In spite of the hostile tone of most of your post, I wish you were modded up to 5 for that comment alone.
As a musician totally agree that many musicians (especially pop musicians) have a distorted view of their craft as a result of the last Century of music copyright laws.
My chosen medium, if I could afford it, would be digital.
You can. Direct-to-HD recording has come of age, and is beginning to replace mid-to-low-end reel tapes. Check out the some of the PCI digital input rackmounts on the market.
My Rush CD's, for example, just seem to be thinner and quieter than the vinyl used to be.
No album from Rush ever had good sound quality in any medium. People listen to Rush because they are masters of their craft, but most of their albums are mush.
That's because, as it says on the label, the digital recording reveals the inherent limitations of analog tape.
No, it's because the inexpensive RIAA pre-amp in your cheap turntable adds an artificial "warmth" to the low end. 70's rock producers often compensated for that by backing off the lows on the master tapes, because they knew that their albums would be played on such systems a lot. When those albums were released on CD's, that extra bit of "boom" was gone, and people noticed that the bass was a little thin. Later CD's did not have this problem. It was never the main criticism of the digital sound, though. Most digital-haters claimed (rightly) that early CD players fucked up the high frequencies. It was thought, at the time, that this was due to the limits of the sampling rate... but this has turned out to not be the case. While a higher sampling rate would not hurt, the main problem was lossy D/A conversion. Newer CD players sound much better in the high ranges.
And I'll take your double-blind test anytime. I can _always_ tell the digital from the analog.
I didn't say you wouldn't. I was saying that with a good turntable and a set of speakers that can handle it, you will like the sound of the records better. If you mostly listen to stuff like Pearl Jam, you may not be familiar with the Scheffield Lab catalog. Their albums are rare treasures, but if you can get a chance to hear Lincoln Mayorga's "Volume III" album on a no-compromise system, you will hear sounds that no CD player has ever managed to reproduce as realistically.
As for The Moscow Sessions I was talking about, Scheffield went and recorded 3 albums for the Moscow symphony. They used their classic analog Lathe, and the very best digital recording device available side-by-side. The analog disk was used to cut the vinyl, the digital master was used for the CD's.
The CD's are universally regarded as 3 of the best sounding symphonic CD's ever recorded, yet the vinyl sounds even better, according to nearly every listener who has experienced both.
Your Star Wars disk is not an honest AB test. They wanted you to think you were getting something extra, so they were a little less than careful in the transfer of the analog soundtrack. It's kind of like the stereo dealers in the 60's who would sabotage floor room speakers, in order to make sure the one with the biggest mark-up is the one that sounds best to you. (This still goes on sometimes, which is why you should never buy expensive speakers without first evaluating them in your own home.)
Open the source code of one of your other projects, and print out the C code that describes the behavior just one button (along with any functions it activates).
Some unpleasant thoughts on the divide between the techies and the non-techies...
Computers are gadgets that require specific instructions to reach specific objectives.
People who know how to give specific instructions and objectives often become programmers, because they are well-suited to the work.
Non-programmers are often people incapable of expressing ideas with the mathematical accuracy that computers require. That's why they hire programmers.
If you are a programmer working directly under a non-programmer boss, it is your job to translate between their fuzzy ideas and the computer's concrete logic.
Programmers who can make this difficult transition are the ones who get paid huge salaries to be project leaders.
Programmers who can't do it are probably better off working for one of those project leaders, so they will be safely isolated from the sort of people who picked on them in Junior High School.
True, but it used a pre-Quake engine (the one from Dark Forces), and did not support 3D cards until Lucas released a patch. Still, the ammunition factor and the way the different guns behaved made this one of the most fun FPS games ever, not to mention that it had one of the better story lines in the history of the FPS genre.
We will have to agree to disagree, then. Not only do I never go back and play Doom today, I didn't think it was anything special back then.
Outlaws was my favorite pre-true-3D shooter, and I still play that once in a while, but when Quake and the various Quake-alikes came along, Doom was off my HD, never to be seen again.
Therefore "it's all shit." You notice his date for the death of the good "hi-fi" - 10 years ago. No one uses the term "hi-fi" anymore. Hi-fi died about the time it became impossible to buy new music on vinyl and the CD took over.
