Perfect pitch is genetic, and is quite distinctive. It's much more accurate than the pitch memory musicians develop over time.
I remember being in a room with someone complaining that the harpsichord was a quarter tone flat, though to those of us without perfect pitch it sounded fine.
I've been an active musician for 37 years and I don't have anywhere near that kind of absolute pitch recognition... though I can usually sing something pretty close to A 440 on a good day.
As noted in other posts, relative pitch perception is essential for effective musicianship.
Another blatant plug:
distanceed.com .
Not a very commercial plug, since the company isn't doing so well,
but I think the product is worthwhile.
The part I designed is the mathematical formula renderer, which can also be found at the Aftermath Café
integrated into a BBS for students to exchange
ideas/answers, and so on.
(there is some other random stuff on this page too).
All the math teachers I've talked to think the formula renderer is cool, but it hasn't been marketed effectively so the company is going under. Sad for me, since 3 years of work is essentially being lost as a result, and I think it could really help people.
Hey -- I'm a programmer, not a salesman!
If you're running the right browser, the applet version is coolest, but the servlet will run in any browser.
I have to dispute a few things said along this thread, as well as comment on a point you're all missing:
points of dispute
"There is absolutely no ambiguity."
You have got to be kidding me. Take a look at 3 or 4 translations of the same passage from the Upanishads, for example. There are often wide variations in interpretation. It its later years, sanskrit words were intentionally layered with multiple meanings, and authors used these to create richness of texture which is impossible to translate. Few translators catch all of the references, even in a common text such as the
Bhagavad-gita.
...in a very elegant way....
Perhaps, but also with an incredible amount of irregularity. The nominal cases you are talking about are monolithic forms of what we would use combinations of connecting words for. For example, rather than having a locative case of the noun 'house', we say "in the house." There's a reason languages became more modular: modularity makes things more flexible, easier to deal with and to understand.
Note that computer languages have evolved in much the same way, especially if you view the object-oriented paradigm as an extension of modularity.
Don't get me wrong, I love sanskrit. (is it obvious?) However, I think all in all it's just as well we don't speak it much anymore.
Sanskrit is essentially a simplified form of proto-indo-european
Simplified??????
When you make generalizations about declinsions that were lost and so on, remember that there were many various periods of sanskrit, and certain cases that were more prominent earlier on got lost later on, and so forth. In this aspect, there may be more differences between early & later sanskrit than between sanskrit and another language.
what you're all missing....
Look at sanskrit, where is all the power? In the noun. Look at spanish, where is all the power? In the verb.
For example, in the entire 180-some-odd verses of the yoga sutras, there are something like 2 verbs.
Just like in computer languages, we have the Object-oriented approach, (noun) and the functional approach (verb).
I have a lot more to say about it, but this message is long enough!
I haven't seen anyone mention j or k , both of which are derivitives (more or less) of APL and both of which are highly functional in approach.
and how often nowadays do you see a programming environment that can ship on a floppy disk? The entirety of K was under 200k the last I checked, and it has a smoking database engine. J also is amazingly fast.
I thought that D^b was defined as being slightly lower, since it's a tendency tone that leads to C; and C# slightlly higher, being a tendency tone that leads to D. The idea being that the intonation brings the note slightly closer to the note it leads to.
On the other hand, if one examines a 7-8 resolution (eg from B-C with an underlying harmony of V-I in C) it would indicate that the upward-leading tone (eg. C#) should be lower, since the diatonic major 3rd (based on the 12th root of 2) is about 15 beats/second sharp of the harmonic equivalent in the temprament octave.
When I was in college, our professer (David Cope, of composition software fame) used to refer to a music dictionary (name forgotten) which defined both of them exactly. I don't remember any more than that, other than that technically speaking they are in fact different.
In my limited experience with DOM it's quick. I just learned xmlc (and the servlet API) last month for a project, after hacking dynamic HTML in perl for a few years. I initially hesitated at how cumbersome it was to program with, until I saw the advantages in terms of
detecting errors at runtime
guaranteeing that all paths of execution will result in well-formed HTML.
encouraging the developer to structure the application clearly.
Modular programming results in a performance hit too, but in most cases it's worth it.
amen to that. I can't stand the shared menu myself, as I think it's highly confusing. But since there are those who do like it, what they ought to do is what KDE does, & let the user choose.
There was a review of OS/X linked from slashdot awhile ago that discusses all the points I could think of. Another is that the mac needs to ship with a genuine 2-button mouse, out of the box.
