24 bit audio file support? Standardized plugins? User interface that won't scare studio clients used to seeing Cubase and Pro Tools? Workable MIDI editing? High resolution file compatibility? Session import so I don't lose access to everything I've ever recorded?
1) Have three licenses that will stay with me through an upgrade and which I can move between computers at will.
Well that's well and good... Say your hard drive crashes and you have to rebuild your Mac from scratch. What kind of special provisions are necessary so that your Mac "remembers" that you have legally purchased these files?
2) Burn it to as many CD's as I like.
Sure. That makes it exactly as good as an mp3. And I still want to know what's stopping people from ripping the audio CDs they create this way and sharing the files... If it's that easy to circumvent the DRM then why bother pissing off your customer base?
3) Place it on as many iPods as I like, as many times as I like.
Okay that's fine if you don't mind spending $300 on the modern equivalent of a Walkman. Will it still work with my $69 Expanium CD-based mp3 player?
How is this a problem, again?
I'll acknowledge that this is the most flexible DRM available today. However it is not NEARLY as flexible as the alternative - mp3's and audio CDs. To supercede a standard it is necessary to IMPROVE on that standard. Otherwise consumers have little incentive to buy in.
About the only thing I can't do--assuming I work on 3 or fewer computers--is send it to a friend over the internet. If I have more than that then Apple has provided a conveinant workaround by allowing me to rerip it to AAC from a CD.
Exactly. You know, I really don't have any problem with NOT sharing my mp3's with the world. But I would most certainly have a problem with any DRM system which will not allow me to make a mix CD for my friend (which is currently legal.) Again, if the DRM is so easy to circumvent then what is the point?
You are using madonna to justify a selection? So if I offered just madonna's Ray of Light on my own system, you would say that I had good selection, right?
Madonna was just a convenient example. The selection on both iTunes AND BuyMusic is woefully lacking artists that people really want to listen to. As a PC user I don't have access to iTunes, but I did check out BuyMusic (which boasts a 50% larger selection than iTunes) and of about 30 searches I ran MOST came up way short of what I would find in the smallest and crappiest CD store in town. No BT. No Prodigy. No Doors. No Zeppelin. No Beatles. One unknown Madonna song. No Queen. No DJ Tricky. It is just sad. How do they expect this to catch on when they insist on TELLING the customer what they want instead of GIVING the customer what they want? I realize that the problem is mostly a legal clusterfuck caused by short-sighted distribution contracts signed with the artists and their publishers, but in the end that really doesn't matter. If I want a song by Madonna I have two choices: Go to the CD store and buy it (which I often do) or get a P2P app and download it for free (which I also do.) Which I choose depends mostly on how much I think I will like the product. I have been tricked into buying bad CDs too many times to just blindly purchase a $18 CD any more. If I *know* I will like it, then I buy the CD. If these services could provide me with cheap mp3s of any song I wanted then I would have no problem at all paying between $.50 and $1.49 even if I wasn't so sure about it. It would be even better if I could access a low quality stream just to make sure.
That makes about as much sense as you judging iTunes selection based on one song by one artist.
Yes but I didn't do that. I can't really name EVERY artist they DON'T have, can I? So I provided a VERY popular artist and song to make my point.
Their selection *is* increasing. They are adding more songs daily, indie labels are comming into the fold, and unsigned artists will be able to put their work up via CDBaby. The selection, while not astounding, is decent (I've found a few things I like) and
It's sad when the BEST online music site out there only serves 3% of the computing population, STILL has proprietary DRM (even the Macheads don't seem to care) and worst of all the selection sucks! Don't believe me? Try to download "Ray of Light" by Madonna from iTunes. What the hell good is a music service that only carries a few select choons by artists that I may or may not give a damn about? I want to be able to get ANY music this way. If I can't... well... I know how I *can*!
...then why bother with this DRM crap at all? It would be a breeze to convert your tracks into normal mp3s (although double-compressed) using your favorite ripper.
