Direct? No. Mix? I edit/mix pretty much everything I do on my own in Adobe Audition (yes, I know Ardour or Audacity would work as well, but CoolEdit/Audition is what I started on and what I know best).
But then again, I've only been doing this for several years, so what do I know? =P
...has obtained the services of a professional radio talent
The voice sounds professional, yes. However, the audio quality on the raw material is lacking. The reverb is VERY over the top, and is not necessary. A dry voice track should not sound like it's coming out of an echo chamber, because reverb can easily be added later in the style and amount you want. Also, would it have really hurt to have the voice talent be a bit further from the mic? At the very least, run the damned track through a de-essing filter to kill off some of the harshness. The sibilance was bordering on painful everytime a word had an S in it. Echo shouldn't be a problem if you're using a proper studio.
I mention this, because if the production of the dry track isn't up to par, then anything you finish it with won't be. And if they REALLY want people to take Linux seriously, whatever ads are made with this stuff needs to sound every bit as professional as something coming out of a major corporation.
I'm not so sure, considering that probably most people who are willing to spend the money on a DSLR camera, WANT a DSLR.
It likely wouldn't sell well enough to be viable as a product.
If it were any other company, you would be correct. However, this is Apple. They would not only make it a viable product, but the Reality Distortion Field would ensure that everyone who sees it believes it to be the second coming of Christ in camera form. They would line up outside Apple stores days in advance for a CHANCE to purchase this mythical item. Then they would return home only to find out that the methods EVERY OTHER DEVICE uses for downloading the pictures to your PC is not the way here. No, they will be forced to use iTunes. And it will check the camera to make sure you are only taking "Apple Approved" images...
That we teach kids how to write properly and put ideas into words FIRST. Being able to type will be of no use whatsoever if you don't know how to communicate. My brother's girlfriend teaches 6th grade, and a good portion of these kids are COMPLETELY unable to put together a coherent sentence. They're writing on at BEST a second grade level (the whole issue of kids not being held back when they need to be is another debate entirely), so a typing class will be of no benefit to them whatsoever. And that's just when you can actually decipher the chicken-scrawl that passes for handwriting these days.
Bottom line is, they need to be learning things in some sort of a sequence so that they can build on what they already know. My opinion is they should go with it as follows:
Reading/Handwriting (and no, I don't mean cursive): Be able to properly and clearly write the letters you will use for the rest of your life and learn it early. Yes, this is still important, because there are many times in daily life you will not have the option to simply punch buttons on a keyboard. If taught while one is still learning to read, the two disciplines will reinforce each other. Also, learning how to write before you can type builds fine motor control.
Grammar & Comprehension: Once you have a solid grasp of how to read words and copy them in your own hand, you can begin the process of learning all the wonderfully annoying nuances of your native language (English being by FAR the most annoying). You don't have to master it overnight, but you want to get the basics down before you move any further. This will ensure that you know how to properly communicate on a functional level, and also that you are able to learn the more complex tidbits more easily.
Typing: Yes, I put typing last on the list. If you don't know how to properly communicate FIRST, then all having the ability to type will do is make you seem like an idiot that much faster. You will get nowhere in life if the extent of your communication skills resembles the output from a pre-alpha version of Babelfish. Once you have a successful grasp on reading/writing/comprehension, only then does typing become an important tool in enabling you to communicate your ideas much faster. Before then, all it will do is become a hinderance.
I am well aware the article talks about teaching this at the high school level, but from what I've seen, it doesn't improve much. When I was in high school, there were juniors and seniors who could barely read, and their handwriting may as well have been from Omicron Persei 8 for how legible it was. We need to make sure kids have a handle on the basic skills BEFORE they get to high school. If we can manage that, I'm pretty sure most will pick up typing quite well on their own.
And the part that concerns me the most, is how they would likely defend against "unreasonable search" allegations. All they have to do is say the search is reasonable based upon suspicion that ANYONE travelling outside of the country could have been doing so for "evil" reasons. This could get them a magic "propable cause" allowance, and your stuff is still siezed/searched. So now we have the government worried that all people travelling abroad are potential terrorists, but they will hastily point out that it's only for people travelling abroad. There are no internal searches anywhere in the US (nevermind the dubious truth of that matter). Lovely choice you have their. Give up any/all information privacy, or never be allowed to leave your country. Sounds a wee bit too East Berlin to me...
Combine that with what you said and we could have a certified evil, lying and flesh eating robot - What could possibly go wrong indeed.....
