GAWD I hope that the URL you have listed for your home page isn't really YOUR homepage. With my background in music and audio production, I can tell you that whoever owns that page is a bitchy git.
But how else do you force an ignorant and uncaring royal to secure his castle? Just tell him and you're likely to get a "Thanks. It's good that we know that, now let's assess how much of a threat it really is and if it doesn't appear to be one, we'll sit on it while we do other more profitable things" response. Sorry, but you've got to force people's hands on things like this. Personally, I'm all for full disclosure because it results in safer environments when the pressure is on. Where is the impetus to actually fix a problem when it's not a problem at the moment? Even more to the point, if fixing that problem is going to cost money, it's rare that most organizations (royalty or software companies) want to put money into something that they feel isn't immediately or visibly beneficial. I had an idiot boss once who didn't "get" the concept of a server. We had a Windows NT domain controller sitting in a closet as a PDC. It also handled DHCP, some file shares, WINS and DNS. We had a financial package that needed to run on a box that was up 24x7. At this point in time, it was running on the business manager's PC. If he was out, I would get a call from one of his lackeys who couldn't connect. I'd have to go up to his office, turn the machine on and make sure the service was started. I suggested to my boss that we get a server and put the server end of the application on it. His response, "What about the server downstairs?! It's not actually DOING ANYTHING....!" I almost tore my hair out. I explained that it WAS doing something and I could easily prove it by shutting it down before I went home. He ACTUALLY took me up on the offer. In the end, even though he realized that we couldn't use the PDC (a paltry Pentium 90 with 24 megs of RAM) he balked at the cost of a new server and instead chose to go with a new powerful workstation. He hated the idea of a box in a closet that "no one uses". If bosses think like this, then it's not a stretch to think that kings and software company CEOs also think the same way.
Actually... with all the GTK themes and Gnome themes out there, I don't agree. Sure Mac OS X looks really nice. But the 6nome theme is easily about 95% as nice looking. What I really like about 6nome is that it's pretty original looking too. It doesn't cop the Aqua or Luna looks from the other OSes.
Actually, I do the same thing myself. I find elements in each that I like, but GNOME seems to feel more polished and put together these days. I'm not saying that KDE doesn't, but... GNOME apps seem more flexible in terms of look and feel. I can't stress the importance of a really slick looking desktop when it comes to the usability of a computer from a non-techie perspective. It makes it much easier for me to introduce people to a new desktop when it looks more impressive than Windows XP.
I've recently been introducing my staff at my day job to GNOME since we are moving away from OpenVMS to Unix. Since HP-UX will be coming with GNOME as a default in future releases, I figured it would be good to get the guys used to it by having them use it on a daily basis for basic work stuff. So far they have taken to it pretty well. The most amazing thing is that some of them actually find it EASIER and more FLEXIBLE than Windows. Thank you for a terrific project!
...it would seem natural that using the open source philosophy in many other fields would be beneficial to those fields. After all, if you take a look at something like the Christian Bible (just an example, I'm not religious myself), it was essentially open source especially when you consider that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all essentially tell most of the same stories, but in slightly different ways. I'll bet that they regularly exchanged their views of the experiences they were trying to document and probably even disagreed on certain approaches in documenting them. And look at how long this book has been around now and still has people violently disagreeing about what it means and (compared to other "holy books") which book is better or "the truth".
So, I expect that the open source approach will help many fields, but will always have it's opponents. Most of the opponents coming from one of two biases: Power control based in the "cathedral" vs. power control for the individual.
Considering that it's "just a start", I wonder how long it will take to actually establish a real network that is interplanetary? Obviously there is little need for one at the moment, but once there are manned bases on Mars, this kind of network would be essential.
The beauty of IP over ethernet is that it's not just dedicated to one single function. It can be used for a variety of applications and is really only limited by bandwidth and latency. Overcoming the latency would be a really huge issue between planets. But I think it may be possible to find a faster than light (or more clearly, not limited by the speed of light) method to send the data over. Now the real question? Will it use IP V6?;)
that the code was gotten from a Linux box? I think Microsoft would be playing this for all it's worth claiming that this wouldn't have happened if the code was kept on a commercial Unix (like SCO, HP-UX or Sun) as opposed to Linux. Silly really, but you know how people play these games. Mind you I'm not claiming that the code leak was a game in itself. It, very well, could have been accidental. But this new information gives Microsoft a powerful tool to make claims about their security vs. Linux.
