Login with username and password (forgot your password?)

Classical music, and to a lesser extent, Jazz, provide a better test of recording techniques.

Classical recordings are generally pretty dreadful - especially when soloists are involved. The only place to hear classical music as it should sound is in the concert hall. On recordings the balance of instruments is always wildly different - and usually REALLY unbalanced.

Classic example a few years ago - I was at a live concert with a guitar concerto that was recorded. In the concert the players worked together to get a superb level of balance and integration of sound (all the more so as the soloist was playing with an orchestra for the first time). On the recording it sounded like the soloist and listener were in one room whilst the orchestra was in another. Been my experience of most classical music recordings.

Can't help wondering some times if soloists are to blame as they want their sound to the front!

I generally use a flat EQ with no effects. Why mess with what the band and recording engineers intended? Sometimes I'll put up the bass for some music, but in general, I listen to it flat.

Because there is a difference between what is heard in a studio with studio monitors and what comes out of, even expensive, domestic audio equipment.

The difference is because of the location, not the speakers.  You can put the same exact speakers in your living room that are used in a recording studio, but the sound will not be the same because of a different acoustic environment.  The best sound in any given room will be obtained by matching the capabilities of the speakers to the characteristics of the room, and also to where listeners will be positioned.

Sound is the result of complex interactions of pressure waves and it varies as you move around a room, or how many people are in that room.  Newer home audio equipment can do a pretty good job of emulating the ambiance of different concert halls, and the effect can sometimes sound more "natural" than straight reproduction, but neither is more "accurate" than the other.

True - but domestic speakers are going to have different response profiles to studio speakers (actually any two different speakers will have different response profiles). So if you are using different speakers in a different environment you won't hear what the engineers heard by using a flat EQ.

As you say you won't even hear what the engineer heard even if you steal their whole set up and take it home - that is why EQ is used to tweak the sound you hear.

At the end of the day it is all a matter of taste - even if you do hear what the engineer hears it still isn't necessarily the best sound. IMHO engineers in concerts can't mix a decent sound at all - I have yet to go to a concert of any band and not be irritated by the bad mixing!

I generally use a flat EQ with no effects. Why mess with what the band and recording engineers intended? Sometimes I'll put up the bass for some music, but in general, I listen to it flat.

Because there is a difference between what is heard in a studio with studio monitors and what comes out of, even expensive, domestic audio equipment.

Thanks - I had already found that. I was initially being a bit dim (not unusual).

Great little tool - shame that Ctrl X, C, V don't work consistently though.

Hmm - Sam Spade doesn't recognise .TV domain names - or at least it can't look them up.

Strangely the website is in a frameset on both domains and actually stored on a third domain!!!

How confusing - no wonder they don't get any page ranking!

Thanks April.

Thanks that is really useful.

Interestingly the dns servers are not what I thought they were as another domain points to the same website and has different DNS servers.

Maybe there are two copies of the website out there on different servers ??

I have a client who has a TV domain name. The person responsible for the website has gone missing without leaving any details of where it is registered etc.

How do you look up .tv names?

I have tried the usual WHOIS sites but they either come up with nothing at all or just that the name is registered and no details!

The domain is thegeorge.tv

Anyone got and ideas?

+1 for AMD
Intel mobile graphics suck 

Talking about trains ... ooo dinosaurs - ah my favourites is the cheesburger

Not available in the UK

Am I missing something? Google's PlayStore is not like Apple or Microsoft's App store. You can download apps from any web and install it, just tap on the downloaded file. OK they can stop the app appearing on PlayStore but it doesn't stop you manually installing it for the developers website.

Maybe removing AdBlock Plus from Play Store is manipulative - but it may also because it doesn't actually work well and causing a lot of users big headaches on locked phones where they don't have access to Proxy settings!

That's why I lead off with the statement "Any time your locked into a proprietary system for apps"

Hmmm - I was responding to the comment:

Perhaps when GoOgle and the others see a severe drop in the sales of their closed app phones, they will reconsider this totalitarian system of theirs or go the way of the dinosaurs

Which seems to argue that Android is a closed eco-system - have I misunderstood?

On windows there is an addon to Adblock plus to remove google ads (if you mean the ones down the right and side) - not sure if it exists on android. If you mean the embedded ads in the search results I have not seen any way to avoid those.

(actually scratch that it was only to block google ads in Gmail)

Perhaps when GoOgle and the others see a severe drop in the sales of their closed app phones, they will reconsider this totalitarian system of theirs or go the way of the dinosaurs.....

Am I missing something? Google's PlayStore is not like Apple or Microsoft's App store. You can download apps from any web and install it, just tap on the downloaded file. OK they can stop the app appearing on PlayStore but it doesn't stop you manually installing it for the developers website.