Not too much, actually. Congress has been this way for YEARS, and the upgrade to flesh-eating will just mean they devour their constituents who don't make the appropriate campaign contributions. Quoth Liberty Prime: "Democracy is non-negotiable!"
He plans to offset the cost by charging members of the public for access to his database to check whether their data security has been breached.
So in order to find out if your personal information has been breached, you have to disclose said information AND pay a fee. Seems a little fishy to me. Isn't that how a lot of identity-theft scams operate in the first place? "Hey, your identity is at risk. Send us money and details and we'll check to see if you're a victim or not.........and.....YES...you are now a victim! Thank you for using Thieves-R-Us!"
Funny, if Bush were in charge, there would be people coming out of the woodwork screaming EXACTLY the same thing as I posted...from every website with a submit button. You would be hard pressed to find anyone calling them sensationalist. But I guess now that "Obama Christ" is in charge, there's nothing to worry about. Ever. Which makes me a right-wing nutjob, doesn't it?
Don't do illegal sh** on your proxy and you'll be fine. If you do illegal sh** on your proxy, don't get caught, and you'll also be fine. But if you're using a proxy to prevent detection of your illegal activity, that is rationally a sign of sophistication and justifiably warrants increased jail-time.
That line of thinking is all fine and good in a perfect world. Sadly, none of us live there. With the increases in domestic spying, dragnets to catch "pirates" and whatnot, this is a VERY bad thing. Sure, you're doing nothing illegal NOW. But whatabout when they change the definition of what is legal and what is not?
Get caught using a proxy to write about why you hate Obama? Well, you just got five years instead of four, you dirty, hacking, unpatriotic racist! Post in a livejournal about your personal stance on abortion, AND do it while logged in through TOR? You must be planning to bomb a Planned Parenthood clinic. Go to Jail, do not pass Go.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't be punished for doing something that's blatantly wrong. The problem lies in the fact that those in power can change the legality of certain things to pander to their target demographic. How long before unpopular political ideas are illegal in this country? Then, not only will sharing your ideas get you a prison sentence, attempting to mask your identity/location will get you MORE time behind bars. Think about that...
I believe that's precisely what they're attempting with the Model S. I see a "5 minute battery swap" listed on the features page. No clue as to the actual specifics, but if it really is that easy, then standardized battery packs and the required support infrastructure are probably already on the drawing board.
I can understand having RAID-0 on there from a performance standpoint, but it's downright STUPID on its own. For one, there's the obvious pitfalls of running the entire thing on such a setup (queue the old "the 0 stands for how many bytes you can recover if something goes wrong" joke). Secondly, if I'm going for pure performance, I'm NOT putting my OS and my scratch space on the same volume. If they want to be serious about this, they need to ditch the optical drive altogether and have room for another HDD for the OS and non-throwaway things. Granted, you should be making regular backups. But at least if one drive fails, the data is still a lot easier to get back than if it were thrown across two drives.
And yes, this is honest constructive criticism here. I'm a proud ThinkPad owner myself (T60 to be exact).
The worst service is from the CFL globe lights over the mirrors in the two bathrooms. I lose about one a month, and recently I've started replacing them with incandescents as they burn out.
I'm no expert on CFL design and construction, but could it possibly be due to the added moisture/humidity in the bathrooms? Taking a shower cranks the humidity in a bathroom, and if you're not using the exhaust fan, the the moisture has nowhere to go until you open the door. I've had friends go through a similar number of incandescents for that very reason.
You'll notice people don't argue with the Geek Squad guys nearly as much
Yes...they do...oh GOD do they ever argue... Maybe they don't gripe at the guys who show up at their door, but the ones who come to the store will bitch, moan, and argue until you want to smack them with their own notebook.
"We'll have to check it in for a diagnostic to verify the problem before we can do anything else"* is followed immediately with "WHY DO I HAVE TO WAIT FOR YOU TO DO THAT?!?! MY COMPUTER IS RUNNING FINE!!!"......they don't get the logical fallacy that if it WERE running fine, they would be at home USING it instead of bitching at us about it...
*Yes, I can usually tell what the problem is right away, but policy dictates that it has to be verified before anything can be done under warranty.
Not quite. Hulu still has yet to grasp the concept to its full extent. Certain shows (notably House and Battlestar Galactica) are not posted on Hulu until AFTER the following episode airs. If I miss an episode and want to catch up, I'm still one behind. Of course, people complain about this, and they either delete the comments, or trot out the apologists to try and make the complainers feel guilty about wanting what was originally provided (new episodes for all shows used to be posted as soon as they got done airing in Hawaii. The delays came later). And I have no idea what they're smoking, but 480p is NOT "high-def".
