The timbre of sounds is effected by shorter waves, so sound waves above 15KHz are often important to accurate music reproduction.
If you don't believe me, take a really good speaker system that can do fairly flat reproductions up to about 24KHz, and play a good analog source through it (like a 1" two-track reel-to-reel tape of a live string quartet performance). Then, put a filter on the line from the source that cuts out everything above 15KHz.
Unless you are nearly deaf from regularilly listening to Metallica at high volumes, you will hear the difference immediately.
Top-of-the-line CD players have gotten better at "faking it" through better interpolation and error correction math since CD's were first released in the 80's, so most of the critics who used to complain about the "sterile" digital sound and rave about vinyl have come around to realize that digital recordings can achieve very high standards... but a higher sampling rate would still be better. (And the whole hi-fi hobby is all about the never-ending effort to create a more-perfect illusion of the original performance.)
16-bit 44.1 was a compromise choice. They wanted a small disk to be able to reproduce 74 minutes of music with available storage technology. DVD Audio may be way more than you really need, but CD audio is slightly less than what picky listeners want.
As a libertarian conservative, I gladly affirm that Hatch is indeed a "conservative's conservative", because he's exactly the sort of conservative I like.
On issues of exessive copyright, he has been on the side of the White Hats almost every time, and is probably the best friend the "anti-record company" crowd has in Congress at the moment.
Can we finally lose this absurd notion of Open Source having anything to do with communism?
In order to have communism, all members of society must contribute to society according to their ability to do so. (As in, "from each, according to his means, to each, according to his needs.")
Since the vast majority of the users of Linux, Apache, and other free software products are passive consumers, who do not even so much as bother to submit bug reports, this is clearly not the case.
Open Source development can therefore be considered an act of benevolence or charity... offering to share the fruits of thier labor and knowledge with the world, knowing full-well that most of the world will do nothing for them in exchange.
If the open source movement was about communism, then every farmer who owns a Linux box would be giving their food away.
Look, I know from following the Darwin lists that Wilfredo Sanchez is a huge contributor but -- front page Slashdot news? The Mac
sites aren't making such a big deal about this. It's not like Steve Jobs or Avie Tevanian is leaving.
The story doesn't matter much to Mac users, because Darwin is a "fringe" product from their perspective. One Darwin engineer leaving Apple's payroll does not impact the future of OS X very much.
The story is of interest to the Linux-ish crowd because Darwin is YAFUC (Yet Another Free Unix Clone). Once OS X ships, it will probably become the most-used BSD-based OS in the world within a matter of months, and since Darwin is a Free-Beer-Free-Speech spin-off built with the same kernel, a lot of BSD hackers are going to be interested in it.
I don't think I have ever recieved a spam from uu.net (at least, not one that admits it in the header).
By "major isp's", I was referring to ISP's that serve a lot of private cutomers... AOL, Juno, Qwest, MSN, etc. etc. not spine providers and business-centered ISP's like uu.net and mr.net
"Most viruses are made by the anti-virus industry."
A popular spin-off: "Most free porn on the internet is published by the makers of filter software."
Very amusing to think so, but there are enough scipt kiddies and porno distributers out there that there is really no need. Why spend your own resources creating the "problem" that sells your product, when so many people are doing it for you for free?
Look for a Jon Katz article about The Rise of the Open Source Conspiracy Method sometime soon.:)
Since most real spam originates from some ".backwater" national domain, and spoofs the recipient's ID into the From: field, it seems to me that the fake spam would be fairly easy to spot.
If it looks like spam, but comes from a major ISP, and is delivered to only one person, it is a fairly good guess that it is really a coded message.
The only way to avoid your message being parsed out from somebody who is really looking for it would be to actually spam a few thousand people though the usual spam channels... which means we can all expect lots more messages advertizing pyramid schemes and satelite TV systems in the near future, just so Bin Laden can chat with his pen-pals.
But technically, that would not be classified as paranoia.
