You're missing the point-- what's the probability that they use amino acids at all? Even if Martian life is an offshoot of proto-Earth life, there's a widely accepted chemical evolution theory called the RNA world hypothesis, which suggests that early terrestrial life was based entirely on RNA, and that proteins and DNA evolved later as more effective machinery (proteins) and more stable information storage (DNA). Even if life from both planets had the same origins, it's incredibly unlikely that they both evolved even the same basic machinery.
I would start with DIY audio electronics, since it's easy to test, usually not dangerous, and you get a useful product in the end. The CMoy amplifier is popular and has several good tutorials written about building them from RadioShack parts for about $25. The best is from TangentSoft. The CMoy has a simple circuit that should be pretty obvious to anyone with some classwork in electrical engineering. You can build the amp without that knowledge, too. If you enjoy it then there's a huge range of other more advanced kits and schematics to build from.
I think the reason people don't sit down and listen to albums anymore is because people don't buy full albums anymore.
Fine. No one dims the lights and sits to listen to an hour of music non-stop anymore. Music is the background noise that we play when we're doing other things. It simply doesn't hold our focus the way it used to. I'm arguing that the reason why is because the way we listen to music now doesn't engage us the same way it did 40 years ago.
This is an argument that I don't buy from a signal processing perspective. Your ears can't physically hear the distortion caused by the bit discreteness-- that's all in the upper frequency range. My argument is that your body can still unconsciously "feel" those frequencies.
1) I'm young enough to have never owned a tape player growing up, let alone a record player. I almost exclusively listen to music released in the last 5 years. I have no nostalgia for the past or any desire to be anachronistic. I just love listening to music.
2) I'm a scientist, and not a fluffy one-- I'm an analytical chemist working in a terminal scientific position. I like unbiased data. Unfortunately we don't have any. What I can tell you is my personal subjective testing strategy.
I'll often buy duplicate copies of music I like, both on CD and on vinyl. There are many reasons why, and convenience is certainly at the top. I have a system where I can A/B my sources, keeping the same amps and speakers.
Using audiophile headphones, I usually can't tell any difference in quality. Usually the vinyl has enough negative and distracting features to make me dislike that listening experience.
Using speakers is a completely different experience. The vinyl feels more engaging and makes me want to focus on just the music-- ignoring the reproduction. When I try to work to vinyl I find myself listening to the music and forgetting what I was supposed to do. I don't have this problem when I try to work to CDs.
Understand that I spent years trying to "hear" the difference between vinyl and CDs. From a technical perspective, I cried BS in every which way. I'm a firm believer that the difference is real but not something you can hear.
Let me guess, you're using some of those "danceable" speaker cables?
What I don't get is why audiophiles are so into claiming vinyl sounds better than CD because it has greater frequency range, but at the same time ignore other digital recording formats support up to 96kHz (such as SACD/DVD-Audio)?
I'm 100% behind you. If the music industry honestly adopted SACD or DVD-Audio, I would absolutely use that. Honestly, those formats have died a stillborn death. There is much more new vinyl released today than SACDs.
I'm not a believer in fancy speaker cables-- I can't hear the difference. The audio rocks and clocks guys are complete BS. However, if you can't hear the difference between a 200 dollar integrated stereo and an intentionally designed high-fi system, you haven't tried.
Audiophiles have known for decades that most listeners cannot discern excellent from mediocre music.
I'll start by saying that I'm an audiophile. I have an all vacuum tube, several thousand dollar stereo that I hand built from source to speakers. I still prefer to buy music on vinyl. If I had the disposable cash, I'd buy it on reel-to-reel tape.
That said, the parent has accidentally stumbled upon the correct answer. FLAC, MP3, OGG, whatever-- if you want higher quality, then listen to BETTER MUSIC.
The most important part of high quality music is the musician. The second is the engineer. Beyond that, everything is just incremental gains. Audiophiles know this and spend their energy getting the right recording of the music they love. And I'm not just talking about old stodgy stuff. There's tons of great new music released new on vinyl geared towards audiophiles-- it's just all labeled "indie".
Let me spend half a minute on vinyl vs CD vs MP3. CD and MP3 contain data that your ears can hear and they both contain that data very accurately. I certainly can't tell the difference between a CD and an MP3 recorded at 192 KBPS. Vinyl is the only format of the three that contains very high and very low frequency data that you cannot hear. You can't hear this data, but you can feel it, physically with your body. This sensation enhances the realness of the recording and makes it feel more engaging and more alive. Anyone can hear and feel this, but usually they can't describe it or perhaps even notice it. They show the difference by not wanting to get up and do dishes, or homework, or play a game, but by wanting to sit and close their eyes and just listen to the music.
