This is not a matter of legality, it is completely legal for Slashdot to link to this sites, but I believe it is in the moral duty and mere common decency for Slashdot to figure out some way to not fry some of these webservers.
Huh? Moral duty? It would be nice if/. would cache a page before posting a story (after requesting approval if copyrighted) and maybe including real links for future reference.
But moral obligation?
Piss off webmasters? Do they post web sites in the hope that as few people as possible see them? If that were the case, they ought to have private sections.
I bought a helicopter gunship "simulator" game back around maybe '92-3, going by the name of Thunder Hawk.
I had an i486DX-33 then, which I bought in 1991 so I think the games performance was inexcusable...
It would basically run ridiculously fast on my 33MHz 486DX, even with turbo switched off. So fast that the heli was impossible to fly and firing hellfire missles at distant targets would reach them within fractions of a second. Assuming of course, that you could survive long enough to actually fire something before a Russian Hind came in at Mach 80 to blow you away.
Thats the point where I stopped buying games and basically started just copying and swapping with friends. Boy was I glad I did that! Try any game at random and you'll usually find that it isn't worth the asking price, delete it and be glad you didn't pay for it!
Now I copy and then buy if the game is good, which I've done for many good games.
Back in '92 I bought Falcon3 which was an excellent game. Even MODEM play at 2400 was fun. Anyone remember loading Falcon3 with loadhi (?) to get the extra details? With that game I think I got lucky.
I've used IDE-SCSI convertors with IDE CDR burners.
In Unices, they work wonderfully, which is fine by me. But a friend of mine, who uses Windows mostly, bought a Sony CDRW drive, Adaptec SCSI controller and an IDE-SCSI convertor.
In my system (OpenBSD), it all works fine, but in his Windows machine, most software we tried (Latest Nero, EZCD, etc) would not find the CDRW drive. They would scan the IDE and SCSI busses, but not find any drive that they "know" it seems. With the Sony plugged in to the IDE bus, there was no problem. It's as if they can only use drive models that they are aware of, rather than falling back on a generic driver.
Burning from within WinXP's built in burning worked fine, but bloody slow to even get to the point of burning.
BTW, Yamaha's new SCSI burners are actually IDE burners with Yamaha supplied IDE-SCSI convertors.
The unit we tried is an ARC760 based unit from here.
And Modthebox checks out a cool tachometer for PC's!
I have been meaning to get my hands on some old retro voltage meter and hook it up to the parrallel port with a simple R2R DAC to use for display of CPU occupancy.
I guess I could multiplex it to display more stats onto more meters too for fun.
Could look cool, having an orange backlit glow and old meter needle flicking into the "red zone". ; )
What about enjoying that snazzy 5.1 surround sound. Isn't that impossible with headphones since there are only 2 speakers?
So certain are you, hmmmm? ; )
But we only have 2 ears!
Seriously, there are products that will take 5.1 channels and encode them into 2 channels with phase variations that our brain decodes as behind, below and above us, etc, for headphone usage.
I think the unit I listened to was a Sennheiser unit, which didn't really tickle my fancy.
I would limit my home theatre enjoyment to multiple speakers merely because the movies are made with that in mind and I doubt a "5.1 encoding into 2" box would ever give as good a surround effect.
In movies I would probably put surround effect slightly ahead of the extreme quality I would want for music listening sessions.
I have a Pioneer SX series receiver from 1978. I still use it routinely and I have only had to have it serviced once. Is there a way I can have it "evaluated," i.e., checked against specs, for a reasonable amount of money?
I've been out of the electronics game for a long time, since moving into computing.
Perhaps you might find a hobbiest in your area, perhaps through some audio electronics newsgroup or forum that could test it for you?
Reason I say that is that I doubt you'll find some company who would do it for a reasonable cost.
Music is a very subjective enjoyment. I once owned a pair a Koss headphones (a brand of headphone considered crap, though my model actually sounded pretty nice) and some of the music I enjoyed then was imprinted onto me with the way they made it sound. I then decided (when I had lots more money) to get myself some AKG headphones... which I didn't like because my music sounded different. It may have sounded technically better, but that hardly mattered to me because my music suddenly didn't sound how I had come to enjoy it. At the time I thought they sounded crap, so I bought some high end Sennheisers... same deal. ; )
So my advice to you, would be that if you're just curious about your amp, and you are not having it tested because you think it now doesn't sound very good anymore, then it might be better if you don't know the specs! If you enjoy your music with it, continue to do so. A change might be regretted and knowledge of inferior specs also. You could be putting yourself into a no-win situation where it will take many years to enjoy your favorite music again.
