dnoyeb, either you're joking you're making the same mistake that michael does in his summary of this article at the top: recording level has nothing to do with the phenomenon the linked article describes.
Each track of the roughly bazillion tracks that make up yr typical Rush album is probably recorded with lots of headroom, and no clipping, i.e. the top of the red level on the VU meter you're looking at. (On magnetic tape this red level degrades gracefully, it has a little "give"; on a digital recorder it's more all-or-nothing: a loud transient will create an ugly jag or just nothing.) In any case, any audio engineer who has the slighest idea who knows what she's doing is going to make sure of that. But the article's not about that. It's about using a device called a compressor AFTER everything's been recorded.
Compression, used judiciously and sparingly, can have a very pleasant effect; it can give an organ more punch or can squeeze down a ride cymbal that rings out too brightly. This guy's not picking a bone with the technology, he's picking a bone with its application. Instead of using compression to sweeten up certain areas of the mix, it's being used to simply boost the whole signal to its highest level.
Advertisers routinely use this technique to make their commericals louder, or as loud, as everything else on that station. Radio stations will apply a small amount of compression to everything they send out over the air.
So when the whole album is heavily compressed from the get-go everything ends up sounding like early Anthrax, loud as hell but with a lot of missing midrange.
Same thing over Xmas - I took stills and video of my family w/their new digital camera, tried plugging it into my TiBook via USB, and the image capture utility not only transferred the images AND the movie but put the pictures in my Pictures folder and the movie in my Movies folder, and opened both folders on the desktop! Yowza!
most people sit their monitors (or iMacs) where they want them, adjust once, and leave everything be
Yep, and then your brother comes along, sits it where he wants it, adjusts it once, and leaves it be. A family is many different sizes and has many different preferences! Have you ever shared a car with somebody on a daily basis? Think "rearview mirror"...
Re:Japanese (and American) revisionist history
on
Review: Pearl Harbor
·
· Score: 1
The equation you and many before you draw is Invasion Deaths > Atomic Deaths. Putting aside the fact that this is 1) speculation and 2) been convincingly refuted, you have to keep in mind that in wartime, soldiers are paid and trained to kill and die for their country. If it takes a million soldiers to "win" then that's what it takes. That's why you have armies and strategy and generals and a whole lotta soldiers. If you can't win on those terms you shouldn't be able to win. There is no moral or ethical justification for premeditated killing of noncombatants, whether it's one mother, or hundreds of thousands of mothers, shoppers, nurses, musicians, drunkards and heroes. And yet the refrain: but we would have lost too many troops! It is the most cowardly strategy.
And we have never owned up - Germany, Italy, and Spain never stop agonizing or apologizing for their roles in this most bloody century, but we are serene...
Run a restaurant and unsure how to get food from the kitchen to your diners' tables? Check out the Dining Optimizer, which brings food to patrons on small, remote controlled wheelie things. Said things note looks of impatience on diners' faces; monitor foot-tapping; do coke.
To your last point: why did Pi have shitty lighting, in your opinion?
And to your first: have you ever seen Clean, Shaven by Lodge Kerrigan? That movie presented us with a paranoid and borderline personality and totally withheld judgement, allowing you to see clearly all the judgements imposed on him from the others in his life. In Pi, the filmmakers valorize the main character's illness. The movie kept pushing the question on us: insane paranoid, or genius? When the old math professor with the goldfish started in with his Icarus story, I wanted to leave. It's the oldest cliche in the book - that the search for knowledge leads to insanity or pain. That the filmmakers confused the main character's pain and insanity - which had an organic and physical basis - with some kind of shining genius was, I thought, just irresponsible and exploitative. And certainly not realistic, the other poster's complaint.
FBI agents, ancient goldfish, a quest for divine knowledge... bah. The guy needed medical attention.
If this is the TVT I think it is, then it's the suits who are bothered, not the artists.
TVT stands for "TV Tunes", and for years their bread and butter was novelty compilations of old TV jingles and theme songs. Not exactly an artist-driven business.
Somewhere along the line, late 80's/early 90's, someone at TVT thought it might be a good idea to get in on the new phenomenon of electronic dance music - from what I understand TVT now distributes tons of small dance labels and techno acts.
Not really the constituency to complain about mp3's. Most dance singles have runs of a few thousand copies at most, and they're sold mainly to DJ's and trainspotters. It is simply not a mass market (NIN et al the exceptions of course, and probably what TVT's so concerned about).
