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Post by the light works on Nov 3, 2016 2:42:03 GMT
I have mixed feelings. it sounds a bit to me like finding a security problem with a car and telling the carmaker, but since they don't have it fixed in a week, broadcasting the details on how to steal the car.
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Post by silverdragon on Nov 3, 2016 8:55:47 GMT
Wind-woes have a history of not addressing the herd of elephants in the room quietly ripping wallpaper from the walls and eating their potted plants as they work.
The more people that know about the possible exploit and how to avoid it being used the better. Eventually someone will come up with a way of isolating that part of the code.... If windows dont put in a security update, it will allow users to quarantine the sandbox and stop it being used. By anyone. "Some" users like myself would be able to remove the affected part completely to prevent abuse. Until micro-bodge do "something", I believe its better that we all know what suspicious activity to look out for to be able to know if someone is trying to exploit your system.
In the analogy of car theft, yes, you have a point, but if all the car owners KNOW what to look for, their is less chance the car would be stolen?.. the car owners would find unique ways of preventing that theft. And often sooner or later someone like me works out a way to throw in a decent fix from "In the wild" beta testing that maybe windup-windows can use.
The more people working on the problem the better.
And again this goes back to not-open-source code, and Microsoft refusal to "Release" parts of its code. For that, read "Acknowledge officially the knowledge of its existence"
Hows that work?.. "we", the greater public of the flavour of anti-nasty software development, already know, line by line, the code they are using. To develop the anti-nasty software we are capable of, we must address that very code. As Micro$$$oft snakes have not "released" that code, knowledge of that code, is considered piracy, and theft, so we would be open to prosecution if we ourselves admitted to having that code.
Its exactly like knowing there is a hole in your ship but unless the captain of the ship says "Go ahead and fix it" you are guilty of Mutiny if you ignore his commands, or guilty of piracy if you on another ship boards the one in trouble and attempts to stop it sinking.
So here we are, we KNOW the problem, and "some of us" know the fix, but as we are unable to re-write the code unless we are given "Permission", we cannot act. Therefore, CNet has probably told Microbodge exactly what the problem is and more than likely in the communication some suggestions on "how to fix" in the general friendly way of just being friendly and trying to help.
And the subject has been ignored.
Its not something you CAN ignore, its another gaping hole in their code.
Forward to my Love of Linux.... its "Open source". If you find a problem, not only are you allowed to fix it, you are positively encouraged to fix it, and positively encouraged to be "Part of the team" that develop the software, and once it has been agreed that your "update" is solid and working, its rolled up with all other updates and rolled out on mass "ASAP". Once a week they address every issue that may have been bought up and ask "Anyone have any good ideas". Along with a working as-it-happens discussion board to address on the fly problems. If there is a problem that someone knows, a new thread is opened, and "everyone" is invited to throw in a possible fix. Open source software is therefore sentient, as it is part of the people who are constantly re-writing it, as it evolves.
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Post by silverdragon on Nov 30, 2016 9:32:12 GMT
[.. All Sing please...] Happy Birthday Firefox
I am happy to say as of today, Firefox is 50.
Latest version, 50.0.1 Dont forget to update, and if your running Adobe "Anything", [flash player etc] thats had updates recently as well, and check them other add-ons....
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Post by GTCGreg on Nov 30, 2016 15:14:57 GMT
If you have anything Adobe, just assume it needs updates, just because it does.
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Post by silverdragon on Dec 1, 2016 9:36:42 GMT
And "How strange" that Adobe needs to remind you to get there mac-coffee-break security scan in with their latest update.... Dont forget to untick the box for that useless pile of crud.
I swear their update is no more than a nag-ware to get you to forget and download the mac-coffee-break thing.... Otherwise why so many updates?. Surely no one can be that awful at writing code?.. well, since AOL passed anyway....