I always recomened HP printers, I went out and got a v40, read the reviews and found out it was shit. Returned it and bought a samsung. I didn't even notice it becouse I had my eyes fixed on HP. This printer qualitly is great so far. I wish it had Mac drivers, but someday it may.
I don't suppose it does PCL does it?
I don't know that printer, but if it does, you might be able to treat it as if it were a HP4 printer.
I have a Xerox DocuPrint P8ex (a great, cheap little unit) which didn't have Linux drivers for a long time. I just used another printer driver that was PCL (I think it was a Samsung driver actually).
You're talking about reproduction/distortion concepts that, although I could look up in a few minutes, I (almost most everyone else) doesn't understand how they interrelate to produce quality audio.
I'll try to sum up the major factors without going into extreme detailed explanations:
THD (Total Harmonic Distortion): How much the equipment distorts the signal, usually as a percentage. Naturally, lower is better here. A high end amplifier might be around 0.0001%.
SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio): The difference between signal amplitude and the noise floor (the hiss sometimes heard between songs, which is there during the songs, just hard to notice then). Usually measured in dB, you want this to be high. CD had a theoretical limit of 96dB, which was a limit etched in the hard stone of mathematics and physics of traditional design. However, smoothing done whilst still in the digital domain can break this limit. Having said that, 96dB is a fantastic figure, be happy with it if you find it, but don't settle for anything less these days. Any decent power amp should be able to have an SNR higher than 96dB, really high end amps go above 120dB.
Sometimes these two are refered together as distortion+noise.
Channel Separation: How well the equipment can prevent the signal from one channel (left and right) from imposing itself into the other channel, which reduces the stereo effect and is generally undesired.
Wow and Flutter: are measurements that show how much the speed of playback changes, and thus the pitch and resulting sound. These apply to older analog equipment like record players and tape decks. CD players use a digital FIFO (first in first out) buffer that is run at a precise speed with accurate quartz timing. However, it can be written to at alternate speeds, so as the buffer becomes too full, the CD is slowed down and as it becomes too empty the CD is sped up, assuring the listener that there are no interuptions. Because the buffer is read at quartz accurate intervals, any wow and flutter is so riduculously small, that they are almost unmeasurably irrelevant. Which is why CD player (and other digital equipment) specs either don't specify wow and flutter at all or try to make the equipment look great by stating that it is unmeasurably low (true of any digital equipment from the cheapest peice of garbage to the sound systems in your local Imax cinema).
Dynamic Range: is the difference between the softest sounds and the loudest sounds. Also measured in dB's, we also want this to be high. It means that listening to classical music for an example, you could just hear the faint noise of orchestra members flipping pages of music notation one second and then be physically assaulted the next with loud music. However, this is one thing that can be over done, with the effect of music being too loud for your enjoyment in some parts and too soft to hear in others.
The most important thing, I rarely see mentioned, is that the transducers (speakers) are by far the weakest link in an audio system. You could buy a $50 CD player with a THD of 0.001% and $100,000 speakers with a THD of 0.1%. So whether you buy a $50 CD player at 0.001% THD or a $500 CD player at 0.0001% THD, at the speakers you are still basically going to hear a THD of around 0.1%.
So the moral here is, spend about 70% of your budget on the speakers, 20% on the power amp and the remainder on everything else!
The Worlds best amplifier, coupled with the Worlds best CD player, are going to sound like crap with anything less that good speakers.
But on the other hand, the Worlds best speakers, coupled with ordinary, low end consumer level CD player and amp from Target, is going to sound MUCH MUCH better and probably not be noticed as "worse" than the "best system" by one of these "audiophile" morons in the HiFi magazines.
The second most important thing is... HEADPHONES!
Headphones are:
* Much cheaper than speakers that give the same quality. Try hundreds to thousands of TIMES cheaper. * Require much less power, thus much less amplification and thus much less THD. * Filter out ambient noise as a matter of simple design, allowing greater enjoyment of dynamic range. * Allow far greater channel separation than speakers and thus much greater stereo effect. * Allow you to turn your music up to where you enjoy it most, without the cops knocking on your door at 11pm.
Anyone who really enjoys their recorded music and knows how to enjoy it, enjoys it with headphones.
Have I forgotten any major points?
PS, when I'm talking about high end power amplifiers, I'm talking about the likes of the Pioneer M-91. Absolute legends. If you're offended because your NAD doesn't stack up, oh well.
Want to bet? Most people do not know how to interpret even the most basic specifications. When I started out in stereo equipment in the 1970's, you could go to any dealer and get handouts with product specifications on just about any product sold.
