The Last Question - by Isaac Asimov

     The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:

     Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.

     Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. So Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac's.

     For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth's poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.

     But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.

     The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.

     Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public functions, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.

     They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.

     "It's amazing when you think of it," said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. "All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever."

     Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. "Not forever," he said.

     "Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert."

     "That's not forever."

     "All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Ten billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?"

     Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. "Ten billion years isn't forever."

     "Well, it will last our time, won't it?"

     "So would the coal and uranium."

     "All right, but now we can hook up each individual spaceship to the Solar Station, and it can go to Pluto and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can't do that on coal and uranium. Ask Multivac, if you don't believe me.

     "I don't have to ask Multivac. I know that."

     "Then stop running down what Multivac's done for us," said Adell, blazing up, "It did all right."

     "Who says it didn't? What I say is that a sun won't last forever. That's all I'm saying. We're safe for ten billion years, but then what?" Lupow pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. "And don't say we'll switch to another sun."

     There was silence for a while. Adell put his glass to his lips only occasionally, and Lupov's eyes slowly closed. They rested.

     Then Lupov's eyes snapped open. "You're thinking we'll switch to another sun when ours is done, aren't you?"

     "I'm not thinking."

     "Sure you are. You're weak on logic, that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."

     "I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."

     "Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was, and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. The sun will last ten billion years and maybe the dwarfs will last two hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all."

     "I know all about entropy," said Adell, standing on his dignity.

     "The hell you do."

     "I know as much as you do."

     "Then you know everything's got to run down someday."

     "All right. Who says they won't?"

     "You did, you poor sap. You said we had all the energy we needed, forever. You said 'forever.'

     It was Adell's turn to be contrary. "Maybe we can build things up again someday," he said.

     "Never."

     "Why not? Someday."

     "Never."

     "Ask Multivac."

     "You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can't be done."

     Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?

     Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?

     Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.

     Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

     "No bet," whispered Lupov. They left hurriedly.

     By next morning, the two, plagued with throbbing head and cottony mouth, had forgotten the incident.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     Jerrodd, Jerrodine, and Jerrodette I and II watched the starry picture in the visiplate change as the passage through hyperspace was completed in its non-time lapse. At once, the even powdering of stars gave way to the predominance of a single bright shining disk, the size of a marble, centered on the viewing-screen.

     "That's X-23," said Jerrodd confidently. His thin hands clamped tightly behind his back and the knuckles whitened.

     The little Jerrodettes, both girls, had experienced the hyperspace passage for the first time in their lives and were self-conscious over the momentary sensation of insideoutness. They buried their giggles and chased one another wildly about their mother, screaming, "We've reached X-23 -- we've reached X-23 -- we've --"

     "Quiet, children." said Jerrodine sharply. "Are you sure, Jerrodd?"

     "What is there to be but sure?" asked Jerrodd, glancing up at the bulge of featureless metal just under the ceiling. It ran the length of the room, disappearing through the wall at either end. It was as long as the ship.

     Jerrodd scarcely knew a thing about the thick rod of metal except that it was called a Microvac, that one asked it questions if one wished; that if one did not it still had its task of guiding the ship to a preordered destination; of feeding on energies from the various Sub-galactic Power Stations; of computing the equations for the hyperspatial jumps.

     Jerrodd and his family had only to wait and live in the comfortable residence quarters of the ship. Someone had once told Jerrodd that the "ac" at the end of "Microvac" stood for ''automatic computer" in ancient English, but he was on the edge of forgetting even that.

     Jerrodine's eyes were moist as she watched the visiplate. "I can't help it. I feel funny about leaving Earth."

     "Why, for Pete's sake?" demanded Jerrodd. "We had nothing there. We'll have everything on X-23. You won't be alone. You won't be a pioneer. There are over a million people on the planet already. Good Lord, our great-grandchildren will be looking for new worlds because X-23 will be overcrowded." Then, after a reflective pause, "I tell you, it's a lucky thing the computers worked out interstellar travel the way the race is growing."

     "I know, I know," said Jerrodine miserably.

     Jerrodette I said promptly, "Our Microvac is the best Microvac in the world."

     "I think so, too," said Jerrodd, tousling her hair.

     It was a nice feeling to have a Microvac of your own and Jerrodd was glad he was part of his generation and no other. In his father's youth, the only computers had been tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a planet. Planetary ACs they were called. They had been growing in size steadily for a thousand years and then, all at once, came refinement. In place of transistors, had come molecular valves so that even the largest Planetary AC could be put into a space only half the volume of a spaceship.

     Jerrodd felt uplifted, as he always did when he thought that his own personal Microvac was many times more complicated than the ancient and primitive Multivac that had first tamed the Sun, and almost as complicated as Earth's Planetarv AC (the largest) that had first solved the problem of hyperspatial travel and had made trips to the stars possible.

