I like a wide variety of music. Most of it is not popular at all. A lot of it is very ecletic. What's wrong with trying to develop a system that can make recommendations for someone like me?
You seem to think if it's not popular there's no point in even acknowledging it exists. Maybe you only like popular music. That's fine.
But this kind of research will definitely benefit some like me. Guess what? I spend a lot of money on music. More than most people, and not just because I don't pirate music. It would behoove artists to try to find a way to expose their music to people like me. It will make them money. It also behooves me to find another way to discover new music I like. It gives me a lot of pleasure to do so.
So far from being useless or futile, I think this kind of research is valuable. Plus, if it works for music, it will tell us how to do similar things for other kinds of pattern matching, including things that are more important than art appreciation. Medical diagnostics, computer vision, human-computer interaction... there's no telling what kind of advances could be triggered by this research.
Furthermore, I have no doubts that the music business heavily influences what becomes "popular" regardless of what a lot of people (not just folks like me) would like if they only heard it. The biggest reason for this is that commercial radio and other similar media are incredibly narrow and limited in scope. I've read the average radio station has a playlist of 400 songs. If true, that's absurd. There is no doubt in my mind much more, and more interesting, music would garner popularity if it had the right exposure. Unfortunately, this still requires a ton of money, but it's becoming less and less so over time, especially as the huge media conglomerates lose relevance in the face of the effectively unlimited distribution network called the Internet.
I most definitely have not read it, but I understand that the author has stated that it's a work of fiction. Of course, what you're telling me just helps support my claim that he's capitalizing on the gullibility of his audience.
I also recall at the time that book was out that a local church (some flavor of Protestant, natch) was advertising a "Da Vinci Code study" every week, which just goes to show that even I am not always cynical enough. After all, what's to "study" in a fictional political-techno-thriller? One has to wonder if they also do Tom Clancy books?
TV used to be like steak, apple pie, and sushi; now its just gravy with artificial flavoring.
Wow I wish I'd lived in this mythical time. TV was always 90% crap. Maybe today it's 95% crap, but that hasn't changed radically. Newt Minow didn't make his famous proclamation of TV being a "vast wasteland", it wasn't after watching "Melrose Place" or "Family Guy" or "Temptation Island", it was in 1961. He was right. He'd be right today too.
The biggest difference is that in the 60's it was 25 minutes of programming and 5 minutes of commercials. Today it's 20 minutes of programming and 10 minutes of commercials. At least Hulu brings that ratio back to something tolerable. I don't block their commercials, although some of their commercials (like the Axe one mentioned above) might make me change my mind.
It's more than that. It is my opinion that Brown specifically leverages people's misconceptions, prejudices, and even bigotry to make stories that will feed right into their beliefs, and which the more gullible will take as being based on historical fact, all the while claiming, truthfully, that it's all just for fun. He knows this happens. I believe he wants this to happen. Yet, there is plenty of plausible deniability to fall back on. On one hand, he can't help it if some of his audience are uncritical idiots who believe his stories are based on history, but he also has to know, and apparently is willing to accept that this will happen.
There's no small amount of people fictionalizing history in a way which undoubtedly sows confusion and misunderstanding (Oliver Stone comes to mind), all the while claiming "it's only made up" while simultaneously being aware that many, many people will assume it's based on fact.
And of course, there's no small amount of people who are simply distorting history to suit their own agendas.
Indeed. And just look at the **AA. They are more than happy to antagonize their customers. Hell, Microsoft has made tens, if not hundreds of billions, of dollars while doing it.
There are more than enough companies out there who are more than willing to do self-destructive things. It's only due diligence to investigate the means by which an interesting and potentially killer product could be ruined by some suit with a Napoleon complex.
Good point. I'm not familiar with D&D since they turned it into a MMORPG on paper. I'm speaking from the point of view of the earlier editions with which I'm familiar.
If you're going to get pedantic on me, you shouldn't be so sloppy with your langauge:
"Killing is a mortal sin as it is suicide; there's no greys on this, just black and white."
Killing? Really? So soldiers in a just war are toast? I'll have to look that up in my Catechism. No, wait, I don't. Bzzzzt.