Was that a troll, or are you just ignorant?
First of all, hi-fi audio is alive and well. My B&W speakers (bought last December) would fool Yo Yo Ma into thinking another cello player was in the room that sounded just like him.
You can still buy records of every major release... you just gotta know how.
As for the whole analog-vs-digital debate - both sides spread a crapload of FUD about each other.
Most of the problems that early critics of CD's thought were built-in limitations of digital turned out to be the result of poor D/A conversion, inferior CD player components, and lossy error correction algorythms.
Today, a $350 Rotel CD player can easilly compete with the warm, full sound of the finest turntables available... even the most die-hard vinyl junkie will admit it.
That said, a simple double-blind test of "The Moscow Sessions" from Scheffield Labs can quickly demonstrate that direct-to-disk 2-track analog recording is still far superior to the state of the art in digital recording. There is no room for debate that Scheffield is the state of the art in both platforms. Doug Sax, the owner fo Sheffield Labs, probably oversaw the mastering phase of half the CD's you own, and you will never meet a bigger cheerleader for vinyl than him.
For purists, analog is still the way to go, but digital can give you Damn Good Sound for a fraction of the price of properly implemented analog.
Bah! I totally disagree. Doom was Wolfenstein with a lot more of the color red used. Sure, you could play against 3 other people, but it really was not much of an advance over the "3D Pac Man" game I played on my old Commodore.
When Quake came along, it allowed you look up and down, and shoot independently of which way you were facing. It required you to actually aim your weapon once in a while, rather than just pound on the control key every time you see a few pixels moving in front of you. That, and the ability to play in huge deathmatches, made it much more immersive. Doom never succeeded in creating the illusion of being in the action for me.
Even the "two-and-a-half-D" games (Marathon, Dark Forces, Outlaws, Duke Nukem 3D, etc.) were vastly superior to Doom. The only reason Doom stayed on top was because there were so many keyboard-jockeys that had invested hours and hours into developing their Doom "skillz", who did not want to adapt to games where they were newbies once again.
Unfortunately, what got me hooked on the FPS games was the network gaming. A human opponent is still far more interesting than a room full of bots.
The stealth games like Deus Ex are pretty cool, but lack of human interaction means I will get bored with it and move on before long. Network games like Everquest, UT, and so on tend to have a lot more longevity.
Story-driven games like Diablo are really only impressive until you complete the story, then they are really dull. Vampire:The Masquerade looks like it is pointing in the right direction, in that a game master can create new interactive stories for a group of networked players. I hope we will see more titles along this line of thinging soon.
This rumor was posted on LEM by "Anne Onymus". If you bothered to check the other "rumors" from the same writer, you would have noticed that Low End Mac's "Rumor Mill" is a PARODY SITE!!!
Dan Knight, publisher of LEM, does not take Apple rumors seriously, and under the name Anne Onymous he pokes fun at the rumor sites on a fairly regular basis.
Aaaagh! What is it with USians using the term "Xtasy"? For the love of God, it's "Ecstacy" or "pills". And it's E, not X too. *grrr*
Oh, my. It seems that you need lessons in both geography and jargon.
First of all, its "Americans", not "USians." We live in the United States of America.
The continent with Canada, Mexico and the USA is not called "America", it is called "North America."
There is no continent that is just called America. There is only North America and South America. The two continents together are occationally called "the Americas" (sort of like people sometimes say "Eurasia"), but they are not called "America".
(The stip of land from Mexico to Panama is often infomally called "Central America", but it is not really a separate continent.)
Canadians are not called Americans. Many Canadians would be mildly offended if you did call them that. They are called either "Canadians" or "North Americans".
"NAFTA" stands for North America Free Trade Agreement; it is not called "AFTA", because that would imply that America is the only country involved.
As for Exctacy being called "E" rather than "X", the correct name for it is "3,4-METHYLENEDIOXY-N-METHYLAMPHETAMINE", and all other names for it are made-up slang. You can call it E, X, Xtacy, MDMA, "the hug drug", or whatever the hell you want. Just because people in your little tiny corner of the world agree that it should be called "E", does not mean that it goes by that name elsewhere.
What is the lifetime of the proton and how can we understand it?
