Sadly, you don't have to go back to the vinyl days for examlpes of this.
The "engineering to death" that you talk about is usually dynamic range compression, where you artificially limit the difference between the softest and the loudest sound reproduced in the media. Compression is very useful in certain situations (guitar compressors are fairly popular to "focus" the sound of the instrument, and compressing vocals is a common practice), but nowadays it has become popular to over-compress pretty much everything in modern music. The net result is that the music appears louder, since the volume variations are reduced, but what you get is tracks where it is impossible to discerne fine details - everything feels mashed together, in a way. This might be good for certain styles (hiphop, perhaps), but the practice is so extended that it has become impossible to find new music with proper production and mixing. Adding insult to injury, it has also become very common to boost the audio levels (volumes) in the CDs so much that they "grow" outside the margins that the media offers, again, trying to make it sound louder and meaner. This is called clipping, and creates clearly audible, horrendous distortion. I've noticed this in a shitload of new tracks, and it boggles my mind that anyone might find ok to distribute audio in that state.
Nowadays i have a hard time finding music produced after mid 90s' that doesn't suffer one of these symptoms. Pop music, particularly, is horrid in this sence. The art of subtely crafting layers of sound seems to be lost... and i'm not saying that every band should sound like Pink Floyd, but, for Gods' sake, when you have all the instruments sounding constantly at the same level in a rock trio it just becomes annoying. Tool is one rock band i've discovered still cares about proper mixing, off the top of my head. On the other hand, i fell in love with the self-titled CD of Army of anyone... or their songs, atleast. It's a shame such a fine album can wear you out after a few listens because of poor mixing.
That game was absolutely incredible, but that particular bit with your dead sister was pretty disturbing. Which is saying a lot considering what else went on in it...
Valgrind is, by far, one of the most useful tools i've ever came across for C/C++ developing. It's a shame it runs only on Linux - i bet a lot of Windows software would be much less leak-proof if such an excellent (and free) tool were available for them.
Usability is the thing that drew me into Opera in the first place! Mouse gestures, excellent keyboard browsing, pop up panels, notes, quick configurations... you name it.
With that said, Microsofts Windows Mobile 6 is a disappointment. Working with a number of applications or "heavy" documents was painful. The delay was too much, especially in Word and PowerPoint files that it wasnt possible for us to work with the device without messing up somewhere and not realizing it in the end. This lag is present across a number of other scenarios as well.
...followed by...
If nothing else, its an interesting gadget for the young and hip crowd, though we wouldnt recommend it for productivity hounds that are looking to do reports and presentations on the Wing. Not to mention, the sexy and strange appeal of the device can't be pleasing to serious professionals. For $299.99 from T-Mobile, its a worthy Sidekick replacement.
Yeah, 300 bucks for a 'trippy' smartphone that is painful to use as a smartphone. Make up your mind.
BTW: Kudos for the 8 hours of real-life battery time (in use). For a smartphone, that's kinda impressive.
Yeah, i also remember when Tom's Hardware didn't use to stretch articles in 17 ad crammed pages. Or when MTV played, you know, actual music, for that matter...
On my experience, most of the crashes are plugin related. I was conservative with the (pulled off my ass:) 60% figure - Flash, until recent versions, was a guaranteed way of hanging your browser. I had some memory leaks back with version 7, which were promptly fixed in an update, and a crash when you opened and closed tabs in a certain way, which was also fixed quickly.
Other than that, i can't honestly recall major problems with Opera. Not that i had a lot of issues with Firefox either (outside Flash, that is), but it does run much faster and with less memory requirements.
It looks allright (using the static QT version) under XFCE, which happens to be a pure GTK+ desktop enviroment. Stock configuration - i only adjust toolbars and such.
I had Opera crashing on me on, say, 50-60 times in the past 5 years i've been using it (back from version 6). Of those, 60% were issues with that piece of shit Flash plugin for Linux, and even that got much better. Opera crashed? No problem, just hit "resume" when you restart.
