something that won't run anywhere else (like today, trying to debug my matrix orbital LCD screen for the first time in 2 years), but for my personal productivity, enjoyment, hacking, study, and preference .. unix is king.
...
.. i can't think of one thing i want to do with a computer that requires windows. all my media is on linux, all my content-creation (i'm a musician) is on OSX, all my lifestyle-computing is on my linux machines, heck .. i even have a portable game machine on its way to me which runs linux. what could i possibly need windows for?
and not just linux either (though i have lots of linux in the house), but OSX too
for me personally, there really isn't any good reason to run windows these days. i just can't think of one. i've got everything i need in a computing environment, and not a bit of it comes from redmond.
i tend to think its a bit of a myth that one 'has to' use windows, also
and giving all of his IP away for free will fix this?!?
.. or 2 .. or even 1 .. year(s) .. profit will simply come naturally.
..
shallow valuation of "passion versus profit" in the short term can radically limit ones result. were he to opt for passion over profit now, perhaps in 5
releasing this RISCO-OS (the non-MIPS variety, blech) to the GPL crowd could be a seriously powerful maneuver, in this particular moment in computing history. as a commercial vendor of digital equipment requiring an interesting and powerful codebase, i'd be quite intrigued to profer RISC OS as an alternative to the current embedded Linux build i'm able to port my code to
oh, really? some sort of problem with that, when you're designing multi-million $ stuff, is not gonna deter someone from doing it if thats the way it'll get the app in front of them ..
X11 is not nasty. X11 can be extraordinarily elegant, and efficient, in ways which CAD users can appreciate.
re-invent it, then create a node in the 'new namespace', however that works, and call it "{LEGACY_WINDOWS_REGISTRY_%d}", make it world readable/writeable so we can be rid of it forever..
The problem with convincing people to use open source software is that when they hear "you can't do that" they say "Oh. Darn" and go on with their life. When they hear "you have to learn more to do that" they throw a temper tantrum then throw the computer out the window.
.. no wonder people fuse up over it. "do what you have to or have not" versus "can if you want to, or have not".
Interesting observation. So, the proper respons might be more effective were it modified slightly: "oh, you can learn how to do that, if you want to..."
i mean, 'can if you want', versus 'have to or its nothing' is quite a different kettle
first of all, whether or not your girlfriend can use it is a client issue. its bone-dead simple to set up an IRC client as easy to use as an IM one.
..
second of all, the issue of whether or not someone can get online with your ID can be solved without resorting to complete corporate takeover of the protocol. ChanServ and NickServ are one way; ID-key exchange in the IRC server and client setup process are another. IRC need not be technologically hijacked on that basis alone.
this is one of those 'programmer scratches' that came up, with the whole IM phenom, because it was easier to just 'move on' than try to work on someone elses code. its a rampant problem with software. the not-invented-here/re-write-it-all-to-bloat problem is legit. the only way to bring it under control is better-educated users
look, this isn't a flame. its pretty simple. 'instant messaging' is like, a yuppy-fication of just one
IRC, a public, open, well-supported, super-doodly protocol, maintained now by hardcore and newby alike, on the other hand, rolls on. why is that?
IM is IRC in a corporate sandbox. you don't need to use IM clients. IRC clients, even snappy little bouncy ones, are just as nice to use for the same task, and you'll actually be fighting back on the open, internationally supported, non-corp communication tip.
this protocol creep is nonsense. all this blah about 'friendliness of corpo-protocols' is, pretty much, just media pimping off the back of the linux contro-crowd. grow up, ditch your IM client fix, and find out about IRC. its a bigger, safer, world.
i've been using an AUS$45 cheap motorola cell phone as my main phone now for a year. its not fancy, it doesn't do 3D, color, or Java, but man does it work well as a phone ..
.. heck in germany you can buy a cell phone at the local Tschibo coffeeshop [boo Euro-starbucks clone, boo!]
and yes, you can buy cell phones in vending machines now. i've seen them in tokyo, i've seen them in germany
no kidding. first, what "is" Muzak, some sort of trademark?
..
second of all, what sort of draconian homage to Ford requires Muzak be 'piped in' to pacify the workers? i really want to avoid ever having anything to do with such places, if i can, and that includes eschewing buying whatever they're pimping. as a consumer, i demand to know what corporation is a proponent of such misbehaviour on the part of the humanity in its midst
that'd be australinaut, mate, its the austrians you want to send to space
i mean, come on .. we've got pics of the crowds, a dummy rocket, and a rocket failure.
where are the pics of the armadillo test flight? this is more interesting than the failures!
i've also shot and killed very large feral cats in WA, and i've seen them at least 2/3rds the size of the 'big cat' in the pic .. in the australian desert, you don't breed feral cats without expecting very, large, big ones by the second or third generation ..
that said, i also believe there are bigger cats in the australian wilderness. there are tons of things outback we don't know about yet..
Do Not Trust Anyone Else's Hardware
.. could be signatures to make it easier for NSA satellites to tune into your CPU ..
screw that. the real rule is Do Not trust Anyone Else's Compilers
you never know what that compiler is wrapping around your func()'s
Why is that whenever a technology is flawed or otherwise lacking, the blame is put on the end user?
..
because technology itself is useless. it requires a user to get any use out of technology.
whether that user is another programmer (in the case where a programming language is the product), or if it is a normal joe-blow dude who doesn't really know what he's doing: until someone does something with a computer, its useless. the only significance feasible is that attributed to it through actual use
ermm.. it is valuable political grandstanding. sure, you can just set up .eu root servers and tell your constituents to start using them.
.. all the better ..
but if you can blacken the face of the US in the process, by demonstrating militant americanism as 'the reason' for all the fuss, then
Some little kid makes a loud noise or is near a discharging weapon and gets his brains blown out.
this might surprise you, or even upset you, but this happens all the time, robot or not.
the only way to truly prevent things like little kids getting their heads blown apart is to not fight wars. period.
there are no excuses for war, other than the ones weapons makers manufacture for you.
f you truly think he is more important, you need to remember that not everyone is Catholic. In fact the large majority are not. The Pope only really matters to Catholics.
heh heh.. okee dookee.. lets count 'americans under senate control', versus 'catholics under pope control' some other time, okay.
the point is, the conclave system is not such a bad way to reflect the will of the people. why shouldn't the process of politics include a degree of duress from the masses of people whose lives will be affected in deep and significant ways by, in the end, such a small group as the elected officials, representatives of us all?