I have found answers to the following questions:
Ask What is playing on the TV channel or network "Lifetime"?
Okay, I still don't know much about how long a proton lasts, but I do know that Janine Turner is starring with Rosa Blasi on Lifetime's brand-new drama seried "Strong Medicine". Gosh, I really liked her in "Northern Exposure".
Thanks, Jeeves, for reminding me what the really important questions are... Who needs science or religion or philosophy when we have the steadfast cathode ray of the TV tube to enlighten us?
Why is this such a clear-cut case of infringement on the rights over intellectual property, while the Napster snafu was/is not?
1. Napster was a search engine, not an archive. 2. Contentville is a pay-per service; Napster is free and paid for by ads. 3. Napster has made no attempt to gain legal control of the content; Contentville wants their database to have copyright protection.
I'm not saying that Napster shouldn't get spanked. Maybe they should... that's what the courts are supposed to work out.
I'm saying that this is why the Napster issue has so much room for dispute while Contentville is, and you said, a "clear-cut case of infringement".
These companies are in Congress right now lobbying for a law to protect databases - that is, to make re-using information from places such as Contentville illegal. Not just copying the information, but even using any of the data or facts from databases would be illegal.
Since they obviously pulled these off various University databases themselves, I can distinctly hear the sound of the proverbial shit heading towards the fan blades.
So, should we go back to the ideals of the founding fathers that state that all citizens can adn should vote, but only male, white landowners are true citizens?
No.
What we should do is keep voting laws just at they are, in that all adult citizens (who are not felons) have the right to vote if they choose to do so.
My point was that the choice to not vote is a valid choice, and what is more, for some people it is the wiser choice. All that "Rock the Vote" propaganda is really just encouraging people who sit and watch MTV all day to go out and vote for whoever they think is "cooler".
Not voting is a fundamental right. Don't let anybody browbeat you into thinking it is your "civic duty" to vote; if you are unsure about your choice of candidate, you can choose to accept the decision of the majority without including your own uncertain input. Don't let anybody tell you "if you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain"; your First Amendment rights are not invalidated because you did not participate in an election.
And by the way, here's a little tidbit that a lot of people don't know:
You do NOT have to fill out every part of a ballot for your vote to count! If you vote this year on the Presidential election (Gore, Bush, Browne, Nader, whoever), and there is also a peon county judge election on the ballot, you can ignore that section if you have no f*ing clue who either of those people are.
Here in Minnesota, we have a common problem that we call the "Scandanavian Name Principle". Basicly, if two people are running for City Council or State Representative during a big national election, the one with a name like "Carlson" will almost always win over somebody with a non-Scandinavian last name. This is because schmuck that were practically shoved into the voting boths by Get Out The Vote efforts, and only know who the two big party Presidential candidates are (sort of), think they need to fill out the rest of the ballot for it to count, so they pick people down the rest of the ballot using really strange criteria, such as familiar-sounding last names.
So please allow me to be the only person who tells you not to bother voting if you are not up on the issues, and if you do vote, not to vote on smaller elections that you know nothing about.
If anything, online voting should encourage voter turnout, which is a Good Thing.
This is one of the worst myths in the American political landscape, that more voters is always good news.
Since I have no polling data handy, please allow me to illustrate my point using wholly made-up numbers. Even if they are completely wrong, it has little do do with my point...
Let's imagine for a moment that 60% of the US popuation is politically active and engaged. They follow the news, they pay attention to what their local government is doing, they know who their representatives are. (Perhaps too big of a number, but like I said, this is just an illustration.)
This group of is divided into a few distinct camps: 30% loyal Republicans, 30% loyal Democtrats, and 40% "swing" voters who may go either way or vote 3rd party. These swing voters therefore represent a little over 20% of the US voting-age population. In a low-turnout year, the candidate who presents the better case for election to this 20% of the population will usually win.
But in a high turn-out year, a large part of the other 40% of the US, (the Jerry Springer watching, clueless, pro wrestling fan) shows up and votes for the candidate with who appeals to them more for really stupid reasons (better looks, funnier jokes, uses a better OS on their web page, etc.) These people can actually overwhelm the input of the informed voters, and elect a total boob.
