If you are a non-technical person and/or someone who wants to be setup almost instantly at a gig and/or someone who just wants to make music and not fiddle with software and cables, which solution is better
I would venture to say if you'd be better off with a Motif and an extra $5000 if all you wanted to do was play music without messing with cables. I can also speak from experience when I say that a rackmount case with a powerbook and USB midi is pretty damn easy to set up.
Also, as far as I can tell, you still need software for this keyboard to shine (which doesn't seem to be included). With my setup, you could make music without fiddling with cables by just playing with your motif or mpc1000. Trust me, a musician would appreciate the modulartity
Some people are happy to pay a premium for convenience. You (and most/.ers) aren't one of them, so that's fine.
Actually, I would pay a premium for convenience, hence the OSX setup. The items I listed may sound complicated, but it really isn't at all. Plug your USB keyboard in, fire up Reason or Reaktor and play. That's it. If you get bored of soft synths, play the yamaha. If you want to record, use garageband (included with OSX.) My general point is the non-technical person would be much better off with a few well-chosen pieces than an overpriced, all-in-one solution that includes no software (other than XP!)
Re:Culture of Empire vs. Culture of Exploration.
on
The Future of NASA
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· Score: 1
I agree with your general sentiment but take exception to your characterization of Greens as "fascists." Any qualification for that statement?
At least where I llve, the Green Party's vision is probably the closest to a functional capitalist democracy that we can get. Here are their ten key values:
Grassroots Democracy
Social Justice
Ecological Wisdom
Non-violence
Decentralization
Community-Based Economics
Feminism
Diversity
Responsibility
Future Focus
Greens are about local control. How does that jive with the definition of fascism: "A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
Also remember that in Italy, it combined elements of corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-communism (via wikipedia). The Green Party provides an interesting framework for government. By casually referring to them as fascists you are perpetuating a disingenuous meme.
If I had $8000, I could buy a 15" G4 powerbook
w/1 gig ram ($3000), reason (~$250), ableton live (~$300), a usb>>midi box (~$49), a 49-key usb keyboard (~$99), an 88-key Yamaha Motif (~$2799), Reaktor (~$400), some proper casing/rackmount (~$200), and still have $1000 left to buy either a Motu 828 MKII w/ Digital Performer (~$700) or an Akai MPC1000 (~$800), or Logic 6(~$600), some rackmount effect modules, or whatever else I wanted. Plus, with OSX & BSD, it's more "open" to boot.
If you can explain to me why this keyboard is a deal, i'd love to hear about it . . .
Re:New World wasn't found due to curiousity
on
One-Way Ticket to Mars?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The land had zero value because no one was there and the bonds got paid off by the railroads.
I believe you're forgeting about the Native Americans who had been living there for centuries. I imagine they would disagree with your assertion that the land had no value.
While I generally agree with your point, I am more inclined to see what we can do with robot technology before we send manned missions. Pushing the limits of robotics also has the nice side effect of being useful for those of us stuck on lovely Terra.
Sorry, sitting in front of my computer trying to discover new music by taking time to download things I may not like is not as efficient as listening to the radio while I am already doing some other task, like driving.
Well, you coud always peruse Shoutcast to find thousands of radio stations. There's probably something there you just might like. Hell, I discovered great stuff from Fila Brazilia (to name just one group) from the ol' monkeyradio.com When I heard something I liked, I'd check out that artist on (the old) audiogalaxy.com . ..
I discovered great new tunes from Audiogalaxy's related artist links, including stuff from Warp.
I hope future versions of iTunes (or whatever) include a "buy it now" button when listening to radio streams. All the time I hear something cool and wish I could make a micropayment (something like 50 cents) to "bookmark" the track in my personal collection. Think of it like a digital jukebox. A number of these payments over time (consider them votes for music) could help out artists that don't have the payola to get there stuff played on the radio.In the future, I suppose this could be added to car radios. Many times I hear something great on the college radio station and wish I could press a button to "download" it for future use.
