Pro Tools is a special case as they used DSP farms on plugin cards to make up for the lack of fire power in the cpu. They were doing huge things with these DSP farms back in the 486 days. The big reason they are every where is that for many years they were the only game in town. Native DAWs just didn't have enough fire power to compete with the DSP farm till fairly recently. With out the DSP farms the software was effectively useless until they brought out the LE version but, those were still tied to specific Hardware read "stuff they made and sold". It wasn't until last year when they brought out Protools 9 that you had a version that wasn't tied to specific hardware. Protools is still the most common in Recording Studios but, Logic, Cubase/Nuendo, and Digital Performer are pretty common as well. In fact Nuendo is the preferred software for motion picture and live recording. Personally, I don't care for Protools. I have it at my studio but, I usually use Nuendo. When a client brings in a Protools session, I usually use my copy of Protools to make it easier to export the session to Nuendo and to import it back to Protools if they need it.
I think of Protools like I think of Word. Just because its in a lot of places doesn't mean its the best tool to use. It's only one of the most common.
To begin with, They are not talking about adding hardware data recorders. What there are talking about is requiring current engine computers to retain more info and make that info available to download. Oh and most of them are silver not black. beginning in 1996 all passenger vehicles were required to be fitted with computers that would monitor the running state of the engine and alert the driver to malfunctions even if they did not effect drive ability of the car. An example would be if the EGR valve failed. The car would run fine but , would pollute more. The computer would light the check engine light and the mechanic would use a reader to retrieve the error code. This standard is called OBD2 (On Board Diagnostics ver 2) and the error codes and readers are standardized. The engine computer collects a large amount of information in order to do its job. It knows the throttle position, engine temp, speed, transmision gear, steering wheel angle (for ABS) O2 sensor info, accelerometer (for air bag deployment), misfires and other info. The information is already at the engine computers. The debate is how much info should it record and how long should it keep it. There is also the troubling problem of who can have access to your info and for how long?
If you have a corvette and your 17 year old sneaks off with the keys, does a high speed run and you don't find out about it till your insurance company jacks your rates from engine computer data, how long should that follow you? what rights do you have to challenge and or see what info they have from your computer? Do the insurance companies get to share the info they collect with each other? Will this create a class of un insurable drivers much like the difficulty people with pre existing conditions have getting health insurance? The potential for misuse of this info is quite real with the consumer being the loser at most turns.
In short the info is already there. What we need to do is craft intelligent policy about who can see the info and what it can be used for. Without such a policy, I could easily see dealerships selling downloaded data to insurance companies. Is that what we want?
The first 2 that come to mind are Paper Weight and Skeet. There likely better re-uses than Skeet but, I doubt they are any that are more fun. First you call someone that bugs you, Your boss, your Ex, the IRS or DMV then you yell pull, and blam. That's how you drop a call.
Simply put: With our police, we have created a class of "Super Citizens" who get to do things that the general population can't. It is extremely important that they follow the rules and we are able to observe their actions. The penalties for breaking the rules MUST be higher for those in charge of enforcing the rules. Anything less is a gradual invitation for creating a police state.
Transparency and oversight. We always need them. Each of the three branches of government watch each other and All three should answer to us. I am profoundly worried by the fading away of the free press and its replacement by partisan reporting designed to comfort what ever political leaning you have. It is good for all sides to exchange views. It is good to challenge your assumptions. There also is great need for fact checking in the media. The need to draw attention to half truths and out and out lies.
The real war has been a war on debate. End Rant.
The point here isn't how is the signal transmitted. Yes digital does use a signal that can be observed in the analog domain. The real question is where is the information. With what we call an analog signal the information is in the amplitude of the input signal. With digital the information is in the CHANGES in voltage over time, Not in the voltage itself. For each clock cycle you look at the input voltage to see if it is in the high or low state. Lets say the low state is defined as 0 to.5 volts and high is defined as 4 to 5 volts. the transition to high from low occurs at 3.5 volt and the transition from high to low occurs at 1.5 volts. You could have a half volt of noise on the line and it would not effect the information in the signal. The transition from high to low and low to high would still be read the same. In short the information would be unchanged. Try that with an analog signal and most of the information is lost.
Alright you scofflaw Pirate you, Yeah, they're coming for you but, you don't seem to know who "they" are. They folk that you need to be in fear of are the gang of three, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. These guys are almost as blood thirsty as the RIAA but, there is a slightly highly chance of the monies collected getting to the song writer. At least they have the good sense not to go after the listener. Instead they try to shake down any business that has the nerve to play music. It doesn't matter if the music is live or just the radio, they want their cut.
