Yahwish never excluded the existence of other gods; Yahweh was simply the god from which all other gods derived their power. Thus the other gods were all power less against Yahweh because he gave them their power.
Yahwish was only monotheistic in the sense that Yahweh was considered to be the only god with any real power. As for Christianity; what do you thing an angel (messenger) is? Basically a lesser god the way I see it.
God: Well, it took a few billion years to... oh, never mind, let's call it "seven days".
The opening story in Gensis resembles a Pharaonic Drama. It is more poetic than literal. People sometimes need to look beyond the words written on the page...funny how my fellow members of a religion, where the founder was dissatisfied with how the current religious leaders had lost sight of the meaning of the words and instead focused on strict literal adherence to the law, are hell bent on making people accept a little story written a very long time ago in a very different time literally.
Drats, I just got a used 9100 because I thought it was the fastest card with Free drivers (used because I'm not giving ATi any more of my money until they start to release Free DRI drivers). I have my principles and I'm standing up for them. I was one of those people who wouldn't buy a portable music player until it supported Vorbis and had a Free sync client. This is why I have a Neuros (I'd have tricked my brother into buying it from me and then gotten a Karma if he had a Free sync client, but sadly it lacks one). I haven't used proprietary software in about three years now.
I have this fear that I'm going to be stuck with the Radeon 9100 / FireGL 8800 as the fastest graphics card I can get for many years to come. At least the pro-audio people woke up and release specs (I can use a 96 channel RME Hammerfall just as well with ALSA as I can with Windows or OS X).
This problem is disappearing nowadays because most devices you'll find in a desktop use standardized interfaces. OHCI/UHCI for USB 1.1 and EHCI for USB2 controllers, USB mass storage, Firewire DV devices, Firewire storage devices, PTP mode cameras...most recent hardware is really easy to support, except for sound cards and graphics cards. The sound card manufacturers seem to make specs available because most cards have support in ALSA, and the graphics card manufacturers have all turned evil and release proprietary drivers (my Radeon 9100 is probably going to be the last graphics card I buy unless someone decides to release Free drivers again).
The only hardware I have ever had trouble with have been printers (usually cheap ones that only work with Windows) and PCI modems (evil Winmodems!). I know that 802.11a/g and Centrino network devices don't work at all (I even wussed out when we got an 802.11b network and just got an ethernet to 802.11b bridge and hooked it up to my 3c905B). So there are still a few driver issues, but most generic hardware is supported well.
And autodetection...kudzu/discover/whatever-Mandrake-u ses (hwdetect? I forgot) combined with hotplug makes dealing with hardware fairly painless. I plug in my Neuros and all I have to do is mount/mnt/neuros and I'm done (hotplug can even mount the device for you, or load the camera software, or really do anything you want it to do). All of my hardware (except for my on board sensor chips and my SCSI card...kudzu finds them fine but discover doesn't) is either auto-detected and the drivers loaded at boot or the drivers are loaded when I plug them in via USB. Maybe I'm just special.
Yeah, Windows XP is probably the dumbest looking thing I've ever seen. Whoever chose the color scheme needs to die (I think that Aqua in Graphite mode is awesome; I use Liquid for my KDE apps and Crux for my Gtk+ apps because I like both). My little brother saw it when we got a new family box and he asked if there was a way to make it go back to the old look so now his desktop has the old Windows look, which was much nicer (did I mention that I like the way NeXTSTEP looked? I run Window Maker...) but still fairly primitive.
Looking at my family, I realize that not very many people find Windows easy to use so the whole ease-of-use argument is gone. I'd rather have everyone in my family running GNU/Linux so I could ssh in and fix things instead of driving half an hour each way to the middle of nowhere to fix stuff when I have other stuff to do (although I did get $100 for that trip...). On second thought...up with Windows! It makes me money:) More seriously, I doubt that e.g. my sister would notice if she were running Windows or not. As long as she had something to "go dot-comming" with, a word processor, and AIM she'd be perfectly happy. The problem comes when you have to install software; I'm not sure how difficult this is nowadays (I use apt-get on the command line because that's how I've always done it, I don't know if there are any easy graphical tools for people that don't know how to use stuff like sudo).