've always felt that if they play it on the air, I should be able to add it to my collection for free.
Ummm, you could tape it, then rip it to mp3. But that would be too much work now, wouldn't it? BUY MUSIC YOU LIKE. Then maybe artists will continue to put out quality albums. I happen to enjoy mainstream rock music and do hear new songs that I enjoy via the radio.
Pepsi will offer 100 million songs as prizes come Super Bowl time. I imagine that will boost iTMS notoriety a bit. And how will people store these songs for portable playback? Gee . . .
It might be more likely that cell phone services begin to offer roaming wi-fi as an extra service or a perk. Think about it. If T-mobile offered Starbucks Wifi access as part of their cell service, they could win over extra customers. The cell providers can also offer internet service through their existing networks to allow true unlimited roaming.
I personally agree with your vision of wifi/communications as a city utlity, but unfortunately such a concept faces a firestorm of FUD from corporations (Baby Bells, cell providers, etc) who would shriek "socialism!"
Actually, LA is doing nothing of the sort. The article tells us a bunch of people are broadcasting their SSIDs. Their is no logon, it's just random individual land connections openly shared via wifi. This is not an example of a wISP, just open connections. Atlanta's initiative is a better example of roaming wifi.
The city government in Atlanta has a very similar program called FastPass. The idea is to get hotels, restaurants,etc to provide wireless service independantly but connect to the FastPass service. Subscribers to the FastPass network then can access any one of those sites, including the airport, the convention center and several hotels. You can get an account by the hour, for several days, or as a monthly subscription. When a subscriber to the service logs onto a independently provided network, the provider gets a portion of the Fastpass connect fee, determined by the time spent on the network (or maybe bandwidth?) Seems like a winning idea to me. Wish more places would sign up to become a part of the network though.
Thanks. I actually have protools & ableton live. I was looking for something more like this though. I'd like to be able to shift the tune while it's playing in iTunes (it's handy sometimes) rather than pulling the song into a seperate program. You mentioned an audio unit that can tune within 100 cents. Do you suppose this can be tweaked? Can some change to quicktime help? Thanks again.
But can it pitch shift? I realize this is a bit offtopic but does anyone know how I can pitch shift mp3s in realtime? Winamp has a plugin. Is there something comparable for Macs? It's about the only thing I don't like about iTunes.
Thanks!
This is the exactly same reason why newer movies are fairly consistently breaking older movies' box office records (on number of ticket sales). This is the exactly same reason why newer movies are fairly consistently breaking older movies' box office records (on number of ticket sales).
Actually there were many more movie ticket purchases during the 1930s. Even during the "Great Depression" millions more tickets were sold, just at a lesser price. Granted, there may be more total tickets sold in today's global economy, but I doubt the number per capita has risen.
I'll bet that almost every./er know more about how the internet is run and works than all the dipomats combined.
An interesting corrollary to that notion is that the average European student knows more about world history and political dynamics than all the American/.ers combined ; )
Or Asian, or Afirican, or South American . ..
It's ironic. A story says gov. leaders lock out techies to talk networking and the the techs start talking hackneyed politics.
ps-I say all this as an American. I just happened to have traveled a lot over the years.
What happens if you edit the file in a graphic utility? Does it alter the hidden info? Destroy it? Do different actions (hue shift, paining-on-top) affect the outcomes?
Amen! How much longer before we see receivers/amps bundled with this service? Think about it-one box that takes all of your existing connections, but includes radio reception AND 802.11 streams. When Sony ( or whoever) comes out with this functionality, then I'll upgrade.
Also, I'd like to see something like the iTrip for my Powerbook. Something small and unobtrusive that I can power via USB or Firewire and plug into my lineout. Thank you in advance, o technology gods!