Opera is as stable as FF (and way more stable than IE) with a fraction of the system requirements - and faster than both. Try an up to date version, you'll be surprised.
You can do this easily with a PIC controller. I've recently built a (stand alone) RGB mood lamp with one of those things and it works flawlessly. You want PWM (pulse width modulation) to drive the leds in order to get proper attenuation.
I think the late great Bill Hicks summed it up pretty nicely...
"People come up to me: 'Bill, quit talking about Kennedy man... It was a long time ago...' And I'm like alright, then don't bring up Jesus to me. As long as we're talking about shelf life here!"
I'm not even American and the JFK assasination is a topic that deeply interests me. We're surely never gonna know what happened that day, but i can settle for what didn't happen.
Motorola is selling a cellphone sporting E-Ink display - it's rather crude, as the display is not dot-matrix but a segmented display (not unlike LCDs) sporting some assorted graphical icons. The kicker is that the phone sells well under 50 bucks unlocked and it's 9mm thick. Apparently, the E-Ink display is way cheaper than LCD displays to mass produce, and, since it doesn't need glass nor polarizer substrates it allows the phone to be this thin.
As for the device itself, it's a nice barebones phone, which feels very study. The display looks great, and i only wish they used a finer dot matrix display, as SMSs can be rather hard to read on it. I've been considering getting one for myself lately.
Sony built a machine that is a game console, a Blu-ray player, DVD player, computer (with a far more powerful processor than most people's home computers), music player, communications/chat server, web browser and much more. It does all this but is nearly silent. It does a lot for the price and it has plenty of room to be extended in the future.
IMHO, this is the reason the PS3 is doing so bad compared to the other two contenders - instead of desiging a gaming console, Sony decided to build the ultimate media center. It has great specs and hardware, don't get me wrong, but the problem is most people don't want a media center, nor a Blu-ray player. They just want a console, and at a $600 price tag (plus an average of $50 per games), it becomes either not a good value or simply too expensive to afford. The fact that they sell it at a loss is irrelevant - Sony is NOT doing you a favor by selling hardware below cost, nor you should care as a consumer.
Just ask Nintendo how they're doing selling a games console at a very reasonable price. Or Microsoft, for that matter.
Quit complaining about price--the reason you complain is that you want one badly but don't have the cash to pony up and buy the device.
Actually, i find more and more people who own and loved their PS2 that are completely uninterested in the PS3. I don't really like consoles myself, and yet the Wii is the first console purchase i'm considering in quite a while. If i can find one, that is.
I migrated from Gaim 2.0.6b to Pidgin 2.0.7b yesterday, and yes, the original emoticons for each protocol are no longer there - there's a very nice set of custom ones (supporting most of the MSN set) though. I'd still prefer the original ones... i guess a third-party package will appear sooner or later.
I like the new UI a lot - functionally, Pidgin is the same as the earlier Gaim 2.0 betas with a sleeker look. It also seems a bit more responsive, IMHO. The Pidgin guys have done a great job, IMHO.
PS: Will we ever get the stock emoticons for each IM protocol back again? The default ones stocked with Pidgin are nice, but i always preferred to see the "original" ones for each client.
Bombing the crap out of people always ends up with them doing the best they can to bomb the crap out of you and it's noticeable that all the worldwide military might of the US still hasn't defeated terrorism.
Maybe it's because i don't live in the US, but i still, after all these years, don't get it... what does carpet bombing places like Iraq have to do with defeating terrorism?
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, you don't have to go back to the vinyl days for examlpes of this.
The "engineering to death" that you talk about is usually dynamic range compression, where you artificially limit the difference between the softest and the loudest sound reproduced in the media. Compression is very useful in certain situations (guitar compressors are fairly popular to "focus" the sound of the instrument, and compressing vocals is a common practice), but nowadays it has become popular to over-compress pretty much everything in modern music. The net result is that the music appears louder, since the volume variations are reduced, but what you get is tracks where it is impossible to discerne fine details - everything feels mashed together, in a way. This might be good for certain styles (hiphop, perhaps), but the practice is so extended that it has become impossible to find new music with proper production and mixing.