An average, unimportant Joe who thinks that a multi-national corporation has marshalled all its resources to destroy him, personally... that would suggest delusions of grandeur, and could be called a type of paranoia, I guess.
People who set their browsers to refuse all cookies out of fear that the "corporatocracy" wants to know everything about them, down to what color underwear they are wearing... those guys are paranoid! Oh... Uh... Sorry Jon, I didn't mean you. Really.
Microsoft was brought down? When did I miss that!? Just this morning it was one of the biggest tech companies in the world... right up there with Oracle.
Also, when was Lyndon Johnson "brought low" by his hubris? He might be my least favorite president of the 20th Century, but he served as president from 63 up until 68... nearly two full terms, and remained a highly-esteemed ex-president ever since.
One final nit-pick: In the article you said, "This book and story give credence to the old saw that has it that just because you're paranoid about somebody doesn't mean you're wrong."
That's not quite how the "old saw" in question goes. It should read, "just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
IANAP (I Am Not A Psychologist), but I don't think you can be paranoid "about somebody". Paranoia is a mental state of delusional grandeur and persecution in which you are irrationally suspicious of others. Fear of one person being after you is not paranoia, it's just worry.
Thing happens, and here's a logical explanation of WHY and HOW it happened. Thing happens, because it's MAGIC! And quit asking questions! (not knocking on Fantasy here, I love it)
A fair definition, but what separates really good science fiction from space opera and action films is that good science fiction follows its own rules. Once the speculative science is explained, you should not see something happen that contradicts it. This is why ST, Star Wars, and The Matrix are not really well-thought-out as science fiction, even though they are a lot of fun to watch.
Most people who really love Star Trek enjoy what it has to say about society more than as a work of speculative imagination. The Next Gen episode "The Quality of Life" is an example: Data is confronted with the belief that a small group of robots are sentient beings, even though the evidence is ambiguous at best. Finding no option but to act according to his beliefs, he endangers his friends to protect them... a risky and brave episode that actually made a case to justify people who block the entrances to abortion clinics... all disguised as a simple story about robots in space. Other issues, like race relations, gay rights, and religion are broached.
Once in a while, an episode gets in the hands of less-skilled writers, and instead of simply confronting difficult issues, the show becomes preachy and heavy-handed... but more often than not, it is done fairly well.
So yes, it can be a fairly serious show... but when you call it "serious science fiction", I am going to laugh at you. Sorry.
P.S. As an author, you should do yourself a favor and read some sci fi works from better writers (starting with Asimov). If you write a story, and then just hang some random psuedo-science off it as window-dressing, you end up with a story that has a lot that it does not need. Too many writers do this, becuase they thing space or robots or time-travel might help their work sell better than it would if it rested on just their talents. If you are not interested in the science, do us all a favor and don't write sci-fi.
Re:Wow, this is just the Wrongness Thread.
on
ST:TMP Fixer Upper
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· Score: 1
The part that always amused me is the way that all ships, everywhere, seemed to be on the exact attitudinal plane, as if "up" was a universally agreed-upon constant among all races.
It helped give the show its nautical feel, but it also removed any real plausibility.
A few particularly amusing elements that resulted:
-- The classic "two dimensional thinking" scene in Wrath of Khan, where Spock and Kirk fool Khan by flying "under" his ship... still flying with the same side "up" at all times.
-- The wreckage from the Borg attack on earth at "Wolf 359", or whatever. We knew the ships were destroyed because the were not upright.
-- Klingon Bird-of-prey ships seem to slope forward slightly to make them look more aggressive.
Very fun and entertaining, but not science fiction, really.
The "renegade" version is not true to the director's original vision, either.
In the theatrical release of Highlander, the immortals are revealed to have come from a distant planet. Fans of the first movie universally agreed that this was a stupid idea.
The director, reacting to the criticism, looped new dialogue into the scenes on the other planet to imply that they immortals come from "the past". Never mind that it totally fucks up the chronology of the story, or that it makes even less sense than the "alien" explanation of the immortals and their special abilities.
The entire conflict in Highlander II (either version) was inspired by the writers' foggy understanding of the ozone-layer problems that scientists were beginning to discover.
