Good! If it can't fail, then why reckon with it and why argue against it? It's one thing to take a wishy-washy approach to the internet and back it up with some "Tao of Information" assertions, but when it comes down to it, the internet will need a form of regulation to be tolerable, and if the regulation stems from natural law and can't effectively be gotten around, then no harm done, it's part of the natural "tao" of the internet.
Thank you, your recognition of my point (as well as my style) is much appreciated. I would like to add that I was simultaneously suggesting that the camp might be arm-in-arm with the causes of problems that people need "help" from, and could just exacerbate some of those problems.
After reading a considerable amount of this growing debate, I have this to address to the people who staunchly support the article's premise:
I get tired of all this "probably" assumption. How probable is it that everybody in the world is going to grab the best possible equipment for recording, conversion, amplification, reconversion and playback and make sure the entire chain from creation in studio to recording to distribution to downloading decompressing and playback is going to involve all of this fucking equipment and that everybody's going to use it properly? Give! Fucking! Up! You fucking... all you autistic chart-wizards make LESS sense than the people you accuse of being fucking "audiophiles"! Your ear, for example, isn't a fucking test tube with a formula written on it! People like you remind me of this one "mentally superior" moron who really did think that a circle was just a 360-sided polygon. You'll cite all your expertise, but just listen to the shit music that gets recorded in 16 bit and 44.1 khz: it's a bunch of fucking chiptunes and weird ass math-audiophile.MOD tunes from the 90s, that sound like exquisite dogturd. Frankly, I'd rather have this hugely "unnecessary" range, frequency and sampling rate that do nothing but TAKE UP A FEW MORE MEGABYTES, and listen to the world's IMPERFECTLY recorded music produced on ANALOG instruments and catch all those imperfections than worry about the seemingly autistic insistences of a handful of overanalysers like your camp.
I get tired of all this "probably" assumption. How probable is it that everybody in the world is going to grab the best possible equipment for recording, conversion, amplification, reconversion and playback and make sure the entire chain from creation in studio to recording to distribution to downloading decompressing and playback is going to involve all of this fucking equipment and that everybody's going to use it properly? Give! Fucking! Up! You fucking... all you autistic chart-wizards make LESS sense than the people you accuse of being fucking "audiophiles"! Your ear, for example, isn't a fucking test tube with a formula written on it! People like you remind me of this one "mentally superior" moron who really did think that a circle was just a 360-sided polygon. You'll cite all your expertise, but just listen to the shit music that gets recorded in 16 bit and 44.1 khz: it's a bunch of fucking chiptunes and weird ass math-audiophile.MOD tunes from the 90s, that sound like exquisite dogturd. Frankly, I'd rather have this hugely "unnecessary" range, frequency and sampling rate that do nothing but TAKE UP A FEW MORE MEGABYTES, and listen to the world's IMPERFECTLY recorded music produced on ANALOG instruments and catch all those imperfections than worry about the seemingly autistic insistences of a handful of overanalysers like your camp.
1. Math-audiophiles sustaining the author's arguments and resorting to logical fallacies. Bias: I disagree with the author's article.
2. Other audiophiles presenting even more cleverly thought out arguments, or deeper (low-level) science behind the article's own (fairly high-level) data that shows the author has made some miserable assumptions.
3. People using this as an opportunity to ask about the quality of audio equipment.
4. People meta-commenting, like yourself.
I think this is one of the best recent articles on Slashdot in awhile in terms of how much know-how (or the presumption of it) it is garnering in comments.
Thereotically, Slashdot is like a hypodermic and the best results are obtained when something with a higher (fluid) pressure is punctured. A boil or a vein are what make slashdot interesting; a lot of articles lately have been hitting muscle, not penetrating the skin, or are just being squirted onto the tongues of the audience.
I think they meant that the sound quality would invite you to tease up the volume on the stereo and continually have your mind blown by what you find, or something to that effect. There's some argument for that: playing music louder makes people feel more immersed in it, and that makes them heavier fans; heavier fans ask more questions like "what is this?" "what?" "WHAT IS THIS?" "WHAT?", and thereafter tend to buy more music. If you turn poor recordings up high enough they just become torture.
So you believe your hunch more than many, many years of very careful and extremely pedantic research.
The "extremely pedantic" may be the failing in the article. Are you "extremely pedantic" when you listen to something or does it simply happen? The approach to understanding something by necessity has little to do with how that something "is". And many other comments to the article have pointed out how over-wrought its arguments are, some suggesting that the author is just flag-waving iconic bits of data that he understands little about. There have been many very scientific rebuttles, on a deeper level than the article approaches, to the article's materials, but I don't see you responding to those comments. Granted, you may not have hit refresh since then, but this remark:
You're not also a creationist are you[*]?
Suggests that you're not entirely concerned with remaining "pedantic", stoic more properly, and are more interested in falling back on ad hominem. I can only ask, in kind, you aren't a closet creationist yourself, are you?
I can't believe you footnoted your own logical fallacy. Gimp!
