Professional iPad music production is a growing industry - it's one of the reasons that there is still a percentage of iOS 6 users who have not upgraded to iOS 7 - the iPad musicians (!) - because iOS 7 broke a number of in-use production-level high-quality music applications. (Check out the new free (yes - free - no IAP) Apptronica magazine on the iTunes store - dedicated to iOS music production)

For composition: Notion or Symphony Pro (Notion was recently purchased by Presonus - the makers of Studio One - and there is a free version of Studio One available for Windows and MacOS too)

For recording, Cubasis (from the makers of Cubase) or Auria - depending on whether you want to record MIDI+app audio or live audio (and there are others too)

For synths:
Korg iMS-20 (accurate MS-20 clone)
Korg iPolysix (accurate Polysix clone)
IK Multimedia SampleTank (Sampled instruments - traditional and modern)
Moog's Animoog
Arturia's iMini (MiniMoog D clone)
Yonac's Magellan synth
Yonac's Gallileo Organ synth
Modular
Alchemy
Arturia's iSEM (accurate SEM clone)
Addictive
Arctic Keys
Nave
NLog Pro
iTuttle
Cube Synth
Korg's new Gadget synth collection and sequencing app
Sunrizer
Arctic Pro
SunVox (Multi-platform including Linux)
Caustic
Nanologue

and many many other excellent professionally used synths

Someone will no doubt say: "Professional musicians don't use an *iPad* do they - isn't it just a toy?" How about Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater? (Google it)

There is also Audiobus that links the apps together with many effects (FX) and the recording apps, and iConnectivity hardware (among others) for connecting to PCs, Macs and MIDI keyboards. There are plenty of good MIDI keyboards also - specifically designed for iOS use.

So - for the price of a decent Windows machine with enough headroom for music production - you could buy a refurbished iPad mini 16GB for around $220 (or less - today's Cowboom deal was at $199) - and a very nice and varied suite of high-quality music production apps - and all these apps will run on it just fine. Apps vary in price from free to $40. Yes - up to $40 - but for an iPad app that the equivalent for Windows or MacOS would cost of the order of $100-$500 for VSTs or recording apps.

It's rapidly becoming an integral part of serious studios' porfolios! :-)

And - no - I'm not a Mac fanboy - I've been a Linux user since '93 - but I use Android (not for music production - not seriously capable of it owing to latency), MacOS and Windows too. All for multiple purposes - and apart from Android - for music production too. Android however supports TouchDAW for DAW control quite nicely without too much lag.

And the Perl 6 final release schedule :-)

I have a Acer Aspire One 8.9" netbook with 1GB of memory and a 1.6GHz CPU. Great machine that is very portable and runs just fine - still - under XP. I would trash this machine to get one that will run Win 7 - why exactly? OK. It'll be insecure in a short while *if* I connect it to the Internet under XP. And if I don't? I would trash it and buy new hardware just to run an updated OS - why exactly?

OK - so I also dual boot this machine under Linux. I'll connect it to the net under Linux if I need to. But the whole idea of "You've got to upgrade in order to run our latest OS - throw out your old hardware" deserves the Opel Vectra analogy someone else gave above.

I have a Samsung Q1UP as well that is ultra portable as a working PC. It runs XP too - and - yes - I can dual boot it to Linux if I need to. It's touch screen with a thumb keyboard if you have never seen the beast (comes with a stylus too) and with dual batteries I can get 12 hours out of it on the road if I need to away from power sources. I would trash this just because I can't easily upgrade it to Win 7 - why exactly? Again - if I don't connect it to the net and it does what I want - like accurate stylus-based interactions - I would spend more money for what reason again? That's only got a Core Solo CPU too...