     "So many stars, so many planets," sighed Jerrodine, busy with her own thoughts. "I suppose families will be going out to new planets forever, the way we are now."

     "Not forever," said Jerrodd, with a smile. "It will all stop someday, but not for billions of years. Many billions. Even the stars run down, you know. Entropy must increase.

     "What's entropy, daddy?" shrilled Jerrodette II.

     "Entropy, little sweet, is just a word which means the amount of running-down of the universe. Everything runs down, you know, like your little walkie-talkie robot, remember?"

     "Can't you just put in a new power-unit, like with my robot?"

     "The stars are the power-units. dear. Once they're gone, there are no more power-units."

     Jerrodette I at once set up a howl. "Don't let them, daddy. Don't let the stars run down."

     "Now look what you've done," whispered Jerrodine, exasperated.

     "How was I to know it would frighten them?" Jerrodd whispered back,

     "Ask the Microvac," wailed Jerrodette I. "Ask him how to turn the stars on again."

     "Go ahead," said Jerrodine. "It will quiet them down." (Jerrodette II was beginning to cry, also.)

     Jerrodd shrugged. "Now, now, honeys. I'll ask Microvac. Don't worry, he'll tell us."

     He asked the Microvac, adding quickly, "Print the answer."

     Jerrodd cupped the strip or thin cellufilm and said cheerfully, "See now, the Microvac says it will take care of everything when the time comes so don't worry."

     Jerrodine said, "And now, children, it's time for bed. We'll be in our new home soon."

     Jerrodd read the words on the cellufilm again before destroying it: INSUFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

     He shrugged and looked at the visiplate. X-23 was just ahead.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     VJ-23X of Lameth stared into the black depths of the three-dimensional, small-scale map of the Galaxy and said, "Are we ridiculous, I wonder in being so concerned about the matter?"

     MQ-17J of Nicron shook his head. "I think not. You know the Galaxy will be filled in five years at the present rate of expansion."

     Both seemed in their early twenties, both were tall and perfectly formed.

     "Still," said VJ-23X, "I hesitate to submit a pessimistic report to the Galactic Council."

     "I wouldn't consider any other kind of report. Stir them up a bit. We've got to stir them up."

     VJ-23X sighed. "Space is infinite. A hundred billion Galaxies are there for the taking. More."

     "A hundred billion is not infinite and it's getting less infinite all the time. Consider! Twenty thousand years ago, mankind first solved the problem of utilizing stellar energy, and a few centuries later, interstellar travel became possible. It took mankind a million years to fill one small world and then only fifteen thousand years to fill the rest of the Galaxy. Now the population doubles every ten years --

     VJ-23X interrupted. "We can thank immortality for that."

     "Very well. Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problem of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions."

     "Yet you wouldn't want to abandon life, I suppose."

     "Not at all," snapped MQ-17J, softening it at once to, "Not yet. I'm by no means old enough. How old are you?"

     "Two hundred twenty-three. And you?"

     "I'm still under two hundred. --But to get back to my point. Population doubles every ten years. Once this GaIaxy is filled, we'll have filled another in ten years. Another ten years and we'll have filled two more. Another decade, four more. In a hundred years, we'll have filled a thousand Galaxies. In a thousand years, a million Galaxies. In ten thousand years, the entire known universe. Then what?"

     VJ-23X said, "As a side issue, there's a problem of transportation. I wonder how many sunpower units it will take to move Galaxies of individuals from one Galaxy to the next."

     "A very good point. Already, mankind consumes two sunpower units per year."

     "Most of it's wasted. After all, our own Galaxy alone pours out a thousand sunpower units a year and we only use two of those."

     "Granted, but even with a hundred per cent efficiency, we only stave off the end. Our energy requirements are going up in a geometric progression even faster than our population. We'll run out of energy even sooner than we run out of Galaxies. A good point. A very good point."

     "We'll just have to build new stars out of interstellar gas."

     "Or out of dissipated heat?" asked MQ-17J, sarcastically.

     "There may be some way to reverse entropy. We ought to ask the Galactic AC."

     VJ-23X was not really serious, but MQ-17J pulled out his AC-contact from his pocket and placed it on the table before him.

     "I've half a mind to," he said. "It's something the human race will have to face someday."

     He stared somberly at his small AC-contact. It was only two inches cubed and nothing in itself, but it was connected through hyperspace with the great Galactic AC that served all mankind. Hyperspace considered, it was an integral part of the Galactic AC.