I can relate. I normally buy headphones in the consumer (not even prosumer) market. So I have real crap to pick from, and on top of that, I buy earbuds, not earbagels proper. So where do I end up? JVC marshmallows, $20 awhile ago and now they're about $24 (with remote) since JVC released a similarly-named "marshmallow" for $14 that sounds like shit compared to the old style. I'm afraid to try the "with remote" ones because I think they might have gone to shit, as well, and I could care less about the remote, don't need another pair, and don't want to spend more. Anyways, I know what it's like: there's not a better product on the consumer-market shelf (even in the next price range approaching $40) and, worse, the existing product seems to be deteriorating. But really, sir, I couldn't possibly ask for more than what those nice JVCs were giving. It was just... horribly, horribly clear, full-ranged, and strong. If you're telling me I'd have to go to $1000 and full bagel (that's what I call headphones that surround your ears) to get back to that, I'm afraid that either you're irretrievably insane or the market is unassailably corrupt.
Why don't you guys work towards setting the standard? I can't stand reading... pardon my expression but nearly autistic trash like the feature article rehashes. And I'd like to think that audio and video are being treated well in the future and that some sanity is being maintained where file size is concerned. From the sound of it you both (P & GP) know what to do for audio and video, so where would you start if you wanted to make those stats the new standards that everybody downloads?
My feeling is, I *know* I hate the sound of dither. And I *know* I hate the flat sound of stuff missing. And I *know* I hate the audiophile super-precise 16- and 32-bit mods/chiptunes and so on, even when they're made by producers with huge experience in audio processing and studio work and... musical theory, and so on. And those digital songs are created by people who should, optimally, be producing the best possible stuff to listen to. But instead the only people who like it are apparently called Seapunks.
Where do I stand? I don't really know. I don't care so much as long as the song I'm listening to sounds as good as an analog recording. In my experience, that happens around 24 bit, 192khz. I don't know *precisely* where it happens, but I know the next step down the digital compression staircase, (164 isn't it? I don't remember) has noticeable losses, and 128 is intolerable for most music. And we're talking about, hmm, almost doubling in size. And we're still talking about megabytes, not anything huge. So I make the sacrifice, and I don't hear any of the things I hate: *dither*; digital conch-shell effect (great now I sound like a Seapunk); "something's not there"; no bass; none of the high-end distortions or hisses I know should be there from experience listening to that synthesizer; etc.
The author gripes a little about "training" the ear making people think they have better hearing. He also goes on about how the wider range is needed in the studio to have more room to work in, but from experience I know if you screw up a recording, once two layers of sound are mixed you aren't going to take that mix and magically move one of them around without also moving the other. But he's talking about side-effects and so on. What it sounds like to me is he's saying "well, if everybody was using transparent oversample filters both in the analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog transition, and if everybody had really fine and precise playback and speaker equipment, and if everybody was a perfect sound engineer and producer and everybody was a perfectly trained listener, there'd be no reason to go to 24 bit 192khz."
And yet there are all these little indications along the way of how the wider range and higher frequency are useful for correcting errors. So it sort of dawns on me, he's asking for *more* effort out of the world in order to justify staying at a width and frequency that have *less* to offer, and his major argument is the amount of space it will all take up. So it sort of fails Occam's razor in a way.
So am I wrong about my reasons to keep using 24 bit 192 khz? I've been doing that for years, and I only go into all this because people are starting to ask questions. Like the other day I was reading an article that bewailed our fates at the hands of "all these people who are producing music for the iPod-headphone crowd".
I had to stop, like, wtf? What's an iPod headphone got to do with it? Then I realized, I make music for the JVC marshmallow earbud. The original ones that still cost around $20, not the new trashy model (which I have, now, and which I hate) that only cost $14. Am I some kind of culprit of some kind of some shit or other? What am I doing wrong? I mean, arguably, my digital tracks are equally for people who buy really low-range response giant speakers for their cars, and I do that on purpose because it's funny. So I have a reason.
But where are all these people suddenly coming from who have these really huge bones to pick with entire industries and crap? What does it all MEAN?
((If you wonder what I'm talking about when I mention 16/32-bit mod music.... fine, if you want to force me to do it, there's a bunch of stuff you could dredge up from the 90s but here's basically THE top result for searching for such stuff: http://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=34414... if you want me to rip my own dick off, force me to listen to that cymbal crash on constant repeat))
Aleopathologists have successfully proven there was no significant positive shift in population growth until well after te advent of agriculture seriously... I've debated this for like ten years now and repeating the same things over and over again gets sort of yeah.
My grade school classes were taught that it was the lever which changed everything. We were shown how adding a lever improced the plough as well as the spear. So I guess the person who sid it's the stick doesn't have to feel that's isolated to Australia, as I was schooled in the U.S.
Let's just rate your word on creedence. We will compare the two lifestyles as two runners.
Hunting and gathering has a track record of 350,000 years in homo sapiens. The runner is fit, free, and happy.
Agriculture takrs off, then stops to shackle itself and remove some teeth and bone marrow, seek and destroy the previous runner (especially any knowledge bases about successful hunting and gathering like "witches" and druids) shoot itself in thw back an then runs about 15,000 miles, burning down every growing thing along the way, before jumping into a radioactive pile and choking itself.
Okay so where are we to take your word for it that immortality is just around the corner? You can even last a tenth of the time as your predecessor! Who by some accounts you wiped out because your endlessly expanding population needed room! And when is that supposed to end, by the way?
