I suspect this is what the "Wild Fox" folks intend to do. I doubt they'd want to re-invent the wheel when such an easy solution is available. Hell, Chrom(e|ium) uses it, to varying degrees (the whole h.264 thing in Chromium).
If you think stories shows up on Digg before/., you should check out Reddit (especially the various tech subreddits). That's where you find the stories 4 days before they show up on Digg.
Nowadays, I mostly come to/. for the discussions. I will admit that the quality of discourse might have sagged a bit since its heyday, but on a whole I still find genuinely stimulating articles and commentary often enough to be a regular reader after all these years.
While I agree in general, we're talking about a PHP interpreter/compiler(maybe) here, so the closest comparison would be MS's language offerings, which are actually rather good. MSVC has considerably better optimization than GCC, for instance.
Call me crazy, but I think we need a new work for "DJ". A real DJ is that jackass you hear talking over the intro the "Stairway to Heaven", rambling about "A rocking free ride rollercoaster weekend of love" on K-KEWL 98.6 FM TO THE MAX!, or something like that. DJ = Disc Jockey.
Maybe we call call them... rave monkeys? Guys with $150 sunglasses? I don't know. Suggestions?
No arguments. I tend to use 10 gauge balanced gold speaker cable for most high-end stuff. So many people are afraid of soldiering irons, it's silly. Attaching phonejack heads isn't exactly difficult.
My comment about the PlanetWave cables is that they're pretty good, not great. The neatest thing I've seen about them is the spring-loaded locks they have that help keep you from yanking yourself unplugged (although you can accomplish that easily enough with a little duct tape, which is generally what I use, because I'm cheap and lazy).
By the way, where the hell are you wiring that you need THAT much distance?
Funny thing, though - Monster Cable is pretty crappy cabling, but for guitar cables, the D'Addario PlanetWaves cables are actually exceptional. And they come in shiny blister packs (or rather, you CAN buy them in shiny blister backs, or in braids).
While it's true that it's a product of wiring in most cases, it can be avoided.
In tube amps, distortion is a result of the addition of even harmonics to the original frequency, or...
base + 1/2sin(2x) + 1/4sin(4x) + 1/6sin(6x) etc...
The same thing, incrementing the variable by 1, is how odd harmonics are generated. To the non-guitar players, this might look like a small difference, but it's the difference between a warm, horn-like vibrato and a buzz-saw sound.
I'm not an expert on the latest in Trans amp technology, but a friend of mine who's designed and worked on a number of amplifiers claims that a few companies (Fender and Marshall, for instance) have found ways to artificially introduce even harmonics in their solid-state amplifiers. Without personal testing and intimate knowlege of the electronics, I can't comment on this (I'm pretty good with tubes. Transistors require too much specialized knowledge - I spend that brain space on programming).
All of this, of course, can be completely faked with amplifier modellers (Line6 POD thingies, Fender Cyber series amplifiers, Roland stuff, etc), but they have their own set of problems.
Buy the way, a piece of free, extremely valuable advice for anybody out there with a tube amp! COOL IT. You're Slashdot people, so you probably know all about cooling, but might not have though of cooling an amplifier. The #1 thing I've seen that destroys old tube amps is overheating. I have an old Fender Twin you could cook an egg on. I wasted a few tubes before I figured out that the incidental heat was destroying the tubes (and damaging who knows what else). I put in a few cheapie computer fans, to help move the hot air out the open back (do NOT leave the backs on tube amps, they turn into ovens), and I haven't replaced the tubes in over a year now.
Harmonics on solid state amps are seriously wonky. Actually, that's not 100% true anymore. A high quality solid state guitar amp nowadays will produce proper harmonics.
I'm not a semi-serious guitar players, I'm a pretty overly serious guitar player, and these guys are almost entirely correct.
Since the late 70's (for the most part - some have never bothered to change) venues have tended to use solid state amplification for sound reinforcement, for the reasons listed above - more efficient power consumption, more reliable, etc.
For guitars, tube amps just sound better. Digital modelling, etc., all try to REPRODUCE the sound of a tube amps, not best it. That's fairly telling. The reasons tube amps sound better for guitars are varied, but are mostly centered around overdriving the amp. The distortion comes on very smoothly as you roll the volume up, and responds to dynamics much better.
For home stereo? Some of the best audiophile home stereos I've heard have been tube (mid 70's Marantz gear), and some have been transistor (late 70's Marantz gear). But tube amps are just NOT cost effective anymore, and almost all of the supposed advantages are just audiophile snobbery.
Another problem with current tube amps is the downright sorry state of tubes. You have to search REALLY hard to find a really high quality 6L6, 12AX7, or EL34 nowadays, and those are the most common used in amplifiers. Hell, the only place to find really high quality ones, like Mullards or Telefunkens I've found is eBay. And they're expensive.
