Programmers are always trying to make things simpler, usually by making them more complex. Interface too complicated? Need a bit of extra functionality? Want to work closer to the problem? Add a layer of abstraction to the code. As most programmers know...

I'm completely switched over. Aside from my two linux servers, every machine I run is on Vista, and the OS isn't even finished yet. Since Beta 1 we've been asked to "Self Host" - to run Vista on our primary development and productivity machines. On early...

Not all frequencies are created equal. And they're also not generally treated equally by a digital filter. How inequally they're treated is one of the defining characteristics of a filter. Audio engineers have a metric for describing this behavior. The...

Arr, software prices are too high. Copying isn't stealing. Copyright infringement is a victimless crime. Nobody gets hurt. Big companies have too much money. It's just sharing with my friends. It's only a few hundred gigabytes. I deserve this music. The...

For years, recorded audio was just a signal, captured by a microphone, stored as an audio signal, and then played back by a speaker. The microphone acted as a "proxy" eardrum to hear the sounds when and where the real listener's ear couldn't be. But somebody...