I think that particular quote applies to a lot more than just the design of an electronic musical instrument
Actually, for synths, I disagree. At present the trend is for more systems with more and more knobs and other performance controllers. Not only that, but the hardwired configuration of oscillator>filter>amp>effects is being superceded by a much more 'modular' approach to the point where you get to mix and match virtual synth components on the fly, say a vocoded sample, through a software emulation of a Moog low-pass filter, through a beat-triggered digital dealy and into a multi-stage amplifier, with multiple low-frequency osciallators controlling various input parameters.
I overclock because I refuse to pay the premium for the Newest CPU On the Block. ie the 200% markup on CPU price that lasts for the first four months of its life. My twin 366Mhz-running-at-550Mhz Celeron's aren't there for hotrod horsepower, they're there because they cost significantly less than a single slowest-model PIII (ie 230 UKP for them and the motherboard)
It bloody is a big deal. It engenders a climate where any UK-hosted site is at risk. Outcast didnt have defamatory material. It was just enough to suggest that they might defame in the future, and they lost their site, and possibly business.
If I pay for a site, then I have a contract with the ISP. If they renege on that contract at the wave of my competitor's hand, then I should be able to do something about it. But, no. You think its fine to allow my competitor an easy sabotage tool. Gee I hope it happens to you.
The Outcast case revolves around the fact that the ISP pulling the site did so on the grounds that the site might be defamatory. However I know of another, albeit slightly different, case in the UK, where a site was dropped by the ISP under a different kind of pressure. The site in question, that of a fetish club, was dropped by the ISP because the owner of a competing club, bombarded the ISP with faxes, letters, emails et.c claiming the owners of the first club owed him money. This was after a court case over the same supposed issue which the second owner lost. But the ISP just didnt have the guts to ignore the guy, and dropped the site completely. They still dont have new hosting.
The second owner has dropped a campaign of rather nasty personal harassment in the meantime, mainly because he has succeeded in winning his little 'dirty tricks' campaign.
But its a worrying trend. It looks as though UK ISP's aren't prepared to back up their customers. In fact they're prepared to shit on them if someone else says so.
Does anyone know of a UK ISP with guts willing to back their clients? If emmett is reading, what are Outcast doing now? Have they found a reliable ISP, one with guts? Or do we wind up moving all our UK websites to the States, just to protect ourselves and our sites?
Im so pissed off that Demon folded against G*dfrey. They may have fucked us all over in the process.
It seems to me that a fundamental argument of Pinkerton's was flawed. Yes, there is an existing 'anonymous reporting culture' But the area this falls into is in the category of existing crimes or malfeasance of some kind, ie rape, abuse, et.c.
The extension of this into attempting to pre-empt criminal behaviour is what is so dangerous, and Jon Katz would have done well to draw that distinction. There is a world of difference between an anonymous phonecall to some relevant body about suspected child abuse, and an anonymous phonecall because a young adult is behaving 'differently'.
In fact, in this case, it would be possible to extend this particular example and say that with the likely psychological repercussions of abuse, it would be more likely victim would be reported to an organisation like Wave America than the perpetrator... So who's being protected then?
I notice one of the features of the XFS port listed as unimplemented as yet is the guaranteed data rate stuff. Anyone able to confirm if any of the other filesystems support a similar feature?
Ext3fs - Progressing with the lightning speed of a concussed tortoise on LSD. Ext3 is a great idea, in theory, as it's backwards compatiable with Ext2. However, unless it picks up speed, we won't be seeing the next patch until well into the next decade. I know Alan Cox is busy, and only has one brain (the size of a planet), but if he's having problems with working on it, what's stopping him putting it on SourceForge and using it to build interest and developers?
Umm, isnt it Steven Tweedie who's working on ext3?
www.bp6.com reports that single-CPU's works okay on the BP6 with the Powerleap 370 to FCPGA adaptor, but not SMP. Although I wouldnt be surprised to see the adaptor tweaked for SMP real soon now
Well there's one or two. She has done some valuable stuff (ie working out the 216-colour websafe palette) but these days, she seems (like Molly Holzschlag IMHO) to be more interested in promoting her books/courses.
If you actually look at her books, the newer revisions dont actually add that much new information. And once you know how to defringe, which image format is better for which kind of graphic, and how to use the 216-color palette then you don't need to purchase four different (~45 UKP) books to get the information. In fact if you read her column in Web Techniques (probably archived) then thats probably all you need to know.