I would like to announce a new open source OS project I am starting. Being a big fan of OpenVMS and DCL, I decided to use some of the basic concepts behind that OS as the model for this project. However, I think the DEC Windows GUI for OpenVMS is a little long in the tooth, so I am proposing something a little more up to date. It's not Linux or Unix based because those OSes have already had a lot of open source activity. It will have limited POSIX compatibility. Previous versions (last night), I experimented with had OS/2 compatibility, but you know how it goes... you need to have the apps to warrant the support. I've already got about 660 Megs of code that I wrote since I received my inspiration and will provide a torrent link to it soon. Anyone intersted in the project, please respond here as I haven't yet set something up at Eba^H^H^H^H^HSourceforge. I look forward to a speedy development phase. I think this OS could be the first open source OS to be ready to go to market in a very short period of time. Boy am I excited!
Ogg Vorbis, the loser? I think not. Anyone who thinks that Ogg Vorbis is a pointless codec obviously has no concern for quality audio and disk usage efficiency. I've been using Ogg Vorbis for the past few years and I have to say I will never go back to MP3. I don't care if there is support for MP3 in every player in the land, just give me a good Ogg Vorbis player, and I will continue to use it until something better comes along. (And no... MP3-Pro is NOT better, it's a pale imitation of Ogg Vorbis)
Just to make a point to all my friend and relatives, I had a Vorbis listening party this past Summer at my home. I told everyone to bring their favorite CDs and that I would rip their favorite track from the disc using MP3 and Vorbis. I did so at 64, 128, 256 and 384 k bitrates. We had a wonderful time conducting blind listening comparisons using both the AKG and Sennheiser cans as well as my Tannoy studio monitors, Yamaha stereo speakers and the Bose 901 series loudspeakers. (Each set in a room seasoned with the best in acoustics) Under such discriminating environments, Vorbis beat MP3 hadns down every time. Some people couldn't even tell the diffrerence between the 64k Vorbis and the 256k MP3. ONly going to prove my point that Ogg Vorbis is FAR superior to any other codec.
After we had dinner (a fine French meal with wine if you must know), it was time for more listening tests. Initially the crowd was a little resistant, but by the time we'd listened to the wonderfully executed "Get Ur Freak On" by Missy Elliot for a fifth time, the crowd agreed that Ogg Vorbis was the winner hands down.
It was a wonderful day and a great victory for Ogg Vorbis as I told everyone present that now that they were aware of the quality the Vorbis provides, they should show all of their friends and family. I provided them all with archive DLTs of the test set (music that they all brought with them) so that they could give it to their IT guys at work and have them load it up on the their Linux or Unix servers and share with their colleagues. They all promised that they would talk to their IT guys.
So, this article has no idea what it's going on about because it isn't aware of the change that is taking the nation by storm with regard to Ogg Vorbis. I urge all of you to show your family and friends the right way to archive digital audio media and advise them to abandon MP3 and proprietary codecs. If you don't then it will be on your own hands...
...From the end user experience, I'll be the first to say Java is a festering piece of shit. Every time I've had to run a Java based applet in a browser or (god forbid) over an X session, it's been ungodly slow! Java DOESN'T scale well if you are talking performance. And now the company I work for is moving to a Java based client application for a big database we have. The bandwidth alone is going to gobble up our network when our 2000+ users all come in in the morning an launch the app. Java Sucks. If you can keep this shit all on the backend with PHP, more power to you.
There are several players in the Unix world, but few are as complete and refined as FreeBSD. It installs easily, scales well, updates without a hassle and holds Netcraft records for uptime. It's also set and beaten several bandwidth records in its ten-year history. I say ten years, but really BSD dates back to 1978 when some programmers at UC Berkeley began making their own custom Unix distributions based on the original AT&T UNIX code. That makes FreeBSD and other BSD variants the oldest non-proprietary Unix operating systems still in use (GNU started in 1983 and Linux started in 1991). FreeBSD shed all of its proprietary UNIX code back in the 80s, so it is neither a trademarked UNIX nor is it directly related to System V or any other true UNIX. Age has given it a certain maturity and quality that few other operating systems possess. Read on to see what advantages FreeBSD offers. The License
You'd be hard pressed to find a license less restrictive than the BSD License. Basically it says two things: that anyone redistributing the software must include all copyright notices and the appropriate license agreements, and that the FreeBSD Project and all contributors to the project may not be held liable for the software if problems should arise with it. It places no limitations on what you can do with the code; that means that it's Free Software. You can make unlimited copies of it, install it on any number of machines, give it to all of your friends and family, modify it in any way that you see fit, and even sell it if you want.
