weeding out all the guys who just want to stand on stage and play parallel 5th powerchords so they can feel tough; rather than the type of people who have love music and have talent enough that they persevere with an instrument. It's just a filter that cuts out all the weeds.
Quit being a jerk. There's plenty of guys who play power chords not "so they can feel tough", but because they like the sound that is made. And if they're on stage, there's probably thousands of people in the audience that agree about the sounds.
To call a rock guitarist a musical "weed" for no other reason than that you don't like or understand the idiom is an insult to rock musicians and rock music fans everywhere. And there's a lot more of them than there are classical or jazz musicians or fans.
By the way, parallel 5ths haven't been "forbidden" in about 100 years now. Modern voice-leading rules are different from the ancient rules handed down in the "theory" classrooms.
And it is precisely what you said which makes guitarists to be considered so poorly by classical/jazz musicians.
And it is precisely what YOU said which makes classical/jazz musicians to be elitist dinosaurs by many other musicians.
a guitar has frets (so it's impossible to be out of tune)
Not impossible, just more difficult. There's still plenty of ways to play out of tune on a guitar, intentionally or not. For example, lateral pressure on the string -- "bending" -- will increase string tension between the fret and the bridge, raising pitch.
Let's complain that pianists are always in tune, while we're at it.
Whereas in the classical/jazz world, the mere fact that you have to commit to maybe 10 years of practice before you can play in public and not be laughed at means that you, on average, get a far better quality of music.
I don't respect the idea that Music is something that you have to spend a decade in a conservatory before you're qualified to create.
Music is for Everybody. The more people making it (or attempting to make it), the better.
AT&T is forwarding all of their call data to the NSA. The NSA doesn't need any super-cool tech in order to intercept this data since AT&T (and the other telecom companies) simply send this data directly to them.
That would only require AT&T to spend millions of dollars on additional infrastructure. AT&T being a business, they would fight the order tooth and nail. Has that happened?
I don't doubt that the NSA has massive surveillance resources, but they're not the fuckin' Illuminati for christ's sake. They're a government organization staffed by human beings, and as such they probably don't have their shit together enough to do all the shadowy things you think they're doing.
perhaps, we just need to put of a few signs at every protest and rally reading something along the lines of "Please remember to read the god damn Constitution and Bill of Rights before you do anything else."
What good would that do? The public doesn't care about protests and rallys, and the government sure doesn't care about them.
To the people that participate in them, rallys are an affirmation that other people share your views, therefore they must be correct, right? To the people that don't participate in them, rallys are mainly just a nuisance.
If you want real change, get out of Union Square Park, go home, and write to your congressmen and assemblymen instead.
The real problem is that the federal government has this power to begin with. The fact that they abuse it, is totally uninteresting, because it's so expected
Except the federal government DOESN'T have this power. At least not within the law. That's why we call it "abuse".
The problem is that there's no system in place to prevent such abuses before they happen. The courts can only intervene AFTER the damage has been done.
And we say "Current Administration" because... it's the CURRENT ADMINISTRATION. It's too late to worry about what previous administrations did, and too early to worry about future administrations.
If MS can start distributing Movies and TV shows through this thing, that will be HUGE. And it seems like it's just a matter of them negotiating it.
It will only happen if they are willing to cede control of the system to the users that are actually going to use it.
I should be able to stream any media format the 360 knows how to decode from any device the 360 can talk to over TCP/IP. I should NOT be limited to streaming DRM-encrusted files only from a Windows Media Center PC, license sold separately, or from Xbox Live's Official Media Download Area.
If Microsoft won't give me this, I will buy a secondhand modchipped Xbox1 and burn a copy of XPMC and build it myself.
it tracks where your child has been, and who s/he has been calling.
Or more accurately, it tracks where the child's PHONE has been.
If I'm a kid with paranoid, distrustful parents who give me one of these phones, and I want to rebel against them by playing hooky from school, I'm just going to put my phone in my locker and then jet. Or better yet, if school policy allows students to bring their phones into the classrooms, give my phone to a friend to carry around for the day so my psychotic mom and dad don't think I was just standing in front of my locker for 6 hours straight.
What about the thing that a lot of us actually want, virtualization from Apple, rumored to be in Leopard?
Will this lead to the same problem that killed OS/2? Where it was so seamless to run Windows 3.1 applications under OS/2, that nobody ever wrote any native OS/2 apps?
Then again, it's not like all that many OS X native apps are being written today, anyway (compared to WinXP native apps). And hey, I enjoyed the OS/2 Workplace Shell over Win3.1's Program Mangler regardless of which OS the apps were written for; as long as OS X provides a better working experience than Windows, I think application compatibility/OS virtualization can only be a benefit.