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 15, 2017 14:41:51 GMT
RESPONSE TO SD, MOVED FROM WORLD NEWS. I don't believe midi guitar controllers use note-off velocity data either. The nuances of how a note is released is carried on the aftertouch controller channel, not via note-off data. I could be wrong on that. I don't really have a lot of experience working with guitar controllers, but all of the guitar voices on our synthesizers use the aftertouch channel for that purpose. As for the damper and sustain pedals on a piano, they do not act on midi note-off velocities either. There are also separate midi controller channels for those pedals. HERE is a list of the midi continuous controller (CC's) channels and what they are usually used for. While this is the "standard" list, individual CC's may be used differently by various manufactures. There are also a number of unassigned CC's which can be used for special purposes. A midi mixing board does not sit "between" the midi controller and synthesizer. It's really just another midi controller and the two operate in parallel. The midi outputs of the two controllers are combined through a midi merger. Sometimes that merger can be built into the midi mixing board and outputs the combined data via the midi thru connector, but often it's a separate box that does the merging. As for the mixing board that is generated on the screen of a computerized audio workstation, it is not controlling the volume of the internal tracks via MIDI. If it is controlling external midi sound modules, it will send midi commands to them. On the audio workstation in my studio, you can have any number of tracks. When you create a new track, you specify whether it's a midi track or an audio track. The audio tracks are not controlled via midi. What I usually do is take all my midi tracks and mix them down and put that entire mix on a separate audio track. I will then mix that audio track with the other audio tracks to create the final mix. That way, if I ever want to remix the audio tracks, I don't have to go back and program all the voices back into the midi sound modules. If I do have to remix any of the midi tracks, I have to delete that audio track and start over with the midi tracks.
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Post by the light works on Jan 15, 2017 15:34:40 GMT
I think the issue here is we have a term "mixing deck" which is being used in two different ways.
to me, "mixing deck" or mixer board specifically refers to mixing final audio streams - whether it does that with digital audio or analog audio signals.
a board that manipulated midi signals would seem to be more of a processing board in my mind.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 15, 2017 15:38:58 GMT
I think the issue here is we have a term "mixing deck" which is being used in two different ways. to me, "mixing deck" or mixer board specifically refers to mixing final audio streams - whether it does that with digital audio or analog audio signals. a board that manipulated midi signals would seem to be more of a processing board in my mind. A midi mixing board is just a parallel controller. It doesn't modify the existing midi data stream, just adds to it. The mixing controller and note controller sometimes get into a fight. When that happens, the controller that sent the last command wins.
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 16, 2017 10:06:35 GMT
Firstly, yeas, I was beginning to wonder if this side discussion needed its own thread, so having it moved makes sense...
Mixing desk has moved. Several directions all at once and in sequence at the same time and one after the other...
Initially it was the "Final" say on anything, and the last in the line between the stage and the speakers. Now-a-days, you can have one almost anywhere you want, and have more than one. It has changed name to controller, it has become a full PC capable machine, it has shrunk down to a Raspbery Pi in size, and gone full circle from a row of buttons that add distort / echo / etc to a full pc and now back to that row of buttons but now it has a full PC capable of a whole lot more that can be used to pre-set what each button does. Its still capable of doing what an old Analogue recording studio mixing desk did "back in the days", its just all equipment has now progressed so much, its had to know what is doing whet now...
And as for that whole bunch of different Mixers about the stage?. They are all "Networked" into the final sound-man Mixing desk. I am presuming by what you are saying here Greg that you HAVE such equipment "somewhere", you seam to have knowledge, so perhaps we can look at this not so much as a competition here. But when I say "between" I mean between. You may have the term Midi Controller and suggest that two Midi instruments and that controller linked in parallel, but when you are using one to control another and have a midi controller controlling how that happens, simplex, parallel, duplex or network is semantics, if it needs to be there to translate commands from one to make the noise on another, its "between"
This is the same as your PC, my PC and the network between us... Sure we could just put up a pure LAN of one wire only between the two computers, but right now, we are sat on either side of a whole host of servers that are controlling what each of us sees on this hosted board, we dont actually need them to swap messages, but they are sitting "between" us?..
But it CAN alter those existing midi streams...it can alter the attack sustain delay release, volume, echo, and a whole lot more. The original MIDI data, "raw", may exist, but the altered also exists, and mostly its the altered that gets used.
The original RAW data is important, and may be,/is often, stored as just that, RAW, with the resultant alterations stripped, such as I do with all my camera data as it comes from the camera before I do PostProduction work, just in case I need that original RAW to "Re-mix" in another production.
The sound stage has evolved to make use of digital. If you look at some of the skeleton type instruments used on some stages, you know there is a whole host of electronics somewhere creating the noise...
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 16, 2017 15:15:16 GMT
I am not trying to "compete" with anyone. I think we are pretty much saying the same thing only using a little bit different terminology.
And yes, I have had extensive experience in both the studio and in live sound. If I had put every dollar I have spent on studio equipment in the bank, I probably could retire today. My wife is a music writer and can play just about any instrument that can produce a note. But her specialty has always been keyboards, so you know our studio is short on microphones and heavy on midi.
