Hear, hear! Where's my mod points when I need them? This one deserves a better score than the "but why" just above.
My GF/partner of one year is a sound art student at RMIT in Melbourne, Down Under; I've learned heaps through going to concerts with her, discovered artists such as Darrin Verhagen, Philip Samartzis and more. It can really challenge your senses and make you experience sound in a totally different fashion.
Although, let it be said, most of my office mates think I'm slightly mad for listening to it - I do pretty much have to confine the experience to my Grado Labs SR325s; they find my listening to Pet Shop Boys less disturbing [yep, I'm a PSB fan]. As if their jazz is any better! No offense to jazz fans intended, the sole purpose is to highlight that we all got different tastes but what is considered "accepted" is often a bit skewed.
But I want my F1 2002 to run in 60FPS at 1600x1200 resolution with all features on! At the moment I can only do this with full screen AA turned off; I want it all goddammit.
My 1.7ghz AMD CPU, 512 MB CAS2 RAM and GF3TI500 is obviously not the go anymore. So bring on the faster CPUs and the new graphics cards. I want it all, and I want it now.
Doesn't matter if I am, or if I am not; Pet Shop Boys still make excellent music in my ears, and they have some pretty fab special edition releases that make collecting their stuff good fun.
Ah, almost forgot. I also love George Michael's music. Firstly because it's good, secondly because it's like a gigantic "up yours" to the all too populous narrow-minded people of this world.
I must be a bit anal about sound quality and find even 128kb/s a bit lacking - the Grado LabsSR325s I have at work are almost a bit too for my own good in this respect. So I'm not too much into music piracy and do often have gigs left of my 3GB monthly ADSL quota.
However, CDs copied to the Media Player using the highest quality setting are pretty darned good - I can't discern any difference in quality.
If they provide say 192kb/s WMA files, I'd be inclined to buying music if I could really use it for all my personal uses; burn to CD, copy to my work and home PCs. And of course if, I could actually find something interesting to buy! (I find most of the 'run of the mill music' being published these days more annoying than anything).
The price must be right though, considerably less than for real CDs. Even though I don't really know where to put my 400+ CD collection anymore, I still like getting the physical product. E.g., I have a very nice collection of Pet Shop Boys, Faithless, Depeche Mode and a few other favourite artists; there's something to be said about the physical product...
I thought of that a bit too late, and I'd still like to keep my main address because I like it so much.
So I signed up with http://bluebottle.com/ , an excellent [pay] service for filtering mail. Whenever a non-approved sender gets on the line, the service sends an email back to them that they have to reply to in order to get "approved". Once approved they come straight into my inbox. This can be coupled with block and approved lists you can set up a priori.
I do find myself spending some time to review the "pending approval" list for automated mails that I want to get through, but the main thing is that I don't get any more spams in my inbox.
To stem the tide a bit I'm using my hotmail address exclusively now when signing up for anything new. That one's got from 50 to 100 "bulk emails" at any one time; I guess a major reason might be that I've registered a few domains with that as the technical contact email.
It will be interesting to see if the US are actually able to extradite a Brit for having commited cyber crimes. Wouldn't the penalties be a fair bit harsher over the pond than in Europe?
My dad was a computer consultant / salesman back then, and he used to bring back Computer World --- in addition to various computers I'd have a go at. The ZX Spectrum [ah the rubber keys], the Amstrad, the PET, Acorn, and what have you - I got to fiddle a bit with them all.
Being a Norwegian, at age 8 I didn't know enough English to fully understand the articles, but I was taken enough by computers [read: obsessed] to keep flicking the pages. I absolutely loved reading about them, in the good old days when everything was brand new.
By the time we started our English classes in grade four I already knew enough to make them a complete bore. But that was about the time I got my first Vic 20 - after saving all my pocket money for a just about year, so that was ok.
I didn't know some 18 years after that I'd be making much more money than that in a _day_ [that was being a ColdFusion contractor in good old 2001] - but I can sure remember the joy of typing in Basic programs from the various magazine listings. And the tape recorder wasn't even available for another 3 or 4 months!
In this context it seems obligatory to note down the following: Vic20 -> C64 -> Amiga 500 -> Amiga 2000 + Motorola 030 and SCSI HD update -> Amiga 3000 then finally getting onto the PC bandwagon.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear, hear! Where's my mod points when I need them? This one deserves a better score than the "but why" just above.