Purchase a TextAd The Hero, by Jem Matzan
Critically acclaimed adventure fantasy novel.
Overview
There are two main editions of FreeBSD: the development version (which includes STABLE and CURRENT), and the more stable version with more mature code, called RELEASE. There are two parts to RELEASE: the new technology release (which is, as of this writing, at version 5.1) and the production release (which is, as of this writing, at 4.8). If you have newer hardware (made within the past 18 months) and you're interested in using FreeBSD for leisure or for regular desktop use, 5.1-RELEASE is likely to be your best choice because of its expanded hardware support. The development team strongly cautions 5.1 users that there could be possibly damaging bugs in the 5.1-CURRENT code, but I've found that this statement is more or less an exaggeration meant to indemnify the programmers in case something bad happens.
So just how risky is the CURRENT branch? Not very, but it is possible to have some problems from time to time if you're always using the latest CVS code. If you're well-versed in Unix you won't have to worry about it much; I have run into a few problems with 5.1-CURRENT that were caused by bugs in the kernel code, but there were none that I was unable to fix (or work around until a fix was released) on my own. I did not test any version prior to 5.1-RELEASE for this review, so I can't comment on the quality of 4.8-RELEASE or compare it to 5.1-RELEASE in any respect other than hardware compatibility.
Entwined with the ports tree (which is used to download and install programs from source) is the package system: a collection of precompiled programs for FreeBSD and other binary-compatible OSes. There is nothing stopping you from installing non-ported programs from source code, or from installing programs via a CDROM or other media, but for the most part you'll be using the ports or package systems to install new programs in FreeBSD. Both the package system and the ports tree can be updated easily by using the cvsup program to retrieve the latest modifications, patches and versions. Some applications cannot be installed as precompiled packages, binaries don't allow you to include special compile-time options, and some packages can be a little out of date, so in addition to the package system there is also the ports tree. Each port in the tree is stored in its own separate directory, categorized by type and listed in
There are quite a few reasons why some MP3s sound better than others. I will try to explain some of them: The quality of the MP3s has a lot less to do with the particular encoder you use and a lot more to do with the user choosing cheap sound cards, speakers and not actually understanding the process of "ripping" a CD. I can't tell you how many times I have come across MP3s on the net that sounded like someone just recorded the audio through the soundcard instead of digitally extracting the audio. Also, I have listened to MP3s on MANY different systems from 486 DX266 machines to Petium II 300s. Some using cheap onboard sound cards and others with Digital IO connected to pro level monitors and A/D convertors. Pretty much ALL MP3 encoders on both the Linux and Windows platforms do a fine job of encoding as long as you stay above the 128K rate. However, if your system can't do the math accurately and quickly enough, the sound quality will suffer no matter how good your sound card is. If you have a cheap sound card, then the quality will be even worse. I had a PCI S3 based sound card. It was the noisiest, most worthless piece of shit I ever heard. All my MP3s sounded horrible on it. But, when I played the same MP3s on my Pentium II 333 with digital IO, a pro A/D unit and pro studio monitors; They sounded great. Your hardware matters.
Certain types of music suffers at 128K due to spectral content. For instance, my KMFDM stuff sounded awful at 128K encoded with 'bladeenc' for Linux. However, when I bumped it up to 256K, it sounded EXACTLY as the CD. My Miles Davis discs required at least 192K. But, heavily processed music like techno (My Aqua or Spice Girls discs) sound excellent at 128K. MP3 has the hardest time acurately reproducing enharmonic sounds such as jazz brushes and hi-hats. Distorted guitar suffers as well. This has EVERYTHING to do with the algorithms. They are looking for specific, predictable harmonic patterns. Anything that doesn't fit within those criteria will sound very bad. That is why Heavy Metal, Industrial, Jazz, Classical and some Rock can sound crappy. Much of the instrumentation is enharmonic in nature. But, techno and heavy electronics are synthesised to follow those harmonic structures precisely, so MP3 has no problem encoding them with full quality at 128K. If you like "loud" music, you're better off encoding at 192K or higher since the distortion in loud music creates sounds with an enharmonic nature. I've tried nearly every encoder for Linux and Windows and they all perform about the same. You must pay more attention to the type of music, it's harmonic structure and general amplitude in order to choose the right bit rate. Also, don't try to get by with substandard components.