You are also correct in that digital has changed live sound tremendously. It used to be that everything on the stage, including microphones and instruments, produced an analog audio signal. All the analog signals were fed into a big box on stage that had splitters that produce two audio feeds. One feed was sent to the front of house (FOH) mixing position, and the other feed was sent to a mixing board just off stage for the stage monitors. Since the FOH mixing position was usually in the rear of the venue, the connection was made through a large multi conductor cable(s) that often contained over 100 pairs of individually shielded wires. These cables were often the size of a small sewer pipe. Now, all of the microphones are sent wirelessly directly to the FOH and monitor positions using RF links. Any analog signals produced by the instruments are directly converted to digital on stage and combined into a single fiber optic link to the FOH position. Everything stays in the digital domain until reaching the power amplifiers that drive the speakers. The input to the power amplifiers is usually digital now, but the output driving the speakers is high power analog. It used to be that the FOH sound engineer was surrounded by racks and racks of his "toys" consisting of multi band EQ, reverb units, compressors, limiters, gates, and a host of other analog signal processing equipment. Now, all of those functions are usually incorporated in the digital mixing desk.
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 17, 2017 10:08:33 GMT
In the voice of count-von-count "Count 'em, one... heh heh heh... two... heh heh heh... Three... heh heh heh.. I Just LOVE to count... And all those pairs have to be checked and wired in the right socket. Then there is all the other wires from Mic's, that have to be labelled, or colour coded, or tagged, and you always get "one" you have no idea what the source is?.
And duck-tape 'em to hell and back to the floor, walls, back of other bits of equipment.... [even each other... if you stood still for more than 5 mins someone would tape "something" to you...] There was a count in "Miles" of I believe somewhere just short of 30 mile of duck tape as used by MB's in their 10 yrs run?.. I can safely say that if you include other people working on the same stage as I did, in all the jobs I have done as Roadie, we collectively can say "Pssht.. call that a lot?.." there was the sound stage, the lighting stage, the "special effects", and the bits of tape holding parts of scenery together and repairs. Before I used to start chasing cables in from equipment to desk and back to speakers etc, I would start by helping myself to two or three or four rolls, and would go back to the pile maybe two or three times. On one production afterwards, some wag decided to collect up the tape and roll it into a ball. By the time he finished, it was measured in feet..... And no, there is no recycling.
I can also say that the Wireless thing was "Thank ye Gods" of an invention, NO ONE likes the job of un-taping all those wires from the floor and trying to reel them back into a shank that can be stored in a bin for the next stage. Some of them are rather heavy as well. Speaker cables thicker than some domestic wiring.
And all have to be counted in... If you leave one wire behind, you cab bet a weeks wages its going to definitely be the one from the lead guitar or lead singers mic, and will they everlet you forget?.. There is one person for each "division" who's job it is to stand on the back of the wagon with a clip-board and count in every piece of equipment. This is important, as fitting all the equipment in the van is an expensive game of jenga, so everything is done in order, and if you forget something that should be at the front of the wagon, you think they are going to be happy about unloading everything and starting again?.. And its not like the venue will tell you either, spare cables are "Gold dust", and the venu's own stage manager is a leprechaun, he will collect and spirit away anything "spare" that is left over.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 17, 2017 15:26:32 GMT
And all those pairs have to be checked and wired in the right socket. Then there is all the other wires from Mic's, that have to be labelled, or colour coded, or tagged, and you always get "one" you have no idea what the source is?. And how does the sound engineer check out all those lines? With the help of one of these. Sound guys love them. I know because I make them. You'd be surprised at how many panic calls I've gotten saying; "I have a big set-up this weekend and lost my Tone Plug, can you drop ship me one overnight?" Shipping ends up costing twice the cost of the plug but they buy it anyway. I had one sound man ask me why I didn't put a neck cord on it so it wouldn't get lost so easily. I told him because that would be bad for repeat sales.