As if that wasn't bad enough, Sean Connery was brought back, since he was a major element in marketing the first movie, even though his character was already dead! He agreed (for a huge ammount of money) to only a few days of shooting, so there are only a handful of scenes (none of which add anything to the plot) stitched clumsilly onto the movie.
It was one of the worst movies I have ever seen.
When H3 was made, they proved that they had no idea why H2 was so bad, by assuming that all the franchise really needed to be saved was another punk-rocker villian with a gravelly voice.
Filmed on his credit card, yes... but it takes a lot of money to DISTRIBUTE a film, and for that he needed backing from money people. If he didn't get that kind of backing, you never would have seen the movie.
Re:so what happens in the uncut version of Abyss?
on
ST:TMP Fixer Upper
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· Score: 1
Rent the disk on a dull day, and see for yourself. It makes much more sense and has some pretty nice eye-candy, although the story is kind of lame.
If you are desperate for a plot summary, you can always go to IMDB.
Yes, and people involved in past movies will write magazine columns about how the scenes with the Enterprise in the dock really ruined the experience.;)
The reports I had heard at the time of the release implied a much less conciliatory attitude on Cameron's part.
Without the climax (and the various tidal wave shots), the story pretty much ammounts to:
Aliens arrive, trashing a sub on their way to the sea floor. Oil rig crew and Navy Seals check it out. Navy Seal goes crazy, almost blows everything up. Hero is brought into alien ship... aliens say "hello" Spaceship suddenly rises to the surface, and everybody is happy. End credits.
It makes no damned sense at all. Why were the aliens there? Why were they haning out on the sea floor? Why is the weather so severe that huge navy destroyers are nervous about being there? Why did they suddenly surface? etc. etc. etc.
Obviously, Cameron is playing nice, staying friendly with the people responsible for ruining The Abyss made it easier for him to get backing for his next two big-budget projects, Terminator 2 and Titanic.
Often times when a film runs out of money during production, the insurance companies that backed it take ownership, and the decision is no longer in the hands of the creative forces behind it.
Even if they don't go bankrupt, the producers will still be very eager to get back in the black with whatever they have, no matter what the director wants... and most director's will try to cooperate with the chop-job, so they have at least some control over a film that is about to go out with their name on it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't believe me, take a really good speaker system that can do fairly flat reproductions up to about 24KHz, and play a good analog source through it (like a 1" two-track reel-to-reel tape of a live string quartet performance). Then, put a filter on the line from the source that cuts out everything above 15KHz.
Unless you are nearly deaf from regularilly listening to Metallica at high volumes, you will hear the difference immediately.
Top-of-the-line CD players have gotten better at "faking it" through better interpolation and error correction math since CD's were first released in the 80's, so most of the critics who used to complain about the "sterile" digital sound and rave about vinyl have come around to realize that digital recordings can achieve very high standards... but a higher sampling rate would still be better. (And the whole hi-fi hobby is all about the never-ending effort to create a more-perfect illusion of the original performance.)
16-bit 44.1 was a compromise choice. They wanted a small disk to be able to reproduce 74 minutes of music with available storage technology. DVD Audio may be way more than you really need, but CD audio is slightly less than what picky listeners want.
On issues of exessive copyright, he has been on the side of the White Hats almost every time, and is probably the best friend the "anti-record company" crowd has in Congress at the moment.
In order to have communism, all members of society must contribute to society according to their ability to do so. (As in, "from each, according to his means, to each, according to his needs.")
Since the vast majority of the users of Linux, Apache, and other free software products are passive consumers, who do not even so much as bother to submit bug reports, this is clearly not the case.
Open Source development can therefore be considered an act of benevolence or charity... offering to share the fruits of thier labor and knowledge with the world, knowing full-well that most of the world will do nothing for them in exchange.
If the open source movement was about communism, then every farmer who owns a Linux box would be giving their food away.
As if that's not bad enough, he actually suggested that a book about cybersex might make a better Valentine's Day gift for your partner than flowers.