Remember, audiophiles don't listen to music, they listen to noise, and therefore souldn't be taken seriously.
Uh, "The Lemon Song" is one of those songs that Jimmy Page ripped off from other artists. The majority of the song is snagged from Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor", with bits taken from Robert Johnson as well (the "take a Rider by my side" part is from "Cross Road Blues", also covered by Cream).
Tons of artists, including Bob Dylan, have covered Killing Floor (but only Zeppelin had the audacity not to credit him).
So there's absolutely NO possibility of a Tolkien connection with this particular tune. Sorry.
Good Times Bad Times Babe I'm Gonna Leave You You Shook Me Dazed And Confused Your Time Is Gonna Come Black Mountain Side Communication Breakdown I Can't Quit You Baby How Many More Times Whole Lotta Love What Is And What Should Never Be The Lemon Song Thank You Heartbreaker Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman) Moby Dick Bring It On Home Friends Celebration Day Since I've Been Loving You Out On The Tiles Gallows Pole Tangerine That's The Way Bron-Y-Aur Stomp Hats Off To (Roy) Harper Black Dog Rock and Roll Four Sticks When The Levee Breaks The Crunge Dancing Days D'yer Mak'er The Ocean
That's just the first 5 albums. Left on anything that could even REMOTELY be interpreted as Tolkien-inspired (such as Going to California).
I'm positive I'm not mistaken. I missed about 30 seconds or so of the movie because of it. Also, I own the DVD and have seen it many times, and there was no melting where I saw it.
There's also the matter of the theatre lights coming on and users telling us the movie would be back on in a "shortly" (and it actually only took about a minute. Must not have been that stoned that day).
Really? I'm not so sure. I'm only 20, and I've seen it twice. Once with Alien3 - which was really bad, as about 5 minutes late in the movie got toasted, preventing me from following the plot coherently until I watched it on video a year later - and again with Fight Club (both David Fincher movies. I never put that together. I had, however, read the Fight Club book before seeing the movie and thought the coincidence was quite eerie - at first I wasn't sure the film had actually melted, and wasn't just an effect in the movie).
I know it's been said many times before, but I think this is just another indication that IRC, as much as I've loved it in the past, has grown stale. It was never designed for the number of users it's now forced to deal with, nor the level of abuse.
It really saddens me to see something that I used to glean so much enjoyment from withering away because of a few script-kiddie jerks with nothing better to do than annoy people.
Are there any major non-commercial (as in, non "Yahoo Chat" web-based style) projects underway to replace IRC, and if not, should one of us get around to starting one?
Man, it's one thing to be a prick and try a DoS attack or something on a commercial or public site, the repercussions are limited at best. It's not often you hear about people getting arrested (although it does happen). But come on, attacking a Dept. of Defense site is just begging for some spookly looking heavily armed jerks to interrogate you under some hotlamps before hopping into the way-back machine and making it so you were never born!
Oy vey, just my cent or two.
I wouldn't agree with this. I work roughly 12 hours a day, and get maybe 2 hours a day of good, quality testing done. Then again, I work for a small startup, and am one of a very small number of coders.
On the other hand, I don't have to deal with much beaurocracy:)
If you've heard the original song (their first single, "I Can't Explain", unless you count the few single releases they made for Fontana Records under the name "The High Numbers" that went nowhere) you know well enough that a lot more than a second long sample was used. In fact, I believe Slim re-recorded the intro, but used the same chord progression and meter (in an effort to dodge paying). However the song, "Going out of my head", is based almost entirely upon the original. Passages of the original lyric remain intact (but with some soul-singer sounding woman singing them instead of Roger Daltrey), and the general feel of the song feels more like "I Can't Explain 1999 Remix" than an entirely, or even particularly, different song.
I tend to believe Mr. Townshend was in the right in that instance. Bear in mind, he didn't sue Will Smith for the sample taken from the 1982 WHO release "Emminence Front" in the "Wild-Wild West" theme song (you'll notice in the middle of the song, theres a break with the line "It's a put-on").
Almost 100% of the information above is correct. However, although they distribute the source to the Visual Components Library("VCL") as Borland Package Libraries ("BPL"), you CAN get the source to the VCL, at least in the professional editions of the product (which is the only edition I'm familiar with). Because the VCL was originally written for Delphi, the source is in Object Pascal, but it is available. Just thought I'd throw that little tid-bit of information in.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect this is what the "Wild Fox" folks intend to do. I doubt they'd want to re-invent the wheel when such an easy solution is available. Hell, Chrom(e|ium) uses it, to varying degrees (the whole h.264 thing in Chromium).
Oy vey. This is what happens when a post disappears, then magically re-appears.
True. I don't use the nickname "scumm" anymore - haven't in about 10 years. But this /. account has been around for longer than that.
Probably. I mean, he *is* a 67-year old Alpha-Geek.