Before the BS, I used to use Hulu to catch back episodes of my favorite shows. The ads were short, unubtrusive, and they SEEMED to be going about things the right way. Now, however, I hit my favorite torrent site and grab the new episodes in higher quality less than 4 hours after they air. Much easier, and no buffering if I want to watch again later.
I've got a T60 that I bought about two years ago from Lenovo. Haven't had a single problem out of it. The only two bluescreens I've ever seen on it were related to the fact that I accidentally covered the vents and it crashed due to being too hot. Other than that, it's been a perfectly stable machine. I get around 4:30 with the 9-cell battery with the screen at full brightness and the wireless going (although constant streaming from, say, youtube, takes it to around 2:15. Who wants to watch youtube for that long, however?).
Wait, I take that back. The optical drive doesn't seem to be worth a crap anymore, but since I so rarely use discs it's not much of an issue. I have an external that I bought so I could burn lightscribe discs anyway. Thinking of swapping the optical drive for another HDD soon (320gb in there now, with the stock 100gb going in the PS3, probably going to add another 320).
Note that I said standard-ish. No, DivX is not a standard, but it's a hell of a lot more widely supported than Quicktime. Quicktime supports a narrow subset of the H.264 standard (i.e. MUST be 30fps, 640x480, etc). Everything QT can play, I can play in another piece of software since I have the right codecs installed. However, when I encode something to the H.264 specifications, that's not a guarantee that it will play in QT. Why? Because they crippled their implementation to make sure that if it will play in QT, it will play on the iPod, which only supports the above mentioned narrow range of settings. They may have become a bit more lax with better decoding on the iPods recently, but that's beside the point.
I guess this puts me in the 10% you mention, since I DO "have a fucking clue what I'm talking about," and I know quite a bit about properly supporting my PC. That is PRECISELY the reason I refuse to use QT. There are other alternatives out there that DON'T require me to install a proprietary, overreaching piece of software on my system to then spend 20 minutes undoing half the changes it made before I feel comfortable using the program. And the "watch only" bit annoys me to no end as well. Upgrade to Pro for $30 just so I can click "Save As"? I don't think so.
Why the hell are almost ALL new movie trailers hosted by Apple, with each requiring Quicktime. And why does every new trailer seem to REQUIRE me to update to the latest version of that bloated, memory-gobbling, unwanted startup service inserting, file association stealing, iTunes pushing crap just to play a damned VIDEO? I'd rather have a larger filesize and get a standard-ish format like DivX than have to use this crap just to shave off some bits on the encode. I already have PROPER h.264 support on my system, so just let me download the damned trailer and watch it with something that's NOT QUICKTIME. The implementation Apple uses for that isn't even compatible with the standard, for crying out loud.
This story really needs to be tagged with "fuckquicktime"
No grad students were involved. They simply told the RIAA that the monkeys were sharing the new Metallica album on all the major P2P networks. The Schutzstaffel...err... RIAA legal team took care of the rest.
Slashdot Mirror
Meaning Ron White proved to be one of the more insightful people around with four simple words: "You can't fix stupid."
I assure you, this will cost MORE than the maximus.
Direct? No. Mix? I edit/mix pretty much everything I do on my own in Adobe Audition (yes, I know Ardour or Audacity would work as well, but CoolEdit/Audition is what I started on and what I know best).
But then again, I've only been doing this for several years, so what do I know? =P
The voice sounds professional, yes. However, the audio quality on the raw material is lacking. The reverb is VERY over the top, and is not necessary. A dry voice track should not sound like it's coming out of an echo chamber, because reverb can easily be added later in the style and amount you want. Also, would it have really hurt to have the voice talent be a bit further from the mic? At the very least, run the damned track through a de-essing filter to kill off some of the harshness. The sibilance was bordering on painful everytime a word had an S in it. Echo shouldn't be a problem if you're using a proper studio.
I mention this, because if the production of the dry track isn't up to par, then anything you finish it with won't be. And if they REALLY want people to take Linux seriously, whatever ads are made with this stuff needs to sound every bit as professional as something coming out of a major corporation.
IAAVOA (I Am a Voice-Over Artist), btw.
