When would you ever need to share a password? (Don't answer that...The answer is never.)
You share passwords when it's forced upon you by an outside entity. For example, a website may charge for access and the company uses a single account for multiple users. I believe some section of Oracle used to (and possibly still does) use per company or per version accounts.
"Never" is a word to stay away from when things are not 100% in control. How often have things been 100% in my control, you ask?
Why, never!:)
Once Again...
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Once again, we have a novel solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Isn't life fun?
I believe that what the researcher failed to take into account is the way that the human mind works. Adding 1's, 5's, 10's and 25's is definately easier than adding 1.37's or 83's for us.
Sure, it may make the handing out of change more efficient by lowering the average amount of change given from 4.x to 3.x coins, but that efficiency will be more than lost when the clerks at the local mini-mart -- who already have problems giving out the correct change -- have to figure out that my $0.72 in change will be two 29-cent coins, two 5-cent coins and four 1-cent coins.
Not to mention the increasing size of cash drawer shortages caused by less-than-mathematically-inclined clerks.
Is it just me, or does it seem that the less "rounded" education becomes, the more one-dimensional "solutions" appear? Guess it is more true than ever: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
They run a product called FreeVSD which is a kind of virtual root system. You can modify about half of the system (apache configs, some Sendmail settings, global procmail stuff) not including most of the system files and additions to the/etc/rc.* directories.
Out of the box they support:
Virtual Domain hosting (I have 4 running)
SSH and Telnet
FTP
Majordomo
PHP
mod_perl
Your own MySQL install
Per-user disk quotas
Other stuff... Check the site.
My only big bummer with them is that they don't have perl 5.6.x or higher and they don't support IMAP; thank to the non-editing of the/etc/rc.* directories, I can't install it either.
The price is nice. I'm paying $49 a month for the virtual root, 15 Gigs of bandwidth, and have 3 gigs (I think; might be more) of disk space.
Their support hasn't been that helpful, but to be fair I hit them with some really nasty questions that their system probably doesn't support. Mainly, upgrading Perl and mod_perl to use Perl 5.6.1.
Now my question is, what really happened to Ix? Because in House Atreides by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, he discusses some very weird things about the Atreides and the Ix houses, and some weird characters and the like. Any ideas?
This has bothered me as well. The Ixians don't play much of a role in the books until the God Emperor, and even then it's a tad confused: they provide the God Emperor with all his "forbidden" toys, yet also send people to attempt to kill Leto. It's almost as if Leto still holds dear the bonds forged in the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books, yet the Ixians despise Leto because the don't understand the sacrifices he's made.
I would also like to read more about the Butlerian Jihad, guess Brian is writing a book on that?
Actually, that should be "guess Brian has writtena book on that.
I haven't read it yet, but from the reviews I've read, don't expect a book like anything else in the Dune seriese. It seems it is done very much like a history text.
On the plus side, it explains the founding of the Bene Geserit order as well as the formation of the Mentat and Suk orders. Should be interesting.
The "old couple at the end" has been confusing people for years, myself included. I can remeber being baffled by their appearance in the book on more than one occasion.
Then I picked up the new Dune prequals done and read the forwards. It seems that Frank Herbert planned to finish the book series after Chapterhouse in a stunning climax, neatly bringing together the Golden Path and the evolution of humanity, but he died before even starting the book.
For years, Brian (the son and co-author of the prequals) scoured his father's stuff looking for a manuscript, notes or anything that would hint to where his father was going. None were found until a few years ago.
It seems that Frank Herbert took quite a few notes and left some highlighted copies of the original series in a safe deposit box somewhere that nobody knew about.
The three prequals and the Butlerian Jihad history book were just "practice" to get into the feel of the Dune universe so that the authors could (finally!) complete the Dune series by using Frank Herbert's notes!
With any luck, we'll be finding out Real Soon Now if the old man and wonam are advanced humans or, as I think, Tlelaxu Face Dancers gone beyond what The Masters intended.
I had an old computer (Pentium 200MMX, IIRC) that had a bizarre failure in the power supply. It seems that one of the filtering caps or maybe an inductor in the switching portion of the power supply failed and caused a short circuit. I've never seen either of those components fail to a short, and the results aren't pretty.
I awakened to the smell of burning silicon -- not very pleasant -- and I quickly attempted to unplug the computer. Somehow, the failure had caused the ground to float and the case was sitting at a 120 volt potential; a very nasty suprise when I put my hand on the case to yank the cord.