For those of you who don't know the plot, eXistenZ is about a future videogame designer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who is being hunted by the "Realists" (something like that) - people who feel that the sophisticated videogames of the movie's future are morally wrong. The Realists muck up the only copy of her next masterpiece, a game called eXistenZ. Because she's a programmer she can fix it, but only by going "into" the game.
eXistenZ puts a lot of people off because it does not deliver pleasure in the way you expect from a movie. I would be put off too, if not for the quite important fact that Cronenberg's movies all end up being precisely about pleasure, and the ways people have come to expect it - from games, cars, videotapes, taboo fantasies - and from movies. He does not give you exactly what you want when you want it, which can make for thought-provoking, if occasionally uncomfortable, viewing.
Everything about the Matrix is what you'd expect from a movie made in 1999 about an elaborate simulation of reality - hard, shiny, urban setting, black sunglasses, martial arts, the power of love, etc. It's what you expect, and it's exactly what you get. It's not suprising that the movie did so well - it takes classic hollywood themes and slaps them together with what have become the canonical trappings of cyberpunk. And of course the obligatory 15 million rounds of ammo.
There is precious little ammo in eXistenZ. Precious few pairs of black sunglasses. And the whole movie takes place in the countryside. What you expect? No. But eXistenZ provokes questions that the Wachowski brothers might ask if they ever bothered reading the post-structuralist theory they littered the set of the Matrix with. Like: to what extent do we fetishize the physical manifestation of information (bioports)? Or: if I am placed in a radically different context, do I remain consistent with myself, or am I someone else, with different desires?
My point: eXistenZ is by far the more imaginative movie. Course it didn't even get nominated for anything, but that won't stop me from complainin'.
p.s. I really want Motorola to make Jude Law's "pink phone"... way cooler than the little slidey StarTacs in the Matrix...
I've replaced my desktop with one of the new Powerbooks from Apple and monitor spanning "just happens" as soon as you plug in an external monitor (VGA or USB). Does Linux support monitor spanning? If so, you might look into LinuxPPC on a Powerbook. Check out what it's got built-in: 10/100T Ethernet, SCSI, dual USB ports, VGA out, sound in, sound out, S-Video out, and DVD on the 400mHz models (DeCSS might come in handy here...).. And there's a PCI slot to boot!
Mind you, Quake doesn't look that hot on the mobile ATI Rage Pro, but I prefer my couch and a Playstation for videogames anyway so it doesn't bother me that much. I bought it to do work on, and since then I've never missed my hulking desktop computer, especially since I can bring it onto jobs w/me when the need arises...
Drawbacks: I feel the the keyboard is a bit mushy. And if you're developing Win software, this is all moot...
This is an eloquent passage. It's clear that you sympathize with the discomfort and unpleasantness this girl feels. Like Kundera, however, she is incapable of using her will to conquer this difficulty. What is the difficulty? I think for many, including myself, protest marches are difficult because you must subjugate yourself to the crowd. The words and slogans sound ridiculous coming from your own mouth.
But why then, do hockey games and basketball games not elicit the same visceral shudder? After all, these events are basically "people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison." Are sports a "basic, pervasive evil"? I suppose it could be argued, but from a pretty cynically abstract point of view.
Kundera seizes on the *form* of the protest march as oppressive, being the consummate aesthete that he is. I would suggest that protest and dissent makes you uncomfortable not because of the form per se, but because of the political necessity in these situations of subjugating your own desires (the desire to be liked, to be cool, to be 'successful', etc.) to a more anonymous and collective desire. Such a subjugation takes a great effort of will, my friend. Identifying how you can be a unique vessel for a truthful message is far more difficult than using weakly nostalgic old lech writers as the cover for your fears.
People are mobilizing in hundreds of cities this week to protest the WTO. Granted, many of the demonstrations will be simplistic and over-earnest bore-fests. I agree that this is a problem. Shit should be exciting. But the political necessity is very real. The WTO can veto legislation retroactively if they find that it "hampers trade," and they can do it secretly. This is simply unprecedented, unless one thinks of the Dutch East India Company and its ability to declare war on nations. The WTO is actually far more effective I think. It is not one company, but a consortium of many companies from many nations.
Lessee, Canada has nationalized health care? Why, that's a barrier to U.S. insurance companies who want to do business there! Hmm, France subsidizes its own filmmakers? Those protectionist jerks! Not giving Big Daddy and End of Days a fair chance in the market place, who do they think they are?
You think these scenarios sound far-fetched? Think again. If your way of life depended on decisions made by the WTO (and it inevitably does, even if the consequences aren't clear yet), you might find it easier to develop the will necessary to get over your embarrassment at shouting as loud as you can in the streets. You think that's the road to totalitarianism? Well, you're entitled to your opinion. But I think you've got it backwards.