Here we are reproducing as if there's no end to resources, when our lifestyle actually IS irreversibly (in any humanly witnessible span of time, like, epochs) draining the necessary resources to sustain even a fraction of curent populations for much longer. Compartively the H&G lifestyle sustained itself and (despite the insistence of people -- who handily ignore all paleopathological and antropological evidence -- H& G wad, even MORE mysteriously, somehow difficult beyond being even feasible) was happier and more worthwhile.
Oh but you know anything about quality of life or how to make things last longer. And if by a stroke of luck immortality is medically possible in your lifetime? Do you REALLY think that's a good idea? And I bet you'd ve ethically against creating super-viruses, when that's more or less what you're promising, on a different scale.
Anf that's another marked difference: H&G understood the need for the earth to remain healthy even if they weren't aware of its size or location in the galaxy (well, by some accounts it's possible they actually may have been).
*facepalm * no, You're missing the entire point, entirely. Only now you're just re-iterating the damn question. It's not "were things really beter before", that's already answered! It's "wtf, why did anybody change anything? Who in their right mind was hunting and gathering one day and being enslaved and dying a hunched over, short, nasty, brutish troll the next? Wtf happened here?" so at least you sort of half-get the question (to your credit) but it's pointed the other direction.
There is no evidence of explosive growth or rapidly increasing density until well after the establishment of agriculture. That theory has already failed.
"Following in the human habit of not putting all your eggs in one basket, (agriculture) is specialization at work."
Priceless! I would look like a fool for even starting in on most of the agriultural defenses in this thread, just for the unpleasant time wasting, and this particular one is the epitome of why.
You don't see any of the glaring contradictions in your own statement, that's what agriculture has done fpr your education.
"pragmatic reasons obvious to people of the times"? No wonder you grasp at steaws for evidence. Better recorda? Of prehistory. You want etter records. Sorry! The earliest recorda are mostly devoted to appropriation of the ownership of lands and, oh, what's this? Slaves. They have nothing to tell about why let alone how those events transpired, and do you imagine it was pleasant?
Time machine? Next time, try studying anthro and paleo, especially specializing in paleopathology, and instead of discounting science for the lack of a time machine, set your angst and imagination aside and learn something sad but true.
Like most modern people, you seem stern about the foundation of this civlization as being superior to what came before.
You speak as if hunter-gatherer babies were expected to die. It's like you have no sense that a person's instincts and goals begin in their owwn immediacy, and that problems are worked out over time in the natural world before they're approached by the modern. By a turn, your approximation of some irrational problem inherent in mankind before agriculture's invention ignores the fact that mankind had, so far, evolved succesfully and thrived quite well.
Perhaps you measure thriving in terms of sheer numbers? After all, you cite surplus as a success as opposed to a failure in design. You're the best friend of vermin, for sure, not to mention pestilence and, due to quasi-drier states brought on by deforestation, also the harbinger of draught. And with the population explosions you make capable due to your forcing yields from the quickly depleting soil, there is finally an opportunity for plague to match the pestilence. And between the sedentary lifestyle and the steadily decreasing nutritional content and dwindling variety of your foods, your multitudes finally get to enjoy disease as a regular lifestyle even when they're "healthy". And due to their dependency, any little change in weather or other unfrseen circumstances like the whim of fire becomes a disaster as famine finally has opportunity to rear its ugly head. Even when vermin, pestilence, draught, plague, disease, and dependency, and famine -- the members of your debate team -- aren't present, life itself is a corruption of its original form and madness and depression have opportunity to exist. Finally religion arrives. An funny you should mention being chased by lions.
John Zerzan likened agriculture to Freud's "assumption of an irrational catastrophe at the beginning of history." Freud wasn't too whacked, at least not when he wrote "civilization and its discontents". Zerzan's "Agriculture" (or its longer, freakier Feral House version, "Demon Engine of Civilization") is a thorough spanking of this food-supply source of mankind's self-destruction.
I often wonder whether a message against agriculture was part of the purpose of the megalithic temple network, with the constant talk about immortality. Modern day humanity will be unbelievably lucky to watch the passing of another wheel of astral precession, but hunters and gatherers lived under several. That's a fairly close approximation of immortality. And on the micro, or personal scale, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle afforded them amounts of leisure time and calm that we can't match today even on the backs of millions of peasants. And health? Paleopathology seems to have developed into a field entirely focused on how actually better-off people were before history began (before the division of time by agriculture). There's plenty of evidence that things were quite the opposite of all three of "nasty, brutish, and short". That's closer to immortality than anything modern science can provide, as well. And then the interpretarion of "legacy": the modern Western civ man seems disinterested in the well-being off his distant descendents. "That'll be my grandkid's problem not mine!" To the extent that try as you may, conscientious of the future and well being of others as you may be, you can't be certain that the next generation won't see the end of mankind itself. Comparatively, we have written eyewitness reports of New World natives seeing their seventh generation before passing on. If the temple builders weren't warning against agriculture, then their "immortality" is something that must look more like sci-fi.
A man pounds his fist on his fancy desk. "God damn cars! They shoulda been invented sooner now we'll never roll this shit over by next quarter!" "What shit, Bob?" "Shiiiiit!"
An old guy is pulling his long grey hair out by the seashore, watching the cruise liners sink. "Fucking pottery wheels! Things should been here like a million years ago!"