This is what XPDE is trying to do (clone the Windows XP interface). Except for the applications part...it provides a shell that looks like the Windows XP one along with a control panel and some other stuff (at least I seem to remember it having that stuff).
Personally, you can pry Window Maker out of my cold dead fingers...but I've been using GNU/Linux on the desktop full time for nearly four years. All the software I use works fine on GNU/Linux so I have no need for Windows. I just need a few games (Frozen-Bubble, LBreakout2, Legacy Doom, Quake2), Emacs, a web browser, and a simple DAW for my occasional audio work (Ardour is awesome for this). I'm not a "desktop user" I guess.
I know, but most people don't bother to go that far...my site is boring and worthless.
I don't mind the iPod getting WMA support either. In the best of worlds it would support both Vorbis and WMA. And FLAC (I mean, with an 80G iPod you can store around 200 albums in FLAC which is just enough for my CD collection with a tiny bit of room to grow which will be provided by me not buyings CDs for a while because I spent all my money for six months on an iPod;) ).
I wanted it. My brother wanted it. I own a Neuros and he now owns a Karma. Entirely because of the Ogg Vorbis support (I got my Neuros a few days before it became the first player to support Ogg Vorbis because they said they were supporting it and I said I'd buy the first player with support so I did). I spent a bit over $400 on my Neuros, which is what an iPod would have run me. Apple would have gotten my money if they had had Ogg Vorbis support because I don't use MP3.
Everyone who asks me which portable music player they should get is told the Rio Karma. Most people that ask me then end up getting a Karma instead of an iPod. And it's all because they chose to support Vorbis and Apple didn't.
My band only offers downloads in Ogg Vorbis too. I suppose that a few people don't matter, but it adds up. Rio and iRiver support it so it must mean something (they are by no means small players...remember when Rio came out with that weird device that could store half an hour of music in MP3 and only cost...). And I know that Rio isn't the same Rio that it was when it was started and they went through some bad times and all that lives on is the name.
I never claimed the Neuros was nearly as pocketable as an iPod. Those things are HUGE. But the Karma fits in shorter pockets than an iPod can, which is important if you have a wallet, change, a few pens, and one of those stylish wallet chains in your pocket like all the cool kids have. Which is to say you aren't a member of the target market for the Karma I guess.
The Karma is way smaller than an iPod, my brother got once two weeks ago. It certainly is pocketable. Unless you are a girl wearing super-tight pants or a long haired 80s metal head with a pair of faded blue jeans that are one size too small. If you are either then you can either put the thing in your purse or beat up leather jacket.
And I can fit my Neuros in my pant pocket fine. People can see it when I sit down but while I'm walking it isn't noticeable and is quite easy for me to yank out a bit and mess with the controls (if I put it in upside down). And I'm not so Wigga wearing a pair of pants six sizes too big around my ankles. I'm that ordinary slashdot reading potted plant (point if you get my reference) that wears size 38 jeans--just the right size. I don't really even need a belt anymore but I wear it anyway because I haven't gone a day without wearing one since I was ten...(hell, it's even been the same belt).
The Almighty Punchdrunk is Gene Hoglan's one off project. One listen and you'll fall in love with it; it's like Strapping Young Lad only heavier. The album can be had from Hevy Devy Records and I highly recommend it.
Zao is a Hardcore band turned Metalcore turned Crap. There is one original member left: Jesse Smith. A few of my friends knew him and the reason they started to suck at the end was because he hated the band. They kept breaking up after every album only to finish up whatever tour they were obligated to do and then have half the band leave and three new guys show up to fill their places because Jesse Smith decided not to call it quits. The vocalist from the third album onward, Dan Weydant, had a problem with never showing up for shows so they had a backup that toured with them and that eventually replaced Dan Weydant when he quit until he decided to unquit and record one more album...and then the whole band decided to call it quits...and then magically they recorded a really crappy final album (Parade of Chaos) and a re-recording of their first album to fufill their recording contract (along with a recently released "Greatist Hits" compilation for a band with six albums and three split sevens). And now, out of nowhere, they decided to unbreakup and then go on tour. And Dan Weydant left again, but it seems like he really did this time. The new stuff sounds better than their last album did at least, maybe Jesse Smith decided to like the band again. Bleed Zao the only site on the net with any current news on Zao.