On a serious note: there are three degrees of ownership for any recording. A. The performance, This is owned by the performers unless they sell the rights for the performance to someone or something else, such as the record labels. Radio stations do not pay royalties for this right. The agreement is that the promotional value is greater than the value of the royalty. B. The publishing right. This is held by the songwriter/composer unless sold, etc. The royalty for this right would be administered by either ASCAP, BMI or SESAC. Radio stations pay a flat rate royalty for this based on the number of listeners. The different organizations sample whats being played by the station and divide the royalty up amongst its members based on how much they are played. C. The media itself. Believe it or not, it is possible to own the media without owning the other 2 rights. Good reel to reel tape has never been cheap. When tape was all that was available, It was common practice for studios to "rent" the use of multi-tape to bands on a budget. If a song sounded especially good the studio would hang on to the multi-track tape and not reuse it. If the song started to take off, the record company would approach the studio to buy the multi-track tape from them. It was common to remix the song for national distribution. The studio didn't own the song or the performance, so they couldn't sell the tape on the open market, they did own the tape itself. They would often sell the tape for several thousand dollars to the record label. not a bad return.
I think this is the right idea but, I wouldn't use an old distro. Installing old distros on laptops is tricky at best. Wireless networking is even more so. What I would do instead is load them with one of the current batch of light weight distributions. Three that come to mind are Antix, Puppy, and Xubuntu. I've used both Puppy 3.01 and Xubuntu on an old IBM 600e with excellent results. Xubuntu picked up my lynksys wpc11 wireless card with no problem. Puppy was a little trickier but there are some excellent howtos out there. The maxchine is a P2 400 MHZ with 256 Megs ram. The big thing seem to get the ram up to 128 Megs or more. That and avoid using Gnome or KDE for your GUI.
Quote from previous post: "Seriously, the people who say they can tell the difference would never pull it off in a blind comparison."
I don't care what type of lossy data compression you are talking about, there will be a difference. Often you can't hear the difference. Sometime you can. You will need an excellent quality system. You will also need the correct material to play. I most often notice the difference when listening to live classical recordings that have no audio compression. I usually notice the difference in the sound of the reverb of the room. I am by no means a golden ear. With most pop music (Compressed to Death), I don't hear much, if any difference with High bit rate compressed mp3. I can and do see it when preparing audio. I have to reduce the gain of source material by about.5db before converting to mp3. With highly compressed(audio compression not data compression)source material I can see variation in the peaks of about.25db after conversion to mp3 that wasn't in the original source material.
Quote from previous post:"I'd like to see an mp3-type format encoded against 24/96 source material. Odds are that even at ~256kbps you can get better-than-CD quality if you use better-than-CD source material. Sure, the 24/96 source sounds better,"
If your source material was created at 96K sampling rate you may be right but not for the reason you likely are thinking. Changing the sampling rate is very hard to do well. It is possible that a well encoded mp3 could sound better than poorly resampled 44.1 PCM. I always try and work at the sampling rate that the project will be mixed to. I've used DAT machines for live recording. Unfortunately they usually sample at 48k. Importing direct digital is easy but getting a good resample from 48k to 44.1 can be a different matter. My SOP is to record 24 bit but thats more for headroom. I tend to be conservative with levels when recording. Digital overs sound awful. If your working in 16 bit and your levels go down to -40 db you are at around 8 bits of resolution. If you're working 24 bit and your levels fall to -40db you still have a good 16 bits of resolution. If you're being conservative with the levels its easy to get down to -40db in quiet passages. With current tastes in music, everything compressed to death, You would often find yourself amplifying something that only had 8 bits of resolution left working with 16 bits. It don't sound too good. The problem with digital compressors is that as they reduce gain they end up reducing resolution at the same time. This means that you should start with the best resolution possible. I usually mix to 24 bit but, thats to give whoever does the mastering the best resolution to start with. That having been said, All other things being equal, Uncompressed PCM with always be more accurate that ANY LOSSY COMPRESSION. Thats why its called LOSSY COMPRESSION! Will you notice the difference? Maybe, maybe not. Will you still enjoy the music? Almost certainly. I will say that the little iPod I've been playing with sure does sound a lot better than than the cassette Walkman that I used many years ago. If you don't believe that you aren't hearing everything when you listen to mp3s, try this, There is a piece of software that compares two audio sources and extacts the difference. Its called DiffMaker. Start with uncompressed PCM, convert to MP3 and then compare. You may have to convert your MP3 back to PCM to do the compare. I don't remember off the top of my head. The software will let you listen to whats missing.
Nope, Not even 8 tracks. It was recorded on multiple 4 track machines. In one of the great hacks of all time, All the tapes were marked for their starting point with grease pencil and one track of the master machine recorded the the line current. They used the 100 volt outs from a Macintosh amp to drive the capstan motors of the slave machines. This kept the machines in sync. The engineers (and I do mean engineers complete with with lab coats and pocket protectors)at EMI really did work miracles with what machines they had to work with. EMI was very slow to adopt new technologies. While the Beatles worked on SGT Peppers with 4 track machines, the Beach Boys blazed the Pet Sounds trail with 8 track machines. Or so the story goes. I must admit I wasn't there.
Oh how soon they forget.....George's boss is Mr. Spacely. The owner of Spacely's Sprockets. The competition was Cogswells Cogs. Clearly you have been neglecting your watching of Saturday morning cartoons. Where are your priorities?