I would HAPPILY fork over my money to anyone who would be willing to sell me digital music that has the same versatility and sound quality that I can get from a normal, boring, store-bought CD. No problems transferring THOSE to personal players!
from my blog:
Tonight I read about a new online music service called "BuyMusic.Com" for the first time. It is billed as a "iTunes for PC users" and this is a conspicuously empty niche in the music business at the moment. I've looked at other services such as Pressplay and MusicNet, but so far they have all sucked in terms of sound quality, value and ridiculous limitations on what you can do with the music that you legitimately purchase. Is BuyMusic any better? Let's find out.
I found the link on the front page of Google news. It was attributed to an article from TechTV.com which comes off as both a commercial for the new service and a fairly harsh dig at Apple and iTunes. They make the point that the tracks are slightly less expensive at BuyMusic ($.79 as opposed to $.99) and the obvious problem that only people who own Macs are currently capable of accessing iTunes. They also make a big deal about the service's music catalog which stands at around 300,000 tracks.
So I go to the BuyMusic site. The home page is fairly well designed, with top 100 singles and top album listings front and center. At first glance the selection is about what I would expect - Norah Jones is here, as well as Justin Timberlake, Shania Twain and 50 Cent. Okay, so it's not my favorite music but this is what sells so I can't blame them for putting it up front. The real test will come when I try to find some of my favorite music - in other words, something a music fan (as opposed to a 12 year old girl) might actually want to buy.
There are some ads on the page, but nothing too intrusive. One is for Windows Media Player 9, which is interesting because it contains an implementation of Microsoft's latest Digital Rights Management technology. WMP9 is also notable for its very open-ended End User License Agreement (EULA) which means basically that if you install this software then you also give Microsoft the legal right to download and install updates to your computer at any time and without asking for your permission. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I just never liked the sound of that. I wonder if it is a required download to use the service. Yep.
That makes the other ad somewhat ironic - it is for a Nomad 20GB MP3 Jukebox. Ironic because regular MP3s don't have any DRM built in and a good DRM system would probably prevent the user from transferring legitimately purchased music onto the player. I have yet to find out exactly what format of music this service is actually selling... Are they MP3s or Microsoft Media Player files or some other proprietary format like the one that Apple is using? Time to forge on and find out...
So I begin to look around the page for the catalog navigation buttons. Off to the left is a list of genres... Looking down the list I notice that although there is a separate category for "Blues" there is no category at all for "Dance Music." Weh oh. Not a good sign.
So I click on Pop/Rock which I figure is the closest thing to dance music they have listed here. Although it lists twenty-something variations on Pop/Rock such as "Teen Pop" and "Experimental Rock" there is still no indication of dance music. Scrolling down the page I do find an album I like however - John Mayer's "Room for Squares." The album price is listed as $12.69. Not too bad, I tell myself.
Clicking onto the album info page I encounter my first harsh truth about BuyMusic: They don't have everything that's listed in their catalog. For example, even though the album price was given as $12.69, a note on the album's page says "For Sale as Individual Tracks Only." Furthermore, only four of the twelve tracks can be downloaded, for $.99 each. The first single
try inserting a plugin during playback and you'll see one important advantage that nuendo and cubase have over cep. there are lots of other differences but that's the one that bugs me most about cool edit - having to constantly stop the playback to make changes is agony when mixing.
Sure. How are the millions of consumers supposed to reform laws that were bought and paid for by huge media company lobbies?
Apparently expressing your opinion in the form of civil disobedience isn't enough. Apparently thousands and thousands of calls, faxes and letters to congressmen aren't enough either. Apparently lawsuits that go to the supreme court aren't enough either.
The IP laws are unjust. People with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo are allowed to railroad laws through congress with little or no public commentary. They should be ignored even by people who are otherwise law-abiding citizens. When the law fails us sometimes all we have is subversion.
He did seem, in fact, to be saying exactly that. And it made perfect sense. Stupid people didn't look closely enough to see that they were buying a CD-R before purchase. They paid extra because it said "import" on it and they were gullible and fell for it.
Why not just go to the record store and buy the domestic version for $16? Yes, it's highway robbery but I can't believe someone (no matter how gullible) would buy a shoddy knock off for $25 just because it has an "import" sticker on it. Even if this does happen now and again that is a far cry from a widespread $300 million a year piracy problem.
