December 18, 2007

64-bit Windows Not Quite Ready for Prime-time

I recently built a new main system.  It is really nice with a quad-core processor, 4GB of RAM and two top-of-the-line video cards to enable me to drive three monitors.  After reading an article on one of my favorite blogs, Coding Horror, about 64-bit Windows and being encouraged by my friend, Punish, I decided to give it a shot.  Everything seemed great and the only problems I had were ones that I was convinced were your typical problems with a new setup and I would take care of them soon enough.  Until I decided to try out the new Windows Home Server.

As for the Home Server, I can't say enough good things about it.  I'll probably have a whole separate post about it, but suffice it to say that with completely automated enterprise-grade backups, every home that relies on its computer for more than just web browsing and email should have one.  I've only had the thing for a few days and already there have been multiple "No really, it was that easy," moments.

The one drawback to Home Server is that it won't do its backup and integration magic on a machine running a 64-bit OS.  I don't know why that is and I haven't seen any announcement on when that will change, but I have to assume that it will.  But, for now, my choice was to not use my shiny new toy or give up a gigabyte of RAM on my new box.  Those of you that know me know that I can't pass up a new toy ...

So I spent last Saturday completely rebuilding my new box with 32-bit Vista and that's where those other niggling problems just disappeared.  I had a problem where I couldn't use my HP LaserJet printer from across the network, it had to be local.  I had a problem when playing World of Warcraft where the video driver would reset (causing a very annoying fifteen second pause each time) several times an hour and sometimes lock up the system completely.  All of that and some other little problems went away when I changed back to 32-bit.  And I could use my new toy, yay!

Honestly, I'm looking forward to when I can get my gigabyte of RAM back.  But as I get older, my computer is more and more for getting things done and less and less for just seeing if I can do various things.  And 64-bit was keeping me from getting things done.

Posted by Legion at 7:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 11, 2005

Automated Tool to Get Back at Telemarketers

Have you ever wanted to do something more than just hang up on telemarketers? Did you forget your grand plan the next time a telemarketer called? Well, that's happened to me a lot. But now ... you don't have to worry about a thing because the TeleCrapper 2000 is on the job. It watches your Caller ID for listings that you dub "annoying" and answers the phone for you when those listings call. Even better ... it holds a "virtual conversation" with the telemarketer by listening for them to say something and then plays pre-programmed responses back to them. Here's an actual virtual conversation presented in Flash.

Posted by Legion at 9:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 6, 2005

Free Software Not So Free Anymore?

As reported by MSNBC, it's possible that people who patent any software would be prohibited from using software licensed under the new GPL slated to be released in December of this year. Let me be the first to say what an utter boneheaded move this would be. Even Google, which is one of FOSS' and Linux's big success stories, patents software. So either the new GPL wouldn't be used ... or the software that uses the new GPL wouldn't be used nearly as widely as FOSS currently enjoys.

But seriously, aren't these restrictions on the freedom of software that they, as organizations, are supposed to be convincing people are the right thing to do? Isn't the whole point of software being free as in speech? Now it's being reduced to "Well, software should be free as in speech ... but only if you promise to be a good boy and play by our rules." Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that these people decry every time they see Microsoft or Intel using these tactics?

Thomas Paine said, "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself." There are many other examples of this sentiment ... but the basic idea is that freedom isn't real unless its for everyone. The FOSS movement is built, supposedly, on the ideal that software should be free for any user to run the program, study and adapt it, redistribute it, and distribute their own adaptations. But when they start defining "any user" as less than "any" ... then that just smacks of things like the Three Fifths Compromise.

Are these people idealists who believe in the ideal that software should be free as in speech? Are they truly taking the high road? Or are they just another group looking to peddle their wares and their way of thinking ... just a meme, looking to reproduce itself? I've always thought they were idealists ... misguided and unrealistic ... but maybe I was wrong.

Posted by Legion at 10:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 3, 2005

I Love My Job

Upon receiving our first computers in the house ... I immediately wanted to learn how to make them do things I wanted them to do. It was a long, hard road ... but I can't think of anything I'd rather do with my life than be a software developer. Every day is filled with cool puzzles ... here is today's ...