The thing that bugs me about OS/X is the fact that they've made all the config files only configurable from a proprietary hierarchal database (similar to the M$ registry). I would rather be able to `vi` from telnet or ssh.
I've got a great new algorithm that can reduce an 80 megabyte file into a single byte! Still working the bugs out of the decompression side...
Seriously though, compression & decompression are among the trippiest algorithms. Analyzing LZW was one of my greatest mystical experiences on a computer.
And to think recently I was absently wondering what 'pk' stood for, as I was creating a.jar file...
Maybe the message is that we all matter more than we realize.
The biggest crime in this department is unsolicited snail mail. Not only is it problematic to recycle, it's printed mostly on unrecycled paper. (which wouldn't be such a problem if we could still easily make paper out of hemp, like we used to). At our tiny post office, a huge bin fills up with this junk every week. Think how many trees would be saved if we could just put an end to that!
According to the post office, "they paid for us to deliver it, so we're just doing our job." Did you expect any sort of conscientiousness regarding the immorality of harassment, or the fact that this garbage crammed into my post box damages the mail I want to receive?
"Of course not! We're government workers!"
Yes, there are ways to turn it off. But the point is, default should be off.
Another way to tell is that the frickin' number pad keys never work! (eg. in Netscape)
The 'number pad' grid a much more sensible layout of up-arrow, page up, home, end &c than the one in the middle of the keyboard, and apparently the X-windows keyboard abstraction layer forces developers to explicitly activate them, which apparently many are too lazy to do. (or maybe they're mac users)
Making keys with the same markings implicitly identical (as they appear to be on the keyboard) is one thing micro$oft did right.
I'm waiting for the sequel, "blue screen crash," where the computer spews apparently random garbage on the screen, in turn causing the user to utter gibberish in an ancient mesopotamian language, phrases like "chkdsk" and "mem/d"; and partake insidiously in a cult centered around Redmond WA....
Speaking of another not-quite-ready-for-primetime platform, how about javasound? Once this wonderous idea takes off, platform will become irrelevant! World peace will become ubiquitous! Enlightenment and perfect happiness will descend on all beings! (that is, if you believe what Sun says in their ads)
My experience has been that IBM's tools are faster, but less reliable than blackdown's.
Jikes (the compiler) is awesomely fast, but will not always catch errors and can generate funky bytecode that causes VM's to crash.
the high performance VM is fast, but has some funny UI quirks. (even more so than java does in general) However, I use it for running AnyJ (the java IDE written in java -- free for linux users!) and it seems stable enough. Though even as fast as it is for java, java is just S*L*O*W.
I'm sure this will all get worked out some day, so I think overall it's a great thing to have the ibm tools automatically install with red hat.
Like everyone, I wish IBM would get their java 2 act together, but even more so I'd like to see java 2 in browsers; and I wish netscape would upgrade their dreadfully slow, buggy vm. (off topic, but other people were mentioning java 2)
(P.s. I can't find the link for anyJ right off, since I can't get the blackdown.org site to connect, but you can get the link from there, I think on the "status" page. Definitely worth checking out if you're developing java on linux.)
If you want any sort of longevity, you'll be forced to copy the DVD. Maybe you wouldn't have bothered to get a DVD writer otherwise, but now that you have it, you'll want to make use of it, to get your money's worth. So you'll copy even more DVD's than you would have had they not come up with this silly idea.
Sure, it takes more dollars from your pocket. But do you understand the actual cost?
Did you know that commercial farmers can (and do) reclassify highly toxic waste as fertilizer and spread it on crop fields? I didn't believe it either, until the san jose mercury news ran a whole series on it.
Let's keep on the USDA to not to dilute the organic standard any further, and to let us keep our local certifications.
Scientific experimentation is one thing, but to say "hey, now let's feed this shit to everyone" is another. Especially since we are now aware of unpredictable short term side effect (eg. corn that produces pollen which kills monarch butterflies on contact). We have no way of knowing the long term side effects.
what's irritating about micro$oft is that they claim they care about security. Closer to the truth: they have no concept of security.
e.g., the "security patch" for office '97, as lame as it is, won't install if (like I have) you have explorer 5 installed. Well, I was forced to install ie5 when I installed w98. Of course, M$ doesn't mention this anywhere. So do I spend the extra $ for office 2000? what added problems would I be buying? If the main advance of office office '97 was the stupid paperclip, I must assume that M$ has come up with something even more annoying in the latest version.
I agree with other points well made by other contributors on this page. You can't just tack security on as an afterthought.
