Monday 29 Jun 2009 - 15:55The Mastering Loudness War is not yet over..

"So if anyone ever wonders why music can often be tiring to listen to, this is exactly why. Mixed in with the music are thousands and thousands of clicks, just like these.
Of course, when the loudness war really is finally over, the record companies will be able to re-release their back catalog once again in unclipped versions... Perhaps they know what they are doing after all?"
from a great article at RecordProducer.com. Glad at least someone is supporting my views from 2004.

Tuesday 23 Jun 2009 - 19:19Interview Project

If there's one person who knows how to portray America and its inhabitants, it's David Lynch. Check out his latest project. Notice the beautiful music, audio, editing and cinematography!

Thursday 18 Jun 2009 - 11:11Essential and recommended software

Below is a list I started in 1995. It's my sublimation of Personal Computer experience, I update this list quite regularly, feel free to bookmark jult.net/warez ;-)
Not everyone will need everything on it, and I use a lot more software than the stuff mentioned here, but this is the software I'm more than happy to know, use and really approve of. Sharing this knowledge would be a good idea, I guess.
. » vervolg ... more »

Thursday 04 Jun 2009 - 09:16Defending Open Internet

Op de 1 of andere manier wordt je altijd meteen weggeveegd als engerd die waarschijnlijk illegale dingen (zoals de distributie van kinderporno) wil kunnen blijven doen, zo gauw je een mening hebt die met een vrij en open internet te maken heeft. Zo ligt het echter niet. Check hier en hier en hier en hier. En stem vandaag op de SP, blijkbaar de enigen die nog een sikkepit om het huidige internet geven, en het uit handen van de grote jongens willen houden.

"Don't vote PSE / PPE / Liberals and UEN member in your country ! Just once to save the net neutrality in Europe!"

The internet as we know it is at risk. The new rules in the EU (the Telecoms package), voted on May 6, will be negotiated again in the Autumn, propose that broadband providers will be legally able to limit the number of websites you can look at, and to tell you whether or not you are allowed to use particular services. It will be dressed up as ‘new consumer options’ which people can choose from. People will be offered TV-like packages – with a limited number of options for you to access. It means that the Internet will be packaged up and your ability to access and to put up content could be severely restricted. It will create boxes of Internet accessibility, which don’t fit with the way we use it today.

It means that the Internet will be packaged up and your ability to access and to put up content could be severely restricted. It will create boxes of Internet accessibility, which don’t fit with the way we use it today.
This is because Internet is now permitting exchanges between persons which cannot be controlled or “facilitated” by any middlemen (the State or a corporation). This possibility improves citizen’s life and makes access to knowledge easier to everyone, but force the industry (telecommunications, entertainment…) to lose power and control. Access providers have now learned that controlling access they can control the Information Society development. That is why they are pushing to act those changes.
The excuse is to promote competition, offering choices to users which better fit their behavior on the Internet and, by collaborating with sectors interested in the promotion of lawful content (aka the entertainment industry), to control the flow of music, films and entertainment content against the alleged piracy by downloading for free, using P2P file-sharing. However, the real victims of this plan will be all Internet users and the democratic and independent access to information, culture goods.

Tuesday 05 May 2009 - 13:27Making linux worse

That's what they're doing when different linux distributions decide on using different names for the exact same binaries.
Good example: Apache; For some idiotic reason Debian needs to call their httpd apache2 instead of httpd, while everybody else uses httpd for the same thing. What kind of tyrannic oversight decides on bullshit like that? When you ever need to migrate from CentOS to Debian, you'll find yourself having to work hours and hours through textfiles and scripts, ONLY because some linux-lord at the top of some distribution didn't ask any user about changing the name of an important open-source package like that of a webserver. How annoying. You couldn't just get along and choose some uniformity between the masses of users of this webserver? What could EVER be useful about using two different names for one and the same daemon? And no surprise they need to scatter configuration over two files now: httpd.conf and apache2.conf. Yes, that's right, the "apache2" daemon still reads the httpd.conf, just to make it even more annoying for you, the innocent user. Whoever made that insane decision: YOU SUCK! And the worst part is: You know you suck.
"This introduction should help you get acclimated to the Debian way of configuring Apache 2.0"
No shit. That it will cost hundreds of users hours of their lives doesn't matter. Oh wait, you've created it for free, so nobody should complain? Well then, at least you knew how to make your distribution suck. Fucking ass.

Wednesday 04 Mar 2009 - 14:17Dwangarbeid

Kijk aan, zelfs al zijn er bijna helemaal geen banen meer over, 'ze' schijnen er toch ineens zat te hebben om iedereen te dwingen tot laagbetaald werk. Werk waar de Donner inc. zelf geen zin in heeft moet voortaan door WW-ers gedaan worden. En een meerderheid heeft vóór gestemd? Het doet mij afvragen waar ik eigenlijk nog voor gestemd heb. Het bewijs is nu wel geleverd, dat stemmen op een politieke partij geen enkele zin heeft. Laat ik nu hebben gedacht dat er bij de laatste verkiezingen een Socialistische Partij een heleboel zetels had binnengehaald. Zie toch bar weinig socialisme terug in dit beleid. In plaats van dat al die vrekken hun fulltime baantjes nu zouden opdelen tussen de werkzoekenden, maar nee, we moesten vooral harder en nog meer uren per week werken, want dat zou ons economietje wel even redden. Wat het niet gedaan heeft. (Let wel.) We zien allemaal wat er gebeurt met die kwakzalvers in hun waan der eeuwige groei.

Monday 23 Feb 2009 - 14:14Wees eerlijk

"If you are going to punish all who share files, you need to start at A in the phone book"

Dus: Geef jezelf vast aan ;-)

De jongens van The Piratebay vermaken zich in de rechtzaal de afgelopen week. Als je Zweeds kunt verstaan, hier staat de audio. Best heftig, want als de aanklagers geen veroordeling van de grond krijgen, dan worden Zweden en de hosters in questie 's werelds safe-haven voor alles wat in andere landen lastiger is, en is het welbeschouwd voorbij met dat gerommel in de marge. Of, zoals ze her en der al schrijven: You can't outlaw the future!

If you're interested in a really great documentary about The Piratebay and intellectual property rights and things like that, go here.

Saturday 14 Feb 2009 - 01:11Harddisks and stuff (update)

Just scroll to 2 minutes into this video and be amazed:

Scott Moulton tells us about killing the parts of your harddisk that are damaged and slower than other parts.. Highly recommended for fellow-geeks out there. He uses Dmitry Postrigan's amazing free software MHDD. If we didn't have the Ukraine, where would our world be, right? Dmitry completely reverse engineered harddrive control and what not. Should get a Nobel-prize for just this tool!

Scott over de harddisks van nu, zeer interessante presentatie. About Flash Memory data recovery, Solid State Hard Drive Design and harddisks in general. How to rebuild and do data recoveries and fix hard drives.