If it were any other company, you would be correct. However, this is Apple. They would not only make it a viable product, but the Reality Distortion Field would ensure that everyone who sees it believes it to be the second coming of Christ in camera form. They would line up outside Apple stores days in advance for a CHANCE to purchase this mythical item. Then they would return home only to find out that the methods EVERY OTHER DEVICE uses for downloading the pictures to your PC is not the way here. No, they will be forced to use iTunes. And it will check the camera to make sure you are only taking "Apple Approved" images...
Bottom line is, they need to be learning things in some sort of a sequence so that they can build on what they already know. My opinion is they should go with it as follows:
I am well aware the article talks about teaching this at the high school level, but from what I've seen, it doesn't improve much. When I was in high school, there were juniors and seniors who could barely read, and their handwriting may as well have been from Omicron Persei 8 for how legible it was. We need to make sure kids have a handle on the basic skills BEFORE they get to high school. If we can manage that, I'm pretty sure most will pick up typing quite well on their own.
And the part that concerns me the most, is how they would likely defend against "unreasonable search" allegations. All they have to do is say the search is reasonable based upon suspicion that ANYONE travelling outside of the country could have been doing so for "evil" reasons. This could get them a magic "propable cause" allowance, and your stuff is still siezed/searched. So now we have the government worried that all people travelling abroad are potential terrorists, but they will hastily point out that it's only for people travelling abroad. There are no internal searches anywhere in the US (nevermind the dubious truth of that matter). Lovely choice you have their. Give up any/all information privacy, or never be allowed to leave your country. Sounds a wee bit too East Berlin to me...
Not too much, actually. Congress has been this way for YEARS, and the upgrade to flesh-eating will just mean they devour their constituents who don't make the appropriate campaign contributions. Quoth Liberty Prime: "Democracy is non-negotiable!"
Take-off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
So in order to find out if your personal information has been breached, you have to disclose said information AND pay a fee. Seems a little fishy to me. Isn't that how a lot of identity-theft scams operate in the first place? "Hey, your identity is at risk. Send us money and details and we'll check to see if you're a victim or not.........and.....YES...you are now a victim! Thank you for using Thieves-R-Us!"
Ninjas who also come disguised as Navy SEAL's with sniper rifles.
Funny, if Bush were in charge, there would be people coming out of the woodwork screaming EXACTLY the same thing as I posted...from every website with a submit button. You would be hard pressed to find anyone calling them sensationalist. But I guess now that "Obama Christ" is in charge, there's nothing to worry about. Ever. Which makes me a right-wing nutjob, doesn't it?
Right there in the last part of your post, emphasis yours, is what immediately disqualifies you from being a lawyer.
That line of thinking is all fine and good in a perfect world. Sadly, none of us live there. With the increases in domestic spying, dragnets to catch "pirates" and whatnot, this is a VERY bad thing. Sure, you're doing nothing illegal NOW. But whatabout when they change the definition of what is legal and what is not?
Get caught using a proxy to write about why you hate Obama? Well, you just got five years instead of four, you dirty, hacking, unpatriotic racist! Post in a livejournal about your personal stance on abortion, AND do it while logged in through TOR? You must be planning to bomb a Planned Parenthood clinic. Go to Jail, do not pass Go.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't be punished for doing something that's blatantly wrong. The problem lies in the fact that those in power can change the legality of certain things to pander to their target demographic. How long before unpopular political ideas are illegal in this country? Then, not only will sharing your ideas get you a prison sentence, attempting to mask your identity/location will get you MORE time behind bars. Think about that...
I believe that's precisely what they're attempting with the Model S. I see a "5 minute battery swap" listed on the features page. No clue as to the actual specifics, but if it really is that easy, then standardized battery packs and the required support infrastructure are probably already on the drawing board.
Come on, McFly! What are you, chicken????
I for one welcome our new chiropteran overlords!
I can understand having RAID-0 on there from a performance standpoint, but it's downright STUPID on its own. For one, there's the obvious pitfalls of running the entire thing on such a setup (queue the old "the 0 stands for how many bytes you can recover if something goes wrong" joke). Secondly, if I'm going for pure performance, I'm NOT putting my OS and my scratch space on the same volume. If they want to be serious about this, they need to ditch the optical drive altogether and have room for another HDD for the OS and non-throwaway things. Granted, you should be making regular backups. But at least if one drive fails, the data is still a lot easier to get back than if it were thrown across two drives.
And yes, this is honest constructive criticism here. I'm a proud ThinkPad owner myself (T60 to be exact).
