I realize that maybe it's obnoxious for you, but I actually clicked over to /. from my RSS reader to view this post because it actually sounded pretty interesting and it's the kind of thing I wouldn't normally think about. There are a lot of really sharp people here and there have been times where I've spent a long while searching Google for just the right solution to come up with nothing, and then a week or two later somebody on /. has the perfect answer. I, for one, really appreciate this kind of post. Plus it's not like you can't skip over it. That's what I do with at least 30% of the stuff that shows up for me. Of course, you're welcome to your opinion; I just thought I'd say that you're not speaking on behalf of everyone. Unfortunately, I don't have any great advice for the OP because I came here to learn something cool!

I never really enjoyed using JabRef, but have had pretty good luck with Aigaion... a little more setup but it's great for our lab, where everyone works from a common database of papers. It allows export to RIS, BibTex, etc. although we do occasionally run into some errors with the LaTeX special characters and such. At least as far as our advisor is concerned, this absolutely revolutionized the way we handled our references. It's searchable, you can add keywords, your own annotations, include abstracts, and upload one or more attachments (the original paper) in whatever format you want. Technically it's an annotated bibliography that supports attachments, but it is pretty solid. One thing to note: We are still using a 1.3.x version of it; we haven't been brave enough or had the time to try the 2.x releases.

the most painful, grueling thing I've ever done, and from what I can tell, compared to other /. residents, I didn't even drink that much. It was basically a two-week debilitating, disorienting migraine followed by rapid weight-loss (although the weight-loss was a pretty welcome development, to be honest). The nausea and pain were so bad I didn't even realize I was losing weight, and all of my friends thought I was sick or dying because I looked so pale and couldn't function. Now I have a cup of tea once a week or so and can't really tell much of a difference between my performance while drinking caffeine and with no caffeine, once I got over the first few weeks.

but my experience is pretty terrible. I usually stream Netflix videos with my XBox 360 and have a fast enough connection that it is possible to get "4 bars" from Netflix. However, most of the time I have to watch everything at the lowest quality, presumably due to congestion. I am not using anywhere near my maximum down bandwidth (according to the bandwidth graphs on my router), and my ISP is surprisingly good at being able to provide that full bandwidth. If I actually try to max out the connection, I can usually reach 85-90% before things become more-or-less unusable, but Netflix almost never works right. It worked great a few months ago, but lately I can't take it. So, while I don't agree with the article's methodology, there may be some substance to comments about the experience. I know I spend a lot of time angry with the whole thing.

I have to say that even when I'm just "having fun, making music" that I'm much happier using a click track for two primary reasons:

1. Although I absolutely love playing music, I'm just not that great of a musician. I'm always getting better, but my goal is more to "make" music than to "play" music. I like composing, I like building a song up from a concept; I like being able to play the guitar part first if I need to.

2. From an editing/production standpoint, it is a NIGHTMARE trying to get even the best musicians (at least the ones that I know) to stay locked in with each other on a recording. It's just not the same as a live performance, and they will drift slightly in tempo against each other. You can take this drift out if you want to spend the next month of your life fixing the recording, or you can record to a click track and its brutal adherence to the tempo. I won't record anyone who won't record to a click unless they're planning on doing a "live" take with no additional instruments or overdubs than what they can perform at once. It's just a pain in the ass.

Finally, although this goes with reason number 1 a little more, I really like to use the grid and other tempo-dependent features available in DAW software. If you're just trying to "make" a song, you can grab a sound from one part of the song, put it somewhere else, specify the tempo and add a delay with appropriate speed, and really change the face of a passage.

I'm not going to say that it's universally good, and I agree that it can result in a mechanical feel, but as an amateur performer, engineer, and producer, a click track just takes so much of the fuss out of the process that I prefer to work with it than without.

On a different note, I have heard some tracks lately where you can actually hear the click (with your ears!) through quieter passages. ( intro to The Starting Line's "Inspired by the $" is the specific track I'm thinking of) I totally understand that they have as much of a right to use a click as I do, but you'd think they'd do a better job of masking it.

That's for sure. If it were just graphical ads (even animated images), it might've been tolerable. With all of the flash and audio-enabled ads, it was just too much. And the audio was usually on by default, meaning I had some random internet lady talking to me while I was trying to check out some music.

That's not to mention the player, which was a little lighter on the ads (you had to go to the website to select any new music, so most of the ads were there), but for some reason always consumed all available CPU power (this is on a single-core CPU with HT, so it is pegged at 50%). It was not only difficult to use, but also made the computer almost unusable.

I am not going to miss it, but I have a few less technically-minded friends who, despite their occasional frustration with it, will probably be sad that it's gone.

This is getting a little off-topic, but I used to work with a guy that had a mouse on the left and right side of his keyboard (connected to the same computer). I don't know if he was left- or right-handed, but it was definitely a little odd. He claimed it dramatically increased his productivity and was a pretty amazing setup. I don't believe him.

There are also hardware autotune devices with extremely low latency. I've performed live with an Antares Vocal Producer (it's getting pretty old now) and as long as you're close most of the time it will definitely get you there. You've got to be within fifty cents of where you're trying to be, but it can smooth out some minor roughness. The flip side of it is that, as parent said, if you start to drift out of the +/- 50 cent range, you get some nasty, nasty effects. You don't have to be terribly consistent, provided that you don't get outside of that range though. The new software plugins are better at pitch detection and correction than the old hardware, but my experience is that they're hard to run live due to latency incurred by going through the computer. In the end, I probably only played 3 shows with the AVP. It did its job, but it wasn't worth the trouble, and the artifacts from really sour notes were usually worse than the sour notes themselves.

I live in a relatively rural area, so it's hard to say what it's like in big cities, but I know of no physical shop within 180 miles (The only major city being St. Louis) that sells computer parts and has better prices than typical online retailers. Virtually all of them have at least 30% higher base prices for similar items, and the fairest prices on the best parts tend to be at big-box stores like Best Buy. Mom & Pop operations have prices almost twice that of online sellers for a similar, albeit lower-quality item. It is absolutely ridiculous. That is a sad, sad state of affairs that makes online retailers much more attractive, plus, in my case, it eliminates several hours of driving. As far as customer service, I've rarely met someone who was both knowledgeable and helpful, so that a lack of interaction in online ordering can be a positive experience. Of course, this doesn't include sales tax, which is about 8% here. Wonder if I can get modded +5 bitter?