When the sufferage movement finally won votes for women, Warren Harding (who was not well-liked by the sufferage leaders) won by a landslide, in part because he took most of the female vote. When polls were taken, sufferagists were dismayed by the news that many women voted for Harding "because he's so handsome".
Slashdot Mirror
F*ing troll.
I bought this book from the bargain rack at Barnes & Noble over a month ago. It mostly contains reviews that were written prior to 1998.
It's not even close to being a "new book".
In spite of the hostile tone of most of your post, I wish you were modded up to 5 for that comment alone.
As a musician totally agree that many musicians (especially pop musicians) have a distorted view of their craft as a result of the last Century of music copyright laws.
Preach on!
Heh heh. Sometimes you are far better off with a manager who does not attempt to understand what you are doing. :)
Alexander Pope said it best: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
You can. Direct-to-HD recording has come of age, and is beginning to replace mid-to-low-end reel tapes. Check out the some of the PCI digital input rackmounts on the market.
My Rush CD's, for example, just seem to be thinner and quieter than the vinyl used to be.
No album from Rush ever had good sound quality in any medium. People listen to Rush because they are masters of their craft, but most of their albums are mush.
That's because, as it says on the label, the digital recording reveals the inherent limitations of analog tape.
No, it's because the inexpensive RIAA pre-amp in your cheap turntable adds an artificial "warmth" to the low end. 70's rock producers often compensated for that by backing off the lows on the master tapes, because they knew that their albums would be played on such systems a lot. When those albums were released on CD's, that extra bit of "boom" was gone, and people noticed that the bass was a little thin. Later CD's did not have this problem. It was never the main criticism of the digital sound, though. Most digital-haters claimed (rightly) that early CD players fucked up the high frequencies. It was thought, at the time, that this was due to the limits of the sampling rate... but this has turned out to not be the case. While a higher sampling rate would not hurt, the main problem was lossy D/A conversion. Newer CD players sound much better in the high ranges.
And I'll take your double-blind test anytime. I can _always_ tell the digital from the analog.
I didn't say you wouldn't. I was saying that with a good turntable and a set of speakers that can handle it, you will like the sound of the records better. If you mostly listen to stuff like Pearl Jam, you may not be familiar with the Scheffield Lab catalog. Their albums are rare treasures, but if you can get a chance to hear Lincoln Mayorga's "Volume III" album on a no-compromise system, you will hear sounds that no CD player has ever managed to reproduce as realistically.
As for The Moscow Sessions I was talking about, Scheffield went and recorded 3 albums for the Moscow symphony. They used their classic analog Lathe, and the very best digital recording device available side-by-side. The analog disk was used to cut the vinyl, the digital master was used for the CD's.
The CD's are universally regarded as 3 of the best sounding symphonic CD's ever recorded, yet the vinyl sounds even better, according to nearly every listener who has experienced both.
Your Star Wars disk is not an honest AB test. They wanted you to think you were getting something extra, so they were a little less than careful in the transfer of the analog soundtrack. It's kind of like the stereo dealers in the 60's who would sabotage floor room speakers, in order to make sure the one with the biggest mark-up is the one that sounds best to you. (This still goes on sometimes, which is why you should never buy expensive speakers without first evaluating them in your own home.)
That oughta shut her up. :)
Computers are gadgets that require specific instructions to reach specific objectives.
People who know how to give specific instructions and objectives often become programmers, because they are well-suited to the work.
Non-programmers are often people incapable of expressing ideas with the mathematical accuracy that computers require. That's why they hire programmers.
If you are a programmer working directly under a non-programmer boss, it is your job to translate between their fuzzy ideas and the computer's concrete logic.
Programmers who can make this difficult transition are the ones who get paid huge salaries to be project leaders.
Programmers who can't do it are probably better off working for one of those project leaders, so they will be safely isolated from the sort of people who picked on them in Junior High School.
True, but it used a pre-Quake engine (the one from Dark Forces), and did not support 3D cards until Lucas released a patch. Still, the ammunition factor and the way the different guns behaved made this one of the most fun FPS games ever, not to mention that it had one of the better story lines in the history of the FPS genre.
Outlaws was my favorite pre-true-3D shooter, and I still play that once in a while, but when Quake and the various Quake-alikes came along, Doom was off my HD, never to be seen again.