I manage a Studio DAW setup that runs everything that it currently needs to run just fine under XP. To be sure, the DAW supplier will not be supporting 32-bit XP beyond April so I *have* added Win7 64 G dual boot to that machine and up'ed the memory to 8G (which, BTW, for those speaking about 4G being a lot is *still* limiting for multiply loaded large VSTs - more memory is a big advantage for certain circumstances). However, it runs a studio just fine with XP and the current DAW - and the legacy studio audio hardware and drivers for the same are all supported under XP. Not replacing that external hardware anytime soon... Such machines - not connected to the Internet - aren't even running AV software to slow them down while doing DAW processing (this is not stupid - it is recommended for DAW setups - don't connect - don't run AV software - don't slow your machine down as a result - turn off wireless - turn of BT - reduce the loading by services you don't need, etc. etc.) I'd replace that machine with a Mac at some point in a studio setting - as in another studio setup I control - but for the fact there are still many VSTs that don't have an equivalent on MacOS. Maybe that'd run Snow Leopoard, Lion or Mountain Lion - all still work pretty well for DAW environments - even SL on "legacy" 2006 macbooks - still feels very snappy. Not upgrading to Mavericks any time soon. Why? External audio hardware support among other things until things catch up. It ain't broke, it ain't gettin' "fixed". Downtime and lost recording time.

See, it's not just the *machine* that's the issue in OS upgrades, it's what it's used for. Not everything is a stock laptop or desktop - although I agree that a lot of computer usage is like that still.

I work professionally with mapping from several sources. For reference and comparison I check against OSM data as well, and would love to use it regularly, but my experience has been that OSM is not always accurate (that is an understatement to be frank. For example, a city close to the city I live in has a point location roughly 10 miles off from where it actually is in the detailed OSM data. People don't always see that data, only a map result, but that data is essential for routing and path planning). In addition, OSM's geocoding is not very flexible, and, geocoding applications built on top - such as gisgraphy - do not have the same level of address matching AI / fuzzy logic in to determine locations from incomplete or inaccurate addresses. I and other colleagues have written my own fuzzy matching and heuristic address matching that is better than either OSM or gisgraphy - but unfortunately it's for proprietary use so I / we cannot contribute it.

I want OSM to work. It would be nice, but, for the moment it's not quite up to prime time. I see the comments here saying "it's what Google maps should have been" and so on, but, working with and comparing with not only Google but other map providers, I cannot agree - yet...

Uh.....

Huh?

I was merely commenting on the fact that the common fad is to say "this is bad for you" then - a few weeks later - "this is good for you".

You were overthinking what I wrote :-)

Coffee's bad for you ....

Coffee's good for you ....

Coffee's bad for you ....

Coffee's good for you ....

Same old.... (as far as I recall :-) )

iOS 7 - failure in moving away from all skeuomorphism. And I *like* Apple products. Steve would not have endorsed the changes... He was about beauty as well as function - that's why we have the graphic fonts of today. No - I am not a Steve "fan" just stating a fact. I run Linux and Android and HP WebOS - and when needed - Windoze too.

I have a basement office. I need artificial light in it. I have some ceiling mounted fluorescents, but I don't use them most of the time because of the glare.

Instead I have 3 freestanding standard lamps that are 3-way 50,100,150. I typically run them all at 150 all the time.

What LED bulb would work in those and not cost an arm and several legs? I don't want any more CFLs around. So, I'm open to LED alternatives. I have an LED already in an outside spot - just fine - but too "blue" (even if it's meant to be white / yellow).

Would appreciate any helpful suggestions here!

"Are you sure?" :-)

Also - the site will have impenetrable ribbon bars at the top with icons that you will have no idea about

Or, we could use, say, Perl and do it in an associative array like so

@years_so_far{map{'0.'.$_;}(0..8)} = ('womb') x 9;
$years_so_far{'0.a'} = 'milk';
$years_so_far{'0.f'} = 'beginning solids';

  and so on ;-) and teach fractional hex while we're at it.

But, since you're "1" 3 months after birth though, that's why we need fractional years ;-)

But there's an offset too ;-) They're one year old at three months after birth. That's why we need fractional years too :-D

Not trolling here. We were recently in a hiring process. We might have been able to use someone with your skills if they fit the profile we were looking for. Careface (or anyone else reading come to that) - PM me your resume. We filled the current open position but we may have another opportunity in the New Year. We *required* a teleworker - our whole team telecommutes and we're all in the US. We communicate on a daily basis via IM and sometimes Skype and have regular phone teleconferences too, and there are no slackers on the team; everyone is self-motivated.

I liked the idea of teaching "number lines" by height above the ground. Dig a hole it's negative. Stack blocks above it's positive. The ground is 0.

When you're born you're 9 months old. Maybe we should start with fractional years :-)