I think it's also true that the sheer complexity of the code means that it may indeed be true that performance tuning the code just wouldn't be economically viable. I imagine most software companies would rather keep their talent working on potentially money-making projects, i.e. new products which can be sold at a profit. During production they tune the code just enough to get it working on the minimum hardware spec and then let it go into the wild. Anything thereafter is released as a bug fix.
Another great media which is still available in the used market is open reel tape. For truly stunning recordings which will blow digital off the map, try some of the 7 1/2 ips Deccas, Mercurys and other fine labels.
Maybe they can spare Keef so we can see how he'd fare against newkewlar attack. I'm guessing it would take about ten times the radiation poisoning to do him in, and even then he'd probably consider it a new way to get high. I mean, he snorted his own dad for Chrissakes!
Dude, are you the one who comes up with all of those lolcats texts?
As for why the first post always can has funny, I guess it's because it's good to kick things off with a bit of humour before the discussion descends into intellectual one-upmanship by the usual bunch of sexually-frustrated *nix and Mac geeks.
Indeed, in a way the record companies are biting the hand that feeds them. The radio station has licensed the music and wants the most number of listeners so that they can charge as much as possible for advertising time. If the companies supplying music are discouraging listening in this way, then radio station profits go down and the music gets less air time when the stations can't afford to license the music. And artists that record companies want to manufacture and promote get less listers.
I managed to, erm, "sell" a really nice house three times in the last six months. Of course in my case I didn't own the property and I did it all through a series of shell companies in the Cayman Islands, but, you know, the principle is the same...
It is very hard to get around the various music copyright groups because no matter what music you listen too, they have been given control over it.
It may be that eventually artists start signing up under different "collection agencies" than the RIAA when it becomes clear that they do more to hurt potential sales than help.
It is true that the RIAA has the short and curlies of the radio, major Internet and other distribution networks and means. But, just as in nature when a group of animals over-grazes their ground their numbers downsize, we'll see the **AA guys rightsize.
At the end of the day though, the weakest link will always be the humans in the chain. Indeed the technology to fight the baddies is there, with patches and tools to thwart the attacks, but if the admins and/or users of Linux systems are slack or lazy then all that technology becomes useless.
Many thanks for the links, I'll check those groups out. Actually I didn't mean to say that *all* heavy metal groups operating today are as I described, simply that the few groups making decent hard rock are being ignored by the larger record companies. And these groups are a case in point, which is very sad.
I'm a big fan of the likes of Nightwish, who are quite popular in the northern European states, but not promoted much outside of the Netherlands as far as I can tell. And the current crop of kids has been so thoroughly brainwashed by the media conglomerates to respond to the modern versions of most kinds of music.
It has to be remembered that most criminals are criminals because they ain't too bright. And they often ain't too nice to begin with, and it's this sort of stupidity and arrogance which will sink the stupidest of the criminal element. Just think, if these guys had a real brain, they'd not be criminals for the most part.
No shit, Sherlock! For the past 10-15 years, the record companies have been concentrating on quick-hit novelty hits such as the Flaming Lips (that horrible, amateurish "Peaches" song and the like). Virtuosity in musical performances and songwriting has been virtually eliminated, which is a major factor in getting people to connect emotionally to music. The huge success of Nirvana and the grunge movement, with the punk movement behind that, provided the impetus for the record companies to eschew with expensive talented musicians and take on any crap acts who can pump out a quick hit for the bean counters. Cheap, disposable music concocted of samples and computer-generated blips and bloops, with minimal human interaction with the actual creation of the music.
Heavy metal has lost any sort of melodic element and is now just a brutal assault with guitar-like sounds which for all we know might have been entirely generated by sampler (as Marylin Manson did with his Beautiful People song) and with not guitar virtuosity in sight (please somebody give me a challenging guitar solo - PLEASE!!).
Add to all of this the current propensity of the record companies to compress the music to the point of unlistenability and you have a recipe for disaster. Heart came out with a really good album a couple of years ago which was a real return to their awesome roots but was torpedoed by the Ultramaximiser applied to the final product. I couldn't listen for more than a few seconds before my ears started bleeding. You know, it's interesting that when I mention that I come on here and mention the superiority of analog sound on vinyl records the first thing people point out is the supposed greater dynamic range of digital. Yet if that is indeed the case, you'd be hard pressed to prove that with most modern pop recordings.