     MQ-17J paused to wonder if someday in his immortal life he would get to see the Galactic AC. It was on a little world of its own, a spider webbing of force-beams holding the matter within which surges of submesons took the place of the old clumsy molecular valves. Yet despite its sub-etheric workings, the Galactic AC was known to be a full thousand feet across.

     MQ-17J asked suddenly of his AC-contact, "Can entropy ever be reversed?"

     VJ-23X looked startled and said at once, "Oh, say, I didn't really mean to have you ask that."

     "Why not?"

     "We both know entropy can't be reversed. You can't turn smoke and ash back into a tree."

     "Do you have trees on your world?" asked MQ-17J.

     The sound of the Galactic AC startled them into silence. Its voice came thin and beautiful out of the small AC-contact on the desk. It said: THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

     VJ-23X said, "See!"

     The two men thereupon returned to the question of the report they were to make to the Galactic Council.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     Zee Prime's mind spanned the new Galaxy with a faint interest in the countless twists of stars that powdered it. He had never seen this one before. Would he ever see them all? So many of them, each with its load of humanity. --But a load that was almost a dead weight. More and more, the real essence of men was to be found out here, in space.

     Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the Universe for new individuals.

     Zee Prime was roused out of his reverie upon coming across the wispy tendrils of another mind.

     "I am Zee Prime," said Zee Prime. "And you?"

     "I am Dee Sub Wun. Your Galaxy?"

     "We call it only the Galaxy. And you?"

     "We call ours the same. All men call their Galaxy their Galaxy and nothing more. Why not?"

     "True. Since all Galaxies are the same."

     "Not all Galaxies. On one particular Galaxy the race of man must have originated. That makes it different."

     Zee Prime said, "On which one?"

     "I cannot say. The Universal AC would know."

     "Shall we ask him? I am suddenly curious."

     Zee Prime's perceptions broadened until the Galaxies themselves shrank and became a new, more diffuse powdering on a much larger background. So many hundreds of billions of them, all with their immortal beings, all carrying their load of intelligences with minds that drifted freely through space. And yet one of them was unique among them all in being the original Galaxy. One of them had, in its vague and distant past, a period when it was the only Galaxy populated by man.

     Zee Prime was consumed with curiosity to see this Galaxy and he called out: "Universal AC! On which Galaxy did mankind originate?"

     The Universal AC heard, for on every world and throughout space, it had its receptors ready, and each receptor led through hyperspace to some unknown point where the Universal AC kept itself aloof.

     Zee Prime knew of only one man whose thoughts had penetrated within sensing distance of Universal AC, and he reported only a shining globe, two feet across, difficult to see.

     "But how can that be all of Universal AC?" Zee Prime had asked.

     "Most of it," had been the answer, "is in hyperspace. In what form it is there I cannot imagine."

     Nor could anyone, for the day had long since passed, Zee Prime knew, when any man had any part of the making of a Universal AC. Each Universal AC designed and constructed its successor. Each, during its existence of a million years or more accumulated the necessary data to build a better and more intricate, more capable successor in which its own store of data and individuality would be submerged.

     The Universal AC interrupted Zee Prime's wandering thoughts, not with words, but with guidance. Zee Prime's mentality was guided into the dim sea of Galaxies and one in particular enlarged into stars.

     A thought came, infinitely distant, but infinitely clear. "THIS IS THE ORIGINAL GALAXY OF MAN."

     But it was the same after all, the same as any other, and Lee Prime stifled his disappointment.

     Dee Sub Wun, whose mind had accompanied the other, said suddenly, "And is one of these stars the original star of Man?"

     The Universal AC said, "MAN'S ORIGINAL STAR HAS GONE NOVA. IT IS A WHITE DWARF"

     "Did the men upon it die?" asked Lee Prime, startled and without thinking.

     The Universal AC said, "A NEW WORLD, AS IN SUCH CASES WAS CONSTRUCTED FOR THEIR PHYSICAL BODIES IN TlME."

     "Yes, of course," said Zee Prime, but a sense of loss overwhelmed him even so. His mind released its hold on the original Galaxy of Man, let it spring back and lose itself among the blurred pin points. He never wanted to see it again.

     Dee Sub Wun said, "What is wrong?"

     "The stars are dying. The original star is dead."

     "They must all die. Why not?"

     "But when all energy is gone, our bodies will finally die, and you and I with them."

     "It will take billions of years."

     "I do not wish it to happen even after billions of years. Universal AC! How may stars be kept from dying?"

     Dee Sub Wun said in amusement, "You're asking how entropy might be reversed in direction."

     And the Universal AC answered: "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

     Zee Prime's thoughts fled back to his own Galaxy. He gave no further thought to Dee Sub Wun, whose body might be waiting on a Galaxy a trillion light-years away, or on the star next to Zee Prime's own. It didn't matter.