I agree 100%.
I remember seeing a $50,000 Meridian CD player that had specs nowhere near as good as a $150 Marantz.
But, people usually falling into the catagory of IGNORANT and often arrogant, buy products that are complete crap and then think they got a good deal.
I find often that if a company is selling a particular item and they suck in a particular spec or are otherwise uncompetitive in that area, they just won't advertise that spec.
The popularisation of consumer electronics has lead to lower quality in order to appease consumers who purchase receivers based on watts-per-dollar.
I've got four letters, that I'm sure you'll enjoy... P M P O. ; )
They kind of sum the situation up nicely, don't you think!
People are, essentially, stupid. Even many of the high IQ types. Because the low IQ types are stupid for obvious reasons, and the high IQ types tend to be arrogant and not fully use their IQ and are thus the worst kind of stupid. Manufacturers don't give a crap about delivering quality to consumers because consumers have a. money and b. no vision of true quality.
192kHz sounds so much better than 44.1kHz hey!?
I can understand the usage of bit depths beyond 16bit and sampling rates beyond 44.1kHz being used in digital mixing decks, where the avoidance of compounded lower significance bit errors can become apparent in the end product without those higher rates and depths, but bringing 24bit 192kHz to the typical end user is nothing more than a marketing gimick.
The situation sucks. I want a return to the days where HP made ultra high quality technical instruments, computing devices and awesome printers.
To sum up a sad situation, my recently purchased HP 48GX... was made in Indonesia.
we can see that Darwin is made up in parts from 4.4BSD Lite2 for Rhapsody, FreeBSD 3.2 and NetBSD 1.4 for Darwin/Mac OSX 10.0, then updated with FreeBSD 4.4 for OSX 10.2.
Looking at the family tree, you can see that the current versions of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, BSDI and Darwin are all 4.4BSD Lite2 based.
There will probably never be a 5.0BSD, unless Berkeley picks BSD up again (and does a lot with it), since the legacy of 4.4BSD is mostly a foundation now.
You believe what you read here, don't you. You are misinformed.
Linux has only recently reached the point where books devoted to it were justified
The first Linux book I bought (in a major "general public" book store chain), was back in the Red Hat 4.2 days.
OpenBSD is the opposite of all of these, and their financial woes are pronounced enough that this could be the mistake that finally puts them under.
What makes you think OpenBSD is funding this book?
You don't have to be an economist to see that the market just isn't there. This is why *BSD continues to falter, even as Linux's popularity explodes.
I happen to know, for a 100% fact, that OpenBSD is used by many banks and other financial entities for firewalling tasks. I know from first hand experience. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it is not widely deployed.
OpenBSD does and should exist in network perimeters and any book that helps people learn how to use it can only be better for OpenBSD and network users alike.
I do own many BSD books, BTW, including an OpenBSD book.
I'd think a book would be more likely to succeed
Somehow, I don't think the author is setting out to make the most successful book. He is setting out to make a successful OpenBSD book.
Re:IDE Raid, inexpensive but major hassle
on
IDE RAID Examined
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· Score: 2
Dude, when I started getting 12 to 20MB/sec on my IDE with Reiserfs and notail, I was ecstatic!!! Of course I'm only running a 900MHz AMD Duron, but still-!
Huh? I have been getting 25+MB/sec with 20GB Seagate UDMA Barracuda's for about the past 3 years on a P2 300.
Linux RAID-0 does of course reduce this transfer rate to less than 20MB/s. Go Linux software RAID!
(It's not my P2 300, BTW, Linux 2.2 RAID-0 did actually give me greater transfer rates, 2.4 is shite).
If he is not going to LOOK at the operating systems in question, then he is in NO position to state that he DOES NOT SEE ANY WORTHWHILE FEATURES in those operating systems.
It's called arrogance.
Of course, if you want to take it absolutely literally, then you could say that he can not see that which he does not look at. But that was not the context. If that is what he meant, then he should have said something along the lines of, "I have not looked at those, so I can't really compare or comment".
This was, by the way, an interview that shortly followed the major VM changes that were occuring within a "stable" kernel branch.
I'm glad it happened though, because my focus has shifted almost completely towards BSD based OS' (Open, Free and OSX) and I am very happy to have done so.
Is this using a Linus definition of small, or a normal definition of small?
I mostly used Linux (Debian) in the past with a little Free and OpenBSD.
After I read an interview with Linus where he was asked about the current Linux kernel versus new BSD and XP features, he said something to the effect of "I haven't really looked much at BSD or XP, but I don't see much of value there".