My GF/partner of one year is a sound art student at RMIT in Melbourne, Down Under; I've learned heaps through going to concerts with her, discovered artists such as Darrin Verhagen, Philip Samartzis and more. It can really challenge your senses and make you experience sound in a totally different fashion.
Although, let it be said, most of my office mates think I'm slightly mad for listening to it - I do pretty much have to confine the experience to my Grado Labs SR325s; they find my listening to Pet Shop Boys less disturbing [yep, I'm a PSB fan]. As if their jazz is any better! No offense to jazz fans intended, the sole purpose is to highlight that we all got different tastes but what is considered "accepted" is often a bit skewed.
Cheers.
But I want my F1 2002 to run in 60FPS at 1600x1200 resolution with all features on! At the moment I can only do this with full screen AA turned off; I want it all goddammit.
My 1.7ghz AMD CPU, 512 MB CAS2 RAM and GF3TI500 is obviously not the go anymore. So bring on the faster CPUs and the new graphics cards. I want it all, and I want it now.
[Slightly, but not fully, tounge-in-cheek]
> You are gay aren't you?
I hate those kind of bullshit statements.
Doesn't matter if I am, or if I am not; Pet Shop Boys still make excellent music in my ears, and they have some pretty fab special edition releases that make collecting their stuff good fun.
Ah, almost forgot. I also love George Michael's music. Firstly because it's good, secondly because it's like a gigantic "up yours" to the all too populous narrow-minded people of this world.
Cheers.
I must be a bit anal about sound quality and find even 128kb/s a bit lacking - the Grado Labs SR325s I have at work are almost a bit too for my own good in this respect. So I'm not too much into music piracy and do often have gigs left of my 3GB monthly ADSL quota.
However, CDs copied to the Media Player using the highest quality setting are pretty darned good - I can't discern any difference in quality.
If they provide say 192kb/s WMA files, I'd be inclined to buying music if I could really use it for all my personal uses; burn to CD, copy to my work and home PCs. And of course if, I could actually find something interesting to buy! (I find most of the 'run of the mill music' being published these days more annoying than anything).
The price must be right though, considerably less than for real CDs. Even though I don't really know where to put my 400+ CD collection anymore, I still like getting the physical product. E.g., I have a very nice collection of Pet Shop Boys, Faithless, Depeche Mode and a few other favourite artists; there's something to be said about the physical product...
I thought of that a bit too late, and I'd still like to keep my main address because I like it so much.
So I signed up with http://bluebottle.com/ , an excellent [pay] service for filtering mail. Whenever a non-approved sender gets on the line, the service sends an email back to them that they have to reply to in order to get "approved". Once approved they come straight into my inbox. This can be coupled with block and approved lists you can set up a priori.
I do find myself spending some time to review the "pending approval" list for automated mails that I want to get through, but the main thing is that I don't get any more spams in my inbox.
To stem the tide a bit I'm using my hotmail address exclusively now when signing up for anything new. That one's got from 50 to 100 "bulk emails" at any one time; I guess a major reason might be that I've registered a few domains with that as the technical contact email.
Hate them spammers....
It will be interesting to see if the US are actually able to extradite a Brit for having commited cyber crimes. Wouldn't the penalties be a fair bit harsher over the pond than in Europe?
Maybe it's a feature? Automatically protected against the ./ effect - if accessed by a very large number of users in short span of time, return a 404.
Or just slashdotted already? Gee, that was quick.
This makes me very nostalgic.
My dad was a computer consultant / salesman back then, and he used to bring back Computer World --- in addition to various computers I'd have a go at. The ZX Spectrum [ah the rubber keys], the Amstrad, the PET, Acorn, and what have you - I got to fiddle a bit with them all.
Being a Norwegian, at age 8 I didn't know enough English to fully understand the articles, but I was taken enough by computers [read: obsessed] to keep flicking the pages. I absolutely loved reading about them, in the good old days when everything was brand new.
By the time we started our English classes in grade four I already knew enough to make them a complete bore. But that was about the time I got my first Vic 20 - after saving all my pocket money for a just about year, so that was ok.
I didn't know some 18 years after that I'd be making much more money than that in a _day_ [that was being a ColdFusion contractor in good old 2001] - but I can sure remember the joy of typing in Basic programs from the various magazine listings. And the tape recorder wasn't even available for another 3 or 4 months!
In this context it seems obligatory to note down the following: Vic20 -> C64 -> Amiga 500 -> Amiga 2000 + Motorola 030 and SCSI HD update -> Amiga 3000 then finally getting onto the PC bandwagon.
Sniff....