Oh yeah, another thing... DON'T GET SUCKERED IN BY "AUDIOPHILES". They are THE worst resource for quality audio information. Much of the audiophile beliefs are complete science fiction. They only THINK they hear things you can't. I mean who in their right mind would believe that placing green stickers ($475 for a set of 12) on your walls at strategic locations is going to affect sound??!! (This is based on mystical hooha about green being harmonically related to certain frequencies that emphasize clarity and presence.) Or that a gold plated power cord ($175) is going to improve the quality of your audio by any noticeable level. They're only after your money. Beware of anyone calling themselves an "Audiophile".
Am I the ONLY person on earth who saw the Sci-Fi channel hype back in July? There were ads for the Blair Witch Project every ten minutes. Then they had their pseudo-documentary, which I watched although I NEW I SHOULDN'T. It sucked. I new from the minute that I saw the first ad, that they were going to hype this thing way out of proportion. To be completely honest, I doubt the validity of it being a sincerely "independent film". My suspicion is that they had some really big industry people in on this from the beginning... It was a gamble on their part; "Let's put $30,000 into this project and see if we can get America to buy into it. If they do, we'll be rich!" There is nothing remarkable about this film. If you want to see a good "chill-flick" go see The Sixth Sense. That was well done.
Hey there! I got an idea! Let's make an OpenSource sattelite project and send it into space! Wouldn't it be cool if our satellite would actually reach intelligent life "out there" first and they crack our ship open to find a stuffed Tux doll?;)
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone who thinks they "rule" is automatically a loser. Check and mate.
Hehehe. Amateurs.
GAWD I hope that the URL you have listed for your home page isn't really YOUR homepage. With my background in music and audio production, I can tell you that whoever owns that page is a bitchy git.
Just to prove it you ass, I'm posting from my older account...
But how else do you force an ignorant and uncaring royal to secure his castle? Just tell him and you're likely to get a "Thanks. It's good that we know that, now let's assess how much of a threat it really is and if it doesn't appear to be one, we'll sit on it while we do other more profitable things" response. Sorry, but you've got to force people's hands on things like this. Personally, I'm all for full disclosure because it results in safer environments when the pressure is on. Where is the impetus to actually fix a problem when it's not a problem at the moment? Even more to the point, if fixing that problem is going to cost money, it's rare that most organizations (royalty or software companies) want to put money into something that they feel isn't immediately or visibly beneficial. I had an idiot boss once who didn't "get" the concept of a server. We had a Windows NT domain controller sitting in a closet as a PDC. It also handled DHCP, some file shares, WINS and DNS. We had a financial package that needed to run on a box that was up 24x7. At this point in time, it was running on the business manager's PC. If he was out, I would get a call from one of his lackeys who couldn't connect. I'd have to go up to his office, turn the machine on and make sure the service was started. I suggested to my boss that we get a server and put the server end of the application on it. His response, "What about the server downstairs?! It's not actually DOING ANYTHING....!" I almost tore my hair out. I explained that it WAS doing something and I could easily prove it by shutting it down before I went home. He ACTUALLY took me up on the offer. In the end, even though he realized that we couldn't use the PDC (a paltry Pentium 90 with 24 megs of RAM) he balked at the cost of a new server and instead chose to go with a new powerful workstation. He hated the idea of a box in a closet that "no one uses". If bosses think like this, then it's not a stretch to think that kings and software company CEOs also think the same way.
Actually... with all the GTK themes and Gnome themes out there, I don't agree. Sure Mac OS X looks really nice. But the 6nome theme is easily about 95% as nice looking. What I really like about 6nome is that it's pretty original looking too. It doesn't cop the Aqua or Luna looks from the other OSes.