2002 was truly awesome. Opeth in particular is interesting; I had never heard a band that could go from Death Metal to Prog Rock in the same song and do it well until I heard them.
Opeth is even kind of mainstream nowadays; my friend Ryan's 16 year old sister listens to them (hmmm...a 16 year old girl with good musical taste but related to my best friend). I don't think the stupid hot topic nu metal kids like them much because they aren't "heavy" enough because they've only ever heard stuff from Damnation (at least the ones that I know around here).
I haven't heard any of the their solo work so I don't know how good it is. I'll take your word for it and try to purchase one of the solo albums next time I go music shopping (hmmm...maybe I should pre-order the next Iced Earth album and order some other stuff too). Still, new Maiden is better than 90s Maiden. Not as good as 80s Maiden, but better than nothing (at least Brave New World was).
I have all of Iced Earth's albums as well as the Dark Genesis boxed set. The three disc version of Alive in Athens is awesome. The album is worth it if only for the versions of the pre-Barlow songs because the versions on Days of Purgatory kind of... suck. Maybe they would sound better if I hadn't owned the originals first, but the Stormrider stuff (except for Stormrider itself because Schaeffer re-recorded the vocals for that, just like on the original album) didn't sound right. But the live versions of the songs sound amazing.
Blind Guardian is indeed awesome. I'd suggest skipping A Night at the Opera to anyone thinking about purchasing a random Blind Guardian album because it is really too overproduced. Nightfall in Middle Earth or Imaginations From the Other Side are good starting places. Their older stuff is more speed metal and lacks the complexity of the newer stuff but is still awesome (I like heavier metal so I like old Blind Guardian a lot).
Another good metal band is Symphony X. Think Dream Theater on some type of quality enhancing drug. Which is to say that Symphony X is freakin' awesome (because Dream Theater is really really awesome).
It was a great year for my music collection too. I purchased the
back catalog of a bunch of artists and now I have an amazing 200
albums (note that I had a total of fifteen albums in October
2002).
My favorite releases this year were:
The Devin Townsend Band - Accelerated Evolution
Blind Guardian - Live
Derek Sherinian - Black Utopia
Strapping Young Lad - SYL
Dream Theater - Train of Thought
And my favorites that I purchased this year (but are not from this
year) are:
Iced Earth - Night of the Stormrider (probably my
favorite album ever)
Gamma Ray - No World Order (purchase this album, just
trust me it is awesome)
Falconer - Chapters From a Vale Forlorn
Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind
The Almighty Punchdrunk - Music for Them Asses
And, naturally, my favorite albums overrall (at least until I get
more albums). This list is unordered because it is really hard for me
to rank any of these above the others, they are just my ten favorite
albums.
Iced Earth - Night of the Stormrider
Blind Guardian - Battalions of Fear
Gamma Ray - No World Order
Falconer - Falconer
Strapping Young Lad - SYL
Mithotyn - King of the Distant Forest
Dream Theater - Images & Words
Dream Theater - A Change of Seasons (I know it is only a
one song EP plus a few live tracks, but the song is longer than most
pop albums are)
Symphony X - The Divine Wings of Tragedy
Zao - Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest
Aside from Dream Theater and Iron Maiden I bet that no one else
knows who any of those bands are. It sucks being a metal head in
todays pop punk and fake metal world. I'm so lonely.
Is Dance of Death good? I have most of the Maiden catalog up to Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and then Brave New World and Rock in Rio but am running a bit low on cash so I'm wondering if the new Maiden album is worth buying right now. I'm so glad Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith returned to Maiden because now they are good again.