Forty years ago people used to sit down and listen to albums. Albums! The reason why we don't do it anymore is NOT because of a lack of time or high quality new music-- we have both those things. It's because the music doesn't engage us anymore. It simply doesn't contain the data to make us forget that we're listening to a recording.
Doctors currently explore the gut using endoscopes, which have to be fed through the body, or "camera pills" that must be swallowed by a patient.
A pill capable of wriggling through the gut on its own could be a valuable tool, says Andrew Gardner, an independent medical imaging expert at University College London.
"Capsules can show you places nothing else can, but you can't stop or slow down when you get to a point of interest," he told New Scientist.
As a programmer, I am much more productive in Linux because I can tie almost everything I do in Gnome (or KDE) to a key command. I don't use the mouse very much (or at all) while programming in gvim or Eclipse, and it really slows me down when I need to, say, launch a terminal or a browser.
As a scientist, where I do most of my work in MS Office, I am much more productive in Windows. I basically have to use MS Office because I need to interoperate with my peers and coworkers. Furthermore, Excel (every scientists best friend), is still far and away the best spreadsheet application and to me is Window's so called "killer app". MS Office for the Mac is still wildly unstable, and although it's an option, it's not a very good one.
As a hobbiest or a general user, I'm more productive in Mac OS X, which sort of bridges both worlds. Because Macintosh enforces a pretty strict interface guideline, all the general purpose apps are easier to use on the first go. This is not really critical for stuff I use every day (as a programmer or a scientist) but is really useful when I'm trying out a new chess app or whatever.
If I had only one choice, I would use Mac OS X. At work I have both a Linux computer and a Windows computer on my desk (it's a pretty big desk). At home I use my iBook. I don't have to make that choice.
I think there is an important thing to note about the page layout problem. Conversions between Mac Office and Windows Office have always resulted in "Minimal Changes in the page layout" as well, even if they are the same version number. You still always have to check (and fix) your document on a Windows computer.
This is particularly noticable in Mac Powerpoint to Windows Powerpoint. For example, a couple of years ago I gave a small presentation I wrote on my mac with (the then new) Office.X. They wanted me to do it on their Windows computer and so I decied to wing it. I was horrified when all my tiff graphics didn't come up and all my properly (mono) spaced fonts were converted to san serif (nothing lined up). I learned my lesson and never trust the (or any) converter anymore.
I haven't tried the new Pages and Keynote yet, but other positive reviews of the conversion features suggest that Pages/Keynote to Word/Powerpoint is probably not any worse off than where current Mac Office users are now. I'm not going to ditch Mac Office, but I'm going to buy iWork next time I get to the Apple store. The new features not included in Office, such as the Keynote to QuickTime converter (programs to do movie demos cost high hundreds to thousands of dollars), are my motivation.
So, careers involving handling sewage, manure or garbage are actually BETTER than being an IT manager?
I don't know about where you live, but in my city careers involving handling sewage or garbage pay significantly better than low to middle level IT people. At least they have unions to stick up for them. We basically have nothing to protect us from, for example, forced/unpaid overtime. Furthermore, there is basically no risk of outsourcing garbagemen to India.
Personally, I use mount/unmount. It has a FAT file system so it's easy enough to set up. I manage my music in directories and it assumes the artist/album/song.ogg format. The new firmware updates will actually read annotation tags from ogg files (finally). Some people do more complicated things, but I've never gotten around to investigating them.
A side note: IRiver is now my favorite company-- I burnt out the main amp in my player doing something stupid and they took it back and mailed me a new one within a day, no questions asked.
Do any of you guys know of a chess engine that actually plays like a human amateur (rated around 1000)? I'm not horrible, but I'm sick of getting my ass kicked by GNUChess.
And you'll have it. Apple may only give you compressed files now, but the only difference to them between AAC files and FLAC is a little bit of bandwidth. Just because it's not on a CD does not mean that isn't CD quality.
Furthermore, what we're talking about isn't necessarily the death of CDs, but the death of the album format. What's interesting about iTunes is that it gets around having to use a privately manufactured physical-ness for music. As a result, there's no need to package songs together into a single purchasing item. The transfer medium (bandwidth) is so cheap that each song can be sold on it's own instead of in a group. You don't have to press a new record or a new CD for each song. This is huge because the album format goes back to printing records on acetate back in the 20s. Really it goes back further to when travelling musicians had repertoires and you wouldn't buy a song, you'd buy an evening of music.