Windows setup prompts for an update-eligible install disk . Which you cannot provide since you're unable to eject the disk from your drive until you install the Apple driver package.
What if you have a second, external CD drive connected? Or are compatible USB/FireWire drivers not installed at that point either?
Alternate headline for this story: "Interest in Fucking Off Remains High".
Linux is objectively pretty great, but neither the technology nor the licensing is a perfect fit for all uses and applications. Advocates would do well to keep that in mind.
We, the people who live in those needy countries do not need cheap computers.
Sure you do. It may not be on the same rung in Maslow's hierarchy, but it's inevitable that if you don't want to be left behind by the modern global economy and culture, you will need computers.
Why do skeptics decide? Of what value is the opinion of a skeptic? Why do people listen to skeptics at all? Offer something constructive, or SHUT THE FUCK UP.
At the risk of starting a political flamewar, I'd like to point out that if the skeptics had had a stronger voice three years ago -- indeed, if the media had embraced to role of skepticism it ought to perform -- a lot of bad decisions in Iraq might never have been implemented.
Criticism is an essential and vital component of public dialogue. Did you notice that you yourself are in the act of criticizing Negroponte's critics, RIGHT NOW? Would you tell yourself to "SHUT THE FUCK UP"?
Isn't Gates's book the one where the first edition forecast the future as being distributed via CD-ROM, and only in later editions were mentions added in of some newfangled "Inter-net" thing that was starting to get big?
No one's forcing you -- you're free to use NO encryption instead.
Anyway, my theory is that the DS's processors aren't powerful enough to do strong WPA encryption AND maintain a smooth multiplayer experience in a game like Mario Kart.
In a web-browsing title, there will be more CPU cycles free to dedicate to encryption. It's not out of the realm of impossibility that WPA support will be included on selected titles.
Not very convenient if you want to set-and-forget your wireless router configuration, though.
Seriously folks, stop the laptops-for-everyone circlejerk, and fix the real problems.
Maybe if the people of Nigeria had access to the Internet, and therefore schools of thought outside of what the clerics tell them, they'd be able to persuade their leadership to allow polio vaccinations to proceed -- or, depose them and replace them with leadership that DOESN'T kook out over public health issues. So there's a solution to #1 and #1a right there.
Knowledge is similarly helpful in solving all the other problems on your list. As outsiders, we can either push our way in and say "trust us, we know how to fix your problems"--and we've seen over and over again how well that attitude is received--or we can empower the people to make their own informed decisions.
But can we PLEASE get it into our heads ONCE AND FOR ALL that the purpose of any big corporation is JUST to make money for its shareholders - END OF STORY!!!
The best way to shovel money into the shareholders' pockets is to make the customer so happy with the product that they have no reason to go elsewhere. Apple has done a great job with that. That the customer ends up so happy with the product is admittedly a side effect of the business model, but it's not to be ignored.
PLEASE get it out of your thick skull that wearing a corporate logo of ANY sort is cool - it isn't because it just goes to show the rest of the world that you are insecure enough to want to belong to one (or more) exclusive little cliques that makes you feel special because you can look down on those that aren't members of those same cliques.
Like the clique you're currently flying the flag of? The Clique Of People Who Are So Smart And Great Because They Realized That Corporations Want Money And You Didn't?
don't just buy something because it's made by "Gap" or "Apple" because then you really are showing the rest of the world only how much of a corporate puppet you really are...
If I've bought 9 products from "Apple" in the past and have been extremely satisfied with all of them, there's no reason for me to believe that buying product #10 will be any different an experience for me. That's a completely legitimate reason to give Apple's products preference when I'm in the market -- they've EARNED it.
Fuck worrying about whether you're a "corporate puppet". Just buy what you like.
Bose belongs in that same group as Sony & Dell, companies whose reputation for quality exceeds the quality of their actual product.
Serious audiophiles won't own any Bose equipment, but the general public sees a full-page ad for a Wave Radio system in the Parade newspaper insert and thinks it must be the greatest thing since sliced bread. After all, the ad itself says so.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow.
"zynaddsubfx" may be the worst product name I've ever heard of. No surprise that it's found on SourceForge...
weeding out all the guys who just want to stand on stage and play parallel 5th powerchords so they can feel tough; rather than the type of people who have love music and have talent enough that they persevere with an instrument. It's just a filter that cuts out all the weeds.
Quit being a jerk. There's plenty of guys who play power chords not "so they can feel tough", but because they like the sound that is made. And if they're on stage, there's probably thousands of people in the audience that agree about the sounds.