I'm running out of room for all my CDs (I've got 10 spaces left in my 220 disc binder and only 70 slots left on my one month old 150 disc rack [it is the second one, my other 150 is full]). It's like having my own radio station except it doesn't play crap.
Good old Old English...finally someone who doesn't confused Old Modern English with real Old English! I can sort of read Old English because I know English and German. I was going to grab a book on Old English and read it over the winter break but decided that becoming a rock star would be more impressive.
Most boxed sets are made using Digipacks. I have tons of Digipack CDs and one five disc box set (Iced Earth's Dark Genesis) Digipack. They can do basically anything you want. A standard four discs on the outer two panels with a book in the middle and a fifth disc stored on the back page of the book (like the Iced Earth box set) is certainly doable (all bound into one nice box with four color printing on the entire thing and with an outer protecting box). It can't be terribly expensive because the Iced Earth box set sold for $50 and was limited to something like 2000 copies.
The Rio Karma works well with GNU/Linux, but you have to install the actual Sun JDK (I guess Blackdown would probably work too, I don't use Java at all so I don't really know) to use it because the Java version of the software uses a few methods which haven't be implemented in GNU Classpath yet. You just bring it up on the network, set a network password, point your browser towards it, download the "Rio Manager Lite" software, unzip, and run.
I'm thinking about getting one once GNU Classpath has better support for Swing (it almost works...on the other hand, the software is non-free and I only run free software). My brother got one a few days ago which is why I tried to run the software on my box because the Windows box doesn't have enough disk space to rip his music so I just synced my music onto his player; he has a lot of the same albums anyway. I ended up connecting the thing via USB to the Windows box and mounting my music directory via Samba and then transfering it...it was slow. 802.11b network through a USB
network interface (and the Karma was on the same bus so I ended up getting like 5Mb/s). Hell, I woke up this morning at about one and it still wasn't done (I set it up at eleven last night). People with faster networks and USB2 should have a better experience (my box has USB2 and firewire, but the Windows box is old and lacks such things...mine only has them because I have like five PCI cards that do various things like SCSI, ATA133, etc. because I am a weirdo and upgrade everything except for the processor).
I have a Neuros which kind of sucks, but it was the first portable to support Vorbis and I said I'd buy the first player that did so I did (unlike a lot of other people who were like "the interface blah blah"...if you say you are going to do something, DO IT). The FM broadcast and recording features are the only reasons I won't be getting a Karma to replace it anytime soon (my old headunit had a line-in, but the headunit that came in my Camaro when I upgraded to it from a Bronco II didn't). I like to record lectures occasionally too. The Neuros is a standard mass storage device but it has a simple db on it (you can grab the sync manager, positron, from Xiph). The company doesn't look terribly healthy right now but they are supposedly trying real hard to get USB 2 and 1.8" HD units out. I'll believe it when I see it.
Why not just get a Karma? My Dad got one for my brother the other day and now I'm thinking about killing him so I can have it. It is so much nicer than my Neuros. The only thing I'd miss would be the ability to record and the FM broadcast, but we can't have everything we want. Anyway, I loaded all of my Vorbis stuff onto it and it plays great. I synced it with my stuff because my brother owns like half of the same music I do and the Windows box doesn't have enough disk space to be able to rip onto; my uncle is getting a new box for the family in January I think so I get to teach my brother how to rip then...it shall be fun (I can't remember if you've seen my brother before).
Meanwhile, I got the dual 2Ghz Athlon MP rig:) I guess that's a bit better than a Rio Karma. Now that I've got the nice box, I'll trade you my sister for a Rio Karma;).
So a piece of software is still 'free' if it is BSD licensed and I take the code and incorporate it into a proprietary product?
I'd say it wasn't. The GPL merely ensures that the software remains 'free.' I don't see how that can be wrong; the people who call the BSD licenses more "corporate friendly" are foolish; it is more friendly because they can take the code and not give anything back to the community. I want my software to be 'free' for all who use it, even if that code has been taken and merged into another program. Boo hoo, a corporation can't "make money" off of MY work. You know, that corporation very well could make money off of my code if they GPLed it. However, a corporation would be damned stupid if they released their code under the BSD license because their competitors could simply take it and not give anything back.