A little kid sits at a console but there are no games for it, so he punches buttons, hard, and watches static. "stupid spinning wheela and looms, I could be out earning money and buying real actual interaction with my parents when they beat me up take my money and run off to spend it at the rum parlors. I could be experiencing the real live action of losing my limbs to the looms. But rotating gears and rolling presses are just too darn slow to make reality come true! Oops, I lost! Oh, mannnn!"
Rack after rack of goods sits empty. Bakers with their arms crossed stare at the lak of gainful employment. "Cocksucking milling stones! Late again!"
Small blond children weep over handfuls of tulips and tall, angular Dutch women tear off their clothes on the hilltops. "Fucking windmills!"
[Voice over] "What the hell. Are things just not Turning out right? Pissed cause wheels just take too long -- SO long... like 2pi -- to get here, already, in a vicious cycle? well take a stand. In your next REM state, go to change.org and sign the petition to retroactively push the invention of the wheel back in time to the breaking of symmetry. When the birth of mankind rolls around, they can experience the fuller life that an early experience with wheels can bring. They'll be more well-rounded individuals, better prepared for life's challenges.
"By heckling numerous members of congress as well as carefully chosen delegates from world governments, along with scores of prominents sports figures and actresses, showdog owners, the lady that checked your groceries, your clothes-wearing classmates, a large spider that has you frozen in terror making it difficult for you to breath or to wake up, this change.org petition will ensure that Our voices are heard and that your teeth won't fall out as you progressively grow younger.
What about the constant stream of counselors anything but the model you preach?
So you throw them out when you catch them. And I throw up if I'm too sick. But unlike a person woth a strong immune system,you get these sickoes into your ranks so consistently that I along with most people I know would never advise a parent to release a child to your temporary observation or guardianship!
Fuck that, i mean, since you obviously can NOT screen for the whacked fucks when they sign on but, just like the catholic church, only react after the fact by denying it happens, who gives a flying FUCK about your insipid and devious attempt to resemble human beings with feelings?
Maybe you could focus less on getting peoples' kids far away from them an into trust situations under strangers, and maybe focus on providing something real to the fucking United States of America. Because we don't need another outlet for pedophiles and acid dosing abuse freaks, any more than you all need holes in your heads.
Yeah let's hit the roster. We'll give it a "run down" and "audit" the in-tek of the pledges:
[private file]
Lil Billy. Three-four. Ten. One-twenty. Overweight and chubby. Calls daek skinned people "nigger" if his mom isn't hiding him under the flaps of her fringed leather biker jacket with the wolves painted on the back. Wants ta hunt rill good. Already fishes pritty good without hooking his thumb and ain't too fraida worms. His father comments on Billy's weight condition: "he'll outgrow that." Billy kniws computers are important but notices that girls see guys who thunk computers are important as icky, and he needs all the help he can get. RSVP says not attending this year's indoors away from home.
Little Jerome. The men in his father's side of the family, including his immediate family, are all members of the same gang. Almost half the younger women are members of the female gang counterpart. His father rapes his sister and smacks Jerome's face and legs with a cane. Jerome, six, dreams of one day abusing his father's handgun. He knows computers are for bitch ass nerds and has declined to attend the camp.
Teen Roger "Malfoy" (as his friends call him) says hacking is done in private in one's own home and believes the camp is a sting. Porn-phishing reveals that this potential Eagle/Mitnick grade scout knows nothing about security or DIY but has masturbated to dozens of cracker flicks. Recon produces a tape of the young man avoiding social contact at school by typing high-speed gibberish and speaking slowly to the screen as an aid in psychological projection. RSVP attending but his mom said no way.
Jonathan, twenty, wants to attend for all the wrong reasons and has sued the supreme court to be allowed to go. Dems and GOP both feel he has a good chance but only because they still understand neither technology, nor pedos, nor children.
Megan, black girl aged 9, wants to attend with her soul sister Whitney, white girl aged 7, and their mutual BFF (some other kid) because they actually, precocipusly as it may be, "get" the concepts behind the hacker scouts' conception. Megan's Dad is a special ops vet turned trucker, her mom is a drunk. They taught her principles that led to her abilities and early cognitive maturity, but still can't afford to send her. Whitney's parents won't let her go because they didn't know Megan was black and it really put a stop to their friendship, even though Megan's dad is white. The otger kid wants to go but unlike Megan, both of his parents are drunks, even though his dad is a fairly successful dot com enterpreneur and his mom is a bank accountant. They fight too much to listen to him, and if either one allows him to go it would be seen as favoritism and since e's the judge of the household, that can't be abided. He spends eleven hours a day on the computer and has no friends besides Megan and Whitney. At eight he's already contemplating suicide. He wished he could hack the bank account and bus tickets to go anyway but, catch 22, he doesn't know enough. Threw RSVPs to decline.
And tangentially, see "the child and the machine", a decently researched book about the financial incebtives behind throwing computers at the largest groups of the youngest kids possible, and also about how computers being involved at an early age have resulted in poorer academic performance in the majority of cases.
Slashdot Mirror
Care for a side of sad with that: so is Sherman H. Skolnick.
Good! If it can't fail, then why reckon with it and why argue against it? It's one thing to take a wishy-washy approach to the internet and back it up with some "Tao of Information" assertions, but when it comes down to it, the internet will need a form of regulation to be tolerable, and if the regulation stems from natural law and can't effectively be gotten around, then no harm done, it's part of the natural "tao" of the internet.