Actually, I do the same thing myself. I find elements in each that I like, but GNOME seems to feel more polished and put together these days. I'm not saying that KDE doesn't, but... GNOME apps seem more flexible in terms of look and feel. I can't stress the importance of a really slick looking desktop when it comes to the usability of a computer from a non-techie perspective. It makes it much easier for me to introduce people to a new desktop when it looks more impressive than Windows XP.
I've recently been introducing my staff at my day job to GNOME since we are moving away from OpenVMS to Unix. Since HP-UX will be coming with GNOME as a default in future releases, I figured it would be good to get the guys used to it by having them use it on a daily basis for basic work stuff. So far they have taken to it pretty well. The most amazing thing is that some of them actually find it EASIER and more FLEXIBLE than Windows. Thank you for a terrific project!
...it would seem natural that using the open source philosophy in many other fields would be beneficial to those fields. After all, if you take a look at something like the Christian Bible (just an example, I'm not religious myself), it was essentially open source especially when you consider that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all essentially tell most of the same stories, but in slightly different ways. I'll bet that they regularly exchanged their views of the experiences they were trying to document and probably even disagreed on certain approaches in documenting them. And look at how long this book has been around now and still has people violently disagreeing about what it means and (compared to other "holy books") which book is better or "the truth".
So, I expect that the open source approach will help many fields, but will always have it's opponents. Most of the opponents coming from one of two biases: Power control based in the "cathedral" vs. power control for the individual.
Considering that it's "just a start", I wonder how long it will take to actually establish a real network that is interplanetary? Obviously there is little need for one at the moment, but once there are manned bases on Mars, this kind of network would be essential.
;)
The beauty of IP over ethernet is that it's not just dedicated to one single function. It can be used for a variety of applications and is really only limited by bandwidth and latency. Overcoming the latency would be a really huge issue between planets. But I think it may be possible to find a faster than light (or more clearly, not limited by the speed of light) method to send the data over. Now the real question? Will it use IP V6?
that the code was gotten from a Linux box? I think Microsoft would be playing this for all it's worth claiming that this wouldn't have happened if the code was kept on a commercial Unix (like SCO, HP-UX or Sun) as opposed to Linux. Silly really, but you know how people play these games. Mind you I'm not claiming that the code leak was a game in itself. It, very well, could have been accidental. But this new information gives Microsoft a powerful tool to make claims about their security vs. Linux.
I would like to announce a new open source OS project I am starting. Being a big fan of OpenVMS and DCL, I decided to use some of the basic concepts behind that OS as the model for this project. However, I think the DEC Windows GUI for OpenVMS is a little long in the tooth, so I am proposing something a little more up to date. It's not Linux or Unix based because those OSes have already had a lot of open source activity. It will have limited POSIX compatibility. Previous versions (last night), I experimented with had OS/2 compatibility, but you know how it goes... you need to have the apps to warrant the support. I've already got about 660 Megs of code that I wrote since I received my inspiration and will provide a torrent link to it soon. Anyone intersted in the project, please respond here as I haven't yet set something up at Eba^H^H^H^H^HSourceforge. I look forward to a speedy development phase. I think this OS could be the first open source OS to be ready to go to market in a very short period of time. Boy am I excited!
Ogg Vorbis, the loser? I think not. Anyone who thinks that Ogg Vorbis is a pointless codec obviously has no concern for quality audio and disk usage efficiency. I've been using Ogg Vorbis for the past few years and I have to say I will never go back to MP3. I don't care if there is support for MP3 in every player in the land, just give me a good Ogg Vorbis player, and I will continue to use it until something better comes along. (And no... MP3-Pro is NOT better, it's a pale imitation of Ogg Vorbis)
Just to make a point to all my friend and relatives, I had a Vorbis listening party this past Summer at my home. I told everyone to bring their favorite CDs and that I would rip their favorite track from the disc using MP3 and Vorbis. I did so at 64, 128, 256 and 384 k bitrates. We had a wonderful time conducting blind listening comparisons using both the AKG and Sennheiser cans as well as my Tannoy studio monitors, Yamaha stereo speakers and the Bose 901 series loudspeakers. (Each set in a room seasoned with the best in acoustics) Under such discriminating environments, Vorbis beat MP3 hadns down every time. Some people couldn't even tell the diffrerence between the 64k Vorbis and the 256k MP3. ONly going to prove my point that Ogg Vorbis is FAR superior to any other codec.