For instance, music stores could be made into iTunes hubs which have access to a private iTunes databank of FLAC files. Can you imagine going to the music store and downloading 10 singles you choose from their local iTunes database directly onto your iPod?
Now what about having the music store make CD-Rs of the 10 singles for you in the store?
And you'll have it. Apple may only give you compressed files now, but the only difference to them between AAC files and FLAC is a little bit of bandwidth. Just because it's not on a CD does not mean that isn't CD quality.
Furthermore, what we're talking about isn't necessarily the death of CDs, but the death of the album format. What's interesting about iTunes is that it gets around having to use a privately manufactured physical-ness for music. As a result, there's no need to package songs together into a single purchasing item. The transfer medium (bandwidth) is so cheap that each song can be sold on it's own instead of in a group. You don't have to press a new record or a new CD for each song. This is huge because the album format goes back to printing records on acetate back in the 20s. Really it goes back further to when travelling musicians had repertoires and you wouldn't buy a song, you'd buy an evening of music.
For instance, music stores could be made into iTunes hubs which have access to a private iTunes databank of FLAC files. Can you imagine going to the music store and downloading 10 singles you choose from their local iTunes database directly onto your iPod?
Now what about having the music store make CD-Rs of the 10 singles for you in the store?
At the end of my last year in college, my roommate was kicking around my office reading e-mail. He recieved the Nigerian money laundering e-mail and, since he was trying to kill time, he looked up the FBI hotline number and phoned in a report of suspicious foreign money launderers. The Feds asked him for his phone number and address, and said that they would investigate it further. We were expecting the FBI to drop by the house to see some of the evidence, but they never did...
However, they clearly thought it was interesting enough to investigate!
What will be the next challenge? Where is there a game that requires the uniqueness of human thought over the pure power of computer calculations?
Let's start with the simple game of "conversation", move quickly to "philosophy", and futher on down the line to "intuition". Hell, even "natual spoken language" is currently impossible for a machine.
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing the point-- what's the probability that they use amino acids at all? Even if Martian life is an offshoot of proto-Earth life, there's a widely accepted chemical evolution theory called the RNA world hypothesis, which suggests that early terrestrial life was based entirely on RNA, and that proteins and DNA evolved later as more effective machinery (proteins) and more stable information storage (DNA). Even if life from both planets had the same origins, it's incredibly unlikely that they both evolved even the same basic machinery.
I should also point out Tangent's tutorials, which are fantastic introductions into wiring and soldering even if you're not interested in audio work.
I would start with DIY audio electronics, since it's easy to test, usually not dangerous, and you get a useful product in the end. The CMoy amplifier is popular and has several good tutorials written about building them from RadioShack parts for about $25. The best is from TangentSoft. The CMoy has a simple circuit that should be pretty obvious to anyone with some classwork in electrical engineering. You can build the amp without that knowledge, too. If you enjoy it then there's a huge range of other more advanced kits and schematics to build from.
I think the reason people don't sit down and listen to albums anymore is because people don't buy full albums anymore.
Fine. No one dims the lights and sits to listen to an hour of music non-stop anymore. Music is the background noise that we play when we're doing other things. It simply doesn't hold our focus the way it used to. I'm arguing that the reason why is because the way we listen to music now doesn't engage us the same way it did 40 years ago.
This is an argument that I don't buy from a signal processing perspective. Your ears can't physically hear the distortion caused by the bit discreteness-- that's all in the upper frequency range. My argument is that your body can still unconsciously "feel" those frequencies.
Many of you misunderstand my position.
1) I'm young enough to have never owned a tape player growing up, let alone a record player. I almost exclusively listen to music released in the last 5 years. I have no nostalgia for the past or any desire to be anachronistic. I just love listening to music.
2) I'm a scientist, and not a fluffy one-- I'm an analytical chemist working in a terminal scientific position. I like unbiased data. Unfortunately we don't have any. What I can tell you is my personal subjective testing strategy.
I'll often buy duplicate copies of music I like, both on CD and on vinyl. There are many reasons why, and convenience is certainly at the top. I have a system where I can A/B my sources, keeping the same amps and speakers.
Using audiophile headphones, I usually can't tell any difference in quality. Usually the vinyl has enough negative and distracting features to make me dislike that listening experience.
Using speakers is a completely different experience. The vinyl feels more engaging and makes me want to focus on just the music-- ignoring the reproduction. When I try to work to vinyl I find myself listening to the music and forgetting what I was supposed to do. I don't have this problem when I try to work to CDs.
Understand that I spent years trying to "hear" the difference between vinyl and CDs. From a technical perspective, I cried BS in every which way. I'm a firm believer that the difference is real but not something you can hear.