Once metrowerks comes out with the new java IDE for linux, I hope to ditch windoze for all my work projects... but I still need it for my sound card, since EMU doesn't support linux yet. (hint hint!)
There's a parallel theme between the spontanaity of the seattle protests and of the open-source movement.
It reminds me of Hinduism which, unlike western churches, has no central authority; yet whose literature provides a much more profoundly penetrating analysis of core spiritual issues than the western tomes.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember being in a room with someone complaining that the harpsichord was a quarter tone flat, though to those of us without perfect pitch it sounded fine.
I've been an active musician for 37 years and I don't have anywhere near that kind of absolute pitch recognition ... though I can usually sing something pretty close to A 440 on a good day.
As noted in other posts, relative pitch perception is essential for effective musicianship.
Another blatant plug: distanceed.com . Not a very commercial plug, since the company isn't doing so well, but I think the product is worthwhile.
The part I designed is the mathematical formula renderer, which can also be found at the Aftermath Café integrated into a BBS for students to exchange ideas/answers, and so on. (there is some other random stuff on this page too). All the math teachers I've talked to think the formula renderer is cool, but it hasn't been marketed effectively so the company is going under. Sad for me, since 3 years of work is essentially being lost as a result, and I think it could really help people.
Hey -- I'm a programmer, not a salesman!
If you're running the right browser, the applet version is coolest, but the servlet will run in any browser.
check out my mp3 page
points of dispute
"There is absolutely no ambiguity."
You have got to be kidding me. Take a look at 3 or 4 translations of the same passage from the Upanishads, for example. There are often wide variations in interpretation. It its later years, sanskrit words were intentionally layered with multiple meanings, and authors used these to create richness of texture which is impossible to translate. Few translators catch all of the references, even in a common text such as the Bhagavad-gita.
Perhaps, but also with an incredible amount of irregularity. The nominal cases you are talking about are monolithic forms of what we would use combinations of connecting words for. For example, rather than having a locative case of the noun 'house', we say "in the house." There's a reason languages became more modular: modularity makes things more flexible, easier to deal with and to understand.
Note that computer languages have evolved in much the same way, especially if you view the object-oriented paradigm as an extension of modularity.
Don't get me wrong, I love sanskrit. (is it obvious?) However, I think all in all it's just as well we don't speak it much anymore.
Sanskrit is essentially a simplified form of proto-indo-european
Simplified??????
When you make generalizations about declinsions that were lost and so on, remember that there were many various periods of sanskrit, and certain cases that were more prominent earlier on got lost later on, and so forth. In this aspect, there may be more differences between early & later sanskrit than between sanskrit and another language.
what you're all missing....
Look at sanskrit, where is all the power? In the noun. Look at spanish, where is all the power? In the verb.
For example, in the entire 180-some-odd verses of the yoga sutras, there are something like 2 verbs.
Just like in computer languages, we have the Object-oriented approach, (noun) and the functional approach (verb).
I have a lot more to say about it, but this message is long enough!
check out my mp3 page
check out my mp3 page
check out my mp3 page
and how often nowadays do you see a programming environment that can ship on a floppy disk? The entirety of K was under 200k the last I checked, and it has a smoking database engine. J also is amazingly fast.
check out my mp3 page
check out my mp3 page
On the other hand, if one examines a 7-8 resolution (eg from B-C with an underlying harmony of V-I in C) it would indicate that the upward-leading tone (eg. C#) should be lower, since the diatonic major 3rd (based on the 12th root of 2) is about 15 beats/second sharp of the harmonic equivalent in the temprament octave.
When I was in college, our professer (David Cope, of composition software fame) used to refer to a music dictionary (name forgotten) which defined both of them exactly. I don't remember any more than that, other than that technically speaking they are in fact different.
check out my mp3 page
Modular programming results in a performance hit too, but in most cases it's worth it.
amen to that. I can't stand the shared menu myself, as I think it's highly confusing. But since there are those who do like it, what they ought to do is what KDE does, & let the user choose.
There was a review of OS/X linked from slashdot awhile ago that discusses all the points I could think of. Another is that the mac needs to ship with a genuine 2-button mouse, out of the box.
The thing that bugs me about OS/X is the fact that they've made all the config files only configurable from a proprietary hierarchal database (similar to the M$ registry). I would rather be able to `vi` from telnet or ssh.
I've got a great new algorithm that can reduce an 80 megabyte file into a single byte! Still working the bugs out of the decompression side...
Seriously though, compression & decompression are among the trippiest algorithms. Analyzing LZW was one of my greatest mystical experiences on a computer.
And to think recently I was absently wondering what 'pk' stood for, as I was creating a .jar file...