I don't see them using libel law in this case, whats more I haven't heard of a take down notice yet. It would seem, that they aren't interested in killing the distribution this video. It would seem that they would rather punish for it. I don't believe that libel law would apply here. I haven't seen anything thats untrue. As a lawyer friend of mine was fond saying "the truth is always a defense". If its true, its not libel. What they seem to be doing is, making certain that he has to repeat the semester. It would seem that this is something of a free speech issue, if its an issue at all. I agree that 40 days is extreme, and sounds rather biblical. Ultimately it makes me want to ask, Don't you have anything more important to do than come down on like a ton of bricks on this kid for an action that was rude, but really didn't do any harm? This would seem to be more about the teachers and the boards pride than anything else. Just my 2 cents
There are 4 factors when picking a cam for an engine. Lift, duration, overlap and timing. Lift is how far you open the valve. Duration is how long you open the valve. Overlap is how many degrees both valves are open. Its really a subset of timing. Timing is when the valves are open. most VVT schemes only change timing. There are some that have 2 sets of lobes which gives you 2 fixed sets of lift and duration to work with. All cams are a compromise between low speed and high speed performance. Ever listen to the idle of a seriously cammed up hot rod? The things will barely idle but, turn them loose and look out.
fractoid wrote:Actually, Toyota's VVTL-i system allows continuously variable timing and lift duration, along with many others.
Nope it aint so. You have 2 profiles for the cam itself. Timing may be continuously variable but lift, and duration are fixed at 2 options. You have the low speed lobe and you have the high speed lobe. The duration, and lift of each lobe is fixed. By changing the timing of the intake vs. the exhaust you can change the overlap to some degree. In all fairness, I could not find complete info on the lexus version vvtl-ie. It may be different but, from the desciption I read, it looked to do about the same thing just using electric motors rather than hydraulics. There may very well be systems out there that I don't know about. If I over looked anything I am sorry. Whats more, what makes this new system unique is the ability to adjust the timing for each valve independently. There are great advantages to being able to do this. Witness the SAAB Trionic engine managment system which allows for setting the ignition timing and mixture independently for each cylinder. The thing runs so clean than what was coming out the tail pipe on a nasty day in london was cleaner that what went in the intake. The big thing that vvtl does is lets the motor behave like an 2 valve per cylinder engine at low speeds(greater intake charge velocity causing more swirl in the combustion chamber leading to a cleaner burn) and like a 4 valve per cylinder motor at high speed ( more volume, more power ). In a nutshell it let you turn off two valves(one intake and one exhaust) at low speed and it lets you run a different fixed profile at high speed on the second set of valves. Clever? Yes. The equal of what perdue is doing? No.
As far as the best setup, I stand by my statement about fully variable valve timing coupled to a CVT. While the CVT will minmise changes in engine speed it will not eliminate the changes in load. Acceleration will still need more power and deceleration less. Part of why fixed valve timing engines do so well in hybrids is that they can run at close to a fixed load. They use the battery array to add power when needed and to absorb extra power when available. The real question is will running at a near constant speed make up for any mechanical loses from using a CVT? They will have to perfect the continuously variable valve timing motor before we know for certain but, My gut is it will. Thats not to take anything away from a manual gearbox. Personally I prefer a manual transmission. We already have had some fixed valve timing with cvt cars out there. The Subaru Justy was one. The milage was pretty impresive.
eldavojohn wrote: The idea of variable valve actuation has been around for a while as well as HCCI, which has some problems that are yet to be overcome.
Right you are. It has been around and its even been used a few time successfully. One notable example is Renault's turbocharged engine that they ran with some success in formula one racing. its used vacuum activated valves. Because formula one motors spin quite fast they were able to use the pressure of the piston rising to help close the valve. It worked well at high RPM but not so well at lower speeds.
Variable valve timing, as it is currently used, It generally lets you change the timing relative to the position of the crankshaft. it doesn't let you change the number of degree's that the valves are open or the lift that the valves open. The most advanced system I am familiar with has only 2 profiles for the cams. One it uses at low speeds and one that it uses at high speeds. Truly variable timing for the valves opens up many options for increasing the efficiency of the engine.
Making an engine run clean as well as getting good mileage is very well understood. Whats hard as heck is doing it over a wide range of engine speeds and loads. If you think about the idea of a hybrid, Using a gas or diesel engine driving a generator, feeding a storage battery, driving electric motors. It shouldn't be more efficient. Each step that you add you should lose energy. what the hybrid allows for, is for the internal combustion engine to run at a near constant speed in its sweet spot. Any loses from the extra steps are more than offset by the gains in efficiency from running the gas or diesel in its sweet spot. From what I understand about it, the combination of truly variable valve timing and CV transmission could yield upwards of 20% to 30% gains in efficiency.