Adding insult to injury, it has also become very common to boost the audio levels (volumes) in the CDs so much that they "grow" outside the margins that the media offers, again, trying to make it sound louder and meaner. This is called clipping, and creates clearly audible, horrendous distortion. I've noticed this in a shitload of new tracks, and it boggles my mind that anyone might find ok to distribute audio in that state.
Nowadays i have a hard time finding music produced after mid 90s' that doesn't suffer one of these symptoms. Pop music, particularly, is horrid in this sence. The art of subtely crafting layers of sound seems to be lost... and i'm not saying that every band should sound like Pink Floyd, but, for Gods' sake, when you have all the instruments sounding constantly at the same level in a rock trio it just becomes annoying. Tool is one rock band i've discovered still cares about proper mixing, off the top of my head. On the other hand, i fell in love with the self-titled CD of Army of anyone... or their songs, atleast. It's a shame such a fine album can wear you out after a few listens because of poor mixing.
Well, i feel almost obliged now (source)...
Nintendo DS:
Global: 40 million
Europe: 11 million
Britain: 3.1 million
Nintendo Wii:
Global: 5.84 million
Europe: 1.3 million
Britain: 438,000
When IPv6 is installed, this happens without fail. As soon as we remove IPv6, all of our printer functions return to normal.
;)
It fails without fail?
That game was absolutely incredible, but that particular bit with your dead sister was pretty disturbing. Which is saying a lot considering what else went on in it...
Valgrind is, by far, one of the most useful tools i've ever came across for C/C++ developing. It's a shame it runs only on Linux - i bet a lot of Windows software would be much less leak-proof if such an excellent (and free) tool were available for them.
Usability is the thing that drew me into Opera in the first place! Mouse gestures, excellent keyboard browsing, pop up panels, notes, quick configurations... you name it.
With that said, Microsofts Windows Mobile 6 is a disappointment. Working with a number of applications or "heavy" documents was painful. The delay was too much, especially in Word and PowerPoint files that it wasnt possible for us to work with the device without messing up somewhere and not realizing it in the end. This lag is present across a number of other scenarios as well.
...followed by...
If nothing else, its an interesting gadget for the young and hip crowd, though we wouldnt recommend it for productivity hounds that are looking to do reports and presentations on the Wing. Not to mention, the sexy and strange appeal of the device can't be pleasing to serious professionals. For $299.99 from T-Mobile, its a worthy Sidekick replacement.
Yeah, 300 bucks for a 'trippy' smartphone that is painful to use as a smartphone. Make up your mind.
BTW: Kudos for the 8 hours of real-life battery time (in use). For a smartphone, that's kinda impressive.
Yeah, i also remember when Tom's Hardware didn't use to stretch articles in 17 ad crammed pages. Or when MTV played, you know, actual music, for that matter...
On my experience, most of the crashes are plugin related. I was conservative with the (pulled off my ass :) 60% figure - Flash, until recent versions, was a guaranteed way of hanging your browser. I had some memory leaks back with version 7, which were promptly fixed in an update, and a crash when you opened and closed tabs in a certain way, which was also fixed quickly.
Other than that, i can't honestly recall major problems with Opera. Not that i had a lot of issues with Firefox either (outside Flash, that is), but it does run much faster and with less memory requirements.
It looks allright (using the static QT version) under XFCE, which happens to be a pure GTK+ desktop enviroment. Stock configuration - i only adjust toolbars and such.
I had Opera crashing on me on, say, 50-60 times in the past 5 years i've been using it (back from version 6). Of those, 60% were issues with that piece of shit Flash plugin for Linux, and even that got much better. Opera crashed? No problem, just hit "resume" when you restart.