To call a rock guitarist a musical "weed" for no other reason than that you don't like or understand the idiom is an insult to rock musicians and rock music fans everywhere. And there's a lot more of them than there are classical or jazz musicians or fans.
By the way, parallel 5ths haven't been "forbidden" in about 100 years now. Modern voice-leading rules are different from the ancient rules handed down in the "theory" classrooms.
And it is precisely what you said which makes guitarists to be considered so poorly by classical/jazz musicians.
And it is precisely what YOU said which makes classical/jazz musicians to be elitist dinosaurs by many other musicians.
a guitar has frets (so it's impossible to be out of tune)
Not impossible, just more difficult. There's still plenty of ways to play out of tune on a guitar, intentionally or not. For example, lateral pressure on the string -- "bending" -- will increase string tension between the fret and the bridge, raising pitch.
Let's complain that pianists are always in tune, while we're at it.
Whereas in the classical/jazz world, the mere fact that you have to commit to maybe 10 years of practice before you can play in public and not be laughed at means that you, on average, get a far better quality of music.
I don't respect the idea that Music is something that you have to spend a decade in a conservatory before you're qualified to create.
Music is for Everybody. The more people making it (or attempting to make it), the better.
surely his 15 minutes of fame could have been put to better use than merely to sue a few classmates.
He didn't WANT 15 minutes of fame, though. That was the whole point.
AT&T is forwarding all of their call data to the NSA. The NSA doesn't need any super-cool tech in order to intercept this data since AT&T (and the other telecom companies) simply send this data directly to them.
That would only require AT&T to spend millions of dollars on additional infrastructure. AT&T being a business, they would fight the order tooth and nail. Has that happened?
I don't doubt that the NSA has massive surveillance resources, but they're not the fuckin' Illuminati for christ's sake. They're a government organization staffed by human beings, and as such they probably don't have their shit together enough to do all the shadowy things you think they're doing.
perhaps, we just need to put of a few signs at every protest and rally reading something along the lines of "Please remember to read the god damn Constitution and Bill of Rights before you do anything else."
What good would that do? The public doesn't care about protests and rallys, and the government sure doesn't care about them.
To the people that participate in them, rallys are an affirmation that other people share your views, therefore they must be correct, right? To the people that don't participate in them, rallys are mainly just a nuisance.
If you want real change, get out of Union Square Park, go home, and write to your congressmen and assemblymen instead.
The real problem is that the federal government has this power to begin with. The fact that they abuse it, is totally uninteresting, because it's so expected
Except the federal government DOESN'T have this power. At least not within the law. That's why we call it "abuse".
The problem is that there's no system in place to prevent such abuses before they happen. The courts can only intervene AFTER the damage has been done.
And we say "Current Administration" because... it's the CURRENT ADMINISTRATION. It's too late to worry about what previous administrations did, and too early to worry about future administrations.
If MS can start distributing Movies and TV shows through this thing, that will be HUGE. And it seems like it's just a matter of them negotiating it.
It will only happen if they are willing to cede control of the system to the users that are actually going to use it.
I should be able to stream any media format the 360 knows how to decode from any device the 360 can talk to over TCP/IP. I should NOT be limited to streaming DRM-encrusted files only from a Windows Media Center PC, license sold separately, or from Xbox Live's Official Media Download Area.
If Microsoft won't give me this, I will buy a secondhand modchipped Xbox1 and burn a copy of XPMC and build it myself.
it tracks where your child has been, and who s/he has been calling.
Or more accurately, it tracks where the child's PHONE has been.
If I'm a kid with paranoid, distrustful parents who give me one of these phones, and I want to rebel against them by playing hooky from school, I'm just going to put my phone in my locker and then jet. Or better yet, if school policy allows students to bring their phones into the classrooms, give my phone to a friend to carry around for the day so my psychotic mom and dad don't think I was just standing in front of my locker for 6 hours straight.
control where your kids go. if they leave their "safe zone", a tiny electric shock is delivered straight to their brain!! 1 year contract required.
Hey, that's better terms than my regular cell phone contract! I'm gonna switch.
What about the thing that a lot of us actually want, virtualization from Apple, rumored to be in Leopard?
Will this lead to the same problem that killed OS/2? Where it was so seamless to run Windows 3.1 applications under OS/2, that nobody ever wrote any native OS/2 apps?
Then again, it's not like all that many OS X native apps are being written today, anyway (compared to WinXP native apps). And hey, I enjoyed the OS/2 Workplace Shell over Win3.1's Program Mangler regardless of which OS the apps were written for; as long as OS X provides a better working experience than Windows, I think application compatibility/OS virtualization can only be a benefit.
Windows setup prompts for an update-eligible install disk . Which you cannot provide since you're unable to eject the disk from your drive until you install the Apple driver package.