But she pushes the books, and the courses, and the videos, and the DVD's. And meanwhile, sahe sticks with slightly older ways of doing things, in a kinda David Siegel stylee. Ookay, CSS isn't guaranteed cross-platform / cross-browser so its forgivable, but its slightly old-fashioned. And there isn't a lot of new graphics-oriented generic information; its devolved into books on specific software packages.
If you're interested, browse her books in Borders or summat, but don't buy. Too damned 'spensive. Get the O'Reilly book on web graphics, or read webdeveloper.com.
Surely someone can arrange a page that automates the filling in of CyberNOT's 'review our decision' form. And then we can Slashdot it.
Actually, would it be possible to set up an engine which checks all these filters, and allowed us to email all the manufacturer's banning specific sites in one go. Maybe hook it into the Meta-Moderation page and we can try to MetaMod the filter software?:)
Opinion: This article may or may not be FUD, but, inescapably, its pretty much the 'Other Camp' reaction to the zealot rallying cry that Open Source code is some kind of software panacea. If OS proponents weren't so single-mindedly bullish about its superiority in all fields, this wouldnt happen nearly as much. Don't confuse the development process (which IMHO is superior) with the product. OS is a solution, but not necessarily the only solution. Its an alternative, but shouldnt be dogma.
And I'll state what I consider to be a fact. There's nothing inherently more secure about an Open Source implementation of a feature versus a proprietry implementation. But there is a greater likelihood that the feature will be improved upon, faster and better, than a proprietry solution. Not always, but it is more likely.
The article, though, seems to make a different (mistaken) assumption. Access to the source code for a given Linux distro is probably the least significant factor in compromising security on a given Linux box. Is the article implying that someone would be able to develop a cracked kernel, and somehow cause its proliferation? Why not also mention Sendmail, BIND, or Apache, all of which sit on more boxen than Linux does? The kernel isn't the typical weak spot in a system; if there's any main software weakness, it's likely to be in the various server daemons.
Most importantly, though, at the end of the day, poor administration is absolutely the worst problem. Implying that a closed-source OS is automatically safer instills a ludicrous perspective, implying that admins of closed OS's need to know less about security. For that reason, and that reason alone, Silicon.com ought to be pilloried publically.
A single drive can now store the equivalent of up to 18 DVD movies in MPEG3 format
Ten, twelve years ago, the average individual couldnt have afforded an HD that stored 2 Audio CD's. Okay DVD blanks are far more expensive than DVD's, but it looks as though in the next coupla years its going to be more than feasible to have a 30-50 DVD collection on your PC. And its rentals they're worried about...
I disagree, and reckon it can be done far cheaper than that. I dont see any valid reason to go for This Year's Model for anything; the price/performance ratio is way out of whack, and your kit is going to be equally out of date in a year. And that 3-4K system you bought early last year? Worth about 1K now.
I reckon the trade-off on price and performance of an Abit BP6, and two 600Mhz Celeron's against a single 750Mhz PIII is enough for a render node, dont you? Cheaper, more grunt.
This isn't really that big of a deal, because it's just the renderer - you still need an NT or IRIX box to actually create any content.
Actually it is; if you're doing serious work, then cheap render nodes are incredibly nice to have. And at the moment, on horsepower-per-buck, it looks like NT systems do damn well; we have a coupla student using Maya at home who reckon that they're getting better speeds of a 2K NT box than our 30K SGI Octanes. Even if thats not true, if you're talking about 1K to 1.5K for a Linux render node and you're talking cheap.
When they port all of their tools over, then it will be a big deal. (The maya renderer is a command-line tool, and if it was any big deal to port then I'd be really suprised.)
The fact that it may have been easy to port isn't the issue; its the fact that they did it that is.
Check out the link on the site for Quasimodo for a link. (Quasimodo is a rather nifty modular-synth style system based on a realtime implementation of CSound (although its migrating to SAOL, part of the MPEg-4 spec).
I'd heard that this was eventually going to be available for Linux. Even if it isnt I want one, but can anyone confirm anything about the Linux port?
For those who dont know what it is its a four-DSP hardware card (with appropriate IO's) with software that allows it to do direct-to-disk recording, mixing, soft-synthesis (including modular synths), sampler, effects et.c.