This is an eloquent passage. It's clear that you sympathize with the discomfort and unpleasantness this girl feels. Like Kundera, however, she is incapable of using her will to conquer this difficulty. What is the difficulty? I think for many, including myself, protest marches are difficult because you must subjugate yourself to the crowd. The words and slogans sound ridiculous coming from your own mouth.
But why then, do hockey games and basketball games not elicit the same visceral shudder? After all, these events are basically "people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison." Are sports a "basic, pervasive evil"? I suppose it could be argued, but from a pretty cynically abstract point of view.
Kundera seizes on the *form* of the protest march as oppressive, being the consummate aesthete that he is. I would suggest that protest and dissent makes you uncomfortable not because of the form per se, but because of the political necessity in these situations of subjugating your own desires (the desire to be liked, to be cool, to be 'successful', etc.) to a more anonymous and collective desire. Such a subjugation takes a great effort of will, my friend. Identifying how you can be a unique vessel for a truthful message is far more difficult than using weakly nostalgic old lech writers as the cover for your fears.
People are mobilizing in hundreds of cities this week to protest the WTO. Granted, many of the demonstrations will be simplistic and over-earnest bore-fests. I agree that this is a problem. Shit should be exciting. But the political necessity is very real. The WTO can veto legislation retroactively if they find that it "hampers trade," and they can do it secretly. This is simply unprecedented, unless one thinks of the Dutch East India Company and its ability to declare war on nations. The WTO is actually far more effective I think. It is not one company, but a consortium of many companies from many nations.
Lessee, Canada has nationalized health care? Why, that's a barrier to U.S. insurance companies who want to do business there! Hmm, France subsidizes its own filmmakers? Those protectionist jerks! Not giving Big Daddy and End of Days a fair chance in the market place, who do they think they are?
You think these scenarios sound far-fetched? Think again. If your way of life depended on decisions made by the WTO (and it inevitably does, even if the consequences aren't clear yet), you might find it easier to develop the will necessary to get over your embarrassment at shouting as loud as you can in the streets. You think that's the road to totalitarianism? Well, you're entitled to your opinion. But I think you've got it backwards.
auto-attenuating Harmon Kardon subwoofer
on
New iMac Rolled Out
·
· Score: 1
I have had Microsoft brand USB speakers plugged into my Windows 98 box since spring, though, and they were only the market six months before that.
Check it out - it's a USB subwoofer. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it works like this: the iMac recognizes your subwoofer the moment you plug it in and - get this - tweaks the EQ of the already excellent H-K speaker system in the iMac to compensate for all that bass that just showed up. Now that is cool.
I'm pretty sure I read a while back that they selected the name from a computer-generated list. Apparently it's very popular now to take a bunch of vague prefixes and suffixes, and run them thru some script that generates thousands of possible combinations. They do this because 1. there are so many names that are already trademarked and 2. they clearly can't come up w/anything themselves. trans ante supra meta meta trans trans meta what evah
Most browsers can definitely render endashes (not that common) and emdashes (most common). Any style manual should tell you that no space is allowed between these-the dashes, that is-and the words or clauses they set off. The HTML code is ampersand, pound sign, 150, semicolon (endash) and 151 for the em variety. Though I've always felt most browsers rendered that emdash a little long--it's more like an ememdash.
Slashdot Mirror
If the chairman of the FCC can be undermined by cable industry lobbyists this easily, he does not have the power to fulfill his duty as regulator.
Martin should resign and the job should go to someone with more backbone.
dnoyeb, either you're joking you're making the same mistake that michael does in his summary of this article at the top: recording level has nothing to do with the phenomenon the linked article describes.
Each track of the roughly bazillion tracks that make up yr typical Rush album is probably recorded with lots of headroom, and no clipping, i.e. the top of the red level on the VU meter you're looking at. (On magnetic tape this red level degrades gracefully, it has a little "give"; on a digital recorder it's more all-or-nothing: a loud transient will create an ugly jag or just nothing.) In any case, any audio engineer who has the slighest idea who knows what she's doing is going to make sure of that. But the article's not about that. It's about using a device called a compressor AFTER everything's been recorded.
Compression, used judiciously and sparingly, can have a very pleasant effect; it can give an organ more punch or can squeeze down a ride cymbal that rings out too brightly. This guy's not picking a bone with the technology, he's picking a bone with its application. Instead of using compression to sweeten up certain areas of the mix, it's being used to simply boost the whole signal to its highest level.