Thank you, your recognition of my point (as well as my style) is much appreciated. I would like to add that I was simultaneously suggesting that the camp might be arm-in-arm with the causes of problems that people need "help" from, and could just exacerbate some of those problems.
After reading a considerable amount of this growing debate, I have this to address to the people who staunchly support the article's premise:
I get tired of all this "probably" assumption. How probable is it that everybody in the world is going to grab the best possible equipment for recording, conversion, amplification, reconversion and playback and make sure the entire chain from creation in studio to recording to distribution to downloading decompressing and playback is going to involve all of this fucking equipment and that everybody's going to use it properly? Give! Fucking! Up! You fucking... all you autistic chart-wizards make LESS sense than the people you accuse of being fucking "audiophiles"! Your ear, for example, isn't a fucking test tube with a formula written on it! People like you remind me of this one "mentally superior" moron who really did think that a circle was just a 360-sided polygon. You'll cite all your expertise, but just listen to the shit music that gets recorded in 16 bit and 44.1 khz: it's a bunch of fucking chiptunes and weird ass math-audiophile .MOD tunes from the 90s, that sound like exquisite dogturd. Frankly, I'd rather have this hugely "unnecessary" range, frequency and sampling rate that do nothing but TAKE UP A FEW MORE MEGABYTES, and listen to the world's IMPERFECTLY recorded music produced on ANALOG instruments and catch all those imperfections than worry about the seemingly autistic insistences of a handful of overanalysers like your camp.
I get tired of all this "probably" assumption. How probable is it that everybody in the world is going to grab the best possible equipment for recording, conversion, amplification, reconversion and playback and make sure the entire chain from creation in studio to recording to distribution to downloading decompressing and playback is going to involve all of this fucking equipment and that everybody's going to use it properly? Give! Fucking! Up! You fucking... all you autistic chart-wizards make LESS sense than the people you accuse of being fucking "audiophiles"! Your ear, for example, isn't a fucking test tube with a formula written on it! People like you remind me of this one "mentally superior" moron who really did think that a circle was just a 360-sided polygon. You'll cite all your expertise, but just listen to the shit music that gets recorded in 16 bit and 44.1 khz: it's a bunch of fucking chiptunes and weird ass math-audiophile .MOD tunes from the 90s, that sound like exquisite dogturd. Frankly, I'd rather have this hugely "unnecessary" range, frequency and sampling rate that do nothing but TAKE UP A FEW MORE MEGABYTES, and listen to the world's IMPERFECTLY recorded music produced on ANALOG instruments and catch all those imperfections than worry about the seemingly autistic insistences of a handful of overanalysers like your camp.
I'm seeing several factions, which I'm glad for:
1. Math-audiophiles sustaining the author's arguments and resorting to logical fallacies. Bias: I disagree with the author's article.
2. Other audiophiles presenting even more cleverly thought out arguments, or deeper (low-level) science behind the article's own (fairly high-level) data that shows the author has made some miserable assumptions.
3. People using this as an opportunity to ask about the quality of audio equipment.
4. People meta-commenting, like yourself.
I think this is one of the best recent articles on Slashdot in awhile in terms of how much know-how (or the presumption of it) it is garnering in comments.
Thereotically, Slashdot is like a hypodermic and the best results are obtained when something with a higher (fluid) pressure is punctured. A boil or a vein are what make slashdot interesting; a lot of articles lately have been hitting muscle, not penetrating the skin, or are just being squirted onto the tongues of the audience.
I think they meant that the sound quality would invite you to tease up the volume on the stereo and continually have your mind blown by what you find, or something to that effect. There's some argument for that: playing music louder makes people feel more immersed in it, and that makes them heavier fans; heavier fans ask more questions like "what is this?" "what?" "WHAT IS THIS?" "WHAT?", and thereafter tend to buy more music. If you turn poor recordings up high enough they just become torture.
So you believe your hunch more than many, many years of very careful and extremely pedantic research.
The "extremely pedantic" may be the failing in the article. Are you "extremely pedantic" when you listen to something or does it simply happen? The approach to understanding something by necessity has little to do with how that something "is". And many other comments to the article have pointed out how over-wrought its arguments are, some suggesting that the author is just flag-waving iconic bits of data that he understands little about. There have been many very scientific rebuttles, on a deeper level than the article approaches, to the article's materials, but I don't see you responding to those comments. Granted, you may not have hit refresh since then, but this remark:
You're not also a creationist are you[*]?
Suggests that you're not entirely concerned with remaining "pedantic", stoic more properly, and are more interested in falling back on ad hominem. I can only ask, in kind, you aren't a closet creationist yourself, are you?
I can't believe you footnoted your own logical fallacy. Gimp!
I can relate. I normally buy headphones in the consumer (not even prosumer) market. So I have real crap to pick from, and on top of that, I buy earbuds, not earbagels proper. So where do I end up? JVC marshmallows, $20 awhile ago and now they're about $24 (with remote) since JVC released a similarly-named "marshmallow" for $14 that sounds like shit compared to the old style. I'm afraid to try the "with remote" ones because I think they might have gone to shit, as well, and I could care less about the remote, don't need another pair, and don't want to spend more. Anyways, I know what it's like: there's not a better product on the consumer-market shelf (even in the next price range approaching $40) and, worse, the existing product seems to be deteriorating. But really, sir, I couldn't possibly ask for more than what those nice JVCs were giving. It was just... horribly, horribly clear, full-ranged, and strong. If you're telling me I'd have to go to $1000 and full bagel (that's what I call headphones that surround your ears) to get back to that, I'm afraid that either you're irretrievably insane or the market is unassailably corrupt.