What if you have a second, external CD drive connected? Or are compatible USB/FireWire drivers not installed at that point either?
The rules are simple : reciprocate or fuck off.
Alternate headline for this story: "Interest in Fucking Off Remains High".
Linux is objectively pretty great, but neither the technology nor the licensing is a perfect fit for all uses and applications. Advocates would do well to keep that in mind.
If this really worked, I wouldn't get a hangover after downing a bottle of Goldschlager, now would I???
We, the people who live in those needy countries do not need cheap computers.
Sure you do. It may not be on the same rung in Maslow's hierarchy, but it's inevitable that if you don't want to be left behind by the modern global economy and culture, you will need computers.
Why do skeptics decide? Of what value is the opinion of a skeptic? Why do people listen to skeptics at all? Offer something constructive, or SHUT THE FUCK UP.
At the risk of starting a political flamewar, I'd like to point out that if the skeptics had had a stronger voice three years ago -- indeed, if the media had embraced to role of skepticism it ought to perform -- a lot of bad decisions in Iraq might never have been implemented.
Criticism is an essential and vital component of public dialogue. Did you notice that you yourself are in the act of criticizing Negroponte's critics, RIGHT NOW? Would you tell yourself to "SHUT THE FUCK UP"?
Isn't Gates's book the one where the first edition forecast the future as being distributed via CD-ROM, and only in later editions were mentions added in of some newfangled "Inter-net" thing that was starting to get big?
will we still be forced to use WEP encryption?
No one's forcing you -- you're free to use NO encryption instead.
Anyway, my theory is that the DS's processors aren't powerful enough to do strong WPA encryption AND maintain a smooth multiplayer experience in a game like Mario Kart.
In a web-browsing title, there will be more CPU cycles free to dedicate to encryption. It's not out of the realm of impossibility that WPA support will be included on selected titles.
Not very convenient if you want to set-and-forget your wireless router configuration, though.
that would mean Nintendo had given up their highly successful business practice of "fucking Europe up the ass, hard."
It's y'all's own fault, for buying more Sega Master Systems than Nintendo Entertainment Systems 20 years ago.
Seriously folks, stop the laptops-for-everyone circlejerk, and fix the real problems.
Maybe if the people of Nigeria had access to the Internet, and therefore schools of thought outside of what the clerics tell them, they'd be able to persuade their leadership to allow polio vaccinations to proceed -- or, depose them and replace them with leadership that DOESN'T kook out over public health issues. So there's a solution to #1 and #1a right there.
Knowledge is similarly helpful in solving all the other problems on your list. As outsiders, we can either push our way in and say "trust us, we know how to fix your problems"--and we've seen over and over again how well that attitude is received--or we can empower the people to make their own informed decisions.
But can we PLEASE get it into our heads ONCE AND FOR ALL that the purpose of any big corporation is JUST to make money for its shareholders - END OF STORY!!!
The best way to shovel money into the shareholders' pockets is to make the customer so happy with the product that they have no reason to go elsewhere. Apple has done a great job with that. That the customer ends up so happy with the product is admittedly a side effect of the business model, but it's not to be ignored.
PLEASE get it out of your thick skull that wearing a corporate logo of ANY sort is cool - it isn't because it just goes to show the rest of the world that you are insecure enough to want to belong to one (or more) exclusive little cliques that makes you feel special because you can look down on those that aren't members of those same cliques.
Like the clique you're currently flying the flag of? The Clique Of People Who Are So Smart And Great Because They Realized That Corporations Want Money And You Didn't?
don't just buy something because it's made by "Gap" or "Apple" because then you really are showing the rest of the world only how much of a corporate puppet you really are...
If I've bought 9 products from "Apple" in the past and have been extremely satisfied with all of them, there's no reason for me to believe that buying product #10 will be any different an experience for me. That's a completely legitimate reason to give Apple's products preference when I'm in the market -- they've EARNED it.
Fuck worrying about whether you're a "corporate puppet". Just buy what you like.
Bose belongs in that same group as Sony & Dell, companies whose reputation for quality exceeds the quality of their actual product.
Serious audiophiles won't own any Bose equipment, but the general public sees a full-page ad for a Wave Radio system in the Parade newspaper insert and thinks it must be the greatest thing since sliced bread. After all, the ad itself says so.
It's an impressive system, for impressive films.
If it's for impressive films, why are they using it for soulless dreck? Some sort of beta testing period maybe?
I heard it can fun at one million funs per megafun.
For some applications, an Ajax page could provide the same level of interactivity as ActiveX.
You are aware that in Internet Explorer, XMLHttpRequest is implemented AS an ActiveX control... right?