Once I managed to get the cord out of the machine, I opened it up to survey the damage. Both hard drives had nice scorch marks on the cables, but the cables still read as good with a continuity check. Most of the other components in the machine were visibly fried; melting lacquer over the motherboard, exploded caps and the like.
I purchased almost a complete new system and threw the hard drives into the box. From the appearance of the cables, I'd guessed that each of them had a blast of 120V AC power into the connectors. Both still worked perfectly and are part of an IDE RAID stripe-set in my audio creation computer.
I'm looking for an entry level digital 4 or 8 track digital recorder to experiment with in the $500 range.
Ok, Ebay might be the bet here if you're sure you want digital. I haven't done much shopping online for recording gear, so I might be off base, but I haven't seen a self-contained all-digital solution that is halfway decent for under $1100 US in my local music stores.
If you don't have to go digital, you might check your local pawn shops to see if you can find a used 4- or 8- track Tascam. Even the cheapest Tascam recorders were fairly decent-sounding. Depending on how long it's been on the shelf, you might get away for under $100.
Any product recommendations or warnings out there in the geek crowd? Something that uses mp2/mp3 natively a plus!
The biggest warning I can think of is don't bother with anything that uses mp2/mp3 as a native recording format.
I don't know about you, but when I write and record my own music, I don't want a lossy compression codec to remove any of the sound I've worked hard to produce.
If it doesn't have to be portable, get 4 SoundBlaster-16 PCI cards and the cheapest copy of Cubase you can find. The cards should be less than $30 at your local computer store and the el-cheapo version of Cubase should be less than $300.
Once you have that built and in the computer, see if you can find ASIO drivers for the SB cards; Creative doesn't make them but there is at least one free aftermarket (http://come.to/sblive) ASIO driver package. Install those, and you've got a decent-sounding, 16-bit digital recorder.
The 16-bit sound isn't going to give you studio quality mix-downs or anything, but it'll do for just screwing around at home.
As somebody who uses Acid a lot for creating music, I'd have to say that it's more of a production tool than a recording tool. Not to harp on Acid, but composition, rather than recording, is where it really shines.
Typically, when laying down tracks, you're recording a live artist, where something like Acid works really well with loop-based arrangement; the two functions are really hard to mix together and still have a usable interface.
Personally, I use Acid for most of my mix-down and rearrangements, as well as final post mix. I also use a simple USB-controlled 8-track mixer and Cubase to to my track layouts. In a pinch, since I'm the only person ever playing in my stuff, I'll use something like SoundForge and then go back and sync the tracks up manually with Acid.
I'd recommend something like Cubase ($150 to $500, depending on your local music stores) or the Digi-01 pack from the makers of Protools ($450 to $700, again depending on the music store.)
If you're looking for an all-in-one type solution, then the Digi-01 pack is probably the way to go. For the price, you get a very good quality professional (read: 96kbit, 24-bit sampling) four track (I think, it might be 8 tracks) with a variety of inputs. In addition, it comes with a Protools "lite" package of software that should be good for most of the home recording junkies out there.
Another package to consider, although it's not out yet, is FruityLoops4.0. Their new package has the sequencing, MIDI and, added in the 4.0 version, track recording capability from an ASIO source like the Digi-01 or Gina cards.
I use FruityLoops 3.56 currently and, while it's a great music creation tool, it's really lacking in the track recording arena. Hopefully, this month's release will remedy that. Perhaps I'll review it in my/. journal when it comes out at the end of this month.
... I get to spend Valentine's day having epidural cortizone (sp?) injections into the L5 and L6 vertebrae.
Nothing says "Happy Valentine's Day" like a 12 guage needle through your back...
You'd use the RFID tags to allow the people you want to have free reign exit the house. The autistic child would not have an RFID tag and, hence, couldn't get outside the door without stealing the other children's shoes.
The nearest competing theatre is 75 miles away ( I think they are still independantly owned, but I'm not 100% sure ). The local populace has already been ripped off by this particular chain, and after a few days of outrage they went right back to typical movie going habits. The truth of the matter is that the average person is too apathetic to care.
How often this is the case; it's rather upsetting, too. I think that, given enough thought, it's possible to get people to boycott without them actually boycotting. Again, it all comes down to whether or not you actually want to put the effort in. If you do, more power to ya. If not, no harm, no foul, no good movie theater.:)
50 people on the bottom line isn't really that much when you are the only game in town.
50 people in a small town can mean a huge effect in the bottom line of the only theater; but it sounds like this isn't the case.