I think people have a problem with the GPL because it forces them to share, something we all learned was good when we were five and then forgot when we grew up and became selfish.
Slashdot Mirror
Yahwish never excluded the existence of other gods; Yahweh was simply the god from which all other gods derived their power. Thus the other gods were all power less against Yahweh because he gave them their power.
Yahwish was only monotheistic in the sense that Yahweh was considered to be the only god with any real power. As for Christianity; what do you thing an angel (messenger) is? Basically a lesser god the way I see it.
God: Well, it took a few billion years to... oh, never mind, let's call it "seven days".
The opening story in Gensis resembles a Pharaonic Drama. It is more poetic than literal. People sometimes need to look beyond the words written on the page...funny how my fellow members of a religion, where the founder was dissatisfied with how the current religious leaders had lost sight of the meaning of the words and instead focused on strict literal adherence to the law, are hell bent on making people accept a little story written a very long time ago in a very different time literally.
Ardour.
I don't really need to say much more...it is an excellent replacement for a stand alone HDR system.
Drats, I just got a used 9100 because I thought it was the fastest card with Free drivers (used because I'm not giving ATi any more of my money until they start to release Free DRI drivers). I have my principles and I'm standing up for them. I was one of those people who wouldn't buy a portable music player until it supported Vorbis and had a Free sync client. This is why I have a Neuros (I'd have tricked my brother into buying it from me and then gotten a Karma if he had a Free sync client, but sadly it lacks one). I haven't used proprietary software in about three years now.
I have this fear that I'm going to be stuck with the Radeon 9100 / FireGL 8800 as the fastest graphics card I can get for many years to come. At least the pro-audio people woke up and release specs (I can use a 96 channel RME Hammerfall just as well with ALSA as I can with Windows or OS X).
This problem is disappearing nowadays because most devices you'll find in a desktop use standardized interfaces. OHCI/UHCI for USB 1.1 and EHCI for USB2 controllers, USB mass storage, Firewire DV devices, Firewire storage devices, PTP mode cameras...most recent hardware is really easy to support, except for sound cards and graphics cards. The sound card manufacturers seem to make specs available because most cards have support in ALSA, and the graphics card manufacturers have all turned evil and release proprietary drivers (my Radeon 9100 is probably going to be the last graphics card I buy unless someone decides to release Free drivers again).
The only hardware I have ever had trouble with have been printers (usually cheap ones that only work with Windows) and PCI modems (evil Winmodems!). I know that 802.11a/g and Centrino network devices don't work at all (I even wussed out when we got an 802.11b network and just got an ethernet to 802.11b bridge and hooked it up to my 3c905B). So there are still a few driver issues, but most generic hardware is supported well.
And autodetection...kudzu/discover/whatever-Mandrake-u ses (hwdetect? I forgot) combined with hotplug makes dealing with hardware fairly painless. I plug in my Neuros and all I have to do is mount /mnt/neuros and I'm done (hotplug can even mount the device for you, or load the camera software, or really do anything you want it to do). All of my hardware (except for my on board sensor chips and my SCSI card...kudzu finds them fine but discover doesn't) is either auto-detected and the drivers loaded at boot or the drivers are loaded when I plug them in via USB. Maybe I'm just special.
Actually considering both apple and microsoft stole the GUI from Xerox Parc (go look it up) I don't think you could call either innovative
Seeing how Xerox stole the interface from the Lisp Machine...
Sorry, had to. Please ignore this post.
Yeah, Windows XP is probably the dumbest looking thing I've ever seen. Whoever chose the color scheme needs to die (I think that Aqua in Graphite mode is awesome; I use Liquid for my KDE apps and Crux for my Gtk+ apps because I like both). My little brother saw it when we got a new family box and he asked if there was a way to make it go back to the old look so now his desktop has the old Windows look, which was much nicer (did I mention that I like the way NeXTSTEP looked? I run Window Maker...) but still fairly primitive.