After we had dinner (a fine French meal with wine if you must know), it was time for more listening tests. Initially the crowd was a little resistant, but by the time we'd listened to the wonderfully executed "Get Ur Freak On" by Missy Elliot for a fifth time, the crowd agreed that Ogg Vorbis was the winner hands down.
It was a wonderful day and a great victory for Ogg Vorbis as I told everyone present that now that they were aware of the quality the Vorbis provides, they should show all of their friends and family. I provided them all with archive DLTs of the test set (music that they all brought with them) so that they could give it to their IT guys at work and have them load it up on the their Linux or Unix servers and share with their colleagues. They all promised that they would talk to their IT guys.
So, this article has no idea what it's going on about because it isn't aware of the change that is taking the nation by storm with regard to Ogg Vorbis. I urge all of you to show your family and friends the right way to archive digital audio media and advise them to abandon MP3 and proprietary codecs. If you don't then it will be on your own hands...
...From the end user experience, I'll be the first to say Java is a festering piece of shit. Every time I've had to run a Java based applet in a browser or (god forbid) over an X session, it's been ungodly slow! Java DOESN'T scale well if you are talking performance. And now the company I work for is moving to a Java based client application for a big database we have. The bandwidth alone is going to gobble up our network when our 2000+ users all come in in the morning an launch the app. Java Sucks. If you can keep this shit all on the backend with PHP, more power to you.
I can see it now... stack heels will become all the rage amongst the IT set.
Introduction
There are several players in the Unix world, but few are as complete and refined as FreeBSD. It installs easily, scales well, updates without a hassle and holds Netcraft records for uptime. It's also set and beaten several bandwidth records in its ten-year history. I say ten years, but really BSD dates back to 1978 when some programmers at UC Berkeley began making their own custom Unix distributions based on the original AT&T UNIX code. That makes FreeBSD and other BSD variants the oldest non-proprietary Unix operating systems still in use (GNU started in 1983 and Linux started in 1991). FreeBSD shed all of its proprietary UNIX code back in the 80s, so it is neither a trademarked UNIX nor is it directly related to System V or any other true UNIX. Age has given it a certain maturity and quality that few other operating systems possess. Read on to see what advantages FreeBSD offers.
The License
You'd be hard pressed to find a license less restrictive than the BSD License. Basically it says two things: that anyone redistributing the software must include all copyright notices and the appropriate license agreements, and that the FreeBSD Project and all contributors to the project may not be held liable for the software if problems should arise with it. It places no limitations on what you can do with the code; that means that it's Free Software. You can make unlimited copies of it, install it on any number of machines, give it to all of your friends and family, modify it in any way that you see fit, and even sell it if you want.
Purchase a TextAd
The Hero, by Jem Matzan
Critically acclaimed adventure fantasy novel.
Overview
There are two main editions of FreeBSD: the development version (which includes STABLE and CURRENT), and the more stable version with more mature code, called RELEASE. There are two parts to RELEASE: the new technology release (which is, as of this writing, at version 5.1) and the production release (which is, as of this writing, at 4.8). If you have newer hardware (made within the past 18 months) and you're interested in using FreeBSD for leisure or for regular desktop use, 5.1-RELEASE is likely to be your best choice because of its expanded hardware support. The development team strongly cautions 5.1 users that there could be possibly damaging bugs in the 5.1-CURRENT code, but I've found that this statement is more or less an exaggeration meant to indemnify the programmers in case something bad happens.
So just how risky is the CURRENT branch? Not very, but it is possible to have some problems from time to time if you're always using the latest CVS code. If you're well-versed in Unix you won't have to worry about it much; I have run into a few problems with 5.1-CURRENT that were caused by bugs in the kernel code, but there were none that I was unable to fix (or work around until a fix was released) on my own. I did not test any version prior to 5.1-RELEASE for this review, so I can't comment on the quality of 4.8-RELEASE or compare it to 5.1-RELEASE in any respect other than hardware compatibility.