I work with SQL databases a lot and we have a bunch of machines in a server lab. So, naturally, we have a database with a list of the machines and some stats about their abilities. Today I was wanting a list of machines that qualified for certain criteria ... and it ended up looking something like this:

Machine NameSpeedRAM
Machine 1996513
Machine 223981026
Machine 332132046

Now, obviously the speed of the machines is in megahertz and the RAM is in megabytes. But most of the time nowadays, we measure both in gigahertz and gigabytes ... so I wanted to make my query clean up the numbers and format them all pretty. With some basic tweaking I made it look like this:

Machine NameSpeedRAM
Machine 11.0 GHz513
Machine 22.4 GHz1026
Machine 33.2 GHz2046

Ah ... the magic of rounding! But there's still those pesky RAM numbers ... what to do about them? I couldn't just leave them looking all crappy, now could I? The problem there though is that RAM isn't counted in tens ... it's counted in powers of two. Machine one really has .5GB and machine two has 1GB (roughly). What I really wanted was to round to the nearest power of two. But how to do that? Well, I came up with one solution and my coworker came up with another.

My idea was to use the "base-2 logarithm" of the number as a measure of how close it was to some power of two. Using the definition that log2(16) = 4 or in other words 24 = 16 then I could do this 2round(log2(n)) ... to round to the nearest power of two ... or in more spelled-out form: raise two to the power of the base-two logarithm of n rounded to the nearest integer. But this one doesn't actually work as well as I thought it would ... since 24.5 = ~22.6 not 24.

On the other hand, my coworker came up with a bit-flipping method. The binary representation of 23 is b10111. What you do is you find the most significant set bit (in other words the leftmost 1) and check the bit after it. If it's clear (zero) then clear all the following bits. If it's set then set the bit one position to the left of the most significant set bit and then clear all bits to the right of it. So in our example of 23 ... since it's closer to 16 than 32 (and the leftmost one is followed by a zero) then we round down to b10000 which is equal to 16. But in the case of 24 (b11000) we would round up (since the leftmost one is followed by another one) to b100000 or 32.

Cool huh?

Posted by Legion at 4:32 PM | Comments (0)

June 1, 2005

Oh Noes, Open Source Gets Exploited?!?

ZDNet reports in this article that a "senior figure" at the European Commission stated that some American IT companies use the Open Source community as "subcontractors". Well ... yeah.

Basically, it seems the crux of his argument is that these American IT companies use open source, but don't contribute to open source. But he also states that, "Open source communities need to take themselves seriously and realise they have contribution to themselves and society. From the moment they realise they are part of the evolution of society and try to influence it, we will be moving in the right direction."

So he seems to be saying that he's upset that American IT companies simply take from open source and that open source is not a competitor on its own. So let me get this straight ... you put a bowl of disks that can never run out on a street corner and say, "Take as many as you want, they're free." Then you get upset when some people just take disks and don't put any back in? And when all you do is give things away for free, you're surprised that you don't have any money to drive change or try to influence the "evolution of society"?

Wow ... I want some of what he's smoking.

Posted by Legion at 8:44 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2005

Son of Case Modding

Well, its no fun to do a case mod without taking a series of pictures and writing up one's observations. So I'm going to do a step-by-step documentary on my experiences. The major difference between me and a lot of these case modders seems to be that I have no background in modelling, machine shops, welding, or electronics beyond an 8th grade survey shop class. I hope to make Mr. Daughhetee proud.

So ... here's the beginning point, my no-name aluminum computer case. Yeah, its kinda dusty ... but this gives me a chance to clean it up as well as clean it out.

InSitu.jpg

The first steps are to install a blowhole with a 120mm fan and a "fanbus" to control it. A fanbus is a control panel that allows one to turn fans on or off and sometimes vary their speed. This enables one to optimize for noise or cooling depending on the situation. So far I've gotten all my parts from FrozenCPU, but I'll let you all in on exactly what I've bought and planned when I'm ready to move forward.