Looking at my family, I realize that not very many people find Windows easy to use so the whole ease-of-use argument is gone. I'd rather have everyone in my family running GNU/Linux so I could ssh in and fix things instead of driving half an hour each way to the middle of nowhere to fix stuff when I have other stuff to do (although I did get $100 for that trip...). On second thought...up with Windows! It makes me money :) More seriously, I doubt that e.g. my sister would notice if she were running Windows or not. As long as she had something to "go dot-comming" with, a word processor, and AIM she'd be perfectly happy. The problem comes when you have to install software; I'm not sure how difficult this is nowadays (I use apt-get on the command line because that's how I've always done it, I don't know if there are any easy graphical tools for people that don't know how to use stuff like sudo).
This is what XPDE is trying to do (clone the Windows XP interface). Except for the applications part...it provides a shell that looks like the Windows XP one along with a control panel and some other stuff (at least I seem to remember it having that stuff).
Personally, you can pry Window Maker out of my cold dead fingers...but I've been using GNU/Linux on the desktop full time for nearly four years. All the software I use works fine on GNU/Linux so I have no need for Windows. I just need a few games (Frozen-Bubble, LBreakout2, Legacy Doom, Quake2), Emacs, a web browser, and a simple DAW for my occasional audio work (Ardour is awesome for this). I'm not a "desktop user" I guess.
I know, but most people don't bother to go that far...my site is boring and worthless.
I don't mind the iPod getting WMA support either. In the best of worlds it would support both Vorbis and WMA. And FLAC (I mean, with an 80G iPod you can store around 200 albums in FLAC which is just enough for my CD collection with a tiny bit of room to grow which will be provided by me not buyings CDs for a while because I spent all my money for six months on an iPod ;) ).
Ok Mr. AC, how'd you find my band's website if I didn't link to it? Hrm?
Meh, I know no one is going to reply.
I wanted it. My brother wanted it. I own a Neuros and he now owns a Karma. Entirely because of the Ogg Vorbis support (I got my Neuros a few days before it became the first player to support Ogg Vorbis because they said they were supporting it and I said I'd buy the first player with support so I did). I spent a bit over $400 on my Neuros, which is what an iPod would have run me. Apple would have gotten my money if they had had Ogg Vorbis support because I don't use MP3.
Everyone who asks me which portable music player they should get is told the Rio Karma. Most people that ask me then end up getting a Karma instead of an iPod. And it's all because they chose to support Vorbis and Apple didn't.
My band only offers downloads in Ogg Vorbis too. I suppose that a few people don't matter, but it adds up. Rio and iRiver support it so it must mean something (they are by no means small players...remember when Rio came out with that weird device that could store half an hour of music in MP3 and only cost...). And I know that Rio isn't the same Rio that it was when it was started and they went through some bad times and all that lives on is the name.
I never claimed the Neuros was nearly as pocketable as an iPod. Those things are HUGE. But the Karma fits in shorter pockets than an iPod can, which is important if you have a wallet, change, a few pens, and one of those stylish wallet chains in your pocket like all the cool kids have. Which is to say you aren't a member of the target market for the Karma I guess.
The Karma is way smaller than an iPod, my brother got once two weeks ago. It certainly is pocketable. Unless you are a girl wearing super-tight pants or a long haired 80s metal head with a pair of faded blue jeans that are one size too small. If you are either then you can either put the thing in your purse or beat up leather jacket.
And I can fit my Neuros in my pant pocket fine. People can see it when I sit down but while I'm walking it isn't noticeable and is quite easy for me to yank out a bit and mess with the controls (if I put it in upside down). And I'm not so Wigga wearing a pair of pants six sizes too big around my ankles. I'm that ordinary slashdot reading potted plant (point if you get my reference) that wears size 38 jeans--just the right size. I don't really even need a belt anymore but I wear it anyway because I haven't gone a day without wearing one since I was ten...(hell, it's even been the same belt).
The Almighty Punchdrunk is Gene Hoglan's one off project. One listen and you'll fall in love with it; it's like Strapping Young Lad only heavier. The album can be had from Hevy Devy Records and I highly recommend it.