Let me guess, you're using some of those "danceable" speaker cables?
What I don't get is why audiophiles are so into claiming vinyl sounds better than CD because it has greater frequency range, but at the same time ignore other digital recording formats support up to 96kHz (such as SACD/DVD-Audio)?
I'm 100% behind you. If the music industry honestly adopted SACD or DVD-Audio, I would absolutely use that. Honestly, those formats have died a stillborn death. There is much more new vinyl released today than SACDs.
I'm not a believer in fancy speaker cables-- I can't hear the difference. The audio rocks and clocks guys are complete BS. However, if you can't hear the difference between a 200 dollar integrated stereo and an intentionally designed high-fi system, you haven't tried.
Audiophiles have known for decades that most listeners cannot discern excellent from mediocre music.
I'll start by saying that I'm an audiophile. I have an all vacuum tube, several thousand dollar stereo that I hand built from source to speakers. I still prefer to buy music on vinyl. If I had the disposable cash, I'd buy it on reel-to-reel tape.
That said, the parent has accidentally stumbled upon the correct answer. FLAC, MP3, OGG, whatever-- if you want higher quality, then listen to BETTER MUSIC.
The most important part of high quality music is the musician. The second is the engineer. Beyond that, everything is just incremental gains. Audiophiles know this and spend their energy getting the right recording of the music they love. And I'm not just talking about old stodgy stuff. There's tons of great new music released new on vinyl geared towards audiophiles-- it's just all labeled "indie".
Let me spend half a minute on vinyl vs CD vs MP3. CD and MP3 contain data that your ears can hear and they both contain that data very accurately. I certainly can't tell the difference between a CD and an MP3 recorded at 192 KBPS. Vinyl is the only format of the three that contains very high and very low frequency data that you cannot hear. You can't hear this data, but you can feel it, physically with your body. This sensation enhances the realness of the recording and makes it feel more engaging and more alive. Anyone can hear and feel this, but usually they can't describe it or perhaps even notice it. They show the difference by not wanting to get up and do dishes, or homework, or play a game, but by wanting to sit and close their eyes and just listen to the music.
Forty years ago people used to sit down and listen to albums. Albums! The reason why we don't do it anymore is NOT because of a lack of time or high quality new music-- we have both those things. It's because the music doesn't engage us anymore. It simply doesn't contain the data to make us forget that we're listening to a recording.
Quoted from the text:
Doctors currently explore the gut using endoscopes, which have to be fed through the body, or "camera pills" that must be swallowed by a patient.
A pill capable of wriggling through the gut on its own could be a valuable tool, says Andrew Gardner, an independent medical imaging expert at University College London.
"Capsules can show you places nothing else can, but you can't stop or slow down when you get to a point of interest," he told New Scientist.
As a programmer, I am much more productive in Linux because I can tie almost everything I do in Gnome (or KDE) to a key command. I don't use the mouse very much (or at all) while programming in gvim or Eclipse, and it really slows me down when I need to, say, launch a terminal or a browser.
As a scientist, where I do most of my work in MS Office, I am much more productive in Windows. I basically have to use MS Office because I need to interoperate with my peers and coworkers. Furthermore, Excel (every scientists best friend), is still far and away the best spreadsheet application and to me is Window's so called "killer app". MS Office for the Mac is still wildly unstable, and although it's an option, it's not a very good one.
As a hobbiest or a general user, I'm more productive in Mac OS X, which sort of bridges both worlds. Because Macintosh enforces a pretty strict interface guideline, all the general purpose apps are easier to use on the first go. This is not really critical for stuff I use every day (as a programmer or a scientist) but is really useful when I'm trying out a new chess app or whatever.
If I had only one choice, I would use Mac OS X. At work I have both a Linux computer and a Windows computer on my desk (it's a pretty big desk). At home I use my iBook. I don't have to make that choice.
I think there is an important thing to note about the page layout problem. Conversions between Mac Office and Windows Office have always resulted in "Minimal Changes in the page layout" as well, even if they are the same version number. You still always have to check (and fix) your document on a Windows computer.
This is particularly noticable in Mac Powerpoint to Windows Powerpoint. For example, a couple of years ago I gave a small presentation I wrote on my mac with (the then new) Office.X. They wanted me to do it on their Windows computer and so I decied to wing it. I was horrified when all my tiff graphics didn't come up and all my properly (mono) spaced fonts were converted to san serif (nothing lined up). I learned my lesson and never trust the (or any) converter anymore.