Wish me luck!

Posted by Legion at 4:45 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2005

Case Modding Follow-up

And as if I didn't already love how close everything is to my new apartment (Fry's, Borders, Costco, OfficeMax, WalMart, Trader Joe's, pizza, sushi and my workplace all within about five miles of me) ... I have found out there's a TAP Plastics just down the street as well. Anytime I've talked to someone about DIY plastic anything, TAP Plastics always comes up. I'll have to check the place out soon ...

Posted by Legion at 8:34 AM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2005

Case Modding

I've always been interested in case modding. I know I have the skill to do it ... but I've been waiting for something to inspire me. When it comes to this type of thing, I'm very utilitarian. I want things that make sense or make the computer work better or easier. This leads to the standard blowhole, fan control switches on the front panel and window so you can see inside with the case closed. Tres uninspired.

But the full on case mods where you build a case from scratch just seem to me to be a bit ... shall we say ... daunting? So I'll settle for the basic stuff for my first mod, but I wanted something cool. I wanted something that people would fawn over at the next LAN party. What to do?

Well, necessity is the mother of invention, I suppose. The new place I'm living in doesn't have any air conditioning and summer is coming soon. If it gets up to eighty degrees in my apartment, I'm sure my computer will cook itself as it currently stands. But as it currently stands, when it's seventy degrees in my apartment ... its almost a hundred degrees inside my case. So, more airflow is needed.

I've committed to adding a blowhole and better wire management to help the airflow issue. But when I went that far I figured why not go all the way with some lighting and a window. Of course just a plain jane window wouldn't work ... but what to put on it?

Well, I remembered a picture I'd seen once of Frank, the demon bunny from the movie Donnie Darko. This will look perfect etched into the window, lit from behind with an eerie glow.

Maybe after I get that done ... then I'll graduate to my dream case ... building a computer inside a Samsonite hardsided suitcase.

Posted by Legion at 8:10 PM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2005

Mac a Bastion From Virii and Spyware?

Recently it seems that there's a huge push saying, "Tired of viruses and spyware? Move to the Mac!" What's that saying, "Everything old is new again"?

In the first half of the 90s, I worked for a national software retailer. People would come in asking whether they should by a Mac or PC. There were three things I would tell them:

  1. Yes, the Mac is easier to use on average
  2. The PC has an order of magnitude more software for it
  3. There were no viruses for the PC

Really? There were no viruses for the PC? Well, not really ... I was a salesperson after all. People like to hear absolutes. But around that time, the Mac was beseiged on all sides by viruses and the PC had Jerusalem. As a service to our customers, people could bring in suspected infected floppies and we'd scan and clean them. In five years, I cleaned maybe three instances of Jerusalem ... one instance of Michelangelo and at least 20 instances of CDEF.

Why was the Mac such a virus breeding ground and why isn't it today? Is it because the Mac is now more secure and Windows just has a ton of holes? Actually, I subscribe to the playground theory of virus spreading. Those of you who have kids know that when one kid on a playground is sick, they'll soon all be sick. Because kids just aren't as disciplined as adults. They don't worry about getting germs all over and they don't worry about making other people sick. Whereas adults keep themselves away from others ... they stay home from work ... they don't drink orange juice out of the bottle, etc.

Novice users are the same way. They don't have anti-virus programs. They click on strange websites (I hear my mom in my head shouting, "Don't click that! You don't know where it's been!"). They open strange email attachments. Novice users are how viruses spread. And it becomes a vicious circle. The novice users make the viruses spread more readily ... so that gives the virus writers that write for that platform a bigger ego boost ... which brings a few more virus writers ... etc etc etc.

Back in my time in retail, the Mac was where the novice users went. PC users were, as a general rule, more knowledgeable, better read and better prepared. The Mac was where you went if you were an artist or wanted a computer but didn't want to have to learn so much to get started (and had a lot of money to burn). But that's not true anymore. Any Joe Shmoe nowadays has a PC. In order to get into a Mac, you have to know something about computers to even know they're out there ... let alone know where to buy one. So where do the viruses go? Over time, they migrate to the PC.