Why don't you guys work towards setting the standard? I can't stand reading ... pardon my expression but nearly autistic trash like the feature article rehashes. And I'd like to think that audio and video are being treated well in the future and that some sanity is being maintained where file size is concerned. From the sound of it you both (P & GP) know what to do for audio and video, so where would you start if you wanted to make those stats the new standards that everybody downloads?
Is that what you use, 64-bit 20MHz? I'm interested as a recording artist, in switching to any improvement. What are the results like?
My feeling is, I *know* I hate the sound of dither. And I *know* I hate the flat sound of stuff missing. And I *know* I hate the audiophile super-precise 16- and 32-bit mods/chiptunes and so on, even when they're made by producers with huge experience in audio processing and studio work and... musical theory, and so on. And those digital songs are created by people who should, optimally, be producing the best possible stuff to listen to. But instead the only people who like it are apparently called Seapunks.
Where do I stand? I don't really know. I don't care so much as long as the song I'm listening to sounds as good as an analog recording. In my experience, that happens around 24 bit, 192khz. I don't know *precisely* where it happens, but I know the next step down the digital compression staircase, (164 isn't it? I don't remember) has noticeable losses, and 128 is intolerable for most music. And we're talking about, hmm, almost doubling in size. And we're still talking about megabytes, not anything huge. So I make the sacrifice, and I don't hear any of the things I hate: *dither*; digital conch-shell effect (great now I sound like a Seapunk); "something's not there"; no bass; none of the high-end distortions or hisses I know should be there from experience listening to that synthesizer; etc.
The author gripes a little about "training" the ear making people think they have better hearing. He also goes on about how the wider range is needed in the studio to have more room to work in, but from experience I know if you screw up a recording, once two layers of sound are mixed you aren't going to take that mix and magically move one of them around without also moving the other. But he's talking about side-effects and so on. What it sounds like to me is he's saying "well, if everybody was using transparent oversample filters both in the analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog transition, and if everybody had really fine and precise playback and speaker equipment, and if everybody was a perfect sound engineer and producer and everybody was a perfectly trained listener, there'd be no reason to go to 24 bit 192khz."
And yet there are all these little indications along the way of how the wider range and higher frequency are useful for correcting errors. So it sort of dawns on me, he's asking for *more* effort out of the world in order to justify staying at a width and frequency that have *less* to offer, and his major argument is the amount of space it will all take up. So it sort of fails Occam's razor in a way.
So am I wrong about my reasons to keep using 24 bit 192 khz? I've been doing that for years, and I only go into all this because people are starting to ask questions. Like the other day I was reading an article that bewailed our fates at the hands of "all these people who are producing music for the iPod-headphone crowd".
I had to stop, like, wtf? What's an iPod headphone got to do with it? Then I realized, I make music for the JVC marshmallow earbud. The original ones that still cost around $20, not the new trashy model (which I have, now, and which I hate) that only cost $14. Am I some kind of culprit of some kind of some shit or other? What am I doing wrong? I mean, arguably, my digital tracks are equally for people who buy really low-range response giant speakers for their cars, and I do that on purpose because it's funny. So I have a reason.
But where are all these people suddenly coming from who have these really huge bones to pick with entire industries and crap? What does it all MEAN?
((If you wonder what I'm talking about when I mention 16/32-bit mod music.... fine, if you want to force me to do it, there's a bunch of stuff you could dredge up from the 90s but here's basically THE top result for searching for such stuff: http://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=34414 ... if you want me to rip my own dick off, force me to listen to that cymbal crash on constant repeat))
Aleopathologists have successfully proven there was no significant positive shift in population growth until well after te advent of agriculture seriously... I've debated this for like ten years now and repeating the same things over and over again gets sort of yeah.
My grade school classes were taught that it was the lever which changed everything. We were shown how adding a lever improced the plough as well as the spear. So I guess the person who sid it's the stick doesn't have to feel that's isolated to Australia, as I was schooled in the U.S.
Let's just rate your word on creedence. We will compare the two lifestyles as two runners.
Hunting and gathering has a track record of 350,000 years in homo sapiens. The runner is fit, free, and happy.
Agriculture takrs off, then stops to shackle itself and remove some teeth and bone marrow, seek and destroy the previous runner (especially any knowledge bases about successful hunting and gathering like "witches" and druids) shoot itself in thw back an then runs about 15,000 miles, burning down every growing thing along the way, before jumping into a radioactive pile and choking itself.
Okay so where are we to take your word for it that immortality is just around the corner? You can even last a tenth of the time as your predecessor! Who by some accounts you wiped out because your endlessly expanding population needed room! And when is that supposed to end, by the way?