Maybe the message is that we all matter more than we realize.
The biggest crime in this department is unsolicited snail mail. Not only is it problematic to recycle, it's printed mostly on unrecycled paper. (which wouldn't be such a problem if we could still easily make paper out of hemp, like we used to). At our tiny post office, a huge bin fills up with this junk every week. Think how many trees would be saved if we could just put an end to that!
According to the post office, "they paid for us to deliver it, so we're just doing our job." Did you expect any sort of conscientiousness regarding the immorality of harassment, or the fact that this garbage crammed into my post box damages the mail I want to receive?
"Of course not! We're government workers!"
Yes, there are ways to turn it off. But the point is, default should be off.
Another way to tell is that the frickin' number pad keys never work! (eg. in Netscape)
The 'number pad' grid a much more sensible layout of up-arrow, page up, home, end &c than the one in the middle of the keyboard, and apparently the X-windows keyboard abstraction layer forces developers to explicitly activate them, which apparently many are too lazy to do. (or maybe they're mac users)
Making keys with the same markings implicitly identical (as they appear to be on the keyboard) is one thing micro$oft did right.
I'm waiting for the sequel, "blue screen crash," where the computer spews apparently random garbage on the screen, in turn causing the user to utter gibberish in an ancient mesopotamian language, phrases like "chkdsk" and "mem/d"; and partake insidiously in a cult centered around Redmond WA....
micro$oft...
then: the 64k bug
now: 64k bugs
Speaking of another not-quite-ready-for-primetime platform, how about javasound? Once this wonderous idea takes off, platform will become irrelevant! World peace will become ubiquitous! Enlightenment and perfect happiness will descend on all beings! (that is, if you believe what Sun says in their ads)
My experience has been that IBM's tools are faster, but less reliable than blackdown's.
Jikes (the compiler) is awesomely fast, but will not always catch errors and can generate funky bytecode that causes VM's to crash.
the high performance VM is fast, but has some funny UI quirks. (even more so than java does in general) However, I use it for running AnyJ (the java IDE written in java -- free for linux users!) and it seems stable enough. Though even as fast as it is for java, java is just S*L*O*W.
I'm sure this will all get worked out some day, so I think overall it's a great thing to have the ibm tools automatically install with red hat.
Like everyone, I wish IBM would get their java 2 act together, but even more so I'd like to see java 2 in browsers; and I wish netscape would upgrade their dreadfully slow, buggy vm. (off topic, but other people were mentioning java 2)
(P.s. I can't find the link for anyJ right off, since I can't get the blackdown.org site to connect, but you can get the link from there, I think on the "status" page. Definitely worth checking out if you're developing java on linux.)
If you want any sort of longevity, you'll be forced to copy the DVD. Maybe you wouldn't have bothered to get a DVD writer otherwise, but now that you have it, you'll want to make use of it, to get your money's worth. So you'll copy even more DVD's than you would have had they not come up with this silly idea.
So what were they trying to accomplish, anyway?
Sure, it takes more dollars from your pocket. But do you understand the actual cost?
Did you know that commercial farmers can (and do) reclassify highly toxic waste as fertilizer and spread it on crop fields? I didn't believe it either, until the san jose mercury news ran a whole series on it.
Let's keep on the USDA to not to dilute the organic standard any further, and to let us keep our local certifications.
Scientific experimentation is one thing, but to say "hey, now let's feed this shit to everyone" is another. Especially since we are now aware of unpredictable short term side effect (eg. corn that produces pollen which kills monarch butterflies on contact). We have no way of knowing the long term side effects.
BUY ORGANIC!!
what's irritating about micro$oft is that they claim they care about security. Closer to the truth: they have no concept of security.
e.g., the "security patch" for office '97, as lame as it is, won't install if (like I have) you have explorer 5 installed. Well, I was forced to install ie5 when I installed w98. Of course, M$ doesn't mention this anywhere. So do I spend the extra $ for office 2000? what added problems would I be buying? If the main advance of office office '97 was the stupid paperclip, I must assume that M$ has come up with something even more annoying in the latest version.
I agree with other points well made by other contributors on this page. You can't just tack security on as an afterthought.
Once metrowerks comes out with the new java IDE for linux, I hope to ditch windoze for all my work projects... but I still need it for my sound card, since EMU doesn't support linux yet. (hint hint!)
It reminds me of Hinduism which, unlike western churches, has no central authority; yet whose literature provides a much more profoundly penetrating analysis of core spiritual issues than the western tomes.
bring back the Indus valley civilization!