In my experience only serious music fans care much about imports in any case, since it usually amounts to paying a $10 premium for one or two bonus tracks that aren't released on the domestic version.
The scary thing is that they sell well even at 'import' prices.
Where I'm from "import" CDs usually sell for between $20-30, due to the fact that they have to be imported. Are you saying that there are retailers who are selling pirated CDs at import prices, and people are buying them? That makes no sense at all.
It's much easier to walk into Bob's Illegal CDs and bust the poor Bob than some dynamically assigned IP of a poor script kiddy.
Honestly have you ever been to a retail store which deals in pirated CDs? Is this really a problem in Amerika today? If I was a retailer who had to make rent and keep customers happy I'd probably find it easier to play by the rules and sell legit stock. The ONLY place I have ever seen pirated software for open sale was on the streets on NYC. I find it hard to believe that the problem is as widespread as it is being portrayed by the RIAA.
And while I'm on the topic the notion that used CDs are a "pirate market" because the license only applies to the first sale is insane and hypocritical. If all they are is alumiminum disks (completely unconnected to the license agreement) then I should be able to copy/transmit/backup the physical media at will and there should be a mechanism for me to sell my legally purchased license. Possesion is 9/10 of the law.
Linux can't be considered a "pro" audio platform until there is a stable multitrack editor with plenty of cross compatibility and that supports 24 bit 96 khz audio. At the moment nearly all Linux audio products are capable only of consumer quality 16-bit audio even if the sound hardware supports better. And you can't expect serious musicians to migrate to a platform where they are not able to access their sample libraries or previously recorded material. WAV and SD2 file support is absolutely necessary but largely unavailable.
I think many people who answered yes to the "have you paid for music" question were confused in one of two ways: either they thought that their ISP fee pays for the music, or they are referring to music that they bought in CD/Tape/other physical form, and also have seperately downloaded to their PCs.
How is that not "paying for music"? If I bought it on CD then I own a license and NO ONE can call it stealing when I download it to listen to at work. That is a perfectly legitimate way to pay for your mp3 downloads.
Connections through PCI bus? (Score:2)
by Dr. Spork on Tuesday November 12, @03:08AM (#4649358)
(User #142693 Info)
Do I understand correctly that they just wired PCI slots from different motherboards together, instead of running the data around over ethernet (which probably would have been plugged into a PCI slot anyway)? If so, I mean, if there's nothing more to it than that, it seems like this will be a kickass way of clustering. But there must be something more to it than I realize, because if there wasn't, there wouldn't be so many ethernet-based beowulf systems.
So please explain this. I mean, I have two linux boxes in my room and each has a free PCI slot. What do I need to to to network them over directly over PCI?
I'm curious about this too... Wouldn't they have bus timing issues? There must be some extra piece of hardware involved... If that's the case isn't it basically just a new kind of NIC?
Uhhh yeah - except that case modding has absolutely no *practical* value. Zero.
except that most mods are designed to make the cooling system more efficient, and thus make the pc cooler and quieter. i have a recording studio and i'm about to switch to watercooling so i can keep the pc in the studio with sensitive microphones. i like my athlon but without extensive modding it wouldn't be practical. with the mods it looks great AND works better.
Having worked on dorm computers, the bigger problem with win2k and winxp is usually the presence of an administrator account with no password. There's a good number of exploits out in the wild that use the absence of an administrator password to take over machines, presumably for DDoS. I'm not certain, but I think that if you tell the installer there will be only one person using the win2k/xp system, it skips the part where it prompts you to set a password for administrator.
Seems like a blank admin password would be a bit of a security risk on ANY operating system. And NO you are spreading FUD when you say it skips the set password dialog. That is ludicrous. *Nix users will say ANYTHING to put down the "Evil Empire" even if they have no idea what they are talking about. Would it have killed you to try it (or look it up) before making a statement about something you're "not certain" of?
