Blog: Announcing Recorder

Posted 751 days ago

Recorder is a component for .Net framework 2.0 written in C#. It handles all the difficult details of working with DirectX in recording audio. With the library, recording audio and saving it to a wave file is as simple as four lines.

It can be downloaded here, with a VS2005 sample project (from which the above screenshot was taken) available here. More information at the link above.

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Blog: Apple's Margins

Posted 922 days ago

With its move to generic hardware for the new generations of Macs, Apple also makes it much easier to look at their margins. Below is a look at the possible cost to apple of the components for their new iMac.

• 512MB of PC5400 Ram: 37.79


• 160GB HDD: 74.50


• Core Duo Proccessor at 1.83Ghz (this is not currently available, but from prices of older Intel proccessors, we can infer that it will retail for around this) $250


• ATI x1600 graphics card with 128MB of vram: ~$150


• 8X superdrive: $37.99


• 17’’ LCD monitor (not widescreen, but has more pixels than the apple one, so should be of comparable price): $230


• Webcam: $26


• Case and mobo: probably around $50


• Wireless (bluetooth+802.11g): around $30

And the total is $886.28. Of course, as Apple is buying in bulk and as many pieces come from in-house, their actual price will be much less. Some of the above prices were estimates, as the exact product is not sold in stores. This computer, the basic iMac, is sold for $1,299.

Posted by: Micah Wylde | Permalink | Comment [1]

Blog: So long, Macromedia

Posted 942 days ago

Adobe has completed its acquisition of its main competitor, Macromedia, and a new design of the Macromedia web site reflects this. Qualms about the new sites' design aside, It seems that Adobe is determined to completely internalize the company. From documents on its website, Adobe claims that no products will be made unavailable for sale:

but it seems inevitable that from those products which previously competed with each other (Photoshop/Fireworks, GoLive/Dreamweaver, FreeHand/Illustrator, etc.) one will be culled. Unfortunately, this likely means that Fireworks, an excellent web image editing app, will likely be cut.

While both companies have along history of producing quality software (with a few notable exceptions from each...acrobat), and ideally the lack of competition in many fields will not be the catalyst for a standstill of innovation.

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Blog: Typo theme: Metropolitan

Posted 976 days ago

I’ve designed a theme, called metropolitan, for the typo ruby on rails blogging engine. It can be downloaded here as a tarball or a zip. This is my first typo theme, and is standards complient and works in all three major browsers (and mostly in opera). You can see a full size screen shot here, and may be able to see a blog with the theme in action here.

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Blog: BSA ads frighten

Posted 984 days ago

Browsing Engadget.com today I noticed the ad to the right. Seriously, what is this? The ad promises vast financial compesensation for ratting out your friends and collegues’ use of illegal software. It sounds like the KGB offering rewards for turning in dissidents. The banner links to this site, which provides a form for letting the BSA know about all your copyright-infringing friends. Now who’s the first to report Microsoft?

Posted by: Micah Wylde | Permalink | Comment [1]

Blog: The New Dark Ages

Posted 990 days ago

Truly a sad day for America. The Kansas state school board has approved 6-4 new science standards for public schools. The most important change was to remove the requirement for explanations to be “natural”, which eliminated such theories as intelligent design, which was the goal of the legislation: to allow the teaching of ID in the classroom. Of course, it was wrapped up in nice language, with the promise of expanding the viewpoints to which Kansas children are exposed.

Which might actually have merit, except that there are no scientific (well, at least, using the rest of the world’s definition of science) theories that stand as alternate view points. ID, which is merely re-branded creationism, is not held as a valid scientific theory by the rest of the world, for several reasons: it is not falsifiable, and it is not a natural explanation.

Not falsifiable means that it can’t, like the existence of God or space aliens, be disproved; no matter how much evidence to the contrary an ID advocate could argue that all this evidence was merely planted by the guiding power to hide his existence, as some sort of test of faith. There is of course no way to debate that, no more than one could debate the statement: “The earth was formed when a giant watermelon was hit with a comet and the seeds streamed out and formed planets.” Which most people would laugh at, if it were actually argued (a similar parody can be found in the Flying Spaghetti Monster).

The main argument of ID proponents is to bring up supposed failures of evolution (though in most cases this is merely because they don’t understand evolution), like gaps in the fossil record, and then argue that because of these failures of evolution ID must be true. Which is a logical fallacy. Another fun argument is that of irreducible complexity; IE that some complex part of our bodies could not have developed without other parts concurrently. The idea is that nothing as complex as us could have developed naturally, that they most have been designed. This huge logical gap in this (as there is no science, merely logic games) is that the proposed creator (who ID proponents rarely name, in an attempt to make it seem to be not creationism) would need to be even more complex than us, in order to have created all this, and yet if here were that complex he could not have developed, he must have been created. And so on forever. Of course, if this is taken as a religious argument, then this is not a problem; as the creator is a supernatural force, IE God, they can claim anything they want about him.

It’s sad that we as a country have come to this stage. Though the only people who will suffer are high-school students in Kansas, it reflects very poorly on our whole nation. A nation who feels itself intellectually righteous enough to go into other countries and change them finds itself decrepit there.

Posted by: Micah Wylde | Permalink | Comment

Blog: You're a moron, shut up

Posted 1016 days ago

Jack Thompson is at it again. He has sent, apparently to various members of the press and Doug Lowenstein, president of the ESA a proposal for a video game. He promises to donate $10,000 to a charity if his game is made. Which seems innoculous enough (ok, maybe slightly deranged, but innoculous), except that his proposal is for a game whose protagonist blames video games for his murder of his father, and vows to take revenge on the video game industry, for making him kill his father.

You see, Jack doesn’t believe in beating around the bush. No, this attention seeking washed out attorney gets right to the point. Of course, he’s been at this sort of thing for years, and has railed against other industries since before pong.

Though he’s hardly unique in America with his nothing-you-do-is-your-fault-it’s-theirs message. We’ve been seeing it for most of this whole century; in its day rock music was corrupting our youth, then comic books were destroying our society, then punk, metal, etc. Of course, he’s fighting a losing battle; as all these have become accepted as their participants have aged and become those who decide what is acceptable, so will video games as this generation ages.

So enjoy it while it lasts, Jack.

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