Entwined with the ports tree (which is used to download and install programs from source) is the package system: a collection of precompiled programs for FreeBSD and other binary-compatible OSes. There is nothing stopping you from installing non-ported programs from source code, or from installing programs via a CDROM or other media, but for the most part you'll be using the ports or package systems to install new programs in FreeBSD. Both the package system and the ports tree can be updated easily by using the cvsup program to retrieve the latest modifications, patches and versions. Some applications cannot be installed as precompiled packages, binaries don't allow you to include special compile-time options, and some packages can be a little out of date, so in addition to the package system there is also the ports tree. Each port in the tree is stored in its own separate directory, categorized by type and listed in
There are quite a few reasons why some MP3s sound better than others. I will try to explain some of them: The quality of the MP3s has a lot less to do with the particular encoder you use and a lot more to do with the user choosing cheap sound cards, speakers and not actually understanding the process of "ripping" a CD. I can't tell you how many times I have come across MP3s on the net that sounded like someone just recorded the audio through the soundcard instead of digitally extracting the audio. Also, I have listened to MP3s on MANY different systems from 486 DX266 machines to Petium II 300s. Some using cheap onboard sound cards and others with Digital IO connected to pro level monitors and A/D convertors. Pretty much ALL MP3 encoders on both the Linux and Windows platforms do a fine job of encoding as long as you stay above the 128K rate. However, if your system can't do the math accurately and quickly enough, the sound quality will suffer no matter how good your sound card is. If you have a cheap sound card, then the quality
will be even worse. I had a PCI S3 based sound card. It was the noisiest, most worthless piece of shit I ever heard. All my MP3s sounded horrible on it. But, when I played the same MP3s on my Pentium II 333 with digital IO, a pro A/D unit and pro studio monitors; They sounded great. Your hardware matters.
Certain types of music suffers at 128K due to spectral content. For instance, my KMFDM stuff sounded awful at 128K encoded with 'bladeenc' for Linux. However, when I bumped it up to 256K, it sounded EXACTLY as the CD. My Miles Davis discs required at least 192K. But, heavily processed music like techno (My Aqua or Spice Girls discs) sound excellent at 128K. MP3 has the hardest time acurately reproducing enharmonic sounds such as jazz brushes and hi-hats. Distorted guitar suffers as well. This has EVERYTHING to do with the algorithms. They are looking for specific, predictable harmonic patterns. Anything that doesn't fit within those criteria will sound very bad. That is why Heavy Metal, Industrial, Jazz, Classical and some Rock can sound crappy. Much of the instrumentation is enharmonic in nature. But, techno and heavy electronics are synthesised to follow those harmonic structures precisely, so MP3 has no problem encoding them with full quality at 128K. If you like "loud" music, you're better off encoding at 192K or higher since the distortion in loud music creates sounds with an enharmonic nature. I've tried nearly every encoder for Linux and Windows and they all perform about the same. You must pay more attention to the type of music, it's harmonic structure and general amplitude in order to choose the right bit rate. Also, don't try to get by with substandard components.
Oh yeah, another thing... DON'T GET SUCKERED IN BY "AUDIOPHILES". They are THE worst resource for quality audio information. Much of the audiophile beliefs are complete science fiction. They only THINK they hear things you can't. I mean who in their right mind would believe that placing green stickers ($475 for a set of 12) on your walls at strategic locations is going to affect sound??!! (This is based on mystical hooha about green being harmonically related to certain frequencies that emphasize clarity and presence.) Or that a gold plated power cord ($175) is going to improve the quality of your audio by any noticeable level. They're only after your money. Beware of anyone calling themselves an "Audiophile".
Hope this helps... "Pro Audio Guy"
Sadly, the HURD is dead.
Am I the ONLY person on earth who saw the Sci-Fi channel hype back in July? There were ads for the Blair Witch Project every ten minutes. Then they had their pseudo-documentary, which I watched although I NEW I SHOULDN'T. It sucked. I new from the minute that I saw the first ad, that they were going to hype this thing way out of proportion. To be completely honest, I doubt the validity of it being a sincerely "independent film". My suspicion is that they had some really big industry people in on this from the beginning... It was a gamble on their part; "Let's put $30,000 into this project and see if we can get America to buy into it. If they do, we'll be rich!" There is nothing remarkable about this film. If you want to see a good "chill-flick" go see The Sixth Sense. That was well done.
I need TP for my bunghole!
Hey there! I got an idea! Let's make an OpenSource sattelite project and send it into space! Wouldn't it be cool if our satellite would actually reach intelligent life "out there" first and they crack our ship open to find a stuffed Tux doll? ;)
"The Beav"
...or I'm gonna have ta lay da smack down on yo ass... beeyotch!