Back in the early 90s, the Mac was at its all time high of about 12% market share. I think Apple will be cursed by its success if it does succeed in wooing away a large number of users due to its inherent "security." I think they'll lose their one big bargaining chip as viruses and spyware start targeting the Mac platform.

Posted by Legion at 8:52 AM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2004

I Have Achieved Nerdvana

Finally, I have been able to piece together the magical combination of hardware and software that has enabled my spare computer to become a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 system. It is dutifully recording Stargate SG-1 episodes for me as I type. As Lester Burnham once said, "I rule!"

Posted by Legion at 8:01 PM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2004

Presto Change-o

Like I expected ... I wasn't quite able to get both computers up and running last night. I was able to get my main computer redone, patched, and most of my basic applications installed and configured. Y'know ... its cool when your 3.2GHz processor actually runs at that speed instead of 2.8GHz. The only hiccough I had was that on the Intel motherboard, in order to get the 800MHz RAM speed, you have to put chips in separate banks. I thought I had to put them both in the same bank. So after I had gotten the case all buttoned up ... I had to take it out and open it again. It always happens ...

Posted by Legion at 8:03 AM | Comments (0)

October 8, 2004

Computer Woes Redux

It turns out that the brand new Shuttle box is incompatible with the latest Prescott-core Pentium 4s. As a matter of fact, I've found out that rather a lot of motherboards simply won't support them ... despite having the proper socket and such. So ... I changed plans.

I bought a new motherboard and my super-fast, top-of-the-line machine is going to be back in my mid-tower case with the 450W power supply and a bunch of room for drives and etc. I'm going to take all my slightly older ... but still good ... hardware, put it in the Shuttle box and build a Media PC out of it.

Microsoft is shipping Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (codenamed Symphony) on Tuesday. I've read the preview and it looks great. I've thought about getting a TiVo ... but this is even better since I'll have a use for this slightly older PC ... but I'll still be able to use it as a computer too. When I get my own place I'll have it in my front room ... and the wireless LAN capability of the Shuttle box will do wonders. I won't have to string network cables all around the house. Now all I need is the wireless adapter for my Xbox and the living room will be set.

Of course ... I need the new apartment too ... *sigh* ... I hate moving.

Posted by Legion at 8:32 AM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2004

Computer Woes

Well ... sometimes it hurts to be at the bleeding edge. My lovely new Shuttle XPC barebones system has a slight flaw (that's not unique to the Shuttle boxes, it would seem) ... but only with the latest Pentium 4 processors and Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Windows XP. So basically, my system wouldn't boot after I had gotten pretty much everything set the way I wanted it ... and I had to reformat and reinstall from scratch in order to get it to boot.

Now that I've got access to the web again, I've found a few complaints about the Shuttle BIOS not supporting the Prescott core Pentium 4s properly ... so I guess I need to send an email to Shuttle. *sigh*

Posted by Legion at 8:25 PM | Comments (0)

New System Up and Running

I was up until the wee hours of the morning last night, piecing together my new system. I've got Windows XP installed and most of my can't-live-without-it software (Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Office 2k3, WinAMP and such). Of course, now comes the fun part where over the next couple weeks exactly what I forgot to back up. It's no big deal because I've got the old system still with the old hard drive still intact (and I did back up 95% of everything) ... ugh ... found one ... I forgot to back up my bookmarks.

Curses ... foiled again!

Posted by Legion at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2004

No Love From WoW

Well, still no email from Blizzard ... so I guess I'll just have to console myself by building the most bitchin' system I can afford at the present time. I've been talking with my buddy Bu at work about these newfangled Shuttle cases. They offer barebones systems that are actually pretty darned good and relatively inexpensive.

At one point, I definitely went with the "bigger is better" theory of computer design. I had a full-tower case that was actually tall enough for me to use as a snack tray at LAN parties. I had a 21" monitor that I lugged around too ... despite its 100+ pound weight.