Opera is as stable as FF (and way more stable than IE) with a fraction of the system requirements - and faster than both. Try an up to date version, you'll be surprised.
You'd be safer using +12V and 1,2kOhms resistors, but your combination will do perfectly fine, specially considering the very low power draw of LEDs.
You can do this easily with a PIC controller. I've recently built a (stand alone) RGB mood lamp with one of those things and it works flawlessly. You want PWM (pulse width modulation) to drive the leds in order to get proper attenuation.
*yawn*
That's cool and everything, but these satellites are kinda watching in the wrong direction, you know... :)
...imagine what they would talk about already!
I think the late great Bill Hicks summed it up pretty nicely...
"People come up to me: 'Bill, quit talking about Kennedy man... It was a long time ago...' And I'm like alright, then don't bring up Jesus to me. As long as we're talking about shelf life here!"
I'm not even American and the JFK assasination is a topic that deeply interests me. We're surely never gonna know what happened that day, but i can settle for what didn't happen.
Motorola is selling a cellphone sporting E-Ink display - it's rather crude, as the display is not dot-matrix but a segmented display (not unlike LCDs) sporting some assorted graphical icons. The kicker is that the phone sells well under 50 bucks unlocked and it's 9mm thick. Apparently, the E-Ink display is way cheaper than LCD displays to mass produce, and, since it doesn't need glass nor polarizer substrates it allows the phone to be this thin.
As for the device itself, it's a nice barebones phone, which feels very study. The display looks great, and i only wish they used a finer dot matrix display, as SMSs can be rather hard to read on it. I've been considering getting one for myself lately.
Your levity is good. It relieves tension and the fear of death.
You mean, unlike the ones created by professionals?
Just create a symlink to /dev/urandom
If we ever have a WWIII, i hope it is *you*, Sir, that repopulates the earth.
Sony built a machine that is a game console, a Blu-ray player, DVD player, computer (with a far more powerful processor than most people's home computers), music player, communications/chat server, web browser and much more. It does all this but is nearly silent. It does a lot for the price and it has plenty of room to be extended in the future.
IMHO, this is the reason the PS3 is doing so bad compared to the other two contenders - instead of desiging a gaming console, Sony decided to build the ultimate media center. It has great specs and hardware, don't get me wrong, but the problem is most people don't want a media center, nor a Blu-ray player. They just want a console, and at a $600 price tag (plus an average of $50 per games), it becomes either not a good value or simply too expensive to afford. The fact that they sell it at a loss is irrelevant - Sony is NOT doing you a favor by selling hardware below cost, nor you should care as a consumer.
Just ask Nintendo how they're doing selling a games console at a very reasonable price. Or Microsoft, for that matter.
Quit complaining about price--the reason you complain is that you want one badly but don't have the cash to pony up and buy the device.
Actually, i find more and more people who own and loved their PS2 that are completely uninterested in the PS3. I don't really like consoles myself, and yet the Wii is the first console purchase i'm considering in quite a while. If i can find one, that is.
I migrated from Gaim 2.0.6b to Pidgin 2.0.7b yesterday, and yes, the original emoticons for each protocol are no longer there - there's a very nice set of custom ones (supporting most of the MSN set) though. I'd still prefer the original ones... i guess a third-party package will appear sooner or later.
I like the new UI a lot - functionally, Pidgin is the same as the earlier Gaim 2.0 betas with a sleeker look. It also seems a bit more responsive, IMHO. The Pidgin guys have done a great job, IMHO.
PS: Will we ever get the stock emoticons for each IM protocol back again? The default ones stocked with Pidgin are nice, but i always preferred to see the "original" ones for each client.
Bombing the crap out of people always ends up with them doing the best they can to bomb the crap out of you and it's noticeable that all the worldwide military might of the US still hasn't defeated terrorism. Maybe it's because i don't live in the US, but i still, after all these years, don't get it... what does carpet bombing places like Iraq have to do with defeating terrorism?