I've thought for some time that a tablet would be great for school. School systems could move their textbooks to digital form. You could write notes directly on the pages & include animations, video and web links. You could write notes on the screen. And keep the texts always up to date. Did I mention that you wouldn't have to lug around 30lbs of books? Sure, it's nice to have a paperback, but mostly for novels and pleasure reading. I would prefer to have a physics/biology/compsci/notebook/e-mail client with wireless networking in a light-weight slimform. It's clearly coming. The question is which government will be the first to phase out paper textbooks and order a few hundred thousand slabs of silicon? I'm waiting . . . .
. . . works just fine. I find that natural language searches work quite well. The real problem is people don't know how to search. One word doesn't cut it. Two words isn't much better. Searching for phrases that you would expect to find does wonders. Creative pairing of words, as well as limiting searches to site: also works very well.
The San Jose Mercury news has a more informative article:
But in May, Booher received one piece of unsolicited e-mail too many. Booher sat down at his keyboard and began firing back e-mail after e-mail threatening to kill the alleged spammer, according to law enforcement officials. On Thursday, federal agents arrested Booher, 44, at his home and charged him with 11 violations of interstate communications.
Released on bond, Booher faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Slashdot Mirror
I would venture to say if you'd be better off with a Motif and an extra $5000 if all you wanted to do was play music without messing with cables. I can also speak from experience when I say that a rackmount case with a powerbook and USB midi is pretty damn easy to set up.
Also, as far as I can tell, you still need software for this keyboard to shine (which doesn't seem to be included). With my setup, you could make music without fiddling with cables by just playing with your motif or mpc1000. Trust me, a musician would appreciate the modulartity
Some people are happy to pay a premium for convenience. You (and most /.ers) aren't one of them, so that's fine.
Actually, I would pay a premium for convenience, hence the OSX setup. The items I listed may sound complicated, but it really isn't at all. Plug your USB keyboard in, fire up Reason or Reaktor and play. That's it. If you get bored of soft synths, play the yamaha. If you want to record, use garageband (included with OSX.) My general point is the non-technical person would be much better off with a few well-chosen pieces than an overpriced, all-in-one solution that includes no software (other than XP!)
At least where I llve, the Green Party's vision is probably the closest to a functional capitalist democracy that we can get. Here are their ten key values:
Greens are about local control. How does that jive with the definition of fascism: "A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
Also remember that in Italy, it combined elements of corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-communism (via wikipedia). The Green Party provides an interesting framework for government. By casually referring to them as fascists you are perpetuating a disingenuous meme.
If you can explain to me why this keyboard is a deal, i'd love to hear about it . . .
I believe you're forgeting about the Native Americans who had been living there for centuries. I imagine they would disagree with your assertion that the land had no value.
While I generally agree with your point, I am more inclined to see what we can do with robot technology before we send manned missions. Pushing the limits of robotics also has the nice side effect of being useful for those of us stuck on lovely Terra.
I think you misspelled "UK" ; )
Well, you coud always peruse Shoutcast to find thousands of radio stations. There's probably something there you just might like. Hell, I discovered great stuff from Fila Brazilia (to name just one group) from the ol' monkeyradio.com When I heard something I liked, I'd check out that artist on (the old) audiogalaxy.com . . .
I discovered great new tunes from Audiogalaxy's related artist links, including stuff from Warp.
I hope future versions of iTunes (or whatever) include a "buy it now" button when listening to radio streams. All the time I hear something cool and wish I could make a micropayment (something like 50 cents) to "bookmark" the track in my personal collection. Think of it like a digital jukebox. A number of these payments over time (consider them votes for music) could help out artists that don't have the payola to get there stuff played on the radio.In the future, I suppose this could be added to car radios. Many times I hear something great on the college radio station and wish I could press a button to "download" it for future use.
've always felt that if they play it on the air, I should be able to add it to my collection for free.
Ummm, you could tape it, then rip it to mp3. But that would be too much work now, wouldn't it? BUY MUSIC YOU LIKE. Then maybe artists will continue to put out quality albums. I happen to enjoy mainstream rock music and do hear new songs that I enjoy via the radio.
I pity you.
