Not everyone likes the Model M either. I've got one in the cupboard, but I prefer a split ergo keyboard. MS Natural 4000 in use these days. The old IBM had fabulous tactile feedback, but my wrists feel better with a split keyboard... and I like to have dedicated buttons for volume control.
They knew more about the vagaries of escape codes, character sets, and still managed to make term.app one of the slickest cocoa apps around. Yes, slick. Especially how slick the character set/keymap localization is. It Just Doesn't Work(tm) unless you happen to know exactly which cryptic settings to touch, or chance upon a web page explaining it. Shipping a term.app that uses US locales by default is just stupid, especially as the rest of the OS is localized very well, much better than Windows IMO.
Absolute rubbish! What part of Europe are you talking about? Here in the UK I don't know anybody without a landline, and it's always one of the first things to get connected when you move into a new house. At least in Finland (and I suspect the rest of Scandinavia) less and less people have landlines. I haven't had one in 7 years. None of my friends has had one for ages, although my mom still does. No need for it: mobile calls are cheap enough, and you don't need to have a landline phone to get DSL over here.
Actually (interestingly), I can't even find an article on Muhammed on Wikipedia. The top link when I search is "Muhammad Ali", and the rest of the links have last names and none appear to be "the prophet Muhmmamed" (or Mohammed, or Mahhamod, or however it's spelled). Funny, that. The article is actually called "Muhammad", and "Muhammed" does redirect to it. But searching for "Muhammed" doesn't bring it up, even though this spelling variant is listed on the first line of the article.
Just to correct myself... the sound chip in the ST didn't even do FM, as another poster pointed out. It was this one. The ST used the Yamaha variant of the chip, AFAIK.
The Amiga blew the pants off the ST in almost every metric, except maybe sound. The ST's strong point was MIDI sequencing, because of two things: The ports were built in, and then Cubase appeared. But the built-in sound chip in the Amiga was *miles* ahead of the crappy Yamaha FM chip in the ST. Sure, there was no real synthesis on the Amiga, but four sample playback channels could go a surprisingly long way in the right hands. Go and find mod.suuntaviivat and compare that to ST music... (Yes, I'm aware that you could play back mods on the Atari, but that involved software mixing even on an STE, and some nasty hacks on an ST.)
Here in Europe you can buy prepaid SIM-cards that you put in the unlocked phone of your choice that you just bought. And, of course, this is not limited to prepaid cards. The normal way to do things is to buy a phone, then sign up with your mobile provider of choice. And switch to another provider if they have cheaper call rates. You *can* be silly and get a subsidized phone, but it will be SIM-locked.
Sorry, I don't know. I found a page on microsoft.com, but it doesn't include any mention of OEM versus retail.
I found a page linking to that page that says only retail licenses apply.:(
If you bought Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, or Business as a retail, packaged product, and you would like a DVD of 64-bit software media to install on your PC [...]
Actually you just buy Vista, and the licence can be used for either the x86 or the x64 port (except Starter, which is a low-cost version for developing countries, and unless I'm mistaken is x86-only).
Do you know if this applies to OEM licenses as well, or just retail versions? I *might* get an OEM Vista the next time I build a new system, but I'm not paying the retail prices, that's for sure...
Before, Stalin took Finland and the Baltic states. During, Stalin took half of Poland. After, Stalin took all of Poland, half of Germany, and almost every other eastern European country.
When exactly did Stalin "take" Finland? And just to nitpick... WW2 was already on when the USSR invaded the Baltic states, which was in 1940. The German invasion of Poland started the war in September 1939.
Just to make this clear... the HD202s are closed-back headphones, not 'noise cancelling' in the strict sense, which would imply an active microphone/counter-noise system. Closed-back cans do block out a lot of noise, and can sound a lot better than the actual noise cancelling stuff.
Apple is a member of the Business Software Alliance, one of the heaviest lobbyists in favour of software patents (and their synchronisation with the cannabilistic US model) here in the EU. Now, the best solution to all would be to trash the US model and adopt the cannabinistic Netherlands model.
XP is probably better if you have a 64 bit processor, but otherwise I don't see what advantages it would have. I've heard you can get an extra 5-7 FPS in some games out of it... I guess that's something. They aren't releasing Service Packs for 2000 anymore, that is likely something else. Last I heard they are discontinuing them for XP too soon anyway... It does have one important feature: ClearType. If you use an LCD, subpixel antialiasing is definitely the way to go.
My media box is a gentoo linux box...I've read you have to buy the drivers for the M-Audio card. What? Buy drivers, why? It's not like the hardware on the Audiophile is proprietary or anything - it's an ICEnsemble/VIA Envy24 controller with some ADC/DAC combo, I forget which ones or if it's a CODEC. But anyway, it's handled just fine by one of the ICE Alsa drivers, 1712 IIRC.