What woman could possibly want to get something like that!?
What do you suggest for an aniversary present, Jon? A copy of the Kinsey Report!?
Heh heh. A guy in my office got your encoded message, and shared it with everybody here. :)
Then the singular form must be "virum". :)
The story doesn't matter much to Mac users, because Darwin is a "fringe" product from their perspective. One Darwin engineer leaving Apple's payroll does not impact the future of OS X very much.
The story is of interest to the Linux-ish crowd because Darwin is YAFUC (Yet Another Free Unix Clone). Once OS X ships, it will probably become the most-used BSD-based OS in the world within a matter of months, and since Darwin is a Free-Beer-Free-Speech spin-off built with the same kernel, a lot of BSD hackers are going to be interested in it.
Playing with the language is common dry geek humor. (You can find plenty of Jargon File entries about this if you take the time to look.)
Some people amuse themselves by saying "virii". Get over it.
Try parsing the meaning of what I was saying, instead of making knee-jerk reactions.
By "major isp's", I was referring to ISP's that serve a lot of private cutomers... AOL, Juno, Qwest, MSN, etc. etc. not spine providers and business-centered ISP's like uu.net and mr.net
"Most viruses are made by the anti-virus industry."
A popular spin-off: "Most free porn on the internet is published by the makers of filter software."
Very amusing to think so, but there are enough scipt kiddies and porno distributers out there that there is really no need. Why spend your own resources creating the "problem" that sells your product, when so many people are doing it for you for free?
Look for a Jon Katz article about The Rise of the Open Source Conspiracy Method sometime soon. :)
You just spotted the answer to "what's wrong with this picture?" faster than anybody here. Way to go! :)
If it looks like spam, but comes from a major ISP, and is delivered to only one person, it is a fairly good guess that it is really a coded message.
The only way to avoid your message being parsed out from somebody who is really looking for it would be to actually spam a few thousand people though the usual spam channels... which means we can all expect lots more messages advertizing pyramid schemes and satelite TV systems in the near future, just so Bin Laden can chat with his pen-pals.
That's just swell.
An average, unimportant Joe who thinks that a multi-national corporation has marshalled all its resources to destroy him, personally... that would suggest delusions of grandeur, and could be called a type of paranoia, I guess.
People who set their browsers to refuse all cookies out of fear that the "corporatocracy" wants to know everything about them, down to what color underwear they are wearing... those guys are paranoid! Oh... Uh... Sorry Jon, I didn't mean you. Really.
When a writer misuses a word that badly, he deserves to be laughed at.
Microsoft was brought down? When did I miss that!? Just this morning it was one of the biggest tech companies in the world... right up there with Oracle.
Also, when was Lyndon Johnson "brought low" by his hubris? He might be my least favorite president of the 20th Century, but he served as president from 63 up until 68... nearly two full terms, and remained a highly-esteemed ex-president ever since.
One final nit-pick: In the article you said, "This book and story give credence to the old saw that has it that just because you're paranoid about somebody doesn't mean you're wrong."
That's not quite how the "old saw" in question goes. It should read, "just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
IANAP (I Am Not A Psychologist), but I don't think you can be paranoid "about somebody". Paranoia is a mental state of delusional grandeur and persecution in which you are irrationally suspicious of others. Fear of one person being after you is not paranoia, it's just worry.
Thing happens, because it's MAGIC! And quit asking questions! (not knocking on Fantasy here, I love it)
A fair definition, but what separates really good science fiction from space opera and action films is that good science fiction follows its own rules. Once the speculative science is explained, you should not see something happen that contradicts it. This is why ST, Star Wars, and The Matrix are not really well-thought-out as science fiction, even though they are a lot of fun to watch.
Most people who really love Star Trek enjoy what it has to say about society more than as a work of speculative imagination. The Next Gen episode "The Quality of Life" is an example: Data is confronted with the belief that a small group of robots are sentient beings, even though the evidence is ambiguous at best. Finding no option but to act according to his beliefs, he endangers his friends to protect them... a risky and brave episode that actually made a case to justify people who block the entrances to abortion clinics... all disguised as a simple story about robots in space. Other issues, like race relations, gay rights, and religion are broached.