You might be able to actually make a little business out of hammering the local chains, if you wanted to. Imagine, if you will, the following:
Talk to the owners of the other theater that's 75 miles away and see if they'd work with you on this. If they're independently owned, so much the better.
Place a bunch of ads in the local papers, radio and cable (whatever's in the budget) saying something like the following:
Tired of the same-old theater experience in [insert your town name here]? We've got the solution! Book a ride on one of our chartered, luxury busses to see the movie at [good theater's name here] in [the other town]! On the bus, we'll provide sodas and popcorn. The theater will provide a nice, catered dinner!
Get some good food, have the theater place some tables in the auditorium, if they can, and charge a reasonable price for it. If you get enough people, $30 or so should work.
We have a theater in our town (Phoenix, Arizona) that operates on a similar principal. They have the same first-run movies, but they draw from all over the valley because they offer a good dinner, comfortable seating and personal service during the movie.
If you're looking for a good business opportunity, you might be able to get another chain (Harkins, AMC, whatever) to help you out...
All in all, it'd be a ton of work. But you'd get the satisfaction of hurting the other theater and possibly make some cash for yourself in the long run.
Never in a million years would I have thought of throwing this back at them.
Of course, they'll just say that it's their policy and they can change it if they want...
For best effectiveness, I'd suggest doing this right out front of the theater when all of the rabid fans are milling about waiting to get in. Make sure to be loud and possibly explain the situation before hand to a few of the patrons.
It could still work in small or monopolized towns, it's just a bit more difficult. It really depends on how much effort you actually want to throw at the thing.
There are consumer advocates in virtually all newspapers (at least in the States; you didn't specify where you are, so I'll assume). Start with those.
Nicely worded letters stating how disappointed you are in the local theater chain. Something like:
It is a sad day when the family sanctuary of the Theater has been so blatantly turned into a profit taking venture. I understand that theaters must make money, and I intended to help them do just that. But our local theater has decided that the public at large must pay for
their mistakes; this is something I cannot support.
The theater has long been a destination of the families and youth of America; a place to go and spend a little of our hard earned money to be entertained, enjoy a good story and meet with friends.
I'm sure you get the idea.
From there, you start talking to your friends, relatives and their friends and relatives; it's a grassroots movement.
You could even go as far as to organize movie trips that take you to the nearest competing theater, even if it's in another county. Make sure the chartered bus pickes everybody up in front of the theater in your town.
It just comes down to this: are you pissed enough to do it?
Call the corporate offices and explain to them your vast disappointment in the lack of responsibility of the management of the theater. Explain to them that there are several theater chains that you can patronize and that, while this is your favorite movie-haus, you just can't patronize a business that feels it must make its patrons pay for their mistakes.
Also explain to them that the sign was placed after you bought your tickets. Be sure to let them know that, as somebody who really stands for personal responsibility, you wouldn't have brought this up had the sign been posted earlier.
Be sure to stress that you see several movies a year, sometimes up to two a month. Tell this story to your friends and let the management know that you're posting your experiences on a large forum that recieves millions of hits a day. You're going to post a follow-up so that the consumers you interact with on this forum (here) can see whether or not this is a theater they'd like to patronize.
Finally, tell us the theater company, the location and -- this part is really important -- what happens when you call them.
If they come back and say, "Tough shit," I'll stop my patronage right now.
It's a giant, multiple machine aquarium. You'll not only get fish swimming across machines in your network, but across the Internet. Here's a blurb from their site:
At DALi we are not just building software that will allow you to have a localized world and ecology, we are building systems that will engender truly ubiquitous artificial life. We are not targeting any particular platform. Instead, we are targeting all of them. Our universe will be everywhere - bits of DALi scattered across millions of computing devices the world-over. In personal computers, portable devices, automobiles, airplanes, even your television. Our aim is to be the first company to realize the living global digital Gaia: a virtual ocean distributed across machines that span the entire non-virtual world; a community of millions of users all taking part in building this virtual ocean, creating the ecology and the life forms that inhabit it; the life forms seamlessly swimming from one machine to the next... And we want you to be our co-creator.
The only drawback for me is that it's written in Java, so getting it to run on the FreeBSD servers in the data center didn't work.
I'm most familiar with SCSI RAID, so YMMV with IDE variants. I'm not too sure about exactly where the information is, I've never been able to get rid of the RAID marking without using the drive utilities.
Typically, there's a utility in the RAID configuration that stamps the drive as part of a set, marks the state (good, bad, rebuilding or hot-spare are most common) and some kind of versionig information.