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Post by the light works on Jan 17, 2017 15:42:15 GMT
And all those pairs have to be checked and wired in the right socket. Then there is all the other wires from Mic's, that have to be labelled, or colour coded, or tagged, and you always get "one" you have no idea what the source is?. And how does the sound engineer check out all those lines? With the help of one of these. Sound guys love them. I know because I make them. You'd be surprised at how many panic calls I've gotten saying; "I have a big set-up this weekend and lost my Tone Plug, can you drop ship me one overnight?" Shipping ends up costing twice the cost of the plug but they buy it anyway. I had one sound man ask me why I didn't put a neck cord on it so it wouldn't get lost so easily. I told him because that would be bad for repeat sales. give me a few minutes and a roll of duct tape and I can make a lanyard for it. I use two styles of telecom testing equipment for tracing wiring. best fun was when the phone company called me in to find the service point. I pulled out my simple tone set, and he said, "oh, that won't work." yeah, same tone set he had - and I had the service point tracked down in minutes, because I knew to split the pairs to get a better tone leakage.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 17, 2017 17:36:59 GMT
I can also say that the Wireless thing was "Thank ye Gods" of an invention, NO ONE likes the job of un-taping all those wires from the floor and trying to reel them back into a shank that can be stored in a bin for the next stage. Live sound engineers have mixed (no pun intended) feelings on wireless mics. While they are much easier to set up and tear down, they present their own special problems. First and foremost is reliability. There's nothing worse than a performer's mic going dead in the middle of a show because of a dead battery. While the sound mans bible says "Thou shalt replace the mic batteries before every show" sometimes it doesn't happen or you may end up with a bad battery in the good battery box. Another problem with wireless mics is that they have a bad habit of going MIA. You can always trace a wired mic's whereabouts by simply following the cord. Performers will set them down in the darnedest places. We once lost a wireless handheld and just couldn't find it. That is until we soloed in the mic's channel and kept hearing toilets flushing in the background. I can't tell you how many times I've walked around a stage clapping my hands and shouting "can you hear me now?" while another person listened in on the missing mic's channel. A third problem is interference. I was at one venue where, in the middle of the show, a loud voice boomed over the house speakers, "United 261 switching to approach control." It was a little comical seeing the sound man dive for the mixing board even though I could feel his pain. One wireless device FOH sound engineers absolutely love is wireless in-ear monitors. One of the nightmares of getting a good house mix is getting the stage monitors under control. With in-ears, the performers get the exact mix they want and the audience gets the sound they paid for. One place you will never see wireless used is in the recording studio. Everything is hard wired. But then, you don't have the set-up, tear-down problem you have with a live show. You also don't have your talent wandering all over the place while they do their thing.
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Post by the light works on Jan 17, 2017 17:48:36 GMT
I can also say that the Wireless thing was "Thank ye Gods" of an invention, NO ONE likes the job of un-taping all those wires from the floor and trying to reel them back into a shank that can be stored in a bin for the next stage. Live sound engineers have mixed (no pun intended) feelings on wireless mics. While they are much easier to set up and tear down, they present their own special problems. First and foremost is reliability. There's nothing worse than a performer's mic going dead in the middle of a show because of a dead battery. While the sound mans bible says "Thou shalt replace the mic batteries before every show" sometimes it doesn't happen or you may end up with a bad battery in the good battery box. Another problem with wireless mics is that they have a bad habit of going MIA. You can always trace a wired mic's whereabouts by simply following the cord. Performers will set them down in the darnedest places. We once lost a wireless handheld and just couldn't find it. That is until we soloed in the mic's channel and kept hearing toilets flushing in the background. I can't tell you how many times I've walked around a stage clapping my hands and shouting "can you hear me now?" while another person listened in on the missing mic's channel. A third problem is interference. I was at one venue where, in the middle of the show, a loud voice boomed over the house speakers, "United 261 switching to approach control." It was a little comical seeing the sound man dive for the mixing board even though I could feel his pain. One wireless device FOH sound engineers absolutely love is wireless in-ear monitors. One of the nightmares of getting a good house mix is getting the stage monitors under control. With in-ears, the performers get the exact mix they want and the audience gets the sound they paid for. One place you will never see wireless used is in the recording studio. Everything is hard wired. But then, you don't have the set-up, tear-down problem you have with a live show. You also don't have your talent wandering all over the place while they do their thing. I have been wondering for the last 20 years why nobody has ever built a wireless microphone to operate on a proprietary rechargeable battery pack. with ni-cads, it was a valid argument that the battery pack would gradually lose capacity, but with lithium battery tech, that is not such an issue. particularly with a situation like a church or a touring show, a slow charger could be used for the packs, to maximize the lifespan of the packs. (speaking of total service life, not charge life) - yes cordless equipment manufacturers consistently make them to operate at Alkaline batteries' slightly higher voltage.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 17, 2017 18:23:20 GMT