Maybe removing AdBlock Plus from Play Store is manipulative - but it may also because it doesn't actually work well and causing a lot of users big headaches on locked phones where they don't have access to Proxy settings!

Read my edited post above ... AdBlock Plus for Android is not working well at all - unless you want all browsers to freeze, crash out or display unusable pages!

Word of warning - it also screws up proxy settings! Not a big problem on recent Android builds but on older builds the user can't edit the proxy setting, esp. on un-rooted devices.

Read the install notes and FAQs on adblock's website before messing about with this.

Definitely not ready for prime time IMHO!

However, I'm disturbed that after having "lost several battles" on desktops, once Mobile came around, suddenly companies saw a chance to start over and build in some nice new toys for themselves by locking down the OS's hard. So yes it's "Google's Store" (or, sideways, Apple's for the iPhone), but if the only way to get software onto the phone is through that store, it starts to make a disturbing chain where the sum of the pieces is far scarier than each piece presented "innocently" by itself. (Which is a MAJOR current brain-hack that media has really accelerated in the past 15 years or so!!)

Actually one of the good things about Android is you are not limited to PlayStore - you can download an installer file and install it manually outside the PlayStore eco-structure.

Just open Android browser to www.adblockplus.org and hey presto - two clicks and Adblock Plus is installed - having said that I am not impressed with the way it totally screws up websites on Android - never had any issues on the desktop but I went to http://uk.yahoo.com on Android's browser with and without AdBlockPlus enabled and the blocked site was completely unreadable and unusable. Removing Adblock plus now!

You aren't alone - I have done it many times myself!

WebsiteSpark is being discontinued:

Sorry beat you to it - look at the last post on the previous page

There is a simple way round the address book problem - always sign up to websites with email addresses that are unique to that website. If you host your own email it is dead easy to set up an infinite number of unique addresses that all forward to your main address. That way if you are in someone's address book it won't match the address registered on the social site.

In addition to Adblock Plus, NoScript, Ghostery, Cookie Monster and RequestPolicy, I also use RefControl, which may be of interest to y'all. Together they make browsing new sites pretty painful, but once a site is set up how you like it it's all good.

Thanks for the tip on Collusion.

Ehtyar.

Sounds brilliant ... really secure browsing ... painfully slow and almost no functionality beyond plain text and pictures

Ha - beat me to it. Some good titles too!

What happens when Google glasses become indistinguishable from normal glasses?

Well that didn't last long - just got the following email from Microsoft:

Thank you for participating in the WebsiteSpark program!  Based on the changing needs of web developers, Microsoft has created new offers at no cost to help Web Pros like you continue to create rich interactive web applications.  These resources are designed to help you design, develop, publish, and deploy world class websites.
 
Since Microsoft is making these powerful new resources available to you without cost, the WebsiteSpark program will no longer be accepting new membership applications. Web Pros enrolled in the WebsiteSpark program as of March 11, 2013 may continue to use their WebsiteSpark benefits under the Microsoft WebsiteSpark Software License Terms and the terms identified by Microsoft as surviving terms in the Microsoft WebsiteSpark Web Pro Agreement, for twelve (12) months, until March 31, 2014.
 
For your convenience, we’ve provided links to some great resources below, available to you anytime at no cost.
 
Design, Develop, Publish & Deploy
http://www.microsoft.com/web/ is your main landing page to get access to the free tools.

·         Visual Studio Express 2012

·         Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2012

·         SQL Server Express

·         WebMatrix 2

 
Learn and Explore
·         Web Developer and Windows Azure Developer Camps are free, fun, no-fluff events for developers, by developers. You learn from experts in a low-key, interactive way and then get hands-on time to apply what you’ve learned. http://www.devcamps.ms

·         Windows Azure Web Sites http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/windowsazure/Learn-2012TechEd-EU/WebSites

·         ASP.net for web developers http://www.asp.net/

 
Windows Azure
·         Host 10 ASP.NET web sites for free with Windows Azure http://www.windowsazure.c...spnet/?WT.mc_id=A5A71FF5F

·         WSS member Windows Azure Offer http://www.windowsazure.c...rs/websitespark-benefits/

·         WebMatrix 2 and Windows Azure http://www.windowsazure.c...loads/webmatrix-overview/

Doesn't really make much difference to me as I had already decided to withdraw from the scheme - but there doesn't seem much incentive for anyone to stay when the software and benefits are effectively a 12 month trial with onerous demands to fulfil.

[Yahoo! webmail! hijacks! are! back!...]

Yahoo! webmail! hijacks! are! back!...

Yahoo! has blamed cross-site scripting security bugs, which it claims to have squashed, for a recent upsurge in webmail account takeovers.

via Daily Network Security Podcast

Pretty typical reaction of Yahoo - if they didn't write such god awful buggy webscripts themselves it might make it harder for hackers, and the problem might not go on for months!