Probably. I mean, my uncle *is* a 67 year old Alpha-Geek, not a UFC fighter.
If you think stories shows up on Digg before /., you should check out Reddit (especially the various tech subreddits). That's where you find the stories 4 days before they show up on Digg.
Nowadays, I mostly come to /. for the discussions. I will admit that the quality of discourse might have sagged a bit since its heyday, but on a whole I still find genuinely stimulating articles and commentary often enough to be a regular reader after all these years.
While I agree in general, we're talking about a PHP interpreter/compiler(maybe) here, so the closest comparison would be MS's language offerings, which are actually rather good. MSVC has considerably better optimization than GCC, for instance.
The obvious troll changed the details of just about everything (crediting several games to Carmack that he didn't make, the GL/DX3D mixup, etc).
But! What was the first 3D card Quake supported? Hint: It wasn't the Voodoo, with GLQuake.
Call me crazy, but I think we need a new work for "DJ". A real DJ is that jackass you hear talking over the intro the "Stairway to Heaven", rambling about "A rocking free ride rollercoaster weekend of love" on K-KEWL 98.6 FM TO THE MAX!, or something like that. DJ = Disc Jockey.
Maybe we call call them... rave monkeys? Guys with $150 sunglasses? I don't know. Suggestions?
No arguments. I tend to use 10 gauge balanced gold speaker cable for most high-end stuff. So many people are afraid of soldiering irons, it's silly. Attaching phonejack heads isn't exactly difficult.
My comment about the PlanetWave cables is that they're pretty good, not great. The neatest thing I've seen about them is the spring-loaded locks they have that help keep you from yanking yourself unplugged (although you can accomplish that easily enough with a little duct tape, which is generally what I use, because I'm cheap and lazy).
By the way, where the hell are you wiring that you need THAT much distance?
Agreed on all points.
Funny thing, though - Monster Cable is pretty crappy cabling, but for guitar cables, the D'Addario PlanetWaves cables are actually exceptional. And they come in shiny blister packs (or rather, you CAN buy them in shiny blister backs, or in braids).
While it's true that it's a product of wiring in most cases, it can be avoided.
In tube amps, distortion is a result of the addition of even harmonics to the original frequency, or...
base + 1/2sin(2x) + 1/4sin(4x) + 1/6sin(6x) etc...
The same thing, incrementing the variable by 1, is how odd harmonics are generated. To the non-guitar players, this might look like a small difference, but it's the difference between a warm, horn-like vibrato and a buzz-saw sound.
I'm not an expert on the latest in Trans amp technology, but a friend of mine who's designed and worked on a number of amplifiers claims that a few companies (Fender and Marshall, for instance) have found ways to artificially introduce even harmonics in their solid-state amplifiers. Without personal testing and intimate knowlege of the electronics, I can't comment on this (I'm pretty good with tubes. Transistors require too much specialized knowledge - I spend that brain space on programming).
All of this, of course, can be completely faked with amplifier modellers (Line6 POD thingies, Fender Cyber series amplifiers, Roland stuff, etc), but they have their own set of problems.
Buy the way, a piece of free, extremely valuable advice for anybody out there with a tube amp! COOL IT. You're Slashdot people, so you probably know all about cooling, but might not have though of cooling an amplifier. The #1 thing I've seen that destroys old tube amps is overheating. I have an old Fender Twin you could cook an egg on. I wasted a few tubes before I figured out that the incidental heat was destroying the tubes (and damaging who knows what else). I put in a few cheapie computer fans, to help move the hot air out the open back (do NOT leave the backs on tube amps, they turn into ovens), and I haven't replaced the tubes in over a year now.
Damnit, I knew I misses something!
Harmonics on solid state amps are seriously wonky. Actually, that's not 100% true anymore. A high quality solid state guitar amp nowadays will produce proper harmonics.
But yeah, you're right.
I'm not a semi-serious guitar players, I'm a pretty overly serious guitar player, and these guys are almost entirely correct.
Since the late 70's (for the most part - some have never bothered to change) venues have tended to use solid state amplification for sound reinforcement, for the reasons listed above - more efficient power consumption, more reliable, etc.
For guitars, tube amps just sound better. Digital modelling, etc., all try to REPRODUCE the sound of a tube amps, not best it. That's fairly telling. The reasons tube amps sound better for guitars are varied, but are mostly centered around overdriving the amp. The distortion comes on very smoothly as you roll the volume up, and responds to dynamics much better.
For home stereo? Some of the best audiophile home stereos I've heard have been tube (mid 70's Marantz gear), and some have been transistor (late 70's Marantz gear). But tube amps are just NOT cost effective anymore, and almost all of the supposed advantages are just audiophile snobbery.