     Unhappily, Zee Prime began collecting interstellar hydrogen out of which to build a small star of his own. If the stars must someday die, at least some could yet be built.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable.

     Man said, "The Universe is dying."

     Man looked about at the dimming Galaxies. The giant stars, spendthrifts, were gone long ago, back in the dimmest of the dim far past. Almost all stars were white dwarfs, fading to the end.

     New stars had been built of the dust between the stars, some by natural processes, some by Man himself, and those were going, too. White dwarfs might yet be crashed together and of the mighty forces so released, new stars built, but only one star for every thousand white dwarfs destroyed, and those would come to an end, too.

     Man said, "Carefully husbanded, as directed by the Cosmic AC, the energy that is even yet left in all the Universe will last for billions of years."

     "But even so," said Man, "eventually it will all come to an end. However it may be husbanded, however stretched out, the energy once expended is gone and cannot be restored. Entropy must increase forever to the maximum."

     Man said, "Can entropy not be reversed? Let us ask the Cosmic AC."

     The Cosmic AC surrounded them but not in space. Not a fragment of it was in space. It was in hyperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy. The question of its size and nature no longer had meaning in any terms that Man could comprehend.

     "Cosmic AC," said Man, "how may entropy be reversed?"

     The Cosmic AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

     Man said, "Collect additional data."

     The Cosmic AC said, 'I WILL DO S0. I HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR A HUNDRED BILLION YEARS. MY PREDECESORS AND I HAVE BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION MANY TlMES. ALL THE DATA I HAVE REMAINS INSUFFICIENT.

     "Will there come a time," said Man, 'when data will be sufficient or is the problem insoluble in all conceivable circumstances?"

     The Cosmic AC said, "NO PROBLEM IS INSOLUBLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES."

     Man said, "When will you have enough data to answer the question?"

     The Cosmic AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

     "Will you keep working on it?" asked Man.

     The Cosmic AC said, "I WILL."

     Man said, "We shall wait."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     The stars and Galaxies died and snuffed out, and space grew black after ten trillion years of running down.

     One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.

     Man's last mind paused before fusion, looking over a space that included nothing but the dregs of one last dark star and nothing besides but incredibly thin matter, agitated randomly by the tag ends of heat wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero.

     Man said, "AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the Universe once more? Can that not be done?"

     AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

     Man's last mind fused and only AC existed -- and that in hyperspace.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     Matter and energy had ended and with it space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer [technician] ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.

     All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness.

     All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.

     But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.

     A timeless interval was spent in doing that.

     And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.

     But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too.

     For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.

     The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.

     And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"

     And there was light --

Best headphones for your needs

I know it's a bit late for this post since people would have probably liked to see this before Christmas but hey, maybe there are some people exchanging gifts or looking for a nice pair of headphones to buy with their gift certificates.

I don't know why but it bugs me so much every time I see people wearing the stupid Beats headphones like it's jewelery. I supposed it shouldn't since that's basically what it is. I would love to know that people buy Beats headphones because it's fashionable rather than because they are good quality headphones, since they are not. If you are going to spend that kind of money on a headphone and you know anything about audio quality, you will stay away from that brand. Beets only has one thing they excel at, marketing. Below I posted a nice picture of Dr. Dre using his Audio-
Technica headphones :P (relevant http://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/16n8vb/i_bought_beats_by_dre_it_was_a_mistake_what/)

I should have made this post a few years ago when I was looking for headphones. I knew all the best ones at the time and I ended up picking up a pair of Sennheiser HD555. It was the best $200 dollars I could have spent on headphones at the time. The sound on them is absolutely brilliant, great treble, solid mids with good enough bass for my taste. Perhaps if you are going to be listening to music that is heavy on the low bands there may be a better match for you out there. Overall though, I don't think I could have spent my money on anything better. These are amazing for listening to my music, but also do an exceptional job for gaming and movies, which was definitely a consideration for me.


Now, this was a few years ago and now the models are different of course. But for anyone looking, here is a great resource that inspired me to make this post http://www.reddit.com/r/headphones

I think explaining the types of earphones you can get would be relevant before I continue:

Earbuds - I think everyone knows what these are. Basically the little ones that go inside your ear canal and will generally come with your iPod or other music players. These tend to be cheap and you will not get the same type of quality in these as you would with bigger pieces. A variation of eabuds are the IEMs (In-ear monitors) which are basically the same thing, but actually go further in your ear kind of lodging themselves a bit tighter. They provide a bit more isolation for the sound and in my experience tend to be of slightly better in quality.