I've ripped a few disks out of the array, mounted them as standard, reformatted and replaced the MBR, threw them back in the array, and still had them recognized as part of the RAID volume. The RAID card didn't like this much, however.:)
I think your best bet is to talk to one of the people who actually wrote the drivers for the card (you've got the Linux source, right:) or possibly see if you can get ahold of an engineer at the manufacturer and discuss ways of getting the information back.
If all you're looking to do is some sound tracking and live playing, you'd probably be better off with something like FruityLoops. It's a $99 software package (without all the frills) that does a excellent job as a production tool and a decent job at MIDI.
My setup consists of a bunch of effects modules, some tone modules, a professional-grade sound card, Fruity Loops 3.56, ACID 4, Sound Forge and Cakewalk.
If you're really into the MIDI playing, an actual sequencing package will probably be better. Cakewalk can't be beat for the price. It's also getting better in the digital audio handling, though it's still not up to snuff with Cubase or ProTools for recording.
If you're curious to see the type of sound you can get using the lower-priced solutions like Acid or FruityLoops, check out the FruityLoops forums or Acid Planet
There's a demo version of FruityLoops available that you can use to play any FLP files from the forums.
Slashdot Mirror
"Never" is a word to stay away from when things are not 100% in control. How often have things been 100% in my control, you ask?
Why, never! :)
I believe that what the researcher failed to take into account is the way that the human mind works. Adding 1's, 5's, 10's and 25's is definately easier than adding 1.37's or 83's for us.
Sure, it may make the handing out of change more efficient by lowering the average amount of change given from 4.x to 3.x coins, but that efficiency will be more than lost when the clerks at the local mini-mart -- who already have problems giving out the correct change -- have to figure out that my $0.72 in change will be two 29-cent coins, two 5-cent coins and four 1-cent coins.
Not to mention the increasing size of cash drawer shortages caused by less-than-mathematically-inclined clerks.
Is it just me, or does it seem that the less "rounded" education becomes, the more one-dimensional "solutions" appear? Guess it is more true than ever: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Sorry, couldn't resist...
They run a product called FreeVSD which is a kind of virtual root system. You can modify about half of the system (apache configs, some Sendmail settings, global procmail stuff) not including most of the system files and additions to the /etc/rc.* directories.
Out of the box they support:
My only big bummer with them is that they don't have perl 5.6.x or higher and they don't support IMAP; thank to the non-editing of the /etc/rc.* directories, I can't install it either.
The price is nice. I'm paying $49 a month for the virtual root, 15 Gigs of bandwidth, and have 3 gigs (I think; might be more) of disk space.
Their support hasn't been that helpful, but to be fair I hit them with some really nasty questions that their system probably doesn't support. Mainly, upgrading Perl and mod_perl to use Perl 5.6.1.
... Your expendatures will always equal your income plus $40.
The last thing I need is some government agency deciding what is best for me.
This has bothered me as well. The Ixians don't play much of a role in the books until the God Emperor, and even then it's a tad confused: they provide the God Emperor with all his "forbidden" toys, yet also send people to attempt to kill Leto. It's almost as if Leto still holds dear the bonds forged in the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books, yet the Ixians despise Leto because the don't understand the sacrifices he's made.
Actually, that should be "guess Brian has written a book on that.
I haven't read it yet, but from the reviews I've read, don't expect a book like anything else in the Dune seriese. It seems it is done very much like a history text.
On the plus side, it explains the founding of the Bene Geserit order as well as the formation of the Mentat and Suk orders. Should be interesting.
Then I picked up the new Dune prequals done and read the forwards. It seems that Frank Herbert planned to finish the book series after Chapterhouse in a stunning climax, neatly bringing together the Golden Path and the evolution of humanity, but he died before even starting the book.
For years, Brian (the son and co-author of the prequals) scoured his father's stuff looking for a manuscript, notes or anything that would hint to where his father was going. None were found until a few years ago.
It seems that Frank Herbert took quite a few notes and left some highlighted copies of the original series in a safe deposit box somewhere that nobody knew about.
The three prequals and the Butlerian Jihad history book were just "practice" to get into the feel of the Dune universe so that the authors could (finally!) complete the Dune series by using Frank Herbert's notes!
With any luck, we'll be finding out Real Soon Now if the old man and wonam are advanced humans or, as I think, Tlelaxu Face Dancers gone beyond what The Masters intended.
I can't wait...
I won't be missing either...
Quite frankly, no... None whatsoever...