Was that a troll, or are you just ignorant?
First of all, hi-fi audio is alive and well. My B&W speakers (bought last December) would fool Yo Yo Ma into thinking another cello player was in the room that sounded just like him.
You can still buy records of every major release... you just gotta know how.
As for the whole analog-vs-digital debate - both sides spread a crapload of FUD about each other.
Most of the problems that early critics of CD's thought were built-in limitations of digital turned out to be the result of poor D/A conversion, inferior CD player components, and lossy error correction algorythms.
Today, a $350 Rotel CD player can easilly compete with the warm, full sound of the finest turntables available... even the most die-hard vinyl junkie will admit it.
That said, a simple double-blind test of "The Moscow Sessions" from Scheffield Labs can quickly demonstrate that direct-to-disk 2-track analog recording is still far superior to the state of the art in digital recording. There is no room for debate that Scheffield is the state of the art in both platforms. Doug Sax, the owner fo Sheffield Labs, probably oversaw the mastering phase of half the CD's you own, and you will never meet a bigger cheerleader for vinyl than him.
For purists, analog is still the way to go, but digital can give you Damn Good Sound for a fraction of the price of properly implemented analog.
When Quake came along, it allowed you look up and down, and shoot independently of which way you were facing. It required you to actually aim your weapon once in a while, rather than just pound on the control key every time you see a few pixels moving in front of you. That, and the ability to play in huge deathmatches, made it much more immersive. Doom never succeeded in creating the illusion of being in the action for me.
Even the "two-and-a-half-D" games (Marathon, Dark Forces, Outlaws, Duke Nukem 3D, etc.) were vastly superior to Doom. The only reason Doom stayed on top was because there were so many keyboard-jockeys that had invested hours and hours into developing their Doom "skillz", who did not want to adapt to games where they were newbies once again.
The stealth games like Deus Ex are pretty cool, but lack of human interaction means I will get bored with it and move on before long. Network games like Everquest, UT, and so on tend to have a lot more longevity.
Story-driven games like Diablo are really only impressive until you complete the story, then they are really dull. Vampire:The Masquerade looks like it is pointing in the right direction, in that a game master can create new interactive stories for a group of networked players. I hope we will see more titles along this line of thinging soon.
Heh heh. It includes talk of putting them into a 19" wide version of the iBook.
(Emphasis added by me)
This rumor was posted on LEM by "Anne Onymus". If you bothered to check the other "rumors" from the same writer, you would have noticed that Low End Mac's "Rumor Mill" is a PARODY SITE!!!
Dan Knight, publisher of LEM, does not take Apple rumors seriously, and under the name Anne Onymous he pokes fun at the rumor sites on a fairly regular basis.
In other words, YHBT YHL HAND.
In yer face, Slashdot editors! (Hehehe)
Oh, my. It seems that you need lessons in both geography and jargon.
First of all, its "Americans", not "USians." We live in the United States of America.
The continent with Canada, Mexico and the USA is not called "America", it is called "North America."
There is no continent that is just called America. There is only North America and South America. The two continents together are occationally called "the Americas" (sort of like people sometimes say "Eurasia"), but they are not called "America".
(The stip of land from Mexico to Panama is often infomally called "Central America", but it is not really a separate continent.)
Canadians are not called Americans. Many Canadians would be mildly offended if you did call them that. They are called either "Canadians" or "North Americans".
"NAFTA" stands for North America Free Trade Agreement; it is not called "AFTA", because that would imply that America is the only country involved.
As for Exctacy being called "E" rather than "X", the correct name for it is "3,4-METHYLENEDIOXY-N-METHYLAMPHETAMINE", and all other names for it are made-up slang. You can call it E, X, Xtacy, MDMA, "the hug drug", or whatever the hell you want. Just because people in your little tiny corner of the world agree that it should be called "E", does not mean that it goes by that name elsewhere.
I have found answers to the following questions:
Ask What is playing on the TV channel or network "Lifetime"?
Okay, I still don't know much about how long a proton lasts, but I do know that Janine Turner is starring with Rosa Blasi on Lifetime's brand-new drama seried "Strong Medicine". Gosh, I really liked her in "Northern Exposure".