Which pretty much sounded to me like "I have not looked, I don't see any good".
This was during the times that the VM shamozzle was occuring and my Linux machine was becoming unstable.
This was the point where I decided that Linus was getting a bit arrogant. I am glad though, because my OpenBSD servers are very clean and stable and Theo not only sticks to his moral grounds but also has well thought out moral grounds.
Yep, I've got an old Shuttle P-II/233 mobo that can support both 1Mb and 2Mb flash chips and I use it all the time to prepare different flash bios chips for other motherboards.
I'm considering replacing the flashrom socket on the next decent mobo I find on the street with a ZIF just for the function of restoring BIOS'.
Make sure you DO NOT insert the chip backwards or it will positively get fried (I know for a fact:-( )and maybe fry the mobo as well. I've been lucky and only fried a chip once by being a homer simpson.
I've done the Homer flash procedure too and I've been in electronics since the 80's. The stuff I do at home is pretty carefree (especially at 4am). ; ) Did the sticker on that flashrom that you fried instantly blister up with the heat?! Cool! (Luckily amongst my "junk" I kept an old flashrom from a buggered board that finally came in handy.
The coolest thing I have ever seen (along these lines) is a Tantalum that was soldered in around the wrong way, which spouted a fountain of smoke and what looked like mercury bubbles.
I prefer to use "UNIFLASH" a free flash utility that'll work with ami, award, phoenix, whatever flash images.
They usually only call every year or two when some hardware goes bad.
That's the great thing with DOS. Having really only one program running, means that it can be as stable as it can be, since you're most likely doing your own memory management and dealing only with it.
I've had scripts that worked lovely for the first few hundred machines and then stumble on one critical machine because the files that should have been under C:\PROGRA~1\MSOFFI~1\ were actually under C:\PROGRA~1\MSOFFI~2\ because there was already a directory that started with MSOFFI before Office was installed.
I can't remember why, but for some reason I could not use quotes to put the full name. So I had to put an "if exist word.exe" to find which bloody directory is the correct one. I think it was because Office 97 preferences automatically (and demanded) the shorter form.
Regardless, it was a joke, the typical kind of crap that makes MS admins stumble every now and then over stuff they should not have too.
Windows 9x should NEVER have existed. Win95 should never have been released. MS should have stuck with 3.11 and then killed it and DOS when they released NT 4.0.
I can't believe we were laboured with 95, 98, 98SE and for the love of God ME. Talk about 90% marketing 1% extra features and an 9% extra bugs each time. 95 was crap, 95b was better, 98 was crap, SE an incredible hide and ME astonishingly shite.
NT was half decent. Comparatively speaking. But then, comparatively speaking, what tastes worse? Dog shit or cat shit?
Basically, an operating system is the software responsible for managing memory, cpu, storage, devices and input/output.
Exactly. Technically, DOS was an OS, but was it much of an OS?
It didn't do a whole lot of memory management, I'd say it provided hooks that helped programmers to manage the memory of their own apps. And within 640k at that. Extended Memory Management was an add on. Choose a manager from MS, Quarterdeck, Watcom (Pharlap?), etc.
Managed CPU? As in...? CPU time used for different processes? Oops, sorry, DOS was not a multitasking OS, so one process at a time please. There were task switchers like Deskview (?) if I remember correctly. But yet another add-on.
Managed storage (as in a filesystem)? Sure, it had filesystem support. But again, it was bare-bones.
Managed devices? I think the BIOS did most of that in those days. : ( DOS PNP was crap too.
I/O? Yeah, it buffered some stuff and provided some software IRQ's...
DOS was an OS, but the D was the biggest part of the whole OS. It was pretty much a free-for-all, not a whole lot of management going on anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a matter of legality, it is completely legal for Slashdot to link to this sites, but I believe it is in the moral duty and mere common decency for Slashdot to figure out some way to not fry some of these webservers.
/. would cache a page before posting a story (after requesting approval if copyrighted) and maybe including real links for future reference.
Huh? Moral duty? It would be nice if
But moral obligation?
Piss off webmasters? Do they post web sites in the hope that as few people as possible see them? If that were the case, they ought to have private sections.
I think it could be funny to hear all the teenage boys, in a cracking voice, half heartedly telling us "I'm gunna kick your ass, you pussy".
I can see them now, blushing after saying it, kinda scared, since they'd never say that to anyone in real life.
I bought a helicopter gunship "simulator" game back around maybe '92-3, going by the name of Thunder Hawk.
I had an i486DX-33 then, which I bought in 1991 so I think the games performance was inexcusable...