You have hit the nail on the head: if Microsoft's product is truly better, it would be obvious. Their need to devote a whole web site to discrediting the open sauce/Linux alternative should have the opposite effect on IT decision makers: They'll start wondering if maybe there is some real benefit to Linux if MS is so scared of it.
"Them"... the chosen ones who command the black helicopters and pink Humvees. Oh and Haliburton and the entire oil industry. Not to mention the worst of them: The International Tinfoil Hat Manufacturers Association.
But really, they should almost have a permanent ban on perpetual motion machine stories. That may be one instance in which free speech can be rightly squashed.
Sorry, but it must be pointed out that fun tales like that of the ark in the Old Testament were simply stories nicked from the Babylonians by the Hebrews. In fact a lot of the Old Testament is just repackaged tales from many different sources kind of patched together with real events, but none verifiable or particularly reliable.
Do we really need *another* flipping video site dishing out the same bloody videos of kids decking out on skateboards, transportation disasters, animals doing unintentionally cute things, lame attempts at humour, underage bimbos trying to shake their collective booties to eminem songs, video mashups between the 300 trailer and The Simpsons Movie trailer, and annoying thirteen year old kids playing guitar way better than I'd ever be if I lived to be 200.
Sorry, I can get all that now, and those same videos are posted on at least a hundred other sites. I say file this idea under "Redundant, redundant, redundant". And if there's one thing I really, really, really can't stand, hate, and loath, not to mention dislike intensely, is redundancy.
and/or computers. Large corporations are constantly turning over their old systems on regular schedules, but many go to the knackers'. Instead, just send them to areas in which there is a greater need. There you go: machines for the cost of shipping.
You raise some very good points. And in the same way the entertainment industry has forsaken the very thing which made them so much wealth: their customers.
I'm really just stunned that the industry has taken such a wrong tack on the piracy issue after *years* of obvious wrong-headedness. I really believe that most of the head honchos of the major conglomerates are utterly technologically clueless and out of touch with the world online. They were probably totally baffled by the infamous "Series of Tubes" speech;-)
As somebody once said, most people don't actually like music, but they do like the way it sounds. This means that they're not into actually *listening* to the music, but just want that pleasant noise buzzing on their iPod as they work or oozing out of the radio while they iron or summat.
It's also helpful in this debate about the decline of music in the retail sector that music itself is facing stiff competition from DVDs (mum and dad didn't buy that cheesy plastic 5.1 surround sound home theatre in a box kit to sit around and gather dust) and of course video games, as well as the internet (chatting, online socialising til all hours, etc.).
Yes, I do believe that the businesses they surveyed asked for many of the new features in Vista, but I don't think they were bargaining for it to cause this much hassle. It's very likely that the reset to zero they did a couple of years back when the whole dot net thing wasn't working out caused much of the munging of current apps and all.
What I do is make sure that a legitimate license has been paid for Win XP Pro and then use my downloaded XP Pro corporate which requires no activation. The version I have is still fully updating with no problems.
The same will happen for Vista if any of my clients goes against my recommendations and buys it. I found a version of Ultimate that requires no registration and will be using it with those clients who buy Ultimate.
And you're right: most people don't sit around listening to oscilloscopes, they listen to music.
What confuses the issue is that people automatically equate vinyl with analog. Indeed, vinyl is the final method of publishing the master source, but if the master source is ultimately digital, it will only be as good as the digital source.
Vinyl which is produced from all-analog sources with no digital in the chain, when done well, is a stunning experience. An example: Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall. Recorded in 1959, it will send shivers up your spine if you have a good, clean copy and a decent turntable. Also, try some of the audiophile vinyl produced around that time by Command Records and others. Stunning in their clarity and dynamics.
You will also note that audio magazines in the 70's were obsessed with lab measurements of the equipment they tested and rarely gave meaningful listening impressions. This is the environment in which the CD was born and because technically it appeared "perfect", it was taken for granted that it was superior. But it wasn't. Nowadays those magazines give more listening impressions than specs and measurements for a very good reason.
Oh, and to anyone who complains about the supposed noisiness of vinyl: First - have you cleaned your vinyl properly? Second - I suppose you go to concerts and berate everyone around you for not making it completely silent just like the CD, eh? Cheers
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's also true that the sheer complexity of the code means that it may indeed be true that performance tuning the code just wouldn't be economically viable. I imagine most software companies would rather keep their talent working on potentially money-making projects, i.e. new products which can be sold at a profit. During production they tune the code just enough to get it working on the minimum hardware spec and then let it go into the wild. Anything thereafter is released as a bug fix.