Here we are reproducing as if there's no end to resources, when our lifestyle actually IS irreversibly (in any humanly witnessible span of time, like, epochs) draining the necessary resources to sustain even a fraction of curent populations for much longer. Compartively the H&G lifestyle sustained itself and (despite the insistence of people -- who handily ignore all paleopathological and antropological evidence -- H& G wad, even MORE mysteriously, somehow difficult beyond being even feasible) was happier and more worthwhile.
Oh but you know anything about quality of life or how to make things last longer. And if by a stroke of luck immortality is medically possible in your lifetime? Do you REALLY think that's a good idea? And I bet you'd ve ethically against creating super-viruses, when that's more or less what you're promising, on a different scale.
Anf that's another marked difference: H&G understood the need for the earth to remain healthy even if they weren't aware of its size or location in the galaxy (well, by some accounts it's possible they actually may have been).
*facepalm * no, You're missing the entire point, entirely. Only now you're just re-iterating the damn question. It's not "were things really beter before", that's already answered! It's "wtf, why did anybody change anything? Who in their right mind was hunting and gathering one day and being enslaved and dying a hunched over, short, nasty, brutish troll the next? Wtf happened here?" so at least you sort of half-get the question (to your credit) but it's pointed the other direction.
There is no evidence of explosive growth or rapidly increasing density until well after the establishment of agriculture. That theory has already failed.
Oh yeeeah the ROYAL children reeeaally put their necks on the line for God and Country, it's not just hrooming and keeping up appearances.
..... Guffaw!!!!
"Following in the human habit of not putting all your eggs in one basket, (agriculture) is specialization at work."
Priceless! I would look like a fool for even starting in on most of the agriultural defenses in this thread, just for the unpleasant time wasting, and this particular one is the epitome of why.
You don't see any of the glaring contradictions in your own statement, that's what agriculture has done fpr your education.
"pragmatic reasons obvious to people of the times"? No wonder you grasp at steaws for evidence. Better recorda? Of prehistory. You want etter records. Sorry! The earliest recorda are mostly devoted to appropriation of the ownership of lands and, oh, what's this? Slaves. They have nothing to tell about why let alone how those events transpired, and do you imagine it was pleasant?
Time machine? Next time, try studying anthro and paleo, especially specializing in paleopathology, and instead of discounting science for the lack of a time machine, set your angst and imagination aside and learn something sad but true.
Like most modern people, you seem stern about the foundation of this civlization as being superior to what came before.
You speak as if hunter-gatherer babies were expected to die. It's like you have no sense that a person's instincts and goals begin in their owwn immediacy, and that problems are worked out over time in the natural world before they're approached by the modern. By a turn, your approximation of some irrational problem inherent in mankind before agriculture's invention ignores the fact that mankind had, so far, evolved succesfully and thrived quite well.
Perhaps you measure thriving in terms of sheer numbers? After all, you cite surplus as a success as opposed to a failure in design. You're the best friend of vermin, for sure, not to mention pestilence and, due to quasi-drier states brought on by deforestation, also the harbinger of draught. And with the population explosions you make capable due to your forcing yields from the quickly depleting soil, there is finally an opportunity for plague to match the pestilence. And between the sedentary lifestyle and the steadily decreasing nutritional content and dwindling variety of your foods, your multitudes finally get to enjoy disease as a regular lifestyle even when they're "healthy". And due to their dependency, any little change in weather or other unfrseen circumstances like the whim of fire becomes a disaster as famine finally has opportunity to rear its ugly head. Even when vermin, pestilence, draught, plague, disease, and dependency, and famine -- the members of your debate team -- aren't present, life itself is a corruption of its original form and madness and depression have opportunity to exist. Finally religion arrives. An funny you should mention being chased by lions.
John Zerzan likened agriculture to Freud's "assumption of an irrational catastrophe at the beginning of history." Freud wasn't too whacked, at least not when he wrote "civilization and its discontents". Zerzan's "Agriculture" (or its longer, freakier Feral House version, "Demon Engine of Civilization") is a thorough spanking of this food-supply source of mankind's self-destruction.
I often wonder whether a message against agriculture was part of the purpose of the megalithic temple network, with the constant talk about immortality. Modern day humanity will be unbelievably lucky to watch the passing of another wheel of astral precession, but hunters and gatherers lived under several. That's a fairly close approximation of immortality. And on the micro, or personal scale, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle afforded them amounts of leisure time and calm that we can't match today even on the backs of millions of peasants. And health? Paleopathology seems to have developed into a field entirely focused on how actually better-off people were before history began (before the division of time by agriculture). There's plenty of evidence that things were quite the opposite of all three of "nasty, brutish, and short". That's closer to immortality than anything modern science can provide, as well. And then the interpretarion of "legacy": the modern Western civ man seems disinterested in the well-being off his distant descendents. "That'll be my grandkid's problem not mine!" To the extent that try as you may, conscientious of the future and well being of others as you may be, you can't be certain that the next generation won't see the end of mankind itself. Comparatively, we have written eyewitness reports of New World natives seeing their seventh generation before passing on. If the temple builders weren't warning against agriculture, then their "immortality" is something that must look more like sci-fi.
A man pounds his fist on his fancy desk. "God damn cars! They shoulda been invented sooner now we'll never roll this shit over by next quarter!"
"What shit, Bob?"
"Shiiiiit!"
An old guy is pulling his long grey hair out by the seashore, watching the cruise liners sink. "Fucking pottery wheels! Things should been here like a million years ago!"