But since LAN parties became more and more popular within my group of friends, ease of portability became a concern. I switched over to using LCD panels first ... and then a smaller, aluminum case. So I just see moving to the lunchbox-sized, aluminum Shuttle case part of this natural progression.

Parts list:

I'm going to use my video card, sound card and optical drive from my current system. The barebones system includes network ports, so I should be all set.

Of course, now I'm waiting on the FedEx man instead of the email ... *sighs*

Posted by Legion at 8:21 AM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2004

These Are the People I'll Be Spending My Weekend With

I've mentioned Penny Arcade here a few times. I think I've even mentioned PAX once or twice. But this article from the Seattle Times is probably the best run-down of the history of Penny Arcade ... and why I would want to help with PAX. They did what I want to do ... struggle my way into my dream job.

Posted by Legion at 7:45 PM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2004

Operation Render Farm: Phase Two

Phase one is now complete. Time to move on to phase two.

Phase one was getting the server built, the software configured and ensuring that Punish could connect to all the differenet processes he needed over the Internet. Phase two consists of actually writing the code that will administrate the render farm. This part will be the time-consuming one (despite the fact that it took over three hours just to format the drive on the server ... ack).

Fortunately, I've gathered a lot of experience with this type of thing while on my latest contract ... so it won't be as hard as it would have been. But it's still a lot of code to get written. Fortunately, Punish has what he needs to get started too.

Posted by Legion at 12:37 PM | Comments (1)

August 21, 2004

How Did We Ever Survive?

Phase one of Operation Render Farm has commenced. Warning: What follows could be considered very geeky and may not be of interest to all readers ...

I have cleaned up numerous things, done some strategic backups (can't lose my pr0n collection), and removed the old 8Gig hard drive from my server box. I have replaced it with a 250 gigabyte monster (available for only $199 from Best Buy ... w00t!). My file server is now up to a total of about 345GB (that's real gigabytes ... as in 230 not 109).

On top of that, my server box dates from the time when I was very much into the BeOS. Hence, it contains two Pentium III 700MHz processors. And yes, it was my desktop box for a long time ... unfortunately, to play games on it I had to disable the second processor. But now, with the installation of Microsoft Windows 2003 Server ... I'm re-enabling the second processor. Yeah ... it'll be screaming fast ... woooo!

Actually, if you ever need to appreciate your current system. Just boot up an old system. I'm so glad that this is going to just be a file server for the most part ... because the DVD-ROM drive I have in it is dog slow. It's one of those old Creative Labs IDE DVD drives from the multimedia package deals.

Yeah ... I'm a packrat ... what of it? Being a packrat is the reason why I have four computers and enough spare parts to repair my own systems until I can get to a computer store to buy a real replacement part. When I moved up to Washington, I threw away more computer equipment than most people ever own.

But I digress ...

So I'm going to get the main server back up and running with Windows Server 2k3, Subversion version control, and a web and FTP server. Then I'm going to get the render system started.

It's good to be the Geek.

Posted by Legion at 1:53 PM | Comments (0)

August 15, 2004

Zealotry

I've figured it out. I wonder why I didn't strike upon this before, really ... but it eluded me. I finally figured out the common thread between Open Source and Mac that I dislike. I understand now why I'll use a Windows system with some Open Source software ... or why I read Mac blogs on occasion ... or why I'd seriously consider owning an iPod ... but that in general, I try to avoid both Apple and Open Source if possible.

It boils down to zealotry. Don't get me wrong ... Windows has it's share of religious-type freaks too. But since Windows has so many other non-fanatic users ... it's easier to ignore them.

Let's look at some things ...

I agree that software drivers for hardware should be open source. You're already giving the drivers away ... it's not like it's going to cost you anything (and if not, you're a profiteering twit who deserves no sales). You might even get a free port out of it to the Macintosh or Linux.

I do not agree that all software should be open source. I don't believe games should be open source. There is no way that any game manufacturer would make a decent living releasing open source games. Heck, even Loki Games the company who rewrote great PC games for Linux filed for bankruptcy a few years back ... and they were proprietary products, i.e. not open source.