Advertisers routinely use this technique to make their commericals louder, or as loud, as everything else on that station. Radio stations will apply a small amount of compression to everything they send out over the air.
So when the whole album is heavily compressed from the get-go everything ends up sounding like early Anthrax, loud as hell but with a lot of missing midrange.
Same thing over Xmas - I took stills and video of my family w/their new digital camera, tried plugging it into my TiBook via USB, and the image capture utility not only transferred the images AND the movie but put the pictures in my Pictures folder and the movie in my Movies folder, and opened both folders on the desktop! Yowza!
most people sit their monitors (or iMacs) where they want them, adjust once, and leave everything be
Yep, and then your brother comes along, sits it where he wants it, adjusts it once, and leaves it be. A family is many different sizes and has many different preferences! Have you ever shared a car with somebody on a daily basis? Think "rearview mirror"...
The equation you and many before you draw is Invasion Deaths > Atomic Deaths. Putting aside the fact that this is 1) speculation and 2) been convincingly refuted, you have to keep in mind that in wartime, soldiers are paid and trained to kill and die for their country. If it takes a million soldiers to "win" then that's what it takes. That's why you have armies and strategy and generals and a whole lotta soldiers. If you can't win on those terms you shouldn't be able to win. There is no moral or ethical justification for premeditated killing of noncombatants, whether it's one mother, or hundreds of thousands of mothers, shoppers, nurses, musicians, drunkards and heroes. And yet the refrain: but we would have lost too many troops! It is the most cowardly strategy.
And we have never owned up - Germany, Italy, and Spain never stop agonizing or apologizing for their roles in this most bloody century, but we are serene...
Run a restaurant and unsure how to get food from the kitchen to your diners' tables? Check out the Dining Optimizer, which brings food to patrons on small, remote controlled wheelie things. Said things note looks of impatience on diners' faces; monitor foot-tapping; do coke.
To your last point: why did Pi have shitty lighting, in your opinion?
And to your first: have you ever seen Clean, Shaven by Lodge Kerrigan? That movie presented us with a paranoid and borderline personality and totally withheld judgement, allowing you to see clearly all the judgements imposed on him from the others in his life. In Pi, the filmmakers valorize the main character's illness. The movie kept pushing the question on us: insane paranoid, or genius? When the old math professor with the goldfish started in with his Icarus story, I wanted to leave. It's the oldest cliche in the book - that the search for knowledge leads to insanity or pain. That the filmmakers confused the main character's pain and insanity - which had an organic and physical basis - with some kind of shining genius was, I thought, just irresponsible and exploitative. And certainly not realistic, the other poster's complaint.
FBI agents, ancient goldfish, a quest for divine knowledge... bah. The guy needed medical attention.
If this is the TVT I think it is, then it's the suits who are bothered, not the artists.
TVT stands for "TV Tunes", and for years their bread and butter was novelty compilations of old TV jingles and theme songs. Not exactly an artist-driven business.
Somewhere along the line, late 80's/early 90's, someone at TVT thought it might be a good idea to get in on the new phenomenon of electronic dance music - from what I understand TVT now distributes tons of small dance labels and techno acts.
Not really the constituency to complain about mp3's. Most dance singles have runs of a few thousand copies at most, and they're sold mainly to DJ's and trainspotters. It is simply not a mass market (NIN et al the exceptions of course, and probably what TVT's so concerned about).
For those of you who don't know the plot, eXistenZ is about a future videogame designer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who is being hunted by the "Realists" (something like that) - people who feel that the sophisticated videogames of the movie's future are morally wrong. The Realists muck up the only copy of her next masterpiece, a game called eXistenZ. Because she's a programmer she can fix it, but only by going "into" the game.
eXistenZ puts a lot of people off because it does not deliver pleasure in the way you expect from a movie. I would be put off too, if not for the quite important fact that Cronenberg's movies all end up being precisely about pleasure, and the ways people have come to expect it - from games, cars, videotapes, taboo fantasies - and from movies. He does not give you exactly what you want when you want it, which can make for thought-provoking, if occasionally uncomfortable, viewing.
Everything about the Matrix is what you'd expect from a movie made in 1999 about an elaborate simulation of reality - hard, shiny, urban setting, black sunglasses, martial arts, the power of love, etc. It's what you expect, and it's exactly what you get. It's not suprising that the movie did so well - it takes classic hollywood themes and slaps them together with what have become the canonical trappings of cyberpunk. And of course the obligatory 15 million rounds of ammo.