I'll say it again since someone modded down the other replies (why?? the man has a point):
On Win2k SERVER, sure. Not on professional. I installed it 2 days ago and I can definitively state that Win2k PRO (which is presumably what college students will be running most of the time) does NOT have IIS installed by default. So you may be right, but you are also irrelevant.
alex
You can work a Rubik's Cube with Legos
on
Lego Addictions
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Here are instructions on how to build a robot out of Legos that can solve all of those stupid Rubik's Cubes you have laying around your house. Fighting toys with toys: now that's elegant.
VRML always sucked. Who the heck wants to look at some aliased, low-res virtual world that contains a huge checkerboard with a floating sphere and some very lame avatars. All this at 5 frames per second inside a tiny browser window? Navigation with on-screen arrow buttons??? GIVE ME A BREAK. It was pathetic, really. I could just fire up Quake 3 and see some graphics that actually look nice. I could NEVER figure out why no one created a VRML browser based on Direct3D or OpenGL so it could run in full screen with a decent frame rate. Even if they had done that though, VRML doesn't offer support for one of the most important features of VR: multiple user worlds. A long time ago there were a couple of apps that allowed users to voice chat in a virtual world through a 3D avatar. It could have been cool but was poorly executed. No product so far has really delivered on the promise of VR in a public-friendly way.
Cmon people, use your imaginations. In say 5 or 10 years when GPUs will be significantly more powerful than they are now and 3D GUIs will be normal this will make a lot of sense. Why do we need 3D? Why do we need 2D? Lynx works just fine, right?:) We don't need it, we just want it because it looks cool and there are possibilities that haven't been fully explored yet. Imagine a 3D chat room for example. It has been done before (badly) but when it comes for real there will be a serious need for a 3D markup language that is more widely accepted than VRML is now.
Slashdot Mirror
24 bit audio file support? Standardized plugins? User interface that won't scare studio clients used to seeing Cubase and Pro Tools? Workable MIDI editing? High resolution file compatibility? Session import so I don't lose access to everything I've ever recorded?
Well to be fair WMAs are supposed to sound better at low bit rates. But basically I agree - I would prefer a higher bit rate to a smaller file size.
The DRM, called FairPlay, allows me to:
1) Have three licenses that will stay with me through an upgrade and which I can move between computers at will.
Well that's well and good... Say your hard drive crashes and you have to rebuild your Mac from scratch. What kind of special provisions are necessary so that your Mac "remembers" that you have legally purchased these files?
2) Burn it to as many CD's as I like.
Sure. That makes it exactly as good as an mp3. And I still want to know what's stopping people from ripping the audio CDs they create this way and sharing the files... If it's that easy to circumvent the DRM then why bother pissing off your customer base?
3) Place it on as many iPods as I like, as many times as I like.
Okay that's fine if you don't mind spending $300 on the modern equivalent of a Walkman. Will it still work with my $69 Expanium CD-based mp3 player?
How is this a problem, again?
I'll acknowledge that this is the most flexible DRM available today. However it is not NEARLY as flexible as the alternative - mp3's and audio CDs. To supercede a standard it is necessary to IMPROVE on that standard. Otherwise consumers have little incentive to buy in.
About the only thing I can't do--assuming I work on 3 or fewer computers--is send it to a friend over the internet. If I have more than that then Apple has provided a conveinant workaround by allowing me to rerip it to AAC from a CD.
Exactly. You know, I really don't have any problem with NOT sharing my mp3's with the world. But I would most certainly have a problem with any DRM system which will not allow me to make a mix CD for my friend (which is currently legal.) Again, if the DRM is so easy to circumvent then what is the point?
You are using madonna to justify a selection? So if I offered just madonna's Ray of Light on my own system, you would say that I had good selection, right?