I agree that Apple makes some great products. The iPod is a very good product that deserves the success that it is enjoying. There are, even now, some features of the iPod that nobody else has successfully copied, mainly relating to the user interface. You'd think that with all these competitors ... someone would be able to present an equally approachable interface.

I do not agree that the Apple Macintosh computers nor the Mac OS are superior to all others. When it comes down to choice ... choice of hardware ... choice of software ... the PC can't be beat. That's one thing that Apple has always managed to stifle. Apple has always been there ... making decisions in the best interests of their users ... like an overbearing father figure. Some people like that. I moved out the first chance I got.

I agree that many ideas, in the right context, have merit. I do not agree that any one idea can be the be-all-and-end-all. I guess that's where zealots really bug me ... in that they have found a safe place and refuse to be shaken from that spot. And the world just isn't like that.

Posted by Legion at 8:51 AM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2004

Open Letter to Governor Schwarzenegger

Below is a letter that I wrote and sent to Governor Schwarzenegger in response to this /. article about a suggestion to use Open Source software as a way to reduce the California State budget.

Governor Schwarzenegger,

I recently read an article about a suggestion to explore the use of Open Source software as an alternative to proprietary software as a cost-saving model. Benefits other than cost savings listed are greater security, less vulnerability to viruses, and ability to run in multiple environments. The only thing I will say to those points is that more informed people than I have debated and still are debating those issues ... but if you think that the Open Source advocates are more trustworthy because they aren't trying to sell you something, think again. Open Source advocates are trying to sell something ... their philosophy.

Now, on to my main point. Open Source software, in my experience, is almost never a cost savings for the average business user ... and rarely even for the average technical business user. A case in point is Eric S. Raymond's essay The Luxury of Ignorance. In it he talks about one particular piece of Open Source software and his trouble getting it configured to work. (ESR, as he is referred to online by OSS advocates, is a highly-technical person who has been working with Unix and software written for it for decades ... if there is anyone that shouldn't have trouble, it is him.)

"Eventually I notice the Listen directive in the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file. 'Aha!' says I to myself, 'Maybe this is like sendmail, where you have to tell it explicitly to listen on the server's IP address.' I add 'Listen 192.168.1.21', the latter being minx's IP address, restarts cupsd...and lo and behold my test job comes tumbling out of the printer."

Did that mean anything to you? I didn't think so ... he continues:

"The thing to notice here is how far behind we have left Aunt Tillie[, the metaphorical 'Average User']. Rule 1 of writing software for nontechnical users is this: if they have to read documentation to use it you designed it wrong. The interface of the software should be all the documentation the user needs."

And of the documentation of this product he notes:

"But in this case, the documentation was passively but severely misleading in one area, and harmfully silent in others. I eventually had to apply m4d skillz gained from wrestling with sendmail[, a Unix program in use for decades and also notoriously impossible to configure,] to solve a problem the CUPS documentation never even hinted about."

The point of all this is ... this is not uncommon in Open Source software. As a matter of fact, even ESR admits that this is the rule rather than the exception (and ESR is not alone). Consider the impact that this type of loss of productivity would have on the budget. And if one wanted to not have a loss of productivity, one would need to hire a lot more IT workers to make things work seamlessly for the average state worker. This would be good for the still-floundering IT sector ... but it would not amount to a net cost savings for the state budget.

I am not saying that the State of California should ignore Open Source software. I am saying that one should look at more than just the purchase price before one decides to go with Open Source software.

Thank you for your time,

Legion Vielenamen

Posted by Legion at 8:12 AM | Comments (0)

August 7, 2004

Two Monitors, One Computer

Many newer video cards have the capability of driving two monitors. It is pretty simple to set up once you have the right video card and two displays so long as you're using Windows 98 or above. All I did was plug in the second monitor and go to the control panel to make sure the second LCD panel was set to the resolution and color depth that I wanted. Voila! The only problem with my setup is that I'm using two fairly different LCD panels ... despite them both being 17" displays ... so matching the color was a bit of a trick. Other than that ... I'm loving it!