Live sound engineers have mixed (no pun intended) feelings on wireless mics. While they are much easier to set up and tear down, they present their own special problems. First and foremost is reliability. There's nothing worse than a performer's mic going dead in the middle of a show because of a dead battery. While the sound mans bible says "Thou shalt replace the mic batteries before every show" sometimes it doesn't happen or you may end up with a bad battery in the good battery box. Another problem with wireless mics is that they have a bad habit of going MIA. You can always trace a wired mic's whereabouts by simply following the cord. Performers will set them down in the darnedest places. We once lost a wireless handheld and just couldn't find it. That is until we soloed in the mic's channel and kept hearing toilets flushing in the background. I can't tell you how many times I've walked around a stage clapping my hands and shouting "can you hear me now?" while another person listened in on the missing mic's channel. A third problem is interference. I was at one venue where, in the middle of the show, a loud voice boomed over the house speakers, "United 261 switching to approach control." It was a little comical seeing the sound man dive for the mixing board even though I could feel his pain. One wireless device FOH sound engineers absolutely love is wireless in-ear monitors. One of the nightmares of getting a good house mix is getting the stage monitors under control. With in-ears, the performers get the exact mix they want and the audience gets the sound they paid for. One place you will never see wireless used is in the recording studio. Everything is hard wired. But then, you don't have the set-up, tear-down problem you have with a live show. You also don't have your talent wandering all over the place while they do their thing. I have been wondering for the last 20 years why nobody has ever built a wireless microphone to operate on a proprietary rechargeable battery pack. with ni-cads, it was a valid argument that the battery pack would gradually lose capacity, but with lithium battery tech, that is not such an issue. particularly with a situation like a church or a touring show, a slow charger could be used for the packs, to maximize the lifespan of the packs. (speaking of total service life, not charge life) - yes cordless equipment manufacturers consistently make them to operate at Alkaline batteries' slightly higher voltage. There's a couple of reasons rechargeable aren't well accepted in the sound community. First is it's a hassle keeping track of which batteries have been recharged and when. It's also a problem (but not an excuse) if you don't have a recharged pack ready to go when you need it and there's not enough time to get one charged. And then there's run time. Primary batteries tend to have a higher capacity than comparable rechargeable. The only reason to use rechargeables is cost. And with what it usually cost to put on a show, the few dollars spent on fresh batteries is negligible.
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Post by the light works on Jan 17, 2017 19:01:16 GMT
I have been wondering for the last 20 years why nobody has ever built a wireless microphone to operate on a proprietary rechargeable battery pack. with ni-cads, it was a valid argument that the battery pack would gradually lose capacity, but with lithium battery tech, that is not such an issue. particularly with a situation like a church or a touring show, a slow charger could be used for the packs, to maximize the lifespan of the packs. (speaking of total service life, not charge life) - yes cordless equipment manufacturers consistently make them to operate at Alkaline batteries' slightly higher voltage. There's a couple of reasons rechargeable aren't well accepted in the sound community. First is it's a hassle keeping track of which batteries have been recharged and when. It's also a problem (but not an excuse) if you don't have a recharged pack ready to go when you need it and there's not enough time to get one charged. And then there's run time. Primary batteries tend to have a higher capacity than comparable rechargeable. The only reason to use rechargeables is cost. And with what it usually cost to put on a show, the few dollars spent on fresh batteries is negligible. but with a fixed location venue, like, as I mentioned, a church, charge tracking becomes a non issue, because you simply have a charger with the capacity to maintain all the packs you own. what I have found discussing digital camera batteries, there are two camps: one says "I can't be sure my proprietary battery is charged, but I can go to the store and buy more disposable batteries" and the other says, "I don't like running to the store for disposable batteries, but I can always keep a battery on the charger"
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 17, 2017 19:44:52 GMT
It's a lot easier to keep one spare battery pack charged for your digital camera then it is to keep 12 battery packs charged for your church's wireless Mics. The church I attended a number of years ago used about 9 wireless mics during each church service. Each microphone used two AA cells and they would last through the two morning church services. We tried using rechargeable alkaline batteries because they were the only rechargeables that had a high enough voltage. The problem was, the rechargeables would only make it through one and a half services. So we had to change out batteries between services. The other problem is we were working mostly with a team of volunteers. The battery seldom got put back on charge when they were supposed to. After about a year of microphones dying when they shouldn't have, we switch back to disposable batteries.
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Post by the light works on Jan 17, 2017 20:02:19 GMT
It's a lot easier to keep one spare battery pack charged for your digital camera then it is to keep 12 battery packs charged for your church's wireless Mics. The church I attended a number of years ago used about 9 wireless mics during each church service. Each microphone used two AA cells and they would last through the two morning church services. We tried using rechargeable alkaline batteries because they were the only rechargeables that had a high enough voltage. The problem was, the rechargeables would only make it through one and a half services. So we had to change out batteries between services. The other problem is we were working mostly with a team of volunteers. The battery seldom got put back on charge when they were supposed to. After about a year of microphones dying when they shouldn't have, we switch back to disposable batteries. it was still nicads when we tried it. but with a designed cordless system, the mics could be put away in the charging system. our first cordless system, we would check voltage on the battery before each service - if it was over 9.1 volts it would make it through another service. if they dropped down to 9, they couldn't be trusted. some got moved to smoke detectors, where they would go for 6 months or more, and the rest got thrown away.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 17, 2017 20:11:13 GMT
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