Zao is a Hardcore band turned Metalcore turned Crap. There is one original member left: Jesse Smith. A few of my friends knew him and the reason they started to suck at the end was because he hated the band. They kept breaking up after every album only to finish up whatever tour they were obligated to do and then have half the band leave and three new guys show up to fill their places because Jesse Smith decided not to call it quits. The vocalist from the third album onward, Dan Weydant, had a problem with never showing up for shows so they had a backup that toured with them and that eventually replaced Dan Weydant when he quit until he decided to unquit and record one more album...and then the whole band decided to call it quits...and then magically they recorded a really crappy final album (Parade of Chaos) and a re-recording of their first album to fufill their recording contract (along with a recently released "Greatist Hits" compilation for a band with six albums and three split sevens). And now, out of nowhere, they decided to unbreakup and then go on tour. And Dan Weydant left again, but it seems like he really did this time. The new stuff sounds better than their last album did at least, maybe Jesse Smith decided to like the band again. Bleed Zao the only site on the net with any current news on Zao.
2002 was truly awesome. Opeth in particular is interesting; I had never heard a band that could go from Death Metal to Prog Rock in the same song and do it well until I heard them.
Opeth is even kind of mainstream nowadays; my friend Ryan's 16 year old sister listens to them (hmmm...a 16 year old girl with good musical taste but related to my best friend). I don't think the stupid hot topic nu metal kids like them much because they aren't "heavy" enough because they've only ever heard stuff from Damnation (at least the ones that I know around here).
I haven't heard any of the their solo work so I don't know how good it is. I'll take your word for it and try to purchase one of the solo albums next time I go music shopping (hmmm...maybe I should pre-order the next Iced Earth album and order some other stuff too). Still, new Maiden is better than 90s Maiden. Not as good as 80s Maiden, but better than nothing (at least Brave New World was).
Maybe Queensryche will stop sucking too!
I have all of Iced Earth's albums as well as the Dark Genesis boxed set. The three disc version of Alive in Athens is awesome. The album is worth it if only for the versions of the pre-Barlow songs because the versions on Days of Purgatory kind of ... suck. Maybe they would sound better if I hadn't owned the originals first, but the Stormrider stuff (except for Stormrider itself because Schaeffer re-recorded the vocals for that, just like on the original album) didn't sound right. But the live versions of the songs sound amazing .
Blind Guardian is indeed awesome. I'd suggest skipping A Night at the Opera to anyone thinking about purchasing a random Blind Guardian album because it is really too overproduced. Nightfall in Middle Earth or Imaginations From the Other Side are good starting places. Their older stuff is more speed metal and lacks the complexity of the newer stuff but is still awesome (I like heavier metal so I like old Blind Guardian a lot).
Another good metal band is Symphony X. Think Dream Theater on some type of quality enhancing drug. Which is to say that Symphony X is freakin' awesome (because Dream Theater is really really awesome).
It was a great year for my music collection too. I purchased the back catalog of a bunch of artists and now I have an amazing 200 albums (note that I had a total of fifteen albums in October 2002).
My favorite releases this year were:
And my favorites that I purchased this year (but are not from this year) are:
And, naturally, my favorite albums overrall (at least until I get more albums). This list is unordered because it is really hard for me to rank any of these above the others, they are just my ten favorite albums.
Aside from Dream Theater and Iron Maiden I bet that no one else knows who any of those bands are. It sucks being a metal head in todays pop punk and fake metal world. I'm so lonely.
Is Dance of Death good? I have most of the Maiden catalog up to Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and then Brave New World and Rock in Rio but am running a bit low on cash so I'm wondering if the new Maiden album is worth buying right now. I'm so glad Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith returned to Maiden because now they are good again.
I'm running out of room for all my CDs (I've got 10 spaces left in my 220 disc binder and only 70 slots left on my one month old 150 disc rack [it is the second one, my other 150 is full]). It's like having my own radio station except it doesn't play crap.