It could have been fun, if it could have been open to ALL Linux developers. Instead Loki president attitude was near to go away and make your own things.
Fun had nothing to do with it. Loki had a problem so they built a solution. They built an opensolution. Thats a good thing. They built a cross-platform solution. That was better still.
I would have prefered that all Linux developer got to define a standard with everyone, but one established developer prefer to be alone on the spotlight.
Did you read the interview? OpenAL was a stalled project. Loki took it up because no-one tried to get any further with developing it.
Would you be telling ESR that you would have preferred 'that all Linux developer got to define a standard with everyone' for Fetchmail because you didnt like 'one established developer prefer to be alone on the spotlight'
You have an itch, you scratch it. Thats the point.
There's an archived article by Ralf S. Engelschall that was printed in WebTechniques magazine. It talks about using pools of servers and reverse proxying for load-balancing. You might want to look there.
You didn't expect me to leave this thread yet did you?
God, no.
But if we resort to trade-offs, the it is no longer an absolute freedom, but a relative one. It is no longer a matter of having *freedom* but having *more* freedom.
As I said a post or so back, what I meant was that 'the only absolute standard for 'rating' a political stance, attitude, or decision, is the amount of freedom it negates, restricts, adds, or enhances'. That's what I (clumsily) attempted to say in my original post. Absolute freedom is a nice ideal, but that would involve inhabiting a society of people I trusted...
Basically, Im forced to make trade-offs owing to the inadequacies of my species.
Or your basic slashdot story;) Lets moderate Wilson [subversive -1E100] immediately!
I think the Feds et.c. already do. But at least a grits post from RAW would be funny
Slashdot Mirror
I think that particular quote applies to a lot more than just the design of an electronic musical instrument
Actually, for synths, I disagree. At present the trend is for more systems with more and more knobs and other performance controllers. Not only that, but the hardwired configuration of oscillator>filter>amp>effects is being superceded by a much more 'modular' approach to the point where you get to mix and match virtual synth components on the fly, say a vocoded sample, through a software emulation of a Moog low-pass filter, through a beat-triggered digital dealy and into a multi-stage amplifier, with multiple low-frequency osciallators controlling various input parameters.
I wouldnt call that simpler, at all :)
Post Posting: Has any european poster any chance to get a rating higher than 1
Yes. Repeatedly
I overclock because I refuse to pay the premium for the Newest CPU On the Block. ie the 200% markup on CPU price that lasts for the first four months of its life. My twin 366Mhz-running-at-550Mhz Celeron's aren't there for hotrod horsepower, they're there because they cost significantly less than a single slowest-model PIII (ie 230 UKP for them and the motherboard)
It bloody is a big deal. It engenders a climate where any UK-hosted site is at risk. Outcast didnt have defamatory material. It was just enough to suggest that they might defame in the future, and they lost their site, and possibly business.
If I pay for a site, then I have a contract with the ISP. If they renege on that contract at the wave of my competitor's hand, then I should be able to do something about it. But, no. You think its fine to allow my competitor an easy sabotage tool. Gee I hope it happens to you.
The Outcast case revolves around the fact that the ISP pulling the site did so on the grounds that the site might be defamatory. However I know of another, albeit slightly different, case in the UK, where a site was dropped by the ISP under a different kind of pressure. The site in question, that of a fetish club, was dropped by the ISP because the owner of a competing club, bombarded the ISP with faxes, letters, emails et.c claiming the owners of the first club owed him money. This was after a court case over the same supposed issue which the second owner lost. But the ISP just didnt have the guts to ignore the guy, and dropped the site completely. They still dont have new hosting.
The second owner has dropped a campaign of rather nasty personal harassment in the meantime, mainly because he has succeeded in winning his little 'dirty tricks' campaign.
But its a worrying trend. It looks as though UK ISP's aren't prepared to back up their customers. In fact they're prepared to shit on them if someone else says so.
Does anyone know of a UK ISP with guts willing to back their clients? If emmett is reading, what are Outcast doing now? Have they found a reliable ISP, one with guts? Or do we wind up moving all our UK websites to the States, just to protect ourselves and our sites?
Im so pissed off that Demon folded against G*dfrey. They may have fucked us all over in the process.