Another problem with current tube amps is the downright sorry state of tubes. You have to search REALLY hard to find a really high quality 6L6, 12AX7, or EL34 nowadays, and those are the most common used in amplifiers. Hell, the only place to find really high quality ones, like Mullards or Telefunkens I've found is eBay. And they're expensive.
Remember, audiophiles don't listen to music, they listen to noise, and therefore souldn't be taken seriously.
Uh, "The Lemon Song" is one of those songs that Jimmy Page ripped off from other artists. The majority of the song is snagged from Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor", with bits taken from Robert Johnson as well (the "take a Rider by my side" part is from "Cross Road Blues", also covered by Cream).
Tons of artists, including Bob Dylan, have covered Killing Floor (but only Zeppelin had the audacity not to credit him).
So there's absolutely NO possibility of a Tolkien connection with this particular tune. Sorry.
Good Times Bad Times
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
You Shook Me
Dazed And Confused
Your Time Is Gonna Come
Black Mountain Side
Communication Breakdown
I Can't Quit You Baby
How Many More Times
Whole Lotta Love
What Is And What Should Never Be
The Lemon Song
Thank You
Heartbreaker
Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)
Moby Dick
Bring It On Home
Friends
Celebration Day
Since I've Been Loving You
Out On The Tiles
Gallows Pole
Tangerine
That's The Way
Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
Hats Off To (Roy) Harper
Black Dog
Rock and Roll
Four Sticks
When The Levee Breaks
The Crunge
Dancing Days
D'yer Mak'er
The Ocean
That's just the first 5 albums. Left on anything that could even REMOTELY be interpreted as Tolkien-inspired (such as Going to California).
I'm positive I'm not mistaken. I missed about 30 seconds or so of the movie because of it. Also, I own the DVD and have seen it many times, and there was no melting where I saw it.
There's also the matter of the theatre lights coming on and users telling us the movie would be back on in a "shortly" (and it actually only took about a minute. Must not have been that stoned that day).
Really? I'm not so sure. I'm only 20, and I've seen it twice. Once with Alien3 - which was really bad, as about 5 minutes late in the movie got toasted, preventing me from following the plot coherently until I watched it on video a year later - and again with Fight Club (both David Fincher movies. I never put that together. I had, however, read the Fight Club book before seeing the movie and thought the coincidence was quite eerie - at first I wasn't sure the film had actually melted, and wasn't just an effect in the movie).
I know it's been said many times before, but I think this is just another indication that IRC, as much as I've loved it in the past, has grown stale. It was never designed for the number of users it's now forced to deal with, nor the level of abuse.
It really saddens me to see something that I used to glean so much enjoyment from withering away because of a few script-kiddie jerks with nothing better to do than annoy people.
Are there any major non-commercial (as in, non "Yahoo Chat" web-based style) projects underway to replace IRC, and if not, should one of us get around to starting one?
Mike Thacker
Man, it's one thing to be a prick and try a DoS attack or something on a commercial or public site, the repercussions are limited at best. It's not often you hear about people getting arrested (although it does happen).
But come on, attacking a Dept. of Defense site is just begging for some spookly looking heavily armed jerks to interrogate you under some hotlamps before hopping into the way-back machine and making it so you were never born!
Oy vey, just my cent or two.
Mike Thacker
I wouldn't agree with this. I work roughly 12 hours a day, and get maybe 2 hours a day of good, quality testing done. Then again, I work for a small startup, and am one of a very small number of coders.
:)
On the other hand, I don't have to deal with much beaurocracy
Mike Thacker
Now, I'm certainly no expert, but I bet older stuff can be found under Strom Thurmonds fingernails.
Then again, didn't he change gods diapers?
Mike Thacker
If you've heard the original song (their first single, "I Can't Explain", unless you count the few single releases they made for Fontana Records under the name "The High Numbers" that went nowhere) you know well enough that a lot more than a second long sample was used. In fact, I believe Slim re-recorded the intro, but used the same chord progression and meter (in an effort to dodge paying). However the song, "Going out of my head", is based almost entirely upon the original. Passages of the original lyric remain intact (but with some soul-singer sounding woman singing them instead of Roger Daltrey), and the general feel of the song feels more like "I Can't Explain 1999 Remix" than an entirely, or even particularly, different song.
I tend to believe Mr. Townshend was in the right in that instance. Bear in mind, he didn't sue Will Smith for the sample taken from the 1982 WHO release "Emminence Front" in the "Wild-Wild West" theme song (you'll notice in the middle of the song, theres a break with the line "It's a put-on").
Dr. Thacker
Almost 100% of the information above is correct. However, although they distribute the source to the Visual Components Library("VCL") as Borland Package Libraries ("BPL"), you CAN get the source to the VCL, at least in the professional editions of the product (which is the only edition I'm familiar with). Because the VCL was originally written for Delphi, the source is in Object Pascal, but it is available. Just thought I'd throw that little tid-bit of information in.