Madonna was just a convenient example. The selection on both iTunes AND BuyMusic is woefully lacking artists that people really want to listen to. As a PC user I don't have access to iTunes, but I did check out BuyMusic (which boasts a 50% larger selection than iTunes) and of about 30 searches I ran MOST came up way short of what I would find in the smallest and crappiest CD store in town. No BT. No Prodigy. No Doors. No Zeppelin. No Beatles. One unknown Madonna song. No Queen. No DJ Tricky. It is just sad. How do they expect this to catch on when they insist on TELLING the customer what they want instead of GIVING the customer what they want? I realize that the problem is mostly a legal clusterfuck caused by short-sighted distribution contracts signed with the artists and their publishers, but in the end that really doesn't matter. If I want a song by Madonna I have two choices: Go to the CD store and buy it (which I often do) or get a P2P app and download it for free (which I also do.) Which I choose depends mostly on how much I think I will like the product. I have been tricked into buying bad CDs too many times to just blindly purchase a $18 CD any more. If I *know* I will like it, then I buy the CD. If these services could provide me with cheap mp3s of any song I wanted then I would have no problem at all paying between $.50 and $1.49 even if I wasn't so sure about it. It would be even better if I could access a low quality stream just to make sure.
That makes about as much sense as you judging iTunes selection based on one song by one artist.
Yes but I didn't do that. I can't really name EVERY artist they DON'T have, can I? So I provided a VERY popular artist and song to make my point.
Their selection *is* increasing. They are adding more songs daily, indie labels are comming into the fold, and unsigned artists will be able to put their work up via CDBaby. The selection, while not astounding, is decent (I've found a few things I like) and
Madonna is just one example. I, as a customer, don't really care WHY it isn't on there. I just see that it isn't, and fire up WinMX.
there are icons on each song's download page that spell out the drm limitations on that particular track.
It's sad when the BEST online music site out there only serves 3% of the computing population, STILL has proprietary DRM (even the Macheads don't seem to care) and worst of all the selection sucks! Don't believe me? Try to download "Ray of Light" by Madonna from iTunes. What the hell good is a music service that only carries a few select choons by artists that I may or may not give a damn about? I want to be able to get ANY music this way. If I can't... well... I know how I *can*!
my personal experience with BuyMusic
...then why bother with this DRM crap at all? It would be a breeze to convert your tracks into normal mp3s (although double-compressed) using your favorite ripper.
I would HAPPILY fork over my money to anyone who would be willing to sell me digital music that has the same versatility and sound quality that I can get from a normal, boring, store-bought CD. No problems transferring THOSE to personal players!
from my blog: Tonight I read about a new online music service called "BuyMusic.Com" for the first time. It is billed as a "iTunes for PC users" and this is a conspicuously empty niche in the music business at the moment. I've looked at other services such as Pressplay and MusicNet, but so far they have all sucked in terms of sound quality, value and ridiculous limitations on what you can do with the music that you legitimately purchase. Is BuyMusic any better? Let's find out. I found the link on the front page of Google news. It was attributed to an article from TechTV.com which comes off as both a commercial for the new service and a fairly harsh dig at Apple and iTunes. They make the point that the tracks are slightly less expensive at BuyMusic ($.79 as opposed to $.99) and the obvious problem that only people who own Macs are currently capable of accessing iTunes. They also make a big deal about the service's music catalog which stands at around 300,000 tracks. So I go to the BuyMusic site. The home page is fairly well designed, with top 100 singles and top album listings front and center. At first glance the selection is about what I would expect - Norah Jones is here, as well as Justin Timberlake, Shania Twain and 50 Cent. Okay, so it's not my favorite music but this is what sells so I can't blame them for putting it up front. The real test will come when I try to find some of my favorite music - in other words, something a music fan (as opposed to a 12 year old girl) might actually want to buy. There are some ads on the page, but nothing too intrusive. One is for Windows Media Player 9, which is interesting because it contains an implementation of Microsoft's latest Digital Rights Management technology. WMP9 is also notable for its very open-ended End User License Agreement (EULA) which means basically that if you install this software then you also give Microsoft the legal right to download and install updates to your computer at any time and without asking for your permission. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I just never liked the sound of that. I wonder if it is a required download to use the service. Yep. That makes the other ad somewhat ironic - it is for a Nomad 20GB MP3 Jukebox. Ironic because regular MP3s don't have any DRM built in and a good DRM system would probably prevent the user from transferring legitimately purchased music onto the player. I have yet to find out exactly what format of music this service is actually selling... Are they MP3s or Microsoft Media Player files or some other proprietary format like the one that Apple is using? Time to forge on and find out... So I begin to look around the page for the catalog navigation buttons. Off to the left is a list of genres... Looking down the list I notice that although there is a separate category for "Blues" there is no category at all for "Dance Music." Weh oh. Not a good sign. So I click on Pop/Rock which I figure is the closest thing to dance music they have listed here. Although it lists twenty-something variations on Pop/Rock such as "Teen Pop" and "Experimental Rock" there is still no indication of dance music. Scrolling down the page I do find an album I like however - John Mayer's "Room for Squares." The album price is listed as $12.69. Not too bad, I tell myself. Clicking onto the album info page I encounter my first harsh truth about BuyMusic: They don't have everything that's listed in their catalog. For example, even though the album price was given as $12.69, a note on the album's page says "For Sale as Individual Tracks Only." Furthermore, only four of the twelve tracks can be downloaded, for $.99 each. The first single
try inserting a plugin during playback and you'll see one important advantage that nuendo and cubase have over cep. there are lots of other differences but that's the one that bugs me most about cool edit - having to constantly stop the playback to make changes is agony when mixing.