It seems to me that a fundamental argument of Pinkerton's was flawed. Yes, there is an existing 'anonymous reporting culture' But the area this falls into is in the category of existing crimes or malfeasance of some kind, ie rape, abuse, et.c.
The extension of this into attempting to pre-empt criminal behaviour is what is so dangerous, and Jon Katz would have done well to draw that distinction. There is a world of difference between an anonymous phonecall to some relevant body about suspected child abuse, and an anonymous phonecall because a young adult is behaving 'differently'.
In fact, in this case, it would be possible to extend this particular example and say that with the likely psychological repercussions of abuse, it would be more likely victim would be reported to an organisation like Wave America than the perpetrator... So who's being protected then?
I notice one of the features of the XFS port listed as unimplemented as yet is the guaranteed data rate stuff. Anyone able to confirm if any of the other filesystems support a similar feature?
Ext3fs - Progressing with the lightning speed of a concussed tortoise on LSD. Ext3 is a great idea, in theory, as it's backwards compatiable with Ext2. However, unless it picks up speed, we won't be seeing the next patch until well into the next decade. I know Alan Cox is busy, and only has one brain (the size of a planet), but if he's having problems with working on it, what's stopping him putting it on SourceForge and using it to build interest and developers?
Umm, isnt it Steven Tweedie who's working on ext3?
a) Its not a ruling, according to the article. Demon -settled-.
b) This -may- affect Wales, but we Scots have our own legal system, so it doesnt -necessarily- affect us up here.
c) Can I use Slashdot to call Godfrey a greedy, grasping tosspot or not? Just as a theoretical question, y'know...
Celeron 2 - Flip chip.
www.bp6.com reports that single-CPU's works okay on the BP6 with the Powerleap 370 to FCPGA adaptor, but not SMP. Although I wouldnt be surprised to see the adaptor tweaked for SMP real soon now
Well there's one or two. She has done some valuable stuff (ie working out the 216-colour websafe palette) but these days, she seems (like Molly Holzschlag IMHO) to be more interested in promoting her books/courses.
If you actually look at her books, the newer revisions dont actually add that much new information. And once you know how to defringe, which image format is better for which kind of graphic, and how to use the 216-color palette then you don't need to purchase four different (~45 UKP) books to get the information. In fact if you read her column in Web Techniques (probably archived) then thats probably all you need to know.
But she pushes the books, and the courses, and the videos, and the DVD's. And meanwhile, sahe sticks with slightly older ways of doing things, in a kinda David Siegel stylee. Ookay, CSS isn't guaranteed cross-platform / cross-browser so its forgivable, but its slightly old-fashioned. And there isn't a lot of new graphics-oriented generic information; its devolved into books on specific software packages.
If you're interested, browse her books in Borders or summat, but don't buy. Too damned 'spensive. Get the O'Reilly book on web graphics, or read webdeveloper.com.
There is a form at http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/siter ev.asp that lets you ask why a given site had been placed on CyberNOTs list of banned sites. Use it...
Surely someone can arrange a page that automates the filling in of CyberNOT's 'review our decision' form. And then we can Slashdot it.
Actually, would it be possible to set up an engine which checks all these filters, and allowed us to email all the manufacturer's banning specific sites in one go. Maybe hook it into the Meta-Moderation page and we can try to MetaMod the filter software? :)
Opinion: This article may or may not be FUD, but, inescapably, its pretty much the 'Other Camp' reaction to the zealot rallying cry that Open Source code is some kind of software panacea. If OS proponents weren't so single-mindedly bullish about its superiority in all fields, this wouldnt happen nearly as much. Don't confuse the development process (which IMHO is superior) with the product. OS is a solution, but not necessarily the only solution. Its an alternative, but shouldnt be dogma.
And I'll state what I consider to be a fact. There's nothing inherently more secure about an Open Source implementation of a feature versus a proprietry implementation. But there is a greater likelihood that the feature will be improved upon, faster and better, than a proprietry solution. Not always, but it is more likely.
The article, though, seems to make a different (mistaken) assumption. Access to the source code for a given Linux distro is probably the least significant factor in compromising security on a given Linux box. Is the article implying that someone would be able to develop a cracked kernel, and somehow cause its proliferation? Why not also mention Sendmail, BIND, or Apache, all of which sit on more boxen than Linux does? The kernel isn't the typical weak spot in a system; if there's any main software weakness, it's likely to be in the various server daemons.