I haven't tried the new Pages and Keynote yet, but other positive reviews of the conversion features suggest that Pages/Keynote to Word/Powerpoint is probably not any worse off than where current Mac Office users are now. I'm not going to ditch Mac Office, but I'm going to buy iWork next time I get to the Apple store. The new features not included in Office, such as the Keynote to QuickTime converter (programs to do movie demos cost high hundreds to thousands of dollars), are my motivation.
So, careers involving handling sewage, manure or garbage are actually BETTER than being an IT manager?
I don't know about where you live, but in my city careers involving handling sewage or garbage pay significantly better than low to middle level IT people. At least they have unions to stick up for them. We basically have nothing to protect us from, for example, forced/unpaid overtime. Furthermore, there is basically no risk of outsourcing garbagemen to India.
I'd like one-- Thanks!
briancsearle at yahoo dot com
Personally, I use mount/unmount. It has a FAT file system so it's easy enough to set up. I manage my music in directories and it assumes the artist/album/song.ogg format. The new firmware updates will actually read annotation tags from ogg files (finally). Some people do more complicated things, but I've never gotten around to investigating them.
A side note: IRiver is now my favorite company-- I burnt out the main amp in my player doing something stupid and they took it back and mailed me a new one within a day, no questions asked.
did you see the screenshots?
That's a lawsuit just waiting to happen... All the sub-apps like the Task Manager and all the Properties windows are a perfect copy! Very impressive.
now we'll have a bunch of video game nerds with massive bowling-style forearms...
Here's a consumer alert from the Federal Trade Commission on why you shouldn't post your email address online... how ironic!
Also ironic: the FTC posts their own email address online (uce@ftc.gov) at the bottom of their webpage!
what about all the sex shops in LA County?
Do any of you guys know of a chess engine that actually plays like a human amateur (rated around 1000)? I'm not horrible, but I'm sick of getting my ass kicked by GNUChess.
What I'm saying is that they could start selling FLAC files (instead of AAC) in a second, bandwidth permitting. Give it time.
And you'll have it. Apple may only give you compressed files now, but the only difference to them between AAC files and FLAC is a little bit of bandwidth. Just because it's not on a CD does not mean that isn't CD quality. Furthermore, what we're talking about isn't necessarily the death of CDs, but the death of the album format. What's interesting about iTunes is that it gets around having to use a privately manufactured physical-ness for music. As a result, there's no need to package songs together into a single purchasing item. The transfer medium (bandwidth) is so cheap that each song can be sold on it's own instead of in a group. You don't have to press a new record or a new CD for each song. This is huge because the album format goes back to printing records on acetate back in the 20s. Really it goes back further to when travelling musicians had repertoires and you wouldn't buy a song, you'd buy an evening of music. For instance, music stores could be made into iTunes hubs which have access to a private iTunes databank of FLAC files. Can you imagine going to the music store and downloading 10 singles you choose from their local iTunes database directly onto your iPod? Now what about having the music store make CD-Rs of the 10 singles for you in the store?
And you'll have it. Apple may only give you compressed files now, but the only difference to them between AAC files and FLAC is a little bit of bandwidth. Just because it's not on a CD does not mean that isn't CD quality.
Furthermore, what we're talking about isn't necessarily the death of CDs, but the death of the album format. What's interesting about iTunes is that it gets around having to use a privately manufactured physical-ness for music. As a result, there's no need to package songs together into a single purchasing item. The transfer medium (bandwidth) is so cheap that each song can be sold on it's own instead of in a group. You don't have to press a new record or a new CD for each song. This is huge because the album format goes back to printing records on acetate back in the 20s. Really it goes back further to when travelling musicians had repertoires and you wouldn't buy a song, you'd buy an evening of music.
For instance, music stores could be made into iTunes hubs which have access to a private iTunes databank of FLAC files. Can you imagine going to the music store and downloading 10 singles you choose from their local iTunes database directly onto your iPod?
Now what about having the music store make CD-Rs of the 10 singles for you in the store?
At the end of my last year in college, my roommate was kicking around my office reading e-mail. He recieved the Nigerian money laundering e-mail and, since he was trying to kill time, he looked up the FBI hotline number and phoned in a report of suspicious foreign money launderers. The Feds asked him for his phone number and address, and said that they would investigate it further. We were expecting the FBI to drop by the house to see some of the evidence, but they never did...
However, they clearly thought it was interesting enough to investigate!
CTRL-ALT-DEL
What will be the next challenge? Where is there a game that requires the uniqueness of human thought over the pure power of computer calculations?
Let's start with the simple game of "conversation", move quickly to "philosophy", and futher on down the line to "intuition". Hell, even "natual spoken language" is currently impossible for a machine.