Don't circumvent the law, reform it.
Sure. How are the millions of consumers supposed to reform laws that were bought and paid for by huge media company lobbies?
Apparently expressing your opinion in the form of civil disobedience isn't enough. Apparently thousands and thousands of calls, faxes and letters to congressmen aren't enough either. Apparently lawsuits that go to the supreme court aren't enough either.
The IP laws are unjust. People with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo are allowed to railroad laws through congress with little or no public commentary. They should be ignored even by people who are otherwise law-abiding citizens. When the law fails us sometimes all we have is subversion.
He did seem, in fact, to be saying exactly that. And it made perfect sense. Stupid people didn't look closely enough to see that they were buying a CD-R before purchase. They paid extra because it said "import" on it and they were gullible and fell for it.
Why not just go to the record store and buy the domestic version for $16? Yes, it's highway robbery but I can't believe someone (no matter how gullible) would buy a shoddy knock off for $25 just because it has an "import" sticker on it. Even if this does happen now and again that is a far cry from a widespread $300 million a year piracy problem.
In my experience only serious music fans care much about imports in any case, since it usually amounts to paying a $10 premium for one or two bonus tracks that aren't released on the domestic version.
alex
The scary thing is that they sell well even at 'import' prices.
Where I'm from "import" CDs usually sell for between $20-30, due to the fact that they have to be imported. Are you saying that there are retailers who are selling pirated CDs at import prices, and people are buying them? That makes no sense at all.
alex
It's much easier to walk into Bob's Illegal CDs and bust the poor Bob than some dynamically assigned IP of a poor script kiddy.
Honestly have you ever been to a retail store which deals in pirated CDs? Is this really a problem in Amerika today? If I was a retailer who had to make rent and keep customers happy I'd probably find it easier to play by the rules and sell legit stock. The ONLY place I have ever seen pirated software for open sale was on the streets on NYC. I find it hard to believe that the problem is as widespread as it is being portrayed by the RIAA.
And while I'm on the topic the notion that used CDs are a "pirate market" because the license only applies to the first sale is insane and hypocritical. If all they are is alumiminum disks (completely unconnected to the license agreement) then I should be able to copy/transmit/backup the physical media at will and there should be a mechanism for me to sell my legally purchased license. Possesion is 9/10 of the law.
alex
Linux can't be considered a "pro" audio platform until there is a stable multitrack editor with plenty of cross compatibility and that supports 24 bit 96 khz audio. At the moment nearly all Linux audio products are capable only of consumer quality 16-bit audio even if the sound hardware supports better. And you can't expect serious musicians to migrate to a platform where they are not able to access their sample libraries or previously recorded material. WAV and SD2 file support is absolutely necessary but largely unavailable.
alex
I think many people who answered yes to the "have you paid for music" question were confused in one of two ways: either they thought that their ISP fee pays for the music, or they are referring to music that they bought in CD/Tape/other physical form, and also have seperately downloaded to their PCs.