Posted by Legion at 7:13 AM | Comments (0)

August 6, 2004

And The Hits Just Keep on Coming

I picked up Doom 3 today on DukeZuke's and my little outing. I read a couple comics about how spooky the game was. I thought it was a bit of hype ... but that it would be a fun game. I was so very, very wrong. It's a great game ... but ... I don't scare easy and in playing through the first few minutes of the game, DukeZuke and I both nearly jumped out of our skin a few times.

To bed with me now ... hopefully to sleep ...

Posted by Legion at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)

Ill-Gotten Booty

I picked up a couple things today. I got a new LCD panel and a new set of surround-sound speakers. I'm ditching my 22" CRT in favor of two 17" LCD panels. I'll update with how it goes ...

Posted by Legion at 8:14 PM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2004

Apple Shows Once Again Why They're Behind

I have a friend with whom I argue occasionally about "the failing of better technology." He says that the big, bad corporations ram crappy technology down the throats of the American public ... forcing them to buy into things like VHS instead of Beta ... PCs instead of Amigas. I keep telling him that it's not like that ...

What's really happening is that the open standard will win out over the closed standard, all things more or less being equal. Beta players were more expensive than VHS. Why? Because Beta was a format owned and licensed by Sony. If you wanted to make a Beta player ... you had to pay Sony a fee to get your foot in the door ... and then some more money for each player you sold. So what happened? A group of electronics companies came along and made the VHS format and anyone could make one. The market was flooded with cheap VHS players (because they didn't have to pay all the up front costs of buying into the Beta format) and there you go.

The same thing happens in lots of cases when a choice comes down between an open and a closed format. Not because the American public loves open standards, but because open standards equals cheap. Cheap to produce. Cheaper to maintain. Cheap to replace. (We'll talk another time about how ubiquity equals open for most intents and purposes.)

So what's going on with Apple? Well, it seems that Real Networks approached Apple with a deal. Basically, Real wanted to partner with Apple to allow iPod owners to download music from Real's Harmony network onto their iPods, much as they do with Apple's own iTunes network. Well ... Apple decided that they didn't want to share and basically told Real Networks to go pound sand.

So, what did Real Networks do? They reverse engineered Apple's DRM format. They figured out how to get music onto iPods without Apple's help. Now Apple is pissed. You see ... the iPod is selling better than anything else Apple produces. The iPod is practically the only thing keeping Apple afloat. I can understand why they might get touchy. But this type of thing can only be good for the iPod. More people being able to download more stuff to the iPod is good. But Apple can't let go of their stranglehold long enough to see that. And I have to side with Real Networks on this issue.

This is something that Apple has been doing for a long time. I agree that Apple does a lot of cool stuff. They have the right attitude about a lot of things. But ... you have to buy in to their culture ... their mindset. I thought about buying an iPod recently ... now I'm glad I didn't.

Posted by Legion at 8:16 AM | Comments (0)

July 5, 2004

MP3s Rule

A week ago I visited the city where I grew up. I had a great time visiting all my friends and family. I did let some people down in one way though ...

You see ... we're all gamers. So when we get together we bring together our computers too for a LAN party. When this happens, typically I'm the DJ. I store all my music on my file server ... but I forgot to copy it over to my main system (which is the only system I brought on the trip) before we left. I've come up with a system to fix that for next time ... but I wanted to let people in on how I have all this music.

I really don't have as large a collection as some I know. But I went through the trouble to convert my meager CD collection completely to MP3. Why bother? Because now I can listen to anything at the drop of a hat. All my CDs are in a box that I never have to open. I can make custom music compilations any time I want. It just gives me more flexibility.

What's the big deal about MP3s? Well, really they're just a different way of encoding the same information. MP3s encode the audio information in such a way that it takes a lot less space. How it does this is it takes out the stuff that your ear wouldn't hear anyway. So it's not an exact reproduction ... but you'd need an audio analyzer to notice the difference if the bitrate is decent.