A little kid sits at a console but there are no games for it, so he punches buttons, hard, and watches static. "stupid spinning wheela and looms, I could be out earning money and buying real actual interaction with my parents when they beat me up take my money and run off to spend it at the rum parlors. I could be experiencing the real live action of losing my limbs to the looms. But rotating gears and rolling presses are just too darn slow to make reality come true! Oops, I lost! Oh, mannnn!"
Rack after rack of goods sits empty. Bakers with their arms crossed stare at the lak of gainful employment. "Cocksucking milling stones! Late again!"
Small blond children weep over handfuls of tulips and tall, angular Dutch women tear off their clothes on the hilltops. "Fucking windmills!"
[Voice over] "What the hell. Are things just not Turning out right? Pissed cause wheels just take too long -- SO long ... like 2pi -- to get here, already, in a vicious cycle? well take a stand. In your next REM state, go to change.org and sign the petition to retroactively push the invention of the wheel back in time to the breaking of symmetry. When the birth of mankind rolls around, they can experience the fuller life that an early experience with wheels can bring. They'll be more well-rounded individuals, better prepared for life's challenges.
"By heckling numerous members of congress as well as carefully chosen delegates from world governments, along with scores of prominents sports figures and actresses, showdog owners, the lady that checked your groceries, your clothes-wearing classmates, a large spider that has you frozen in terror making it difficult for you to breath or to wake up, this change.org petition will ensure that Our voices are heard and that your teeth won't fall out as you progressively grow younger.
"With your help, we can turn this:
"[Bob]: Shiiiiiiit!
"... Into this:
"[Fred]: Willmaaaa!"
God... Cackling... Lmao.... Really?
Do you think we're all that moronic?
What about the constant stream of counselors anything but the model you preach?
So you throw them out when you catch them. And I throw up if I'm too sick. But unlike a person woth a strong immune system,you get these sickoes into your ranks so consistently that I along with most people I know would never advise a parent to release a child to your temporary observation or guardianship!
Fuck that, i mean, since you obviously can NOT screen for the whacked fucks when they sign on but, just like the catholic church, only react after the fact by denying it happens, who gives a flying FUCK about your insipid and devious attempt to resemble human beings with feelings?
Maybe you could focus less on getting peoples' kids far away from them an into trust situations under strangers, and maybe focus on providing something real to the fucking United States of America. Because we don't need another outlet for pedophiles and acid dosing abuse freaks, any more than you all need holes in your heads.
Yeah let's hit the roster. We'll give it a "run down" and "audit" the in-tek of the pledges:
[private file]
Lil Billy. Three-four. Ten. One-twenty. Overweight and chubby. Calls daek skinned people "nigger" if his mom isn't hiding him under the flaps of her fringed leather biker jacket with the wolves painted on the back. Wants ta hunt rill good. Already fishes pritty good without hooking his thumb and ain't too fraida worms. His father comments on Billy's weight condition: "he'll outgrow that." Billy kniws computers are important but notices that girls see guys who thunk computers are important as icky, and he needs all the help he can get. RSVP says not attending this year's indoors away from home.
Little Jerome. The men in his father's side of the family, including his immediate family, are all members of the same gang. Almost half the younger women are members of the female gang counterpart. His father rapes his sister and smacks Jerome's face and legs with a cane. Jerome, six, dreams of one day abusing his father's handgun. He knows computers are for bitch ass nerds and has declined to attend the camp.
Teen Roger "Malfoy" (as his friends call him) says hacking is done in private in one's own home and believes the camp is a sting. Porn-phishing reveals that this potential Eagle/Mitnick grade scout knows nothing about security or DIY but has masturbated to dozens of cracker flicks. Recon produces a tape of the young man avoiding social contact at school by typing high-speed gibberish and speaking slowly to the screen as an aid in psychological projection. RSVP attending but his mom said no way.
Jonathan, twenty, wants to attend for all the wrong reasons and has sued the supreme court to be allowed to go. Dems and GOP both feel he has a good chance but only because they still understand neither technology, nor pedos, nor children.
Megan, black girl aged 9, wants to attend with her soul sister Whitney, white girl aged 7, and their mutual BFF (some other kid) because they actually, precocipusly as it may be, "get" the concepts behind the hacker scouts' conception. Megan's Dad is a special ops vet turned trucker, her mom is a drunk. They taught her principles that led to her abilities and early cognitive maturity, but still can't afford to send her. Whitney's parents won't let her go because they didn't know Megan was black and it really put a stop to their friendship, even though Megan's dad is white. The otger kid wants to go but unlike Megan, both of his parents are drunks, even though his dad is a fairly successful dot com enterpreneur and his mom is a bank accountant. They fight too much to listen to him, and if either one allows him to go it would be seen as favoritism and since e's the judge of the household, that can't be abided. He spends eleven hours a day on the computer and has no friends besides Megan and Whitney. At eight he's already contemplating suicide. He wished he could hack the bank account and bus tickets to go anyway but, catch 22, he doesn't know enough. Threw RSVPs to decline.
And tangentially, see "the child and the machine", a decently researched book about the financial incebtives behind throwing computers at the largest groups of the youngest kids possible, and also about how computers being involved at an early age have resulted in poorer academic performance in the majority of cases.