How is that not "paying for music"? If I bought it on CD then I own a license and NO ONE can call it stealing when I download it to listen to at work. That is a perfectly legitimate way to pay for your mp3 downloads.
alex
mastering on headphones is not advisable... those are good 'phones though. i have a pair myself.
alex
Connections through PCI bus? (Score:2) by Dr. Spork on Tuesday November 12, @03:08AM (#4649358) (User #142693 Info) Do I understand correctly that they just wired PCI slots from different motherboards together, instead of running the data around over ethernet (which probably would have been plugged into a PCI slot anyway)? If so, I mean, if there's nothing more to it than that, it seems like this will be a kickass way of clustering. But there must be something more to it than I realize, because if there wasn't, there wouldn't be so many ethernet-based beowulf systems. So please explain this. I mean, I have two linux boxes in my room and each has a free PCI slot. What do I need to to to network them over directly over PCI?
I'm curious about this too... Wouldn't they have bus timing issues? There must be some extra piece of hardware involved... If that's the case isn't it basically just a new kind of NIC?
alex
Uhhh yeah - except that case modding has absolutely no *practical* value. Zero.
except that most mods are designed to make the cooling system more efficient, and thus make the pc cooler and quieter. i have a recording studio and i'm about to switch to watercooling so i can keep the pc in the studio with sensitive microphones. i like my athlon but without extensive modding it wouldn't be practical. with the mods it looks great AND works better.
alex
Maybe we'll end up with motorola cpus. or VIA... aren't they still freelance?
Having worked on dorm computers, the bigger problem with win2k and winxp is usually the presence of an administrator account with no password. There's a good number of exploits out in the wild that use the absence of an administrator password to take over machines, presumably for DDoS. I'm not certain, but I think that if you tell the installer there will be only one person using the win2k/xp system, it skips the part where it prompts you to set a password for administrator.
Seems like a blank admin password would be a bit of a security risk on ANY operating system. And NO you are spreading FUD when you say it skips the set password dialog. That is ludicrous. *Nix users will say ANYTHING to put down the "Evil Empire" even if they have no idea what they are talking about. Would it have killed you to try it (or look it up) before making a statement about something you're "not certain" of?
alex
I'll say it again since someone modded down the other replies (why?? the man has a point):
On Win2k SERVER, sure. Not on professional. I installed it 2 days ago and I can definitively state that Win2k PRO (which is presumably what college students will be running most of the time) does NOT have IIS installed by default. So you may be right, but you are also irrelevant.
alex
Here are instructions on how to build a robot out of Legos that can solve all of those stupid Rubik's Cubes you have laying around your house. Fighting toys with toys: now that's elegant.
Well, the VRML-browser I used the most - VRWeb - used OpenGL.
And did you use it to browse any really cool-looking VRML sites with a reasonable amount of functionality?
alex
So what happened to VRML [web3d.org]?
VRML always sucked. Who the heck wants to look at some aliased, low-res virtual world that contains a huge checkerboard with a floating sphere and some very lame avatars. All this at 5 frames per second inside a tiny browser window? Navigation with on-screen arrow buttons??? GIVE ME A BREAK. It was pathetic, really. I could just fire up Quake 3 and see some graphics that actually look nice. I could NEVER figure out why no one created a VRML browser based on Direct3D or OpenGL so it could run in full screen with a decent frame rate. Even if they had done that though, VRML doesn't offer support for one of the most important features of VR: multiple user worlds. A long time ago there were a couple of apps that allowed users to voice chat in a virtual world through a 3D avatar. It could have been cool but was poorly executed. No product so far has really delivered on the promise of VR in a public-friendly way.
alex
Cmon people, use your imaginations. In say 5 or 10 years when GPUs will be significantly more powerful than they are now and 3D GUIs will be normal this will make a lot of sense. Why do we need 3D? Why do we need 2D? Lynx works just fine, right? :) We don't need it, we just want it because it looks cool and there are possibilities that haven't been fully explored yet. Imagine a 3D chat room for example. It has been done before (badly) but when it comes for real there will be a serious need for a 3D markup language that is more widely accepted than VRML is now.
alex