I'm no expert on CFL design and construction, but could it possibly be due to the added moisture/humidity in the bathrooms? Taking a shower cranks the humidity in a bathroom, and if you're not using the exhaust fan, the the moisture has nowhere to go until you open the door. I've had friends go through a similar number of incandescents for that very reason.
Yes...they do...oh GOD do they ever argue... Maybe they don't gripe at the guys who show up at their door, but the ones who come to the store will bitch, moan, and argue until you want to smack them with their own notebook.
"We'll have to check it in for a diagnostic to verify the problem before we can do anything else"* is followed immediately with "WHY DO I HAVE TO WAIT FOR YOU TO DO THAT?!?! MY COMPUTER IS RUNNING FINE!!!"......they don't get the logical fallacy that if it WERE running fine, they would be at home USING it instead of bitching at us about it...
*Yes, I can usually tell what the problem is right away, but policy dictates that it has to be verified before anything can be done under warranty.
Not quite. Hulu still has yet to grasp the concept to its full extent. Certain shows (notably House and Battlestar Galactica) are not posted on Hulu until AFTER the following episode airs. If I miss an episode and want to catch up, I'm still one behind. Of course, people complain about this, and they either delete the comments, or trot out the apologists to try and make the complainers feel guilty about wanting what was originally provided (new episodes for all shows used to be posted as soon as they got done airing in Hawaii. The delays came later). And I have no idea what they're smoking, but 480p is NOT "high-def".
Before the BS, I used to use Hulu to catch back episodes of my favorite shows. The ads were short, unubtrusive, and they SEEMED to be going about things the right way. Now, however, I hit my favorite torrent site and grab the new episodes in higher quality less than 4 hours after they air. Much easier, and no buffering if I want to watch again later.
I've got a T60 that I bought about two years ago from Lenovo. Haven't had a single problem out of it. The only two bluescreens I've ever seen on it were related to the fact that I accidentally covered the vents and it crashed due to being too hot. Other than that, it's been a perfectly stable machine. I get around 4:30 with the 9-cell battery with the screen at full brightness and the wireless going (although constant streaming from, say, youtube, takes it to around 2:15. Who wants to watch youtube for that long, however?).
Wait, I take that back. The optical drive doesn't seem to be worth a crap anymore, but since I so rarely use discs it's not much of an issue. I have an external that I bought so I could burn lightscribe discs anyway. Thinking of swapping the optical drive for another HDD soon (320gb in there now, with the stock 100gb going in the PS3, probably going to add another 320).
Note that I said standard-ish. No, DivX is not a standard, but it's a hell of a lot more widely supported than Quicktime. Quicktime supports a narrow subset of the H.264 standard (i.e. MUST be 30fps, 640x480, etc). Everything QT can play, I can play in another piece of software since I have the right codecs installed. However, when I encode something to the H.264 specifications, that's not a guarantee that it will play in QT. Why? Because they crippled their implementation to make sure that if it will play in QT, it will play on the iPod, which only supports the above mentioned narrow range of settings. They may have become a bit more lax with better decoding on the iPods recently, but that's beside the point.
I guess this puts me in the 10% you mention, since I DO "have a fucking clue what I'm talking about," and I know quite a bit about properly supporting my PC. That is PRECISELY the reason I refuse to use QT. There are other alternatives out there that DON'T require me to install a proprietary, overreaching piece of software on my system to then spend 20 minutes undoing half the changes it made before I feel comfortable using the program. And the "watch only" bit annoys me to no end as well. Upgrade to Pro for $30 just so I can click "Save As"? I don't think so.
Karma be damned, this has to be said.
Why the hell are almost ALL new movie trailers hosted by Apple, with each requiring Quicktime. And why does every new trailer seem to REQUIRE me to update to the latest version of that bloated, memory-gobbling, unwanted startup service inserting, file association stealing, iTunes pushing crap just to play a damned VIDEO? I'd rather have a larger filesize and get a standard-ish format like DivX than have to use this crap just to shave off some bits on the encode. I already have PROPER h.264 support on my system, so just let me download the damned trailer and watch it with something that's NOT QUICKTIME. The implementation Apple uses for that isn't even compatible with the standard, for crying out loud.
This story really needs to be tagged with "fuckquicktime"
No grad students were involved. They simply told the RIAA that the monkeys were sharing the new Metallica album on all the major P2P networks. The Schutzstaffel...err... RIAA legal team took care of the rest.