Suggestions
Shure SE215 ($100) - Shure is a pretty popular manufacturer for music equipment, and back when I used to play in a band we always thought of Shure microphones being some of the best for our price range. Sennheiser PMX 680 Sport ($60) - These are a bit cheaper but they are supposedly good for listening when moving around alot, for instance during workout.

LH's Budget pick: Grado Labs SR60i ($80) and Sennheiser PX 200-II ($90)

Midrange: Etymotic Research HF5 ($150)

Highrange: JH Audio JH13 Pro ($1100) or Westone ES5 ($950)

Closed Full-sized Circumaural - These are the big ones that are fairly popular nowadays. They are full-sized if they basically cover your entire but circumaural means that they sit around your ear rather than on top of them. These are generally not very portable and I wouldn't necessarily walk around the street with them, although people do. The Closed part just means that they separate your ears from the surrounding sounds, meaning they isolate the sound so that they prevent your music from coming out of your ear but also prevent outside sounds from coming in. This is not the same as sound cancelling, that's a whole other technology, all it is is that they are closed and will provide some cancellation.

Open Full-sized Circumaural - These are very similar to our previous category of course, but instead of being closed to the outside they are open. Some of you may ask, why would that be good? Well I think there is a level of personal preference, but I think in general most people would say that these will generally provide a better and more realistic experince. While you will annoy more people in the bus with these and you will hear your neighbour cut the grass through them, they sound better. The closed earphones will bounce sound inside and around your ear while you listen to them, which can sound almost as if the music is coming from inside your head sometimes. They kind of give you this feel that you are listening to music in a studio, but to me that isn't how I think things should sound. I like my music and sounds to sound normal as if they were happening around me. So the open headphone allow the sound to dissipate around you which makes it sounds a lot more like you are seeing a live band. The sound just feels more alive and true to me. Of course that's why I ended up chosing the HD555 when I did. That is an example of a open circumaural headphone.


Suggestions
Low: Shure SRH440 ($100 - closed)

Mid: Audio-Technica ATH-M50 ($160 - closed) This is a very trusted brand from audiophiles and I certainly considered buying something similar when I was shopping around. It's a popular pick at this price range. Alternatively, the Sennheiser HD558 is the modern version of my headphone and tends to sell around $200 (open). This is probably what I would buy at this price range just because of my 3 year experience with the previous generation. They are superbly confortable and sound amazing. If there is one complaint I have is that they can get a bit warm if you are wearing them for a long time in the summer. The velvet pads are great when the temperature is nice, but not so great at 40ºC.


Expensive: Sennheiser HD800 ($1500 - open) Of course the top end I would suggest would be an open piece.

Full-sized Supra-aural - These are quite popular for people that have earphones hanging around their neck on the street. They can be seen as the portable version of the circumaural as they are smaller and only sit on top of the ear, meaning they don't have to cover your entire ear. This of course affects how natural they can sound if you aren't even using your full ear to add to the experience. I've tested a few of these but never bought one becuase I just don't have a need for it.

Suggestions
Low: JVC HAS400B ($35)

Mid-High: Sennheiser HD 25-1 II ($200) and Beyerdynamic DT 1350 ($300)

Noice Cancelling Headphones

I've tested a few but to be honest I have never found myself needing something like this. I don't fly very much and would have no other reason to buy them, meaning I don't know as much about these types of pieces. What I do know, is that they often require a battery because they have a tiny microphone on the outside that picks up ambient noises, with these they are able to produce changes to the soundwaves coming out into your ears so that they remove the annoying sounds from the outside. Some people don't even use them for music, they can be great for just removing ambient sounds. This technology is very cool, but will also make so that you will pay a pretty penny for these. They are not cheap and generally you won't get the best sound quality even if you spend $300 dollars for them. Not saying they are bad, I'm just saying you are paying for them to cancel noise, and not produce quality sounds. I tend to think that way about anything, I always try to buy products that fit my precise need and not pay for a bunch of technology I have no use for. I think that's a good piece of advice to anyone. Technology costs money and you end up paying for it even if you don't use it. That is money you could be spending on some other aspect of the product, in this case quality of the sound. Another piece of advice, don't ever think that spending more money garantees you a better product. Just look at Beets, Bose and Apple, you pay more for their stuff and that's it, you are not necessarily getting the best bang for your buck, and with these 3 I can garantee you that you are not. Unless having the most popular product is your bang and not the actual quality, than ignore what I'm saying.

For further literature check out that subreddit I linked above and Head-Fi.org. 