Thanks, Jeeves, for reminding me what the really important questions are... Who needs science or religion or philosophy when we have the steadfast cathode ray of the TV tube to enlighten us?
I am not saying "don't do it", I'm just saying "don't inform them of what you are doing". :)
1. Napster was a search engine, not an archive.
2. Contentville is a pay-per service; Napster is free and paid for by ads.
3. Napster has made no attempt to gain legal control of the content; Contentville wants their database to have copyright protection.
I'm not saying that Napster shouldn't get spanked. Maybe they should... that's what the courts are supposed to work out.
I'm saying that this is why the Napster issue has so much room for dispute while Contentville is, and you said, a "clear-cut case of infringement".
These companies are in Congress right now lobbying for a law to protect databases - that is, to make re-using information from places such as Contentville illegal. Not just copying the information, but even using any of the data or facts from databases would be illegal.
Since they obviously pulled these off various University databases themselves, I can distinctly hear the sound of the proverbial shit heading towards the fan blades.
No.
What we should do is keep voting laws just at they are, in that all adult citizens (who are not felons) have the right to vote if they choose to do so.
My point was that the choice to not vote is a valid choice, and what is more, for some people it is the wiser choice. All that "Rock the Vote" propaganda is really just encouraging people who sit and watch MTV all day to go out and vote for whoever they think is "cooler".
Not voting is a fundamental right. Don't let anybody browbeat you into thinking it is your "civic duty" to vote; if you are unsure about your choice of candidate, you can choose to accept the decision of the majority without including your own uncertain input. Don't let anybody tell you "if you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain"; your First Amendment rights are not invalidated because you did not participate in an election.
And by the way, here's a little tidbit that a lot of people don't know:
You do NOT have to fill out every part of a ballot for your vote to count! If you vote this year on the Presidential election (Gore, Bush, Browne, Nader, whoever), and there is also a peon county judge election on the ballot, you can ignore that section if you have no f*ing clue who either of those people are.
Here in Minnesota, we have a common problem that we call the "Scandanavian Name Principle". Basicly, if two people are running for City Council or State Representative during a big national election, the one with a name like "Carlson" will almost always win over somebody with a non-Scandinavian last name. This is because schmuck that were practically shoved into the voting boths by Get Out The Vote efforts, and only know who the two big party Presidential candidates are (sort of), think they need to fill out the rest of the ballot for it to count, so they pick people down the rest of the ballot using really strange criteria, such as familiar-sounding last names.
So please allow me to be the only person who tells you not to bother voting if you are not up on the issues, and if you do vote, not to vote on smaller elections that you know nothing about.
I mentioned the chance of uninformed voters electing a "total boob", and your response sounds like you assumed I meant a third-party candidate. :)
No, but my comment was posted for the benifit of those who do. :)
This is one of the worst myths in the American political landscape, that more voters is always good news.
Since I have no polling data handy, please allow me to illustrate my point using wholly made-up numbers. Even if they are completely wrong, it has little do do with my point...
Let's imagine for a moment that 60% of the US popuation is politically active and engaged. They follow the news, they pay attention to what their local government is doing, they know who their representatives are. (Perhaps too big of a number, but like I said, this is just an illustration.)
This group of is divided into a few distinct camps: 30% loyal Republicans, 30% loyal Democtrats, and 40% "swing" voters who may go either way or vote 3rd party. These swing voters therefore represent a little over 20% of the US voting-age population. In a low-turnout year, the candidate who presents the better case for election to this 20% of the population will usually win.
But in a high turn-out year, a large part of the other 40% of the US, (the Jerry Springer watching, clueless, pro wrestling fan) shows up and votes for the candidate with who appeals to them more for really stupid reasons (better looks, funnier jokes, uses a better OS on their web page, etc.) These people can actually overwhelm the input of the informed voters, and elect a total boob.
When the sufferage movement finally won votes for women, Warren Harding (who was not well-liked by the sufferage leaders) won by a landslide, in part because he took most of the female vote. When polls were taken, sufferagists were dismayed by the news that many women voted for Harding "because he's so handsome".
I'm sure it is a great mercy to Tocqueville that he died long before you came along.