It would basically run ridiculously fast on my 33MHz 486DX, even with turbo switched off. So fast that the heli was impossible to fly and firing hellfire missles at distant targets would reach them within fractions of a second. Assuming of course, that you could survive long enough to actually fire something before a Russian Hind came in at Mach 80 to blow you away.
Thats the point where I stopped buying games and basically started just copying and swapping with friends. Boy was I glad I did that! Try any game at random and you'll usually find that it isn't worth the asking price, delete it and be glad you didn't pay for it!
Now I copy and then buy if the game is good, which I've done for many good games.
Back in '92 I bought Falcon3 which was an excellent game. Even MODEM play at 2400 was fun. Anyone remember loading Falcon3 with loadhi (?) to get the extra details? With that game I think I got lucky.
I've used IDE-SCSI convertors with IDE CDR burners.
In Unices, they work wonderfully, which is fine by me. But a friend of mine, who uses Windows mostly, bought a Sony CDRW drive, Adaptec SCSI controller and an IDE-SCSI convertor.
In my system (OpenBSD), it all works fine, but in his Windows machine, most software we tried (Latest Nero, EZCD, etc) would not find the CDRW drive. They would scan the IDE and SCSI busses, but not find any drive that they "know" it seems. With the Sony plugged in to the IDE bus, there was no problem. It's as if they can only use drive models that they are aware of, rather than falling back on a generic driver.
Burning from within WinXP's built in burning worked fine, but bloody slow to even get to the point of burning.
BTW, Yamaha's new SCSI burners are actually IDE burners with Yamaha supplied IDE-SCSI convertors.
The unit we tried is an ARC760 based unit from here.
I was hoping that it was a story on a proper Starcraft 2, not one of these 3D jobs.
And Modthebox checks out a cool tachometer for PC's!
I have been meaning to get my hands on some old retro voltage meter and hook it up to the parrallel port with a simple R2R DAC to use for display of CPU occupancy.
I guess I could multiplex it to display more stats onto more meters too for fun.
Could look cool, having an orange backlit glow and old meter needle flicking into the "red zone". ; )
Just when you think you couldn't burn those shared MP3s any faster, Asus comes out with a 52X Burner.
.au for about $150.
Lite-On have had a 52x burner out for weeks! I can get it here in
52x24x52.
What about enjoying that snazzy 5.1 surround sound. Isn't that impossible with headphones since there are only 2 speakers?
So certain are you, hmmmm? ; )
But we only have 2 ears!
Seriously, there are products that will take 5.1 channels and encode them into 2 channels with phase variations that our brain decodes as behind, below and above us, etc, for headphone usage.
I think the unit I listened to was a Sennheiser unit, which didn't really tickle my fancy.
I would limit my home theatre enjoyment to multiple speakers merely because the movies are made with that in mind and I doubt a "5.1 encoding into 2" box would ever give as good a surround effect.
In movies I would probably put surround effect slightly ahead of the extreme quality I would want for music listening sessions.
AC-3 and DTS don't sound that great to me anyway.
I like Beyer Dynamic DT-911's. Older and out of production I think.
If I could afford a pair, I would probably have some set of high end electrostatics.
I have a Pioneer SX series receiver from 1978. I still use it routinely and I have only had to have it serviced once. Is there a way I can have it "evaluated," i.e., checked against specs, for a reasonable amount of money?
I've been out of the electronics game for a long time, since moving into computing.
Perhaps you might find a hobbiest in your area, perhaps through some audio electronics newsgroup or forum that could test it for you?
Reason I say that is that I doubt you'll find some company who would do it for a reasonable cost.
Music is a very subjective enjoyment. I once owned a pair a Koss headphones (a brand of headphone considered crap, though my model actually sounded pretty nice) and some of the music I enjoyed then was imprinted onto me with the way they made it sound. I then decided (when I had lots more money) to get myself some AKG headphones... which I didn't like because my music sounded different. It may have sounded technically better, but that hardly mattered to me because my music suddenly didn't sound how I had come to enjoy it. At the time I thought they sounded crap, so I bought some high end Sennheisers... same deal. ; )
So my advice to you, would be that if you're just curious about your amp, and you are not having it tested because you think it now doesn't sound very good anymore, then it might be better if you don't know the specs! If you enjoy your music with it, continue to do so. A change might be regretted and knowledge of inferior specs also. You could be putting yourself into a no-win situation where it will take many years to enjoy your favorite music again.
I always recomened HP printers, I went out and got a v40, read the reviews and found out it was shit. Returned it and bought a samsung. I didn't even notice it becouse I had my eyes fixed on HP. This printer qualitly is great so far. I wish it had Mac drivers, but someday it may.