As to the nature of mortal sin being only "black and white", Mr. Anonymous Coward, if that is your real name, there are conditions to a sin being mortal:
1. It must be a serious and grave sin.
2. You must have "sufficient reflection" on the grievous nature of the sin being committed.
I'm not contradicting Catholic doctrine in any way when I suggest that a mentally ill or even an overwrought person who commits suicide might be lack culpability because of conditions 2 and 3. I am merely stating that we cannot know whether these mitigating circumstances exist in any case, and can pray for the person, and as I stated above, can place our faith in the mercy and justice of God.
In the future, I would suggest you be more careful in understanding and communicating Catholic doctrine before you accuse others of hypocrisy. It might save some hurt feelings, and more importantly, might keep you from looking like an idiot.
Given the quality at which a lot of music is engineered these days, I'm not surprised. Since heavy (sound) compression is widely used in modern recording, I would posit that with music such treated, 48k vs. 160k won't sound significantly different to anyone, leave alone the average listener.
Given the preponderance of crappy little "earbud" headphones and low quality MP3 recordings that comprise most if not all of what many people ever hear, it's no surprise that they have not acquired any ability to distinguish subtle (or not so subtle) differences in the quality of recordings. If you're never exposed to quality sound, it's quite possible you won't notice the difference when you do hear it.
On the other hand, with a little exposure to a decent sound system and/or good headphones and some quality recordings made by people like this guy, I have no doubts that most people who aren't already half deaf would quickly learn to distinguish and appreciate this difference.
I'm hardly an audiosnob, and I'm sure the equipment I use would horrify a real audiosnob, but these differences are enormous to me. I cannot distinguish, from personal testing on the equipment I use, between level 5 and level 6 of OGG compression (which correspond roughly to 256kbps and 320kbps, respectively, IIUC), but I can't hearing anything at 48kbps that doesn't sound like fingernails on a chalkboard for any length of time.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive. If I had a child who committed suicide, I'd be disinclined to share that information.
Regarding suicide being a sin, it's a touchy subject though because many, if not most, people who commit suicide are mentally ill or are suffering from other mitigating circumstances. I can't speak for Mormon theology, but as a Catholic, we can pray for the repose of that person's soul. We cannot and do not judge the disposition of that person's soul. Personally, I trust in the mercy of God and that whatever He does is just. There's not much else you can do.
You raise a good point but the difference is this:
The Microsoft.NET plugin is for functionality that maybe 1% or 1/10 of 1% of users actually use. If Firefox were to disable Flash, no matter how legitimate the reason, this would affect almost every single user adversely. Ditto for Adobe Reader and Java, although to a lesser extent.
The general population shouldn't have input in things like this anyway. Leave it to the educated people please.
But this country (I'm speaking about the U.S.) has universal suffrage. There's not even a requirement that the people they vote for have any education or proven competence. We're seeing the effects of elections influenced by (and targeted towards) the ignorant in the horrible incompetence in our elected officials at the national level for the last few decades.
Jack Chick is about more than D&D. He is the poster child for everything that is wrong with _some_ Christians.
As a Christian, and as someone who plays D&D, I can see the potential for harm in the game. For instance, I think playing evil characters could be problematic and unhealthy. However, the idea of the game in and of itself is no more harmful than kids playing cops and robbers, or perhaps more appropriately, knights and dragons.
Is it a sin to read about Greek Mythology? Or to make the analogy more precise, would it be a sin to act in a play about Greek gods? If fantasy is a sin, then most everything in life that's not literal work or prayer is out of bounds. Lewis, as was mentioned above was a devout Christian who wrote about fantasy and magic. Ditto Tolkien.
It is this kind of narrow-minded thinking and rejection of reason that gave rise to the most virulent of Muslims, and we all know how screwed up those folks are. I don't understand how there are branches of Christianity which essentially deny science and reason, when Christianity was the biggest nurturer of scientific and philosophical advancement for most of the time it has existed. Who created most of the original universities? Who was responsible for gathering and passing on the wealth of knowledge from the Greeks and Romans? Who can deny the strong correlation between scientific, philosophical and civil advances with Western Civilization, which was primarily a Christian civilization? This isn't to deny the advances of other cultures, especially in the past. The Chinese were way ahead of everyone 2000 years ago. The Muslims in the Middle East had a great age of learning and development around the end of the first millennium, which was spurred in part by their discovery of the great works of the Greeks. India gave us math, etc, etc. But there's only one place that has most consistently and steadily been the source of the advancement of civilization and that has been the places where Christianity flourished.