The kaleidoscopic effect on the photos led me to find this interactive kaledoscope.
Enjoy!
Pepsi will offer 100 million songs as prizes come Super Bowl time. I imagine that will boost iTMS notoriety a bit. And how will people store these songs for portable playback? Gee . . .
heh.
I personally agree with your vision of wifi/communications as a city utlity, but unfortunately such a concept faces a firestorm of FUD from corporations (Baby Bells, cell providers, etc) who would shriek "socialism!"
Actually, LA is doing nothing of the sort. The article tells us a bunch of people are broadcasting their SSIDs. Their is no logon, it's just random individual land connections openly shared via wifi. This is not an example of a wISP, just open connections. Atlanta's initiative is a better example of roaming wifi.
The city government in Atlanta has a very similar program called FastPass. The idea is to get hotels, restaurants,etc to provide wireless service independantly but connect to the FastPass service. Subscribers to the FastPass network then can access any one of those sites, including the airport, the convention center and several hotels. You can get an account by the hour, for several days, or as a monthly subscription. When a subscriber to the service logs onto a independently provided network, the provider gets a portion of the Fastpass connect fee, determined by the time spent on the network (or maybe bandwidth?) Seems like a winning idea to me. Wish more places would sign up to become a part of the network though.
The LOC holds about 20 terabytes of data. Format lines as you please . . .
High quality. Great selection.
Thanks. I actually have protools & ableton live. I was looking for something more like this though. I'd like to be able to shift the tune while it's playing in iTunes (it's handy sometimes) rather than pulling the song into a seperate program. You mentioned an audio unit that can tune within 100 cents. Do you suppose this can be tweaked? Can some change to quicktime help? Thanks again.
But can it pitch shift? I realize this is a bit offtopic but does anyone know how I can pitch shift mp3s in realtime? Winamp has a plugin. Is there something comparable for Macs? It's about the only thing I don't like about iTunes. Thanks!
Actually there were many more movie ticket purchases during the 1930s. Even during the "Great Depression" millions more tickets were sold, just at a lesser price. Granted, there may be more total tickets sold in today's global economy, but I doubt the number per capita has risen.
An interesting corrollary to that notion is that the average European student knows more about world history and political dynamics than all the American /.ers combined ; )
Or Asian, or Afirican, or South American . . .
It's ironic. A story says gov. leaders lock out techies to talk networking and the the techs start talking hackneyed politics.
ps-I say all this as an American. I just happened to have traveled a lot over the years.
What happens if you edit the file in a graphic utility? Does it alter the hidden info? Destroy it? Do different actions (hue shift, paining-on-top) affect the outcomes?
Also, I'd like to see something like the iTrip for my Powerbook. Something small and unobtrusive that I can power via USB or Firewire and plug into my lineout. Thank you in advance, o technology gods!
I've thought for some time that a tablet would be great for school. School systems could move their textbooks to digital form. You could write notes directly on the pages & include animations, video and web links. You could write notes on the screen. And keep the texts always up to date. Did I mention that you wouldn't have to lug around 30lbs of books? Sure, it's nice to have a paperback, but mostly for novels and pleasure reading. I would prefer to have a physics/biology/compsci/notebook/e-mail client with wireless networking in a light-weight slimform. It's clearly coming. The question is which government will be the first to phase out paper textbooks and order a few hundred thousand slabs of silicon? I'm waiting . . . .
Pictionary Taboo Scattergories
. . . works just fine. I find that natural language searches work quite well. The real problem is people don't know how to search. One word doesn't cut it. Two words isn't much better. Searching for phrases that you would expect to find does wonders. Creative pairing of words, as well as limiting searches to site: also works very well.
But in May, Booher received one piece of unsolicited e-mail too many. Booher sat down at his keyboard and began firing back e-mail after e-mail threatening to kill the alleged spammer, according to law enforcement officials. On Thursday, federal agents arrested Booher, 44, at his home and charged him with 11 violations of interstate communications.
Released on bond, Booher faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
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