I don't suppose it does PCL does it?
I don't know that printer, but if it does, you might be able to treat it as if it were a HP4 printer.
I have a Xerox DocuPrint P8ex (a great, cheap little unit) which didn't have Linux drivers for a long time. I just used another printer driver that was PCL (I think it was a Samsung driver actually).
You're talking about reproduction/distortion concepts that, although I could look up in a few minutes, I (almost most everyone else) doesn't understand how they interrelate to produce quality audio.
I'll try to sum up the major factors without going into extreme detailed explanations:
THD (Total Harmonic Distortion): How much the equipment distorts the signal, usually as a percentage. Naturally, lower is better here. A high end amplifier might be around 0.0001%.
SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio): The difference between signal amplitude and the noise floor (the hiss sometimes heard between songs, which is there during the songs, just hard to notice then). Usually measured in dB, you want this to be high. CD had a theoretical limit of 96dB, which was a limit etched in the hard stone of mathematics and physics of traditional design. However, smoothing done whilst still in the digital domain can break this limit. Having said that, 96dB is a fantastic figure, be happy with it if you find it, but don't settle for anything less these days. Any decent power amp should be able to have an SNR higher than 96dB, really high end amps go above 120dB.
Sometimes these two are refered together as distortion+noise.
Channel Separation: How well the equipment can prevent the signal from one channel (left and right) from imposing itself into the other channel, which reduces the stereo effect and is generally undesired.
Wow and Flutter: are measurements that show how much the speed of playback changes, and thus the pitch and resulting sound. These apply to older analog equipment like record players and tape decks. CD players use a digital FIFO (first in first out) buffer that is run at a precise speed with accurate quartz timing. However, it can be written to at alternate speeds, so as the buffer becomes too full, the CD is slowed down and as it becomes too empty the CD is sped up, assuring the listener that there are no interuptions. Because the buffer is read at quartz accurate intervals, any wow and flutter is so riduculously small, that they are almost unmeasurably irrelevant. Which is why CD player (and other digital equipment) specs either don't specify wow and flutter at all or try to make the equipment look great by stating that it is unmeasurably low (true of any digital equipment from the cheapest peice of garbage to the sound systems in your local Imax cinema).
Dynamic Range: is the difference between the softest sounds and the loudest sounds. Also measured in dB's, we also want this to be high. It means that listening to classical music for an example, you could just hear the faint noise of orchestra members flipping pages of music notation one second and then be physically assaulted the next with loud music. However, this is one thing that can be over done, with the effect of music being too loud for your enjoyment in some parts and too soft to hear in others.
The most important thing, I rarely see mentioned, is that the transducers (speakers) are by far the weakest link in an audio system. You could buy a $50 CD player with a THD of 0.001% and $100,000 speakers with a THD of 0.1%. So whether you buy a $50 CD player at 0.001% THD or a $500 CD player at 0.0001% THD, at the speakers you are still basically going to hear a THD of around 0.1%.
So the moral here is, spend about 70% of your budget on the speakers, 20% on the power amp and the remainder on everything else!
The Worlds best amplifier, coupled with the Worlds best CD player, are going to sound like crap with anything less that good speakers.
But on the other hand, the Worlds best speakers, coupled with ordinary, low end consumer level CD player and amp from Target, is going to sound MUCH MUCH better and probably not be noticed as "worse" than the "best system" by one of these "audiophile" morons in the HiFi magazines.
The second most important thing is... HEADPHONES!
Headphones are:
* Much cheaper than speakers that give the same quality. Try hundreds to thousands of TIMES cheaper.
* Require much less power, thus much less amplification and thus much less THD.
* Filter out ambient noise as a matter of simple design, allowing greater enjoyment of dynamic range.
* Allow far greater channel separation than speakers and thus much greater stereo effect.
* Allow you to turn your music up to where you enjoy it most, without the cops knocking on your door at 11pm.
Anyone who really enjoys their recorded music and knows how to enjoy it, enjoys it with headphones.
Have I forgotten any major points?
PS, when I'm talking about high end power amplifiers, I'm talking about the likes of the Pioneer M-91. Absolute legends. If you're offended because your NAD doesn't stack up, oh well.
Want to bet? Most people do not know how to interpret even the most basic specifications. When I started out in stereo equipment in the 1970's, you could go to any dealer and get handouts with product specifications on just about any product sold.
I agree 100%.
I remember seeing a $50,000 Meridian CD player that had specs nowhere near as good as a $150 Marantz.