In my time observing the big three, what I have found them to be afraid of isn't new technologies but rather, it's anything that makes the automobile more expensive to produce. You would be amazed at the engineering effort that GM uses to figure out how to make a simple pulley for a nickel less. The truth is that the big three are just trying to make a buck. No one MAKES you BUY a car. If they can continue to make money selling monster SUVs that get lousy mileage, they will continue to sell monster SUVs. If the market tells them that they want more efficient vehicles, you may be certain that they will produce them. Its happening slowly but, it is happening. As gas prices go up and stay up the demand for huge cars and trucks are going down. Not a moment too soon in my opinion. I never understood the whole SUV thing. Cars make lousy trucks and trucks make lousy cars. Use cars for car things and use trucks for truck things. That always seems to work best for me. Just my 2 cents
I think you're close. Its not as you say " capacitive coupling between the primary and the secondary windings of the plug pack" but you are close. Its an old practice when you do not have a polarized 2 prong plug, to couple to one or both sides of the power to the chasis to create an psuedo ground. The capacitors form a voltage divider with greatly limited current. 65 vac would be in the right range given that capacitors are often + or - 20% or more. The real test would be to unplug the power adaptor from the laptop and connect an AC voltmeter between a known earth ground( such as the grounding pin of an outlet or a copper cold water pipe) and the barrel of the power connector. This assumes that the outside barrel is negative. I'm also assuming that that it uses a coaxial power plug. If it uses a different style connector you may have to check all the connections. I would bet a sizable amount of money that its coming from the power adaptor. My father has a 9400, Next time I see him I'll have to bring the trusty old fluke meter and see what it says. Any body else want to check? Of course, the best way to find out the cause, would be to open one of these power supplies up and trace the circuit. I wonder if pop would mind my disecting his power supply?
Of course the adult thing to do when you have a tailgater following you is to get out of their way. Change lane where posible or even find a drive way to pull in to to let them by. That being said what fun is it being an adult? I have for some time believed that if a semi truck is tailgating you, they are trying to kill you. As such you should be able return fire. I don't however think that the local police share this view. As always your mileage may vary.
I am curious, what does Joss have to say about this? Seeing as he is the one that got the ball rolling, I would think he would have something to say about these goings on. I would imagine that he would have mixed feelings about this. One of his stuggles has always been to get support for his projects. Using "viral marketing" is one tool at his disposal to show the studios that there is a market for a project. That being said I would also imagine that It would be bad juju to double cross those who made the project possible in the first place. That is to say many fans would likely think twice before putting so much effort into getting the word out if what once was theirs suddenly is ripped from their hands and given to the media corps.
To my eyes this looks rather like trying to close the barn door after the cows have left. Part of the reason that fans put so much energy into things like senerity and firefly is there is a feeling of ownership involved. A bit of " hey, look what I found.". That feeling of "Look, Heres something really cool that the big guys have overlooked. Its ours now. Lets show the world what they missed.". While this sort of thing is good in that you tend to get loyal fans you do have to be carefull in that they will take things personally. One of the thing I have observed in my daughter (15) and her friends is that they wear their media much in the same way that we wears clothes. They delight in finding something interesting that has been passed over by the mainsteam. They in large part define them selves by their taste in music, movies, blogs, and the like. An example would be if asked what someone is like they might decribe them as " Elliot Smith and Degrassi.". If one of their finds gets taken from them, so to speak, they aren't going to look so kindly on the next release from the same artist, reguardless of quality.
Simply put, the answer is comcast. Telephone reps are heavily scripted and monitored to avoid liability issues. In short if someone leaves the scripted pitch they will be "corrected" quickly. It is possible that they could have farmed out the direct calling to a third party firm but, that firm still needs to have there scripts passed by the parent orginazation. I am quite certain that there is a lawyer sitting in a room somewhere making certain that the scripts past muster. It rather like the old paradox in advertising that anyone can claim to be the best but, in order to be better you have to be able to prove it.
Just my two cents
It's not all batteries that can explode. Lithium ion batteries are the dangerous ones. If the seals fail for any reason, the contents react violently upon contact with air. It is no accident that replacement lithium ion cells to rebuild battery packs are almost impossible to buy for the average consumer. You can find NiCad and NiMh replacement cells all over the place - even at Radio Shack.
Seals on LI batteries can be damaged by incorrect charging, short circuits, or physical damage. Any or all of these will cause what we saw in the picture. This can happen to ANY notebook that uses LI batteries. For that matter, it can happen to ANY cell phone that uses LI batteries. Why, then, are LI batteries being used in so many applications? Weight and size. NiMh comes close to matching LI for the size of the cell you need, but they are heavier. With the push for the smallest and lightest notebooks and cellphones, we will be seeing LI batteries for some time to come. We will also likely be seeing more of this sort of thing.