Most importantly, though, at the end of the day, poor administration is absolutely the worst problem. Implying that a closed-source OS is automatically safer instills a ludicrous perspective, implying that admins of closed OS's need to know less about security. For that reason, and that reason alone, Silicon.com ought to be pilloried publically.
A single drive can now store the equivalent of up to 18 DVD movies in MPEG3 format
Ten, twelve years ago, the average individual couldnt have afforded an HD that stored 2 Audio CD's. Okay DVD blanks are far more expensive than DVD's, but it looks as though in the next coupla years its going to be more than feasible to have a 30-50 DVD collection on your PC. And its rentals they're worried about...
Just a thought.
I disagree, and reckon it can be done far cheaper than that. I dont see any valid reason to go for This Year's Model for anything; the price/performance ratio is way out of whack, and your kit is going to be equally out of date in a year. And that 3-4K system you bought early last year? Worth about 1K now.
I reckon the trade-off on price and performance of an Abit BP6, and two 600Mhz Celeron's against a single 750Mhz PIII is enough for a render node, dont you? Cheaper, more grunt.
This isn't really that big of a deal, because it's just the renderer - you still need an NT or IRIX box to actually create any content.
Actually it is; if you're doing serious work, then cheap render nodes are incredibly nice to have. And at the moment, on horsepower-per-buck, it looks like NT systems do damn well; we have a coupla student using Maya at home who reckon that they're getting better speeds of a 2K NT box than our 30K SGI Octanes. Even if thats not true, if you're talking about 1K to 1.5K for a Linux render node and you're talking cheap.
When they port all of their tools over, then it will be a big deal. (The maya renderer is a command-line tool, and if it was any big deal to port then I'd be really suprised.)
The fact that it may have been easy to port isn't the issue; its the fact that they did it that is.
IIRC you need to patch your X server. Check out Wacom's driver download page.
There are low-latency patches for Linux.
Check out the link on the site for Quasimodo for a link. (Quasimodo is a rather nifty modular-synth style system based on a realtime implementation of CSound (although its migrating to SAOL, part of the MPEg-4 spec).
Site is www.quasimodo.org
I'd heard that this was eventually going to be available for Linux. Even if it isnt I want one, but can anyone confirm anything about the Linux port?
For those who dont know what it is its a four-DSP hardware card (with appropriate IO's) with software that allows it to do direct-to-disk recording, mixing, soft-synthesis (including modular synths), sampler, effects et.c.
It could have been fun, if it could have been open to ALL Linux developers. Instead Loki president attitude was near to go away and make your own things.
Fun had nothing to do with it. Loki had a problem so they built a solution. They built an opensolution. Thats a good thing. They built a cross-platform solution. That was better still.
I would have prefered that all Linux developer got to define a standard with everyone, but one established developer prefer to be alone on the spotlight.
Did you read the interview? OpenAL was a stalled project. Loki took it up because no-one tried to get any further with developing it.
Would you be telling ESR that you would have preferred 'that all Linux developer got to define a standard with everyone' for Fetchmail because you didnt like 'one established developer prefer to be alone on the spotlight'
You have an itch, you scratch it. Thats the point.
Bugger. Slashdot ate my A HREF Tag. Sorry.
The article is at http://www.webtechniques .com/archives/1998/05/engelschall/
There's an archived article by Ralf S. Engelschall that was printed in WebTechniques magazine. It talks about using pools of servers and reverse proxying for load-balancing. You might want to look there.
You didn't expect me to leave this thread yet did you?
God, no.
But if we resort to trade-offs, the it is no longer an absolute freedom, but a relative one. It is no longer a matter of having *freedom* but having *more* freedom.
As I said a post or so back, what I meant was that 'the only absolute standard for 'rating' a political stance, attitude, or decision, is the amount of freedom it negates, restricts, adds, or enhances'. That's what I (clumsily) attempted to say in my original post. Absolute freedom is a nice ideal, but that would involve inhabiting a society of people I trusted...
Basically, Im forced to make trade-offs owing to the inadequacies of my species.
Or your basic slashdot story ;) Lets moderate Wilson [subversive -1E100] immediately!
I think the Feds et.c. already do. But at least a grits post from RAW would be funny