Shopping for a tablet

My wife came up with the idea of getting me a tablet for Xmas. I never really pushed to buy one before because of price and I thought I wouldn't really get my money's worth out of it. But as it is Xmas and the idea was planted in my head I decided to do a bit of research on it. After some research and consideration of my price range I was looking at:

• Google (ASUS) Nexus 7 -  This was the smallest one I considered, only 7 inches, but the reviews everywhere just praise this machine. It has great hardware, boasting 1920 x 1200 native resolution, 32Gb of storage but no SD compatibility. 2Gb of RAM and is the only one with Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) out of the box. The machine is beautiful and it sounds like it has early access to apps via Google Play, although I'm still not sure what that means. I think if I could get the Nexus 10 I would have considered the google tablets a bit more seriously, however 7 inches was a tad too small for me. I really wanted something a bit more substantial.
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10" - One of my top contenders since it's a 10 inch tablet at a fairly reasonable price point. It uses Android 4.2, which is not the newest but it's close. It has 16Gb of storage which is upgradeable through MicroSD to 64Gb. It has 1Gb of RAM which is actually not very much and is the reason I didn't pick it. It weights 510g with a 1280x800 resolution. I considered the 8 inch one as well, which seems a bit better in terms of hardware, but the screen was too small for my needs.
• Microsoft Surface 32Gb Windows RT - The weekend I was looking at tablets, this one was hugely on sale for only C$199. In terms of hardware I actually thing it was easily the best option available. As you may or may not know, the windows tablets also come with virtually full featured office suite, which is great if you want a tablet for browsing and work. I was very close to buying this model, but I'm glad I didn't now. The keyboard doesnt come with the RT tablets, and it is sold separately for pretty much the same price as any other keyboard for Androids. The RT OS is actually pretty restricting, only allowing you to use RT software you get from the microsoft app store. This is unlike the Surface 2, which can pretty much run like a laptop, but those things are very expensive. As I said, in terms of harware, it's great. Resolution of 1366x768, 32 Gb of storage, 2Gb of RAM. It's a bit heavier, weighing 680g. But in the end, I realized I'm likely not going to be doing too too much work on this thing so I shouldn't buy something so restrictive. Apple and Androids just have so much more option in terms of apps.
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z 10" - It hast only 16Gb of storage although that can be upgraded with a SD card. It's 10 inches which I think is important to me. It's one of the lightest machines around and has the added bonus of being waterproof. It uses Android 4.1, which is a more dated OS but it is an Android still.

Anyway, I ended up decided on the Sony Xperia Z tablet. Despite not seeing it appear on a lot of review websites, I absolutely love the machine and now I can't believe I never had one before and that it doesn't receive more praise around. It is simply a perfect extension from my PC in the home. I love using it to connect me to all my devices and just have easy access to everything I need anywhere without needing my 5kg laptop. It also happens to be the only waterproof tablet around and it even has remote control capabilities, so I can use it to work my TV and whatnot. It's just perfect.

 

In terms of apps I actually use on it right now, I have evernote and dropbox for my cloud needs. I have Lemon SSH to connect to my home/media server. I use a reddit app and I downloaded Dungeaon Crawl Stone Soup for android which is availabe on Google play. It's actually not a terrible port to be honest. This tablet also has great integration with all my google accounts, including my schedule, my emails, my contacts. I'm still exploring what apps there are, but I'm very impressed with my Android so far.

As a last comment, I didn't really consider an iPad for 2 main reasons. First, it is fairly expensive for what you get compared to the Androids. More importantly, I hate Apple. I think they make good products and they have the best marketing team in the world as far as I'm concerned. However I hate what Apple stands for. They produce great products that unfortunately restrict their users to a lot of the software they want their users to use, instead of trying to open up so that users can have freedom if they chose so. How many times have I been stuck with a problem on one of my iDevices that I simply would not be able to resolve without a huge amount of headache if it wasn't for Linux. I can always just acces my apple machines with the help of my Linux and that usually allows me to have the freedom that Apple seems to always want to take away. A lot of people claim this is solely to protect users from making mistakes, but I think often it is to prevent users that are already paying a premium on their products from steering away from other products they will be happy to charge their customers for. It's just like Burton snowboards, that force you to buy the bindings from them and then the snowboard boots from them as well. People get tricked into buying their product, just to be stuck using all their other products in the end. I refuse to fund a corporation that uses these types of tactics to make money.

update error on Ubuntu Server 12.04

Recently I came across an annoying error on my headless Ubuntu Server. Nothing really had happened as far as I'm concerned in my home LAN, and all of a sudden only this distro could no longer run an OS update. I did upgrade my internet service recently but I'm not sure if that could be related. Anyway, the error I kept getting for days was:

 

"  temporary failure resolving 'us.archive.ubuntu.com'  "

Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com precise Release.gpg

Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/precise/Release.gpg

Temporary failure resolving 'us.archive.ubuntu.com'