You know everyone likes to point to Galileo as proof the Church was opposed to science. Aside of the fact that even the Church itself has admitted it was wrong in that case, and the fact that if you study the details, the issue at the time was more political than it was doctrinal, or the fact that Galileo was _also_ being an ass, even though he was right, name another example. I bet most of you can't. I don't know of any, although I can't imagine there aren't. But this only shows that that was the exception rather than the rule. The Vatican has its own observatory where real science is done. Look up the history of seismology and its relation to the Jesuits. Read about how the Industrial Revolution might have occurred in the 17th century rather than the 19th, except all the Christians (Catholics and Protestants) took a couple of centuries off to slaughter each other, more often than not over nationalism (or any of the other various reasons people war) than doctrine. The Enlightenment is seen by some as a move away from religion, but look how well that worked in France, or later in Russia and China. The Enlightenment owes as much to religious philosophy as it does to secular philosophy. See the Founding Fathers of the U.S. for a perfect example. See how Adam Smith, despite being extemely anti-Catholic, conceived of an economic philosophy that is pretty consistent with Catholic social teaching. Read "Rerum Novarum" to understand how capitalists and workers each depend upon and owe each other, and how socialism and the abolition of private property is inimical to all freedom.
The reason for this is that Christians did not abandon reason. We believe that God is omnipotent, but that He has made an ordered world, and has given us an intellect and will to use to advancement of Mankind in accordance with His Laws. We believe that God wants us to use our minds (otherwise t
What if we take them at their word? Obama wants (however naively) to eliminate nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad has promised to make one and use it on Israel.
I think Obama is a twit, but he's at least got the right idea.
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I like a wide variety of music. Most of it is not popular at all. A lot of it is very ecletic. What's wrong with trying to develop a system that can make recommendations for someone like me?
You seem to think if it's not popular there's no point in even acknowledging it exists. Maybe you only like popular music. That's fine.
But this kind of research will definitely benefit some like me. Guess what? I spend a lot of money on music. More than most people, and not just because I don't pirate music. It would behoove artists to try to find a way to expose their music to people like me. It will make them money. It also behooves me to find another way to discover new music I like. It gives me a lot of pleasure to do so.
So far from being useless or futile, I think this kind of research is valuable. Plus, if it works for music, it will tell us how to do similar things for other kinds of pattern matching, including things that are more important than art appreciation. Medical diagnostics, computer vision, human-computer interaction... there's no telling what kind of advances could be triggered by this research.
Furthermore, I have no doubts that the music business heavily influences what becomes "popular" regardless of what a lot of people (not just folks like me) would like if they only heard it. The biggest reason for this is that commercial radio and other similar media are incredibly narrow and limited in scope. I've read the average radio station has a playlist of 400 songs. If true, that's absurd. There is no doubt in my mind much more, and more interesting, music would garner popularity if it had the right exposure. Unfortunately, this still requires a ton of money, but it's becoming less and less so over time, especially as the huge media conglomerates lose relevance in the face of the effectively unlimited distribution network called the Internet.
You're sentiment is very valid until I consider the many "x has been patented" stories where what you are describing is exactly what happens.
I most definitely have not read it, but I understand that the author has stated that it's a work of fiction. Of course, what you're telling me just helps support my claim that he's capitalizing on the gullibility of his audience.
I also recall at the time that book was out that a local church (some flavor of Protestant, natch) was advertising a "Da Vinci Code study" every week, which just goes to show that even I am not always cynical enough. After all, what's to "study" in a fictional political-techno-thriller? One has to wonder if they also do Tom Clancy books?
TV used to be like steak, apple pie, and sushi; now its just gravy with artificial flavoring.
Wow I wish I'd lived in this mythical time. TV was always 90% crap. Maybe today it's 95% crap, but that hasn't changed radically. Newt Minow didn't make his famous proclamation of TV being a "vast wasteland", it wasn't after watching "Melrose Place" or "Family Guy" or "Temptation Island", it was in 1961. He was right. He'd be right today too.
The biggest difference is that in the 60's it was 25 minutes of programming and 5 minutes of commercials. Today it's 20 minutes of programming and 10 minutes of commercials. At least Hulu brings that ratio back to something tolerable. I don't block their commercials, although some of their commercials (like the Axe one mentioned above) might make me change my mind.
It is more and more obvious that corporations see human beings as kettle, easily scared, directed, milked and slaughtered.