Probably why I'm trying to start my own company now...
I had an old computer (Pentium 200MMX, IIRC) that had a bizarre failure in the power supply. It seems that one of the filtering caps or maybe an inductor in the switching portion of the power supply failed and caused a short circuit. I've never seen either of those components fail to a short, and the results aren't pretty.
I awakened to the smell of burning silicon -- not very pleasant -- and I quickly attempted to unplug the computer. Somehow, the failure had caused the ground to float and the case was sitting at a 120 volt potential; a very nasty suprise when I put my hand on the case to yank the cord.
Once I managed to get the cord out of the machine, I opened it up to survey the damage. Both hard drives had nice scorch marks on the cables, but the cables still read as good with a continuity check. Most of the other components in the machine were visibly fried; melting lacquer over the motherboard, exploded caps and the like.
I purchased almost a complete new system and threw the hard drives into the box. From the appearance of the cables, I'd guessed that each of them had a blast of 120V AC power into the connectors. Both still worked perfectly and are part of an IDE RAID stripe-set in my audio creation computer.
The drives were IBM DeskStar 10GB models.
If you don't have to go digital, you might check your local pawn shops to see if you can find a used 4- or 8- track Tascam. Even the cheapest Tascam recorders were fairly decent-sounding. Depending on how long it's been on the shelf, you might get away for under $100.
The biggest warning I can think of is don't bother with anything that uses mp2/mp3 as a native recording format.
I don't know about you, but when I write and record my own music, I don't want a lossy compression codec to remove any of the sound I've worked hard to produce.
If it doesn't have to be portable, get 4 SoundBlaster-16 PCI cards and the cheapest copy of Cubase you can find. The cards should be less than $30 at your local computer store and the el-cheapo version of Cubase should be less than $300.
Once you have that built and in the computer, see if you can find ASIO drivers for the SB cards; Creative doesn't make them but there is at least one free aftermarket (http://come.to/sblive) ASIO driver package. Install those, and you've got a decent-sounding, 16-bit digital recorder.
The 16-bit sound isn't going to give you studio quality mix-downs or anything, but it'll do for just screwing around at home.
Or the fact that every scene he's in without being alone, the temprature makes people cold and/or uncomfortable.
Plus, he probably could have used a digital 4 track recorder to enhance the tapes he was listening to in the basement...
As somebody who uses Acid a lot for creating music, I'd have to say that it's more of a production tool than a recording tool. Not to harp on Acid, but composition, rather than recording, is where it really shines.
Typically, when laying down tracks, you're recording a live artist, where something like Acid works really well with loop-based arrangement; the two functions are really hard to mix together and still have a usable interface.
Personally, I use Acid for most of my mix-down and rearrangements, as well as final post mix. I also use a simple USB-controlled 8-track mixer and Cubase to to my track layouts. In a pinch, since I'm the only person ever playing in my stuff, I'll use something like SoundForge and then go back and sync the tracks up manually with Acid.
I'd recommend something like Cubase ($150 to $500, depending on your local music stores) or the Digi-01 pack from the makers of Protools ($450 to $700, again depending on the music store.)
If you're looking for an all-in-one type solution, then the Digi-01 pack is probably the way to go. For the price, you get a very good quality professional (read: 96kbit, 24-bit sampling) four track (I think, it might be 8 tracks) with a variety of inputs. In addition, it comes with a Protools "lite" package of software that should be good for most of the home recording junkies out there.
Another package to consider, although it's not out yet, is FruityLoops4.0. Their new package has the sequencing, MIDI and, added in the 4.0 version, track recording capability from an ASIO source like the Digi-01 or Gina cards.
I use FruityLoops 3.56 currently and, while it's a great music creation tool, it's really lacking in the track recording arena. Hopefully, this month's release will remedy that. Perhaps I'll review it in my /. journal when it comes out at the end of this month.
Hope that helps!
... I get to spend Valentine's day having epidural cortizone (sp?) injections into the L5 and L6 vertebrae. Nothing says "Happy Valentine's Day" like a 12 guage needle through your back...
You'd use the RFID tags to allow the people you want to have free reign exit the house. The autistic child would not have an RFID tag and, hence, couldn't get outside the door without stealing the other children's shoes.
It could work...
How often this is the case; it's rather upsetting, too. I think that, given enough thought, it's possible to get people to boycott without them actually boycotting. Again, it all comes down to whether or not you actually want to put the effort in. If you do, more power to ya. If not, no harm, no foul, no good movie theater. :)
50 people on the bottom line isn't really that much when you are the only game in town.