But, people usually falling into the catagory of IGNORANT and often arrogant, buy products that are complete crap and then think they got a good deal.
I find often that if a company is selling a particular item and they suck in a particular spec or are otherwise uncompetitive in that area, they just won't advertise that spec.
The popularisation of consumer electronics has lead to lower quality in order to appease consumers who purchase receivers based on watts-per-dollar.
I've got four letters, that I'm sure you'll enjoy... P M P O. ; )
They kind of sum the situation up nicely, don't you think!
People are, essentially, stupid. Even many of the high IQ types. Because the low IQ types are stupid for obvious reasons, and the high IQ types tend to be arrogant and not fully use their IQ and are thus the worst kind of stupid. Manufacturers don't give a crap about delivering quality to consumers because consumers have a. money and b. no vision of true quality.
192kHz sounds so much better than 44.1kHz hey!?
I can understand the usage of bit depths beyond 16bit and sampling rates beyond 44.1kHz being used in digital mixing decks, where the avoidance of compounded lower significance bit errors can become apparent in the end product without those higher rates and depths, but bringing 24bit 192kHz to the typical end user is nothing more than a marketing gimick.
The situation sucks. I want a return to the days where HP made ultra high quality technical instruments, computing devices and awesome printers.
To sum up a sad situation, my recently purchased HP 48GX... was made in Indonesia.
BTW, there are some pretty excellent PDF files here that have a nice representation of UNIX history.
FreeBSD 5 will have to show its mettle before Apple officially integrates the 5.0BSD subsystem in a later OS X update.
Are you confusing the "4.4BSD" that gets thrown around a lot, with FreeBSD 4.4?
Because 4.4BSD does not mean FreeBSD 4.4, it usually refers to the last official release of the Berkeley Software Distribution.
From this: The UNIX system family tree: Research and BSD
we can see that Darwin is made up in parts from 4.4BSD Lite2 for Rhapsody, FreeBSD 3.2 and NetBSD 1.4 for Darwin/Mac OSX 10.0, then updated with FreeBSD 4.4 for OSX 10.2.
Looking at the family tree, you can see that the current versions of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, BSDI and Darwin are all 4.4BSD Lite2 based.
There will probably never be a 5.0BSD, unless Berkeley picks BSD up again (and does a lot with it), since the legacy of 4.4BSD is mostly a foundation now.
continuously dwindling, community of *BSD users
You believe what you read here, don't you. You are misinformed.
Linux has only recently reached the point where books devoted to it were justified
The first Linux book I bought (in a major "general public" book store chain), was back in the Red Hat 4.2 days.
OpenBSD is the opposite of all of these, and their financial woes are pronounced enough that this could be the mistake that finally puts them under.
What makes you think OpenBSD is funding this book?
You don't have to be an economist to see that the market just isn't there. This is why *BSD continues to falter, even as Linux's popularity explodes.
I happen to know, for a 100% fact, that OpenBSD is used by many banks and other financial entities for firewalling tasks. I know from first hand experience. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it is not widely deployed.
OpenBSD does and should exist in network perimeters and any book that helps people learn how to use it can only be better for OpenBSD and network users alike.
I do own many BSD books, BTW, including an OpenBSD book.
I'd think a book would be more likely to succeed
Somehow, I don't think the author is setting out to make the most successful book. He is setting out to make a successful OpenBSD book.
Dude, when I started getting 12 to 20MB/sec on my IDE with Reiserfs and notail, I was ecstatic!!! Of course I'm only running a 900MHz AMD Duron, but still-!
Huh? I have been getting 25+MB/sec with 20GB Seagate UDMA Barracuda's for about the past 3 years on a P2 300.
Linux RAID-0 does of course reduce this transfer rate to less than 20MB/s. Go Linux software RAID!
(It's not my P2 300, BTW, Linux 2.2 RAID-0 did actually give me greater transfer rates, 2.4 is shite).
Why should he?
If he is not going to LOOK at the operating systems in question, then he is in NO position to state that he DOES NOT SEE ANY WORTHWHILE FEATURES in those operating systems.
It's called arrogance.
Of course, if you want to take it absolutely literally, then you could say that he can not see that which he does not look at. But that was not the context. If that is what he meant, then he should have said something along the lines of, "I have not looked at those, so I can't really compare or comment".
This was, by the way, an interview that shortly followed the major VM changes that were occuring within a "stable" kernel branch.
I'm glad it happened though, because my focus has shifted almost completely towards BSD based OS' (Open, Free and OSX) and I am very happy to have done so.
Did you ever think it could be Linus not seeing anything in BSD or XP that he didn't already have under Linux?