As long as they don't call them black...
It's more than that. It is my opinion that Brown specifically leverages people's misconceptions, prejudices, and even bigotry to make stories that will feed right into their beliefs, and which the more gullible will take as being based on historical fact, all the while claiming, truthfully, that it's all just for fun. He knows this happens. I believe he wants this to happen. Yet, there is plenty of plausible deniability to fall back on. On one hand, he can't help it if some of his audience are uncritical idiots who believe his stories are based on history, but he also has to know, and apparently is willing to accept that this will happen.
There's no small amount of people fictionalizing history in a way which undoubtedly sows confusion and misunderstanding (Oliver Stone comes to mind), all the while claiming "it's only made up" while simultaneously being aware that many, many people will assume it's based on fact.
And of course, there's no small amount of people who are simply distorting history to suit their own agendas.
Indeed. And just look at the **AA. They are more than happy to antagonize their customers. Hell, Microsoft has made tens, if not hundreds of billions, of dollars while doing it.
There are more than enough companies out there who are more than willing to do self-destructive things. It's only due diligence to investigate the means by which an interesting and potentially killer product could be ruined by some suit with a Napoleon complex.
Good point. I'm not familiar with D&D since they turned it into a MMORPG on paper. I'm speaking from the point of view of the earlier editions with which I'm familiar.
If you're going to get pedantic on me, you shouldn't be so sloppy with your langauge:
"Killing is a mortal sin as it is suicide; there's no greys on this, just black and white."
Killing? Really? So soldiers in a just war are toast? I'll have to look that up in my Catechism. No, wait, I don't. Bzzzzt.
As to the nature of mortal sin being only "black and white", Mr. Anonymous Coward, if that is your real name, there are conditions to a sin being mortal:
1. It must be a serious and grave sin.
2. You must have "sufficient reflection" on the grievous nature of the sin being committed.
3. You must commit the sin of your own free will.
For more detail, you can see the section on "Imputability" on this page: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14004b.htm
I'm not contradicting Catholic doctrine in any way when I suggest that a mentally ill or even an overwrought person who commits suicide might be lack culpability because of conditions 2 and 3. I am merely stating that we cannot know whether these mitigating circumstances exist in any case, and can pray for the person, and as I stated above, can place our faith in the mercy and justice of God.
In the future, I would suggest you be more careful in understanding and communicating Catholic doctrine before you accuse others of hypocrisy. It might save some hurt feelings, and more importantly, might keep you from looking like an idiot.
Given the quality at which a lot of music is engineered these days, I'm not surprised. Since heavy (sound) compression is widely used in modern recording, I would posit that with music such treated, 48k vs. 160k won't sound significantly different to anyone, leave alone the average listener.
Given the preponderance of crappy little "earbud" headphones and low quality MP3 recordings that comprise most if not all of what many people ever hear, it's no surprise that they have not acquired any ability to distinguish subtle (or not so subtle) differences in the quality of recordings. If you're never exposed to quality sound, it's quite possible you won't notice the difference when you do hear it.
On the other hand, with a little exposure to a decent sound system and/or good headphones and some quality recordings made by people like this guy, I have no doubts that most people who aren't already half deaf would quickly learn to distinguish and appreciate this difference.
I'm hardly an audiosnob, and I'm sure the equipment I use would horrify a real audiosnob, but these differences are enormous to me. I cannot distinguish, from personal testing on the equipment I use, between level 5 and level 6 of OGG compression (which correspond roughly to 256kbps and 320kbps, respectively, IIUC), but I can't hearing anything at 48kbps that doesn't sound like fingernails on a chalkboard for any length of time.
We shall have to agree to disagree.
By the way, you tend not to have much luck convincing people to consider your point of view by mocking them. Just saying...
Makes sense to me, but why should I trust a "CorporateSuit"? ;-)
Those two things are not mutually exclusive. If I had a child who committed suicide, I'd be disinclined to share that information.
Regarding suicide being a sin, it's a touchy subject though because many, if not most, people who commit suicide are mentally ill or are suffering from other mitigating circumstances. I can't speak for Mormon theology, but as a Catholic, we can pray for the repose of that person's soul. We cannot and do not judge the disposition of that person's soul. Personally, I trust in the mercy of God and that whatever He does is just. There's not much else you can do.
Then people (er, guys anyway) will be interested regardless...