Anyway, after a bit of googling, I came across a helpful comment by fossfreedom from the UK, which can be found here. The solution was simple for me:

1. Test to see if the problem is your DNS setting or an ISP issue. To do this type on the console: ping -n 8.8.8.8
2. If produces replies you can stop it with Ctrl + C. This indicates that it is not an ISP problem so there is no point in calling them.
3. Therefore, for me it was a DNS problem, which I have been having a lot of lately (likely due to my VPN usage). So I checked /etc/resolv.conf to see if I could find my DNS servers there. That's when I knew what my problem was. The file was empty, so I added the google DNS server.
4. This was done through: echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" | sudo tee /etc/resolv.conf > /dev/null
5. After that, I just had to run the update via: sudo apt-get update

Xubuntu - Trying Xfce for the first time

To keep the theme of distro sampling I decided to give Xubuntu a go. As I mentioned on a previous post, I didn't find the Gnome Ubuntu to be an OS I would like to use personally. I thought the idea of simple, minimalist and intuitive sounded like a good match for me, less is not always more and simple functionalities that are not in Gnome are in my opinion an improvement over not having them and I don't see the need to remove them if they don't clutter or confuse things.

Anyway, my pick to try Xubuntu stemmed from the fact that I wanted a distro to run as a VM in my laptop, hence I needed something lightweight but with enough functionality to keep me happy. Xfce seemed like the place to go. As you may or may not know, Xfce is a desktop environment known for being lightweight, although not as barebones as some of the others out there like LXDE it still feel snappy and efficient.

I installed version 13.04 mostly just to try the most updated Xubuntu available. Nothing special about the installation process, it's much like all other Ubuntu distros I've tried, very easy to get going, even as a VM. This desktop environment definitely feels fast compared to Unity when I tried on my machine. I very much enjoyed the fact that the OS comes pre loaded with GIMP and a number of other applications I would have to install otherwise.

Update warnings show up on the taskbar in a discrete way and so far I feel it's very stable and user friendly. I appreciate that this distro still has multiple workspaces as default, which is no longer the case for Ubuntu. I understand that perhaps new user may struggle to understand the concept, but to be honest I don't think it's rocket science. But then again, I should assume Cannonical knows what their doing. Since I'm on this small tangent already, I would suggest that Ubuntu should have 2 options when you download, the newbie version which doesn't have default  options that may be unfamiliar to noobies and a version for more experienced users with defaults that I really miss such as multiple desktops, sticky windows with shortcuts and synaptic. I love Unity, and I would say it's my favorite Linux flavor but with every version of Ubuntu I feel they change it so I have to tweek more and more every time and I find that a tad annoying.

Anyway, back to Xubuntu, I highly recommend it to anyone that has some experience with Linux at all. It's not difficult to figure out, it is attractive despite it's light weight. Worth a shot for anyone that can't run Unity due to hardware limitations.

Lastly, for anyone curious, here is my conky config from this photo, it's nothign fancy but it's a nice config that works well out of the box.

-----

background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont Sans:size=8
xftalpha 1
update_interval 1.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type desktop
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 200
maximum_width 200
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color white
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color white
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 120
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no

TEXT
${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}SYSTEM ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}$sysname $kernel $alignr $machine
Host:$alignr$nodename
Uptime:$alignr$uptime
File System: $alignr${fs_type}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}PROCESSORS ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${cpugraph cpu1}
CPU1: ${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}MEMORY ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}RAM $alignc $mem / $memmax $alignr $memperc%
$membar

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}DISKS ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}/ $alignc ${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} $alignr ${fs_used_perc /}%
${fs_bar /}
SWAP $alignc ${swap} / ${swapmax} $alignr ${swapperc}%
${swapbar}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}TOP PROCESSES ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${top_mem name 1}${alignr}${top mem 1} %
${top_mem name 2}${alignr}${top mem 2} %
$font${top_mem name 3}${alignr}${top mem 3} %
$font${top_mem name 4}${alignr}${top mem 4} %
$font${top_mem name 5}${alignr}${top mem 5} %

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}NETWORK ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}IP address: $alignr ${addr eth0}
ESSID: $alignr ${wireless_essid eth0}
Connection quality: $alignr ${wireless_link_qual_perc eth0}%
${downspeedgraph eth0}
DLS:${downspeed eth0} kb/s $alignr total: ${totaldown eth0}
${upspeedgraph eth0}
ULS:${upspeed eth0} kb/s $alignr total: ${totalup eth0}

Using an SSH Client on Ubuntu 13.04

Since now I have an Ubuntu Server setup at home, I feel the need to use a client from my Ubuntu 13.04 VM. In order to do that I followed this great concise guide I found from ubuntulinuxhelp.com (from garymacritchie)

---

The SSH Client

The SSH Client is the piece of software that you have on the computer you are sitting in front of and typing on. It sends messages to the SSH server which is on the remote computer (such as the webserver). We’ll assume that there is already a valid SSH server up and running that you are trying to connect to.