He's certainly not going to see anything if he is NOT GOING TO LOOK!
That is the point.
Some people will be getting tattoos that read, "An exception has occured in Kernel32.dll" or a flying Windows flag logo.
Is this using a Linus definition of small, or a normal definition of small?
I mostly used Linux (Debian) in the past with a little Free and OpenBSD.
After I read an interview with Linus where he was asked about the current Linux kernel versus new BSD and XP features, he said something to the effect of "I haven't really looked much at BSD or XP, but I don't see much of value there".
Which pretty much sounded to me like "I have not looked, I don't see any good".
This was during the times that the VM shamozzle was occuring and my Linux machine was becoming unstable.
This was the point where I decided that Linus was getting a bit arrogant. I am glad though, because my OpenBSD servers are very clean and stable and Theo not only sticks to his moral grounds but also has well thought out moral grounds.
Yep, I've got an old Shuttle P-II/233 mobo that can support both 1Mb and 2Mb flash chips and I use it all the time to prepare different flash bios chips for other motherboards.
:-( )and maybe fry the mobo as well. I've been lucky and only fried a chip once by being a homer simpson.
I'm considering replacing the flashrom socket on the next decent mobo I find on the street with a ZIF just for the function of restoring BIOS'.
Make sure you DO NOT insert the chip backwards or it will positively get fried (I know for a fact
I've done the Homer flash procedure too and I've been in electronics since the 80's. The stuff I do at home is pretty carefree (especially at 4am). ; ) Did the sticker on that flashrom that you fried instantly blister up with the heat?! Cool! (Luckily amongst my "junk" I kept an old flashrom from a buggered board that finally came in handy.
The coolest thing I have ever seen (along these lines) is a Tantalum that was soldered in around the wrong way, which spouted a fountain of smoke and what looked like mercury bubbles.
I prefer to use "UNIFLASH" a free flash utility that'll work with ami, award, phoenix, whatever flash images.
Hey cool, thanks for that.
lots of cool stuff :)
You REEEEALLY need to get out more.
They usually only call every year or two when some hardware goes bad.
That's the great thing with DOS. Having really only one program running, means that it can be as stable as it can be, since you're most likely doing your own memory management and dealing only with it.
C:\MYDOCUME.NTS\BIRTHDAY.PTY\SHOPPING.LST
Then Windows 95 gave us...
C:\MYDOCU~1\BIRTHD~1\SHOPPI~2.txt
Ever tried to script for Win9x?
I've had scripts that worked lovely for the first few hundred machines and then stumble on one critical machine because the files that should have been under C:\PROGRA~1\MSOFFI~1\ were actually under C:\PROGRA~1\MSOFFI~2\ because there was already a directory that started with MSOFFI before Office was installed.
I can't remember why, but for some reason I could not use quotes to put the full name. So I had to put an "if exist word.exe" to find which bloody directory is the correct one. I think it was because Office 97 preferences automatically (and demanded) the shorter form.
Regardless, it was a joke, the typical kind of crap that makes MS admins stumble every now and then over stuff they should not have too.
Windows 9x should NEVER have existed. Win95 should never have been released. MS should have stuck with 3.11 and then killed it and DOS when they released NT 4.0.
I can't believe we were laboured with 95, 98, 98SE and for the love of God ME. Talk about 90% marketing 1% extra features and an 9% extra bugs each time. 95 was crap, 95b was better, 98 was crap, SE an incredible hide and ME astonishingly shite.
NT was half decent. Comparatively speaking. But then, comparatively speaking, what tastes worse? Dog shit or cat shit?
Basically, an operating system is the software responsible for managing memory, cpu, storage, devices and input/output.
Exactly. Technically, DOS was an OS, but was it much of an OS?
It didn't do a whole lot of memory management, I'd say it provided hooks that helped programmers to manage the memory of their own apps. And within 640k at that. Extended Memory Management was an add on. Choose a manager from MS, Quarterdeck, Watcom (Pharlap?), etc.
Managed CPU? As in...? CPU time used for different processes? Oops, sorry, DOS was not a multitasking OS, so one process at a time please. There were task switchers like Deskview (?) if I remember correctly. But yet another add-on.
Managed storage (as in a filesystem)? Sure, it had filesystem support. But again, it was bare-bones.
Managed devices? I think the BIOS did most of that in those days. : ( DOS PNP was crap too.
I/O? Yeah, it buffered some stuff and provided some software IRQ's...
DOS was an OS, but the D was the biggest part of the whole OS. It was pretty much a free-for-all, not a whole lot of management going on anywhere.