Vertical arrangements are rare, until you rotate your display by 90 degrees and XP's ClearType goes b0rk. I hear Vista also supports vertical pixel arrangements, but as is typical, they won't be available in XP. But in any case, ClearType is *the* feature that made me upgrade from Windows 2000. On an LCD, subpixel antialiasing is the only way to go, IMO.
8*4=32. I think there's some confusion here over terminology. Each of the 32 oscillators on the Ensoniq 5503 counts as a voice. These get dumped into one output channel by a stock IIGS for mono output, but they can be demuxed by relatively simple circuitry into as many as 8 channels (though 2 was more common, for stereo output). "Voices" refers to the on-chip oscillators, while "channels" refers to analog outputs that drive speakers.
You're right, we were discussing the same thing with different terms. I never considered a need for demuxing the chip's output into more than two audio channels. Likewise, the Amiga had four 'voices' routed into two output channels. However, since Amiga's audio output was essentially just a bunch of D/A converters with no synthesis features like envelopes for volume, or filters, they were commonly referred to as just audio channels. I'm not sure if the Ensoniq chip had volume envelopes or filters or LFOs, but if it did, I just wonder why they never used it on the Mac.
While the default sound output was mono, you could theoretically demux up to 8 channels (with 4 voices per channel). I don't think anyone ever did more than 2 channels, though...sound cards for the IIGS are usually little more than demuxers and mixers, with maybe a power amplifier thrown in to drive unamplified speakers. It's only been fairly recently that multichannel audio from computers has become somewhat common. According to Wikipedia, the chip did indeed have 32 channels. The software paired them up by default into 16 stereo channels, of which the OS reserved one. Another thing is that the IIGS only had a mono output for sound, even though the chip was capable of stereo. Of course, if you used 32 channels and had a stereo output board, you would get 16 channels for the left output and 16 for the right output. The Ultrasound was the first sample playback synth chip with panning, AFAIK.
But did the Beeb have four channels of digital sound, as in four D/A converters? Or just four tone generators? As noted by another poster, Atari's 400/800 were probably the first ones out with four channel sound in that sense, even if the generators were very simple - just sine and square wave, IIRC.
I don't know, but I'd submit that realistic polyphonic sound/music was more revolutionary than 3D hardware acceleration. 3D graphics are cool and all, but at least the CPU could generate 3D graphics (Quake?) before hardware acceleration - if it weren't for the Soundblaster we'd be playing visually stunning games with beeps and parps for sound effects.
The Amiga had four channel digital sound in 1985, so the SB combination of a Yamaha FM chip (already used in the AdLib) with one digital channel wasn't really that revolutionary. Oddly, the Amiga only comes in at number 37... And actually, the SB came out in 1989. Compared to the sound chip in the Apple II/GS from 1986, it was crap. The GS had an Ensoniq chip with 32 digital channels. A later 16-bit version was used in the Gravis Ultrasound boards in the 90s.
You are out of date. ID3 v1 tags had a limit of 30 characters per field, but nobody has used those for years, save for compatibility with some hardware like MP3 capable DVD players. ID3v2 tags can have frames that are up to 16 MB. ID3v2.3 is the most widely used version these days.
Back to the topic, Foobar2000 for Windows handles crazy big music libraries with no slowdowns, and is extremely customisable.
The Envy24 is really renowned as a great sounding chip.
Yes, if by that you mean that it does nothing to degrade the sound data passing through it. The Envy24 is a DSP, it handles interfacing and mixing, but has nothing to do with how the analogue output of the card performs. The quality of the DAC determines that.
The DSP is from Via, yes. But given a sanely designed DSP, the difference in sound quality in conventional stereo playback, with no environmental effects or anything, only comes down to the DAC. AFAIK, Via only do low-end codec chips for motherboards, so the Revolution would have the part that counts from a third party. Just like Creative... Now, if the DSP is hampered by idiocy (like every Creative DSP before the X-Fi) then it can have an effect on sound quality.
Further, Apple may NEVER do this until it can be 100% across the board, like it or not, and we also don't know if one or more of the other major label contracts mandates that all music sold via the same store/mechanisms share the same controls. Even if the latter isn't the case, the former is still by far a legitimate enough reason for Jobs to not want to do it (e.g., why do some tracks I bought play on my Zune and others won't?). I know that a lot of people don't buy that argument, but frankly, it's perfectly legitimate.
I think this might have more truth in it than most at Slashdot are willing to admit. One of the iTMS' biggest strenghts has always been that the customer knows what he's getting - every time. There is no small print attached to certain albums, no extra gotchas, and the price is always the same. It's simplicity for the customer, and that's what Apple has been selling across the board, not just in music files. While it isn't fair towards the independents who could give a rat's ass about DRM, it still makes business sense.