Another great media which is still available in the used market is open reel tape. For truly stunning recordings which will blow digital off the map, try some of the 7 1/2 ips Deccas, Mercurys and other fine labels.
Maybe they can spare Keef so we can see how he'd fare against newkewlar attack. I'm guessing it would take about ten times the radiation poisoning to do him in, and even then he'd probably consider it a new way to get high. I mean, he snorted his own dad for Chrissakes!
As for why the first post always can has funny, I guess it's because it's good to kick things off with a bit of humour before the discussion descends into intellectual one-upmanship by the usual bunch of sexually-frustrated *nix and Mac geeks.
Cheers
Indeed, in a way the record companies are biting the hand that feeds them. The radio station has licensed the music and wants the most number of listeners so that they can charge as much as possible for advertising time. If the companies supplying music are discouraging listening in this way, then radio station profits go down and the music gets less air time when the stations can't afford to license the music. And artists that record companies want to manufacture and promote get less listers.
Cheers
I managed to, erm, "sell" a really nice house three times in the last six months. Of course in my case I didn't own the property and I did it all through a series of shell companies in the Cayman Islands, but, you know, the principle is the same...
It may be that eventually artists start signing up under different "collection agencies" than the RIAA when it becomes clear that they do more to hurt potential sales than help.
It is true that the RIAA has the short and curlies of the radio, major Internet and other distribution networks and means. But, just as in nature when a group of animals over-grazes their ground their numbers downsize, we'll see the **AA guys rightsize.
At the end of the day though, the weakest link will always be the humans in the chain. Indeed the technology to fight the baddies is there, with patches and tools to thwart the attacks, but if the admins and/or users of Linux systems are slack or lazy then all that technology becomes useless.
Cheers
Where it will end up five minutes after the first person pays for it.
Oh, and then I should probably think about buying an iPhone...
Many thanks for the links, I'll check those groups out. Actually I didn't mean to say that *all* heavy metal groups operating today are as I described, simply that the few groups making decent hard rock are being ignored by the larger record companies. And these groups are a case in point, which is very sad.
I'm a big fan of the likes of Nightwish, who are quite popular in the northern European states, but not promoted much outside of the Netherlands as far as I can tell. And the current crop of kids has been so thoroughly brainwashed by the media conglomerates to respond to the modern versions of most kinds of music.
Cheers
It has to be remembered that most criminals are criminals because they ain't too bright. And they often ain't too nice to begin with, and it's this sort of stupidity and arrogance which will sink the stupidest of the criminal element. Just think, if these guys had a real brain, they'd not be criminals for the most part.
Cheers
No shit, Sherlock! For the past 10-15 years, the record companies have been concentrating on quick-hit novelty hits such as the Flaming Lips (that horrible, amateurish "Peaches" song and the like). Virtuosity in musical performances and songwriting has been virtually eliminated, which is a major factor in getting people to connect emotionally to music. The huge success of Nirvana and the grunge movement, with the punk movement behind that, provided the impetus for the record companies to eschew with expensive talented musicians and take on any crap acts who can pump out a quick hit for the bean counters. Cheap, disposable music concocted of samples and computer-generated blips and bloops, with minimal human interaction with the actual creation of the music.
Heavy metal has lost any sort of melodic element and is now just a brutal assault with guitar-like sounds which for all we know might have been entirely generated by sampler (as Marylin Manson did with his Beautiful People song) and with not guitar virtuosity in sight (please somebody give me a challenging guitar solo - PLEASE!!).
Add to all of this the current propensity of the record companies to compress the music to the point of unlistenability and you have a recipe for disaster. Heart came out with a really good album a couple of years ago which was a real return to their awesome roots but was torpedoed by the Ultramaximiser applied to the final product. I couldn't listen for more than a few seconds before my ears started bleeding. You know, it's interesting that when I mention that I come on here and mention the superiority of analog sound on vinyl records the first thing people point out is the supposed greater dynamic range of digital. Yet if that is indeed the case, you'd be hard pressed to prove that with most modern pop recordings.
Cheers
You have hit the nail on the head: if Microsoft's product is truly better, it would be obvious. Their need to devote a whole web site to discrediting the open sauce/Linux alternative should have the opposite effect on IT decision makers: They'll start wondering if maybe there is some real benefit to Linux if MS is so scared of it.