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Pro Tools is a special case as they used DSP farms on plugin cards to make up for the lack of fire power in the cpu. They were doing huge things with these DSP farms back in the 486 days. The big reason they are every where is that for many years they were the only game in town. Native DAWs just didn't have enough fire power to compete with the DSP farm till fairly recently. With out the DSP farms the software was effectively useless until they brought out the LE version but, those were still tied to specific Hardware read "stuff they made and sold". It wasn't until last year when they brought out Protools 9 that you had a version that wasn't tied to specific hardware. Protools is still the most common in Recording Studios but, Logic, Cubase/Nuendo, and Digital Performer are pretty common as well. In fact Nuendo is the preferred software for motion picture and live recording. Personally, I don't care for Protools. I have it at my studio but, I usually use Nuendo. When a client brings in a Protools session, I usually use my copy of Protools to make it easier to export the session to Nuendo and to import it back to Protools if they need it. I think of Protools like I think of Word. Just because its in a lot of places doesn't mean its the best tool to use. It's only one of the most common.
To begin with, They are not talking about adding hardware data recorders. What there are talking about is requiring current engine computers to retain more info and make that info available to download. Oh and most of them are silver not black. beginning in 1996 all passenger vehicles were required to be fitted with computers that would monitor the running state of the engine and alert the driver to malfunctions even if they did not effect drive ability of the car. An example would be if the EGR valve failed. The car would run fine but , would pollute more. The computer would light the check engine light and the mechanic would use a reader to retrieve the error code. This standard is called OBD2 (On Board Diagnostics ver 2) and the error codes and readers are standardized. The engine computer collects a large amount of information in order to do its job. It knows the throttle position, engine temp, speed, transmision gear, steering wheel angle (for ABS) O2 sensor info, accelerometer (for air bag deployment), misfires and other info. The information is already at the engine computers. The debate is how much info should it record and how long should it keep it. There is also the troubling problem of who can have access to your info and for how long? If you have a corvette and your 17 year old sneaks off with the keys, does a high speed run and you don't find out about it till your insurance company jacks your rates from engine computer data, how long should that follow you? what rights do you have to challenge and or see what info they have from your computer? Do the insurance companies get to share the info they collect with each other? Will this create a class of un insurable drivers much like the difficulty people with pre existing conditions have getting health insurance? The potential for misuse of this info is quite real with the consumer being the loser at most turns. In short the info is already there. What we need to do is craft intelligent policy about who can see the info and what it can be used for. Without such a policy, I could easily see dealerships selling downloaded data to insurance companies. Is that what we want?
It would seem that Die Hard meets Die Hard Drive Die. We've gone from you can't take it with you to you MUST take it with you, Ah Progress......
The first 2 that come to mind are Paper Weight and Skeet. There likely better re-uses than Skeet but, I doubt they are any that are more fun. First you call someone that bugs you, Your boss, your Ex, the IRS or DMV then you yell pull, and blam. That's how you drop a call.
Simply put: With our police, we have created a class of "Super Citizens" who get to do things that the general population can't. It is extremely important that they follow the rules and we are able to observe their actions. The penalties for breaking the rules MUST be higher for those in charge of enforcing the rules. Anything less is a gradual invitation for creating a police state. Transparency and oversight. We always need them. Each of the three branches of government watch each other and All three should answer to us. I am profoundly worried by the fading away of the free press and its replacement by partisan reporting designed to comfort what ever political leaning you have. It is good for all sides to exchange views. It is good to challenge your assumptions. There also is great need for fact checking in the media. The need to draw attention to half truths and out and out lies. The real war has been a war on debate. End Rant.
The point here isn't how is the signal transmitted. Yes digital does use a signal that can be observed in the analog domain. The real question is where is the information. With what we call an analog signal the information is in the amplitude of the input signal. With digital the information is in the CHANGES in voltage over time, Not in the voltage itself. For each clock cycle you look at the input voltage to see if it is in the high or low state. Lets say the low state is defined as 0 to .5 volts and high is defined as 4 to 5 volts. the transition to high from low occurs at 3.5 volt and the transition from high to low occurs at 1.5 volts. You could have a half volt of noise on the line and it would not effect the information in the signal. The transition from high to low and low to high would still be read the same. In short the information would be unchanged. Try that with an analog signal and most of the information is lost.
Alright you scofflaw Pirate you, Yeah, they're coming for you but, you don't seem to know who "they" are. They folk that you need to be in fear of are the gang of three, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. These guys are almost as blood thirsty as the RIAA but, there is a slightly highly chance of the monies collected getting to the song writer. At least they have the good sense not to go after the listener. Instead they try to shake down any business that has the nerve to play music. It doesn't matter if the music is live or just the radio, they want their cut. On a serious note: there are three degrees of ownership for any recording. A. The performance, This is owned by the performers unless they sell the rights for the performance to someone or something else, such as the record labels. Radio stations do not pay royalties for this right. The agreement is that the promotional value is greater than the value of the royalty. B. The publishing right. This is held by the songwriter/composer unless sold, etc. The royalty for this right would be administered by either ASCAP, BMI or SESAC. Radio stations pay a flat rate royalty for this based on the number of listeners. The different organizations sample whats being played by the station and divide the royalty up amongst its members based on how much they are played. C. The media itself. Believe it or not, it is possible to own the media without owning the other 2 rights. Good reel to reel tape has never been cheap. When tape was all that was available, It was common practice for studios to "rent" the use of multi-tape to bands on a budget. If a song sounded especially good the studio would hang on to the multi-track tape and not reuse it. If the song started to take off, the record company would approach the studio to buy the multi-track tape from them. It was common to remix the song for national distribution. The studio didn't own the song or the performance, so they couldn't sell the tape on the open market, they did own the tape itself. They would often sell the tape for several thousand dollars to the record label. not a bad return.