Not that I wouldn't want to see DRM go away, but I also think that it will only happen when they can offer a large majority of music without DRM. At that point, the inevitable small print will turn into leverage to get rid of the remaining DRM protections - the last record company to insist on having DRM will look like the bad guy. (As if the big four don't already..;) )
And no, I'm not an iTMS apologist. I buy my music as CDs and LPs, and will as long as they don't offer losslessly compressed DRM-free music online. (Sidenote: I heard Allofmp3 may sell some tracks recompressed from a lossy source - don't know if it's true however.)
All TVs sold in Europe the past 15 years can do 60 Hz without problems. There is no reason to keep things in 50 Hz anymore. Not quite all of them. There are exceptions, like Nokia TVs. Most can do 60 Hz, but there are no guarantees, unlike with HD Ready sets.
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Not everyone likes the Model M either. I've got one in the cupboard, but I prefer a split ergo keyboard. MS Natural 4000 in use these days. The old IBM had fabulous tactile feedback, but my wrists feel better with a split keyboard... and I like to have dedicated buttons for volume control.
Just to correct myself... the sound chip in the ST didn't even do FM, as another poster pointed out. It was this one. The ST used the Yamaha variant of the chip, AFAIK.
I found a page linking to that page that says only retail licenses apply. :(
If you bought Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, or Business as a retail, packaged product, and you would like a DVD of 64-bit software media to install on your PC [...]Do you know if this applies to OEM licenses as well, or just retail versions? I *might* get an OEM Vista the next time I build a new system, but I'm not paying the retail prices, that's for sure...
When exactly did Stalin "take" Finland? And just to nitpick... WW2 was already on when the USSR invaded the Baltic states, which was in 1940. The German invasion of Poland started the war in September 1939.
Mmmmmm, ration of pie....
Just to make this clear... the HD202s are closed-back headphones, not 'noise cancelling' in the strict sense, which would imply an active microphone/counter-noise system. Closed-back cans do block out a lot of noise, and can sound a lot better than the actual noise cancelling stuff.
Vertical arrangements are rare, until you rotate your display by 90 degrees and XP's ClearType goes b0rk. I hear Vista also supports vertical pixel arrangements, but as is typical, they won't be available in XP. But in any case, ClearType is *the* feature that made me upgrade from Windows 2000. On an LCD, subpixel antialiasing is the only way to go, IMO.
You're right, we were discussing the same thing with different terms. I never considered a need for demuxing the chip's output into more than two audio channels. Likewise, the Amiga had four 'voices' routed into two output channels. However, since Amiga's audio output was essentially just a bunch of D/A converters with no synthesis features like envelopes for volume, or filters, they were commonly referred to as just audio channels. I'm not sure if the Ensoniq chip had volume envelopes or filters or LFOs, but if it did, I just wonder why they never used it on the Mac.
But did the Beeb have four channels of digital sound, as in four D/A converters? Or just four tone generators? As noted by another poster, Atari's 400/800 were probably the first ones out with four channel sound in that sense, even if the generators were very simple - just sine and square wave, IIRC.
The Amiga had four channel digital sound in 1985, so the SB combination of a Yamaha FM chip (already used in the AdLib) with one digital channel wasn't really that revolutionary. Oddly, the Amiga only comes in at number 37... And actually, the SB came out in 1989. Compared to the sound chip in the Apple II/GS from 1986, it was crap. The GS had an Ensoniq chip with 32 digital channels. A later 16-bit version was used in the Gravis Ultrasound boards in the 90s.
Back to the topic, Foobar2000 for Windows handles crazy big music libraries with no slowdowns, and is extremely customisable.
Yes, if by that you mean that it does nothing to degrade the sound data passing through it. The Envy24 is a DSP, it handles interfacing and mixing, but has nothing to do with how the analogue output of the card performs. The quality of the DAC determines that.
The DSP is from Via, yes. But given a sanely designed DSP, the difference in sound quality in conventional stereo playback, with no environmental effects or anything, only comes down to the DAC. AFAIK, Via only do low-end codec chips for motherboards, so the Revolution would have the part that counts from a third party. Just like Creative... Now, if the DSP is hampered by idiocy (like every Creative DSP before the X-Fi) then it can have an effect on sound quality.
I think this might have more truth in it than most at Slashdot are willing to admit. One of the iTMS' biggest strenghts has always been that the customer knows what he's getting - every time. There is no small print attached to certain albums, no extra gotchas, and the price is always the same. It's simplicity for the customer, and that's what Apple has been selling across the board, not just in music files. While it isn't fair towards the independents who could give a rat's ass about DRM, it still makes business sense.
Not that I wouldn't want to see DRM go away, but I also think that it will only happen when they can offer a large majority of music without DRM. At that point, the inevitable small print will turn into leverage to get rid of the remaining DRM protections - the last record company to insist on having DRM will look like the bad guy. (As if the big four don't already..;) )
And no, I'm not an iTMS apologist. I buy my music as CDs and LPs, and will as long as they don't offer losslessly compressed DRM-free music online. (Sidenote: I heard Allofmp3 may sell some tracks recompressed from a lossy source - don't know if it's true however.)