Once in a while, an episode gets in the hands of less-skilled writers, and instead of simply confronting difficult issues, the show becomes preachy and heavy-handed... but more often than not, it is done fairly well.
So yes, it can be a fairly serious show... but when you call it "serious science fiction", I am going to laugh at you. Sorry.
P.S. As an author, you should do yourself a favor and read some sci fi works from better writers (starting with Asimov). If you write a story, and then just hang some random psuedo-science off it as window-dressing, you end up with a story that has a lot that it does not need. Too many writers do this, becuase they thing space or robots or time-travel might help their work sell better than it would if it rested on just their talents. If you are not interested in the science, do us all a favor and don't write sci-fi.
It helped give the show its nautical feel, but it also removed any real plausibility.
A few particularly amusing elements that resulted:
-- The classic "two dimensional thinking" scene in Wrath of Khan, where Spock and Kirk fool Khan by flying "under" his ship... still flying with the same side "up" at all times.
-- The wreckage from the Borg attack on earth at "Wolf 359", or whatever. We knew the ships were destroyed because the were not upright.
-- Klingon Bird-of-prey ships seem to slope forward slightly to make them look more aggressive.
Very fun and entertaining, but not science fiction, really.
The "renegade" version is not true to the director's original vision, either.
In the theatrical release of Highlander, the immortals are revealed to have come from a distant planet. Fans of the first movie universally agreed that this was a stupid idea.
The director, reacting to the criticism, looped new dialogue into the scenes on the other planet to imply that they immortals come from "the past". Never mind that it totally fucks up the chronology of the story, or that it makes even less sense than the "alien" explanation of the immortals and their special abilities.
The entire conflict in Highlander II (either version) was inspired by the writers' foggy understanding of the ozone-layer problems that scientists were beginning to discover.
As if that wasn't bad enough, Sean Connery was brought back, since he was a major element in marketing the first movie, even though his character was already dead! He agreed (for a huge ammount of money) to only a few days of shooting, so there are only a handful of scenes (none of which add anything to the plot) stitched clumsilly onto the movie.
It was one of the worst movies I have ever seen.
When H3 was made, they proved that they had no idea why H2 was so bad, by assuming that all the franchise really needed to be saved was another punk-rocker villian with a gravelly voice.
Filmed on his credit card, yes... but it takes a lot of money to DISTRIBUTE a film, and for that he needed backing from money people. If he didn't get that kind of backing, you never would have seen the movie.
If you are desperate for a plot summary, you can always go to IMDB.
Yes, and people involved in past movies will write magazine columns about how the scenes with the Enterprise in the dock really ruined the experience. ;)
That comment reminds me of the old man in the bank in "Raising Arizona":
"Well which is it, sonny? You want we should freeze or you want we should get down on the ground?"
A little news flash: Star Trek was never serious science fiction. It was Wagon Train in space.
Without the climax (and the various tidal wave shots), the story pretty much ammounts to:
Aliens arrive, trashing a sub on their way to the sea floor.
Oil rig crew and Navy Seals check it out.
Navy Seal goes crazy, almost blows everything up.
Hero is brought into alien ship... aliens say "hello"
Spaceship suddenly rises to the surface, and everybody is happy.
End credits.
It makes no damned sense at all. Why were the aliens there? Why were they haning out on the sea floor? Why is the weather so severe that huge navy destroyers are nervous about being there? Why did they suddenly surface? etc. etc. etc.
Obviously, Cameron is playing nice, staying friendly with the people responsible for ruining The Abyss made it easier for him to get backing for his next two big-budget projects, Terminator 2 and Titanic.
Even if they don't go bankrupt, the producers will still be very eager to get back in the black with whatever they have, no matter what the director wants... and most director's will try to cooperate with the chop-job, so they have at least some control over a film that is about to go out with their name on it.