In Ubuntu, there is a SSH client installed as standard and it is called Open SSH.

To use it, you simply open a terminal and proceed any command with “ssh”.

For example, if you would like to log in to your remote server, just use the command…

ssh username@mysite.myserver.org

However, as this is a blog that likes to keep things simple (and annoy a lot of the die-hard Linux geeks), I’m going to suggest a different tool… PuTTY.

PuTTY is a client program for SSH (among other things) and gives a neat little interface for making SSH connections. It is also in my opinion one of the best pieces of software ever written. It has been around for ever and can also be used on Windows without installation (just runs as a .exe). Learn this little guy and you will never look for another SSH client.

Install PuTTY by typing the following into a terminal…

sudo apt-get install putty

You will then find the PuTTY program among your other internet applications.

(When you start it up, you will be able to enter the ip address or name of the remote computer you wish to contact and click connect. You will then be asked for password etc. If you are going to be using SSH regular, you can save that connection as a profile which makes things easier).

Linux distro sampling - Ubuntu GNOME and Kali Linux

I decided to try a few new distros this week after realizing that my current Ubuntu 12.04 install is wrecked. Before picking what to install next on my dual boot machine I decided to try out a couple of things in a VM form. So I downloaded VirtualBox, installed that, changed my BIOS to be able to run a virtual machine and off I went installing Ubuntu Gnome.

Ubuntu GNOME

I had seen a few videos of the distro and read some reviews of Gnome 3 and thought this looks quite nice, looked nicer than KDE and it seemed a bit more practical and fast than Unity. Well after installing it I'm not nearly as impressed as I thought I would be. I don't like a lot of aspect of this version of gnome. I thought I would like the idea of a desktop environment that's simple, clean and minimalist, but I don't. I like the search function of the DE but it's not even as good as Unity at that. Not having minimize and maximize buttons is annoying even if they are not essential. The color scheme is annoying and I can't find a quick way to remediate that without downloading something. I know this is probably not related to my desktop environment, but the software center in this distro has no search function, and that's just abnoxious. I ended up downloading synaptic which I do like but seriously. I'm also not a big fan of the file manager that comes with this distro, Nautilus in my opinion is superior. All in all I think I would go back to the regular Ubuntu as soons as I can unless I do find something better before I make the jump back.

Kali Linux

After trying to get my old copy of Backtrack 5 running on my newer laptop and having a lot of issues to fix I decided to go ahead and download a more recent version of BT which would be BT5R3. Well I discovered in this process that there is a whole new distro that is the next BT called Kali Linux. I did a bit of reading and despite my natural propensity to avoid change I went ahead and downloaded Kali. First thing I noticed was how much smaller the ISO file is compared to BT5. The OS uses KDE and it isn't nearly as sleek looking as BT5 was, but obviously aesthetics of a distro with this kind of purposes is kind of a silly thing to worry about. The bottom line is that I'm extremely impressed with this distro. I don't think I will ever touch BackTrack again after experiencing Kali. It's faster, lighter, does the job with minimal problems. It also took a lot less configuring to get things I needed working to work such as the network adapter. I would strongly recommend anyone using BT to try Kali next chance they have, it's a wonderful change from BT in the sense that it does what you need it to with minimal to no headache. Great move by the developers.

Ubuntu Server 12.04

Since I'm at it and this was something I did recently I figured I'd post it here too... I mentioned in earlier posts that I'm also working with a server distro on my old laptop. I'm using it headless with Putty on my desktop machine. Right now I have it running a samba server which shares any HD attached to my dock, and this week I installed miniDLNA on it to share media over my network to other machines as well as my PS3 (mainly to my PS3 really).

My experience so far with this distro has been very positive. It's so fast even on my old shitty laptop. Working on it through a command line and no GUI has actually been quite an interesting experience. I'm not going to say it's not a bit more challenging to work on it this way (at least for a noob like me), but I feel like I'm learning quite a bit and it just makes the whole experience "cleaner" if you understand what I mean. It's nice having such a minimalist OS running in my server.

Overall (tl:dr)

Ubuntu GNOME 13.04 - I want my unity back, sorry Gnome 3 but it's just not going to work out.
Ubuntu Server 12.04 - Fast and reliable, what else do you need from a server?
Kali Linux 1.0.3 - An upgrade from BT5, I didn't think it was possible. It was love at first ARP spoof.