To paraphrase the movie Braveheart, The trouble with law, is that its practiced by lawyers.
Go Wings Eh!
I think this is the right idea but, I wouldn't use an old distro. Installing old distros on laptops is tricky at best. Wireless networking is even more so. What I would do instead is load them with one of the current batch of light weight distributions. Three that come to mind are Antix, Puppy, and Xubuntu. I've used both Puppy 3.01 and Xubuntu on an old IBM 600e with excellent results. Xubuntu picked up my lynksys wpc11 wireless card with no problem. Puppy was a little trickier but there are some excellent howtos out there. The maxchine is a P2 400 MHZ with 256 Megs ram. The big thing seem to get the ram up to 128 Megs or more. That and avoid using Gnome or KDE for your GUI.
Hello Everyone
2 Things, #1. Haiku's form is 5,7,5 not 5,5,7. #2. The best Haiku ever is:
Lets go krogering
For the best of everything
including the price
What more can I say?
Quote from previous post: "Seriously, the people who say they can tell the difference would never pull it off in a blind comparison."
.5db before converting to mp3. With highly compressed(audio compression not data compression)source material I can see variation in the peaks of about .25db after conversion to mp3 that wasn't in the original source material.
I don't care what type of lossy data compression you are talking about, there will be a difference. Often you can't hear the difference. Sometime you can. You will need an excellent quality system. You will also need the correct material to play. I most often notice the difference when listening to live classical recordings that have no audio compression. I usually notice the difference in the sound of the reverb of the room. I am by no means a golden ear. With most pop music (Compressed to Death), I don't hear much, if any difference with High bit rate compressed mp3. I can and do see it when preparing audio. I have to reduce the gain of source material by about
Quote from previous post:"I'd like to see an mp3-type format encoded against 24/96 source material. Odds are that even at ~256kbps you can get better-than-CD quality if you use better-than-CD source material. Sure, the 24/96 source sounds better,"
If your source material was created at 96K sampling rate you may be right but not for the reason you likely are thinking. Changing the sampling rate is very hard to do well. It is possible that a well encoded mp3 could sound better than poorly resampled 44.1 PCM. I always try and work at the sampling rate that the project will be mixed to. I've used DAT machines for live recording. Unfortunately they usually sample at 48k. Importing direct digital is easy but getting a good resample from 48k to 44.1 can be a different matter. My SOP is to record 24 bit but thats more for headroom. I tend to be conservative with levels when recording. Digital overs sound awful. If your working in 16 bit and your levels go down to -40 db you are at around 8 bits of resolution. If you're working 24 bit and your levels fall to -40db you still have a good 16 bits of resolution. If you're being conservative with the levels its easy to get down to -40db in quiet passages. With current tastes in music, everything compressed to death, You would often find yourself amplifying something that only had 8 bits of resolution left working with 16 bits. It don't sound too good. The problem with digital compressors is that as they reduce gain they end up reducing resolution at the same time. This means that you should start with the best resolution possible. I usually mix to 24 bit but, thats to give whoever does the mastering the best resolution to start with. That having been said, All other things being equal, Uncompressed PCM with always be more accurate that ANY LOSSY COMPRESSION. Thats why its called LOSSY COMPRESSION! Will you notice the difference? Maybe, maybe not. Will you still enjoy the music? Almost certainly. I will say that the little iPod I've been playing with sure does sound a lot better than than the cassette Walkman that I used many years ago. If you don't believe that you aren't hearing everything when you listen to mp3s, try this, There is a piece of software that compares two audio sources and extacts the difference. Its called DiffMaker. Start with uncompressed PCM, convert to MP3 and then compare. You may have to convert your MP3 back to PCM to do the compare. I don't remember off the top of my head. The software will let you listen to whats missing.
Just my 2 cents
(Sgt. Pepper was recorded on 8 track equipment),
Nope, Not even 8 tracks. It was recorded on multiple 4 track machines. In one of the great hacks of all time, All the tapes were marked for their starting point with grease pencil and one track of the master machine recorded the the line current. They used the 100 volt outs from a Macintosh amp to drive the capstan motors of the slave machines. This kept the machines in sync. The engineers (and I do mean engineers complete with with lab coats and pocket protectors)at EMI really did work miracles with what machines they had to work with. EMI was very slow to adopt new technologies. While the Beatles worked on SGT Peppers with 4 track machines, the Beach Boys blazed the Pet Sounds trail with 8 track machines. Or so the story goes. I must admit I wasn't there.