What's a bitrate? I'm glad you asked. The bitrate of an MP3 is basically a rating of how much information is retained in a second of audio. CDs store information at 704Kbps. The old "standard" bitrate for MP3s was 128Kbps. This gave one about a 10:1 compression ratio ... basically one minute of audio in CD format took 10MB, but in MP3 format it only took 1MB. Just this conversion meant that one could store almost 11 hours of music onto one CD.

Now 128Kbps is all well and good. But if you listen to music a lot (and if you don't, why are you reading this article?) then typically you'll want to blast it sometimes and you might have a little bit better chance to pick up some of those things that get dropped off. I can hear the difference at 128Kbps ... and I don't have that great of an ear (just ask Punish). I generally encode at 192Kbps VBR.

Oh ... I didn't explain VBR? Ok ... there's two ways of encoding MP3s at a certain bitrate. One is CBR or Constant BitRate and the other is VBR or Variable BitRate. VBR basically means that the encoding centers around a particular bitrate ... but if the audio becomes more "simple" it falls to a lower bitrate and if it becomes more complex the reverse happens. This generally gives better compression than a CBR file ... at the cost of some compatibility (though lately, pretty much every MP3 player handles VBR files).

So, what do I use to convert CDs to MP3s? Well, most recently I've used two things. The first is WinAMP. For the low, low price of $15US you get a great music player, a CD ripper (the thing that turns CDs into MP3s) and a media manager. It's fairly easy to use ... but hey, it's cheap and does a decent job.

What I use for my personal collection though is Exact Audio Copy. It's postcard-ware (you just send a postcard to the developer as thanks) ... so you can't beat the price. Also, it is the most accurate ripper available. It isn't the fastest ... because if it detects an error during the ripping process, it goes back and fixes it ... but you won't get the occasional bad track which happens on even the best systems.

Now, ripping is actually a two-step process. Ripping is the process of taking the audio data off the disc. Encoding is the process of turning that audio data into an MP3. Some software does this all at once ... but since I got the best ripper available, I also wanted the best encoder. So I grabbed LAME. I was able to find an executable version as well.

Basically, you download LAME and unzip it to a folder on your hard drive. (I recommend C:\Program Files\LAME) Once that's done, you download and install EAC. During the install process, you can tell EAC where LAME is installed (or let it search for it which is kinda slow, but it'll get there). The defaults work just fine in my experience ... but there's a lot of tweakage you can do. One mandatory step though is to set the output folder to someplace you'll remember. (C:\music comes to mind. Or if you're running XP "My Documents\My Music" works too.)

And don't forget to send that postcard ...

And last but not least ... you'll need a player. Windows Media Player works pretty well though I use WinAMP. It's been around for a long time and has some great features that other players lack ... including the ability to bind a key combination to control WinAMP no matter what other programs are running. (This is great for playing music while playing MMO-type games.)

And that's all there is to it ...

Posted by Legion at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2004

My Dream Computer Case

This is my dream computer case ... for the most part. The style of it and the look of it are awesome. I just wish I had the time to build something like that. But let's lay down what I would want in a custom-designed case.

It would be light. I don't do LAN parties as much anymore now that I've moved, but I do forsee doing them often again once things get rolling here. So it would be light and easily portable ... most likely have some handles to make portage easier.

It would be self-contained. Once again, for LAN parties ... it would be helpful to minimize the number of things that need to be plugged in. I've seen cases that have integrated power strips and network hubs ... though it would be hard to integrate those things and still maintain the stylish look like the VesperDeco case.

It would be unique. The vast majority of modded cases out there are simply copies of a few things that have gotten easy to do because so many people said, "Oooo ... nifty!" Case windows, case lighting, and fanbuses all fall into this category. Wood is becoming more common ... but it's still pretty rare. I used to think of making a LAN system out of an old Samsonite suitcase ... but I think it would look pretty cobbled-together compared to some of these systems that people are turning out.

Or maybe I'll just settle for putting a blowhole, fanbus and LCD panel in my current case until I come up with something that really blows my mind ...

Posted by Legion at 8:00 AM | Comments (2)