Good old Old English...finally someone who doesn't confused Old Modern English with real Old English! I can sort of read Old English because I know English and German. I was going to grab a book on Old English and read it over the winter break but decided that becoming a rock star would be more impressive.
Most boxed sets are made using Digipacks. I have tons of Digipack CDs and one five disc box set (Iced Earth's Dark Genesis) Digipack. They can do basically anything you want. A standard four discs on the outer two panels with a book in the middle and a fifth disc stored on the back page of the book (like the Iced Earth box set) is certainly doable (all bound into one nice box with four color printing on the entire thing and with an outer protecting box). It can't be terribly expensive because the Iced Earth box set sold for $50 and was limited to something like 2000 copies.
The Rio Karma works well with GNU/Linux, but you have to install the actual Sun JDK (I guess Blackdown would probably work too, I don't use Java at all so I don't really know) to use it because the Java version of the software uses a few methods which haven't be implemented in GNU Classpath yet. You just bring it up on the network, set a network password, point your browser towards it, download the "Rio Manager Lite" software, unzip, and run.
I'm thinking about getting one once GNU Classpath has better support for Swing (it almost works...on the other hand, the software is non-free and I only run free software). My brother got one a few days ago which is why I tried to run the software on my box because the Windows box doesn't have enough disk space to rip his music so I just synced my music onto his player; he has a lot of the same albums anyway. I ended up connecting the thing via USB to the Windows box and mounting my music directory via Samba and then transfering it...it was slow. 802.11b network through a USB network interface (and the Karma was on the same bus so I ended up getting like 5Mb/s). Hell, I woke up this morning at about one and it still wasn't done (I set it up at eleven last night). People with faster networks and USB2 should have a better experience (my box has USB2 and firewire, but the Windows box is old and lacks such things...mine only has them because I have like five PCI cards that do various things like SCSI, ATA133, etc. because I am a weirdo and upgrade everything except for the processor).
I have a Neuros which kind of sucks, but it was the first portable to support Vorbis and I said I'd buy the first player that did so I did (unlike a lot of other people who were like "the interface blah blah"...if you say you are going to do something, DO IT). The FM broadcast and recording features are the only reasons I won't be getting a Karma to replace it anytime soon (my old headunit had a line-in, but the headunit that came in my Camaro when I upgraded to it from a Bronco II didn't). I like to record lectures occasionally too. The Neuros is a standard mass storage device but it has a simple db on it (you can grab the sync manager, positron, from Xiph). The company doesn't look terribly healthy right now but they are supposedly trying real hard to get USB 2 and 1.8" HD units out. I'll believe it when I see it.
Why not just get a Karma? My Dad got one for my brother the other day and now I'm thinking about killing him so I can have it. It is so much nicer than my Neuros. The only thing I'd miss would be the ability to record and the FM broadcast, but we can't have everything we want. Anyway, I loaded all of my Vorbis stuff onto it and it plays great. I synced it with my stuff because my brother owns like half of the same music I do and the Windows box doesn't have enough disk space to be able to rip onto; my uncle is getting a new box for the family in January I think so I get to teach my brother how to rip then...it shall be fun (I can't remember if you've seen my brother before).
Meanwhile, I got the dual 2Ghz Athlon MP rig :) I guess that's a bit better than a Rio Karma. Now that I've got the nice box, I'll trade you my sister for a Rio Karma ;).
So a piece of software is still 'free' if it is BSD licensed and I take the code and incorporate it into a proprietary product?
I'd say it wasn't. The GPL merely ensures that the software remains 'free.' I don't see how that can be wrong; the people who call the BSD licenses more "corporate friendly" are foolish; it is more friendly because they can take the code and not give anything back to the community. I want my software to be 'free' for all who use it, even if that code has been taken and merged into another program. Boo hoo, a corporation can't "make money" off of MY work. You know, that corporation very well could make money off of my code if they GPLed it. However, a corporation would be damned stupid if they released their code under the BSD license because their competitors could simply take it and not give anything back.
I think people have a problem with the GPL because it forces them to share, something we all learned was good when we were five and then forgot when we grew up and became selfish.