Oh how soon they forget.....George's boss is Mr. Spacely. The owner of Spacely's Sprockets. The competition was Cogswells Cogs. Clearly you have been neglecting your watching of Saturday morning cartoons. Where are your priorities?
I don't see them using libel law in this case, whats more I haven't heard of a take down notice yet. It would seem, that they aren't interested in killing the distribution this video. It would seem that they would rather punish for it. I don't believe that libel law would apply here. I haven't seen anything thats untrue. As a lawyer friend of mine was fond saying "the truth is always a defense". If its true, its not libel. What they seem to be doing is, making certain that he has to repeat the semester. It would seem that this is something of a free speech issue, if its an issue at all. I agree that 40 days is extreme, and sounds rather biblical. Ultimately it makes me want to ask, Don't you have anything more important to do than come down on like a ton of bricks on this kid for an action that was rude, but really didn't do any harm? This would seem to be more about the teachers and the boards pride than anything else.
Just my 2 cents
There are 4 factors when picking a cam for an engine. Lift, duration, overlap and timing. Lift is how far you open the valve. Duration is how long you open the valve. Overlap is how many degrees both valves are open. Its really a subset of timing. Timing is when the valves are open. most VVT schemes only change timing. There are some that have 2 sets of lobes which gives you 2 fixed sets of lift and duration to work with. All cams are a compromise between low speed and high speed performance. Ever listen to the idle of a seriously cammed up hot rod? The things will barely idle but, turn them loose and look out.
Archie
fractoid wrote:Actually, Toyota's VVTL-i system allows continuously variable timing and lift duration, along with many others.
Nope it aint so. You have 2 profiles for the cam itself. Timing may be continuously variable but lift, and duration are fixed at 2 options. You have the low speed lobe and you have the high speed lobe. The duration, and lift of each lobe is fixed. By changing the timing of the intake vs. the exhaust you can change the overlap to some degree. In all fairness, I could not find complete info on the lexus version vvtl-ie. It may be different but, from the desciption I read, it looked to do about the same thing just using electric motors rather than hydraulics. There may very well be systems out there that I don't know about. If I over looked anything I am sorry. Whats more, what makes this new system unique is the ability to adjust the timing for each valve independently. There are great advantages to being able to do this. Witness the SAAB Trionic engine managment system which allows for setting the ignition timing and mixture independently for each cylinder. The thing runs so clean than what was coming out the tail pipe on a nasty day in london was cleaner that what went in the intake. The big thing that vvtl does is lets the motor behave like an 2 valve per cylinder engine at low speeds(greater intake charge velocity causing more swirl in the combustion chamber leading to a cleaner burn) and like a 4 valve per cylinder motor at high speed ( more volume, more power ). In a nutshell it let you turn off two valves(one intake and one exhaust) at low speed and it lets you run a different fixed profile at high speed on the second set of valves. Clever? Yes. The equal of what perdue is doing? No.
As far as the best setup, I stand by my statement about fully variable valve timing coupled to a CVT. While the CVT will minmise changes in engine speed it will not eliminate the changes in load. Acceleration will still need more power and deceleration less. Part of why fixed valve timing engines do so well in hybrids is that they can run at close to a fixed load. They use the battery array to add power when needed and to absorb extra power when available. The real question is will running at a near constant speed make up for any mechanical loses from using a CVT? They will have to perfect the continuously variable valve timing motor before we know for certain but, My gut is it will. Thats not to take anything away from a manual gearbox. Personally I prefer a manual transmission. We already have had some fixed valve timing with cvt cars out there. The Subaru Justy was one. The milage was pretty impresive.
Archie
eldavojohn wrote:
The idea of variable valve actuation has been around for a while as well as HCCI, which has some problems that are yet to be overcome.
Right you are. It has been around and its even been used a few time successfully. One notable example is Renault's turbocharged engine that they ran with some success in formula one racing. its used vacuum activated valves. Because formula one motors spin quite fast they were able to use the pressure of the piston rising to help close the valve. It worked well at high RPM but not so well at lower speeds.
Variable valve timing, as it is currently used, It generally lets you change the timing relative to the position of the crankshaft. it doesn't let you change the number of degree's that the valves are open or the lift that the valves open. The most advanced system I am familiar with has only 2 profiles for the cams. One it uses at low speeds and one that it uses at high speeds. Truly variable timing for the valves opens up many options for increasing the efficiency of the engine.
Making an engine run clean as well as getting good mileage is very well understood. Whats hard as heck is doing it over a wide range of engine speeds and loads. If you think about the idea of a hybrid, Using a gas or diesel engine driving a generator, feeding a storage battery, driving electric motors. It shouldn't be more efficient. Each step that you add you should lose energy. what the hybrid allows for, is for the internal combustion engine to run at a near constant speed in its sweet spot. Any loses from the extra steps are more than offset by the gains in efficiency from running the gas or diesel in its sweet spot. From what I understand about it, the combination of truly variable valve timing and CV transmission could yield upwards of 20% to 30% gains in efficiency.