They didn't achieve the goals of the people who voted for them in pursuit of those goals.
Otherwise, yes, you have a very good point.
You raise a good point but the difference is this:
The Microsoft .NET plugin is for functionality that maybe 1% or 1/10 of 1% of users actually use. If Firefox were to disable Flash, no matter how legitimate the reason, this would affect almost every single user adversely. Ditto for Adobe Reader and Java, although to a lesser extent.
The general population shouldn't have input in things like this anyway. Leave it to the educated people please.
But this country (I'm speaking about the U.S.) has universal suffrage. There's not even a requirement that the people they vote for have any education or proven competence. We're seeing the effects of elections influenced by (and targeted towards) the ignorant in the horrible incompetence in our elected officials at the national level for the last few decades.
I happen to be fat, you insensitive clod!
Jack Chick is about more than D&D. He is the poster child for everything that is wrong with _some_ Christians.
As a Christian, and as someone who plays D&D, I can see the potential for harm in the game. For instance, I think playing evil characters could be problematic and unhealthy. However, the idea of the game in and of itself is no more harmful than kids playing cops and robbers, or perhaps more appropriately, knights and dragons.
Is it a sin to read about Greek Mythology? Or to make the analogy more precise, would it be a sin to act in a play about Greek gods? If fantasy is a sin, then most everything in life that's not literal work or prayer is out of bounds. Lewis, as was mentioned above was a devout Christian who wrote about fantasy and magic. Ditto Tolkien.
It is this kind of narrow-minded thinking and rejection of reason that gave rise to the most virulent of Muslims, and we all know how screwed up those folks are. I don't understand how there are branches of Christianity which essentially deny science and reason, when Christianity was the biggest nurturer of scientific and philosophical advancement for most of the time it has existed. Who created most of the original universities? Who was responsible for gathering and passing on the wealth of knowledge from the Greeks and Romans? Who can deny the strong correlation between scientific, philosophical and civil advances with Western Civilization, which was primarily a Christian civilization? This isn't to deny the advances of other cultures, especially in the past. The Chinese were way ahead of everyone 2000 years ago. The Muslims in the Middle East had a great age of learning and development around the end of the first millennium, which was spurred in part by their discovery of the great works of the Greeks. India gave us math, etc, etc. But there's only one place that has most consistently and steadily been the source of the advancement of civilization and that has been the places where Christianity flourished.
You know everyone likes to point to Galileo as proof the Church was opposed to science. Aside of the fact that even the Church itself has admitted it was wrong in that case, and the fact that if you study the details, the issue at the time was more political than it was doctrinal, or the fact that Galileo was _also_ being an ass, even though he was right, name another example. I bet most of you can't. I don't know of any, although I can't imagine there aren't. But this only shows that that was the exception rather than the rule. The Vatican has its own observatory where real science is done. Look up the history of seismology and its relation to the Jesuits. Read about how the Industrial Revolution might have occurred in the 17th century rather than the 19th, except all the Christians (Catholics and Protestants) took a couple of centuries off to slaughter each other, more often than not over nationalism (or any of the other various reasons people war) than doctrine. The Enlightenment is seen by some as a move away from religion, but look how well that worked in France, or later in Russia and China. The Enlightenment owes as much to religious philosophy as it does to secular philosophy. See the Founding Fathers of the U.S. for a perfect example. See how Adam Smith, despite being extemely anti-Catholic, conceived of an economic philosophy that is pretty consistent with Catholic social teaching. Read "Rerum Novarum" to understand how capitalists and workers each depend upon and owe each other, and how socialism and the abolition of private property is inimical to all freedom.
The reason for this is that Christians did not abandon reason. We believe that God is omnipotent, but that He has made an ordered world, and has given us an intellect and will to use to advancement of Mankind in accordance with His Laws. We believe that God wants us to use our minds (otherwise t
I don't know... is she hot?
My 13-year-old prefers "nuked the fridge" to "jumped the shark" these days.
I've been playing that POV-Ray game since 1992, but it's still got a lousy frame rate... often worse than 0.001 FPS.
I'd love a peacemaker that could convert radiation directly to energy!
What if we take them at their word? Obama wants (however naively) to eliminate nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad has promised to make one and use it on Israel.
I think Obama is a twit, but he's at least got the right idea.
No, a bunch of elitist leftists in Norway seem to disagree.