50 people in a small town can mean a huge effect in the bottom line of the only theater; but it sounds like this isn't the case.
You might be able to actually make a little business out of hammering the local chains, if you wanted to. Imagine, if you will, the following:
Talk to the owners of the other theater that's 75 miles away and see if they'd work with you on this. If they're independently owned, so much the better.
Place a bunch of ads in the local papers, radio and cable (whatever's in the budget) saying something like the following:
Get some good food, have the theater place some tables in the auditorium, if they can, and charge a reasonable price for it. If you get enough people, $30 or so should work.
We have a theater in our town (Phoenix, Arizona) that operates on a similar principal. They have the same first-run movies, but they draw from all over the valley because they offer a good dinner, comfortable seating and personal service during the movie.
If you're looking for a good business opportunity, you might be able to get another chain (Harkins, AMC, whatever) to help you out...
All in all, it'd be a ton of work. But you'd get the satisfaction of hurting the other theater and possibly make some cash for yourself in the long run.
That's great!
Never in a million years would I have thought of throwing this back at them.
Of course, they'll just say that it's their policy and they can change it if they want...
For best effectiveness, I'd suggest doing this right out front of the theater when all of the rabid fans are milling about waiting to get in. Make sure to be loud and possibly explain the situation before hand to a few of the patrons.
Man, I'd pay to see this one...
There are consumer advocates in virtually all newspapers (at least in the States; you didn't specify where you are, so I'll assume). Start with those.
Nicely worded letters stating how disappointed you are in the local theater chain. Something like:
I'm sure you get the idea.From there, you start talking to your friends, relatives and their friends and relatives; it's a grassroots movement.
You could even go as far as to organize movie trips that take you to the nearest competing theater, even if it's in another county. Make sure the chartered bus pickes everybody up in front of the theater in your town.
It just comes down to this: are you pissed enough to do it?
Call the corporate offices and explain to them your vast disappointment in the lack of responsibility of the management of the theater. Explain to them that there are several theater chains that you can patronize and that, while this is your favorite movie-haus, you just can't patronize a business that feels it must make its patrons pay for their mistakes.
Also explain to them that the sign was placed after you bought your tickets. Be sure to let them know that, as somebody who really stands for personal responsibility, you wouldn't have brought this up had the sign been posted earlier.
Be sure to stress that you see several movies a year, sometimes up to two a month. Tell this story to your friends and let the management know that you're posting your experiences on a large forum that recieves millions of hits a day. You're going to post a follow-up so that the consumers you interact with on this forum (here) can see whether or not this is a theater they'd like to patronize.
Finally, tell us the theater company, the location and -- this part is really important -- what happens when you call them.
If they come back and say, "Tough shit," I'll stop my patronage right now.
Good luck!
I'd like a million of them, half the standard size and the other half the little tiny hard-drive size.
I can never find one when I need one...
It's a giant, multiple machine aquarium. You'll not only get fish swimming across machines in your network, but across the Internet. Here's a blurb from their site:
The only drawback for me is that it's written in Java, so getting it to run on the FreeBSD servers in the data center didn't work.
Have fun!
Typically, there's a utility in the RAID configuration that stamps the drive as part of a set, marks the state (good, bad, rebuilding or hot-spare are most common) and some kind of versionig information.
I've ripped a few disks out of the array, mounted them as standard, reformatted and replaced the MBR, threw them back in the array, and still had them recognized as part of the RAID volume. The RAID card didn't like this much, however. :)
I think your best bet is to talk to one of the people who actually wrote the drivers for the card (you've got the Linux source, right :) or possibly see if you can get ahold of an engineer at the manufacturer and discuss ways of getting the information back.
Good luck!
If all you're looking to do is some sound tracking and live playing, you'd probably be better off with something like FruityLoops. It's a $99 software package (without all the frills) that does a excellent job as a production tool and a decent job at MIDI.
My setup consists of a bunch of effects modules, some tone modules, a professional-grade sound card, Fruity Loops 3.56, ACID 4, Sound Forge and Cakewalk.
If you're really into the MIDI playing, an actual sequencing package will probably be better. Cakewalk can't be beat for the price. It's also getting better in the digital audio handling, though it's still not up to snuff with Cubase or ProTools for recording.
If you're curious to see the type of sound you can get using the lower-priced solutions like Acid or FruityLoops, check out the FruityLoops forums or Acid Planet
There's a demo version of FruityLoops available that you can use to play any FLP files from the forums.
Good luck!