In my time observing the big three, what I have found them to be afraid of isn't new technologies but rather, it's anything that makes the automobile more expensive to produce. You would be amazed at the engineering effort that GM uses to figure out how to make a simple pulley for a nickel less. The truth is that the big three are just trying to make a buck. No one MAKES you BUY a car. If they can continue to make money selling monster SUVs that get lousy mileage, they will continue to sell monster SUVs. If the market tells them that they want more efficient vehicles, you may be certain that they will produce them. Its happening slowly but, it is happening. As gas prices go up and stay up the demand for huge cars and trucks are going down. Not a moment too soon in my opinion. I never understood the whole SUV thing. Cars make lousy trucks and trucks make lousy cars. Use cars for car things and use trucks for truck things. That always seems to work best for me. Just my 2 cents
Archie
I think you're close. Its not as you say " capacitive coupling between the primary and the secondary windings of the plug pack" but you are close. Its an old practice when you do not have a polarized 2 prong plug, to couple to one or both sides of the power to the chasis to create an psuedo ground. The capacitors form a voltage divider with greatly limited current. 65 vac would be in the right range given that capacitors are often + or - 20% or more. The real test would be to unplug the power adaptor from the laptop and connect an AC voltmeter between a known earth ground( such as the grounding pin of an outlet or a copper cold water pipe) and the barrel of the power connector. This assumes that the outside barrel is negative. I'm also assuming that that it uses a coaxial power plug. If it uses a different style connector you may have to check all the connections. I would bet a sizable amount of money that its coming from the power adaptor. My father has a 9400, Next time I see him I'll have to bring the trusty old fluke meter and see what it says. Any body else want to check? Of course, the best way to find out the cause, would be to open one of these power supplies up and trace the circuit. I wonder if pop would mind my disecting his power supply?
Of course the adult thing to do when you have a tailgater following you is to get out of their way. Change lane where posible or even find a drive way to pull in to to let them by. That being said what fun is it being an adult? I have for some time believed that if a semi truck is tailgating you, they are trying to kill you. As such you should be able return fire. I don't however think that the local police share this view. As always your mileage may vary.
I am curious, what does Joss have to say about this? Seeing as he is the one that got the ball rolling, I would think he would have something to say about these goings on. I would imagine that he would have mixed feelings about this. One of his stuggles has always been to get support for his projects. Using "viral marketing" is one tool at his disposal to show the studios that there is a market for a project. That being said I would also imagine that It would be bad juju to double cross those who made the project possible in the first place. That is to say many fans would likely think twice before putting so much effort into getting the word out if what once was theirs suddenly is ripped from their hands and given to the media corps. To my eyes this looks rather like trying to close the barn door after the cows have left. Part of the reason that fans put so much energy into things like senerity and firefly is there is a feeling of ownership involved. A bit of " hey, look what I found.". That feeling of "Look, Heres something really cool that the big guys have overlooked. Its ours now. Lets show the world what they missed.". While this sort of thing is good in that you tend to get loyal fans you do have to be carefull in that they will take things personally. One of the thing I have observed in my daughter (15) and her friends is that they wear their media much in the same way that we wears clothes. They delight in finding something interesting that has been passed over by the mainsteam. They in large part define them selves by their taste in music, movies, blogs, and the like. An example would be if asked what someone is like they might decribe them as " Elliot Smith and Degrassi.". If one of their finds gets taken from them, so to speak, they aren't going to look so kindly on the next release from the same artist, reguardless of quality.
Simply put, the answer is comcast. Telephone reps are heavily scripted and monitored to avoid liability issues. In short if someone leaves the scripted pitch they will be "corrected" quickly. It is possible that they could have farmed out the direct calling to a third party firm but, that firm still needs to have there scripts passed by the parent orginazation. I am quite certain that there is a lawyer sitting in a room somewhere making certain that the scripts past muster. It rather like the old paradox in advertising that anyone can claim to be the best but, in order to be better you have to be able to prove it. Just my two cents
It's not all batteries that can explode. Lithium ion batteries are the dangerous ones. If the seals fail for any reason, the contents react violently upon contact with air. It is no accident that replacement lithium ion cells to rebuild battery packs are almost impossible to buy for the average consumer. You can find NiCad and NiMh replacement cells all over the place - even at Radio Shack. Seals on LI batteries can be damaged by incorrect charging, short circuits, or physical damage. Any or all of these will cause what we saw in the picture. This can happen to ANY notebook that uses LI batteries. For that matter, it can happen to ANY cell phone that uses LI batteries. Why, then, are LI batteries being used in so many applications? Weight and size. NiMh comes close to matching LI for the size of the cell you need, but they are heavier. With the push for the smallest and lightest notebooks and cellphones, we will be seeing LI batteries for some time to come. We will also likely be seeing more of this sort of thing.