"Them"... the chosen ones who command the black helicopters and pink Humvees. Oh and Haliburton and the entire oil industry. Not to mention the worst of them: The International Tinfoil Hat Manufacturers Association.
Mumblemumblemumblemumble
Sorry, I'm skeptical of anything which doesn't help me download pr0n faster from the innertubes.
But really, they should almost have a permanent ban on perpetual motion machine stories. That may be one instance in which free speech can be rightly squashed.
Cheers
Sorry, but it must be pointed out that fun tales like that of the ark in the Old Testament were simply stories nicked from the Babylonians by the Hebrews. In fact a lot of the Old Testament is just repackaged tales from many different sources kind of patched together with real events, but none verifiable or particularly reliable.
Cheers
Do we really need *another* flipping video site dishing out the same bloody videos of kids decking out on skateboards, transportation disasters, animals doing unintentionally cute things, lame attempts at humour, underage bimbos trying to shake their collective booties to eminem songs, video mashups between the 300 trailer and The Simpsons Movie trailer, and annoying thirteen year old kids playing guitar way better than I'd ever be if I lived to be 200.
Sorry, I can get all that now, and those same videos are posted on at least a hundred other sites. I say file this idea under "Redundant, redundant, redundant". And if there's one thing I really, really, really can't stand, hate, and loath, not to mention dislike intensely, is redundancy.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
and/or computers. Large corporations are constantly turning over their old systems on regular schedules, but many go to the knackers'. Instead, just send them to areas in which there is a greater need. There you go: machines for the cost of shipping.
You raise some very good points. And in the same way the entertainment industry has forsaken the very thing which made them so much wealth: their customers.
;-)
I'm really just stunned that the industry has taken such a wrong tack on the piracy issue after *years* of obvious wrong-headedness. I really believe that most of the head honchos of the major conglomerates are utterly technologically clueless and out of touch with the world online. They were probably totally baffled by the infamous "Series of Tubes" speech
Cheers
As somebody once said, most people don't actually like music, but they do like the way it sounds. This means that they're not into actually *listening* to the music, but just want that pleasant noise buzzing on their iPod as they work or oozing out of the radio while they iron or summat.
It's also helpful in this debate about the decline of music in the retail sector that music itself is facing stiff competition from DVDs (mum and dad didn't buy that cheesy plastic 5.1 surround sound home theatre in a box kit to sit around and gather dust) and of course video games, as well as the internet (chatting, online socialising til all hours, etc.).
Cheers
In my opinion both his teacher and parents should have been arrested for their utter failure to educate the student.
Yes, I do believe that the businesses they surveyed asked for many of the new features in Vista, but I don't think they were bargaining for it to cause this much hassle. It's very likely that the reset to zero they did a couple of years back when the whole dot net thing wasn't working out caused much of the munging of current apps and all.
What I do is make sure that a legitimate license has been paid for Win XP Pro and then use my downloaded XP Pro corporate which requires no activation. The version I have is still fully updating with no problems.
The same will happen for Vista if any of my clients goes against my recommendations and buys it. I found a version of Ultimate that requires no registration and will be using it with those clients who buy Ultimate.
Cheers
And you're right: most people don't sit around listening to oscilloscopes, they listen to music.
What confuses the issue is that people automatically equate vinyl with analog. Indeed, vinyl is the final method of publishing the master source, but if the master source is ultimately digital, it will only be as good as the digital source.
Vinyl which is produced from all-analog sources with no digital in the chain, when done well, is a stunning experience. An example: Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall. Recorded in 1959, it will send shivers up your spine if you have a good, clean copy and a decent turntable. Also, try some of the audiophile vinyl produced around that time by Command Records and others. Stunning in their clarity and dynamics.
You will also note that audio magazines in the 70's were obsessed with lab measurements of the equipment they tested and rarely gave meaningful listening impressions. This is the environment in which the CD was born and because technically it appeared "perfect", it was taken for granted that it was superior. But it wasn't. Nowadays those magazines give more listening impressions than specs and measurements for a very good reason.
Oh, and to anyone who complains about the supposed noisiness of vinyl: First - have you cleaned your vinyl properly? Second - I suppose you go to concerts and berate everyone around you for not making it completely silent just like the CD, eh?
Cheers