There is precious little ammo in eXistenZ. Precious few pairs of black sunglasses. And the whole movie takes place in the countryside. What you expect? No. But eXistenZ provokes questions that the Wachowski brothers might ask if they ever bothered reading the post-structuralist theory they littered the set of the Matrix with. Like: to what extent do we fetishize the physical manifestation of information (bioports)? Or: if I am placed in a radically different context, do I remain consistent with myself, or am I someone else, with different desires?
My point: eXistenZ is by far the more imaginative movie. Course it didn't even get nominated for anything, but that won't stop me from complainin'.
p.s. I really want Motorola to make Jude Law's "pink phone"... way cooler than the little slidey StarTacs in the Matrix...
I've replaced my desktop with one of the new Powerbooks from Apple and monitor spanning "just happens" as soon as you plug in an external monitor (VGA or USB). Does Linux support monitor spanning? If so, you might look into LinuxPPC on a Powerbook. Check out what it's got built-in: 10/100T Ethernet, SCSI, dual USB ports, VGA out, sound in, sound out, S-Video out, and DVD on the 400mHz models (DeCSS might come in handy here...).. And there's a PCI slot to boot!
Mind you, Quake doesn't look that hot on the mobile ATI Rage Pro, but I prefer my couch and a Playstation for videogames anyway so it doesn't bother me that much. I bought it to do work on, and since then I've never missed my hulking desktop computer, especially since I can bring it onto jobs w/me when the need arises...
Drawbacks: I feel the the keyboard is a bit mushy. And if you're developing Win software, this is all moot...
Someone moderate this up, please.
This is an eloquent passage. It's clear that you sympathize with the discomfort and unpleasantness this girl feels. Like Kundera, however, she is incapable of using her will to conquer this difficulty. What is the difficulty? I think for many, including myself, protest marches are difficult because you must subjugate yourself to the crowd. The words and slogans sound ridiculous coming from your own mouth.
But why then, do hockey games and basketball games not elicit the same visceral shudder? After all, these events are basically "people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison." Are sports a "basic, pervasive evil"? I suppose it could be argued, but from a pretty cynically abstract point of view.
Kundera seizes on the *form* of the protest march as oppressive, being the consummate aesthete that he is. I would suggest that protest and dissent makes you uncomfortable not because of the form per se, but because of the political necessity in these situations of subjugating your own desires (the desire to be liked, to be cool, to be 'successful', etc.) to a more anonymous and collective desire. Such a subjugation takes a great effort of will, my friend. Identifying how you can be a unique vessel for a truthful message is far more difficult than using weakly nostalgic old lech writers as the cover for your fears.
People are mobilizing in hundreds of cities this week to protest the WTO. Granted, many of the demonstrations will be simplistic and over-earnest bore-fests. I agree that this is a problem. Shit should be exciting. But the political necessity is very real. The WTO can veto legislation retroactively if they find that it "hampers trade," and they can do it secretly. This is simply unprecedented, unless one thinks of the Dutch East India Company and its ability to declare war on nations. The WTO is actually far more effective I think. It is not one company, but a consortium of many companies from many nations.
Lessee, Canada has nationalized health care? Why, that's a barrier to U.S. insurance companies who want to do business there! Hmm, France subsidizes its own filmmakers? Those protectionist jerks! Not giving Big Daddy and End of Days a fair chance in the market place, who do they think they are?
You think these scenarios sound far-fetched? Think again. If your way of life depended on decisions made by the WTO (and it inevitably does, even if the consequences aren't clear yet), you might find it easier to develop the will necessary to get over your embarrassment at shouting as loud as you can in the streets. You think that's the road to totalitarianism? Well, you're entitled to your opinion. But I think you've got it backwards.
This is an eloquent passage. It's clear that you sympathize with the discomfort and unpleasantness this girl feels. Like Kundera, however, she is incapable of using her will to conquer this difficulty. What is the difficulty? I think for many, including myself, protest marches are difficult because you must subjugate yourself to the crowd. The words and slogans sound ridiculous coming from your own mouth.
But why then, do hockey games and basketball games not elicit the same visceral shudder? After all, these events are basically "people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison." Are sports a "basic, pervasive evil"? I suppose it could be argued, but from a pretty cynically abstract point of view.
Kundera seizes on the *form* of the protest march as oppressive, being the consummate aesthete that he is. I would suggest that protest and dissent makes you uncomfortable not because of the form per se, but because of the political necessity in these situations of subjugating your own desires (the desire to be liked, to be cool, to be 'successful', etc.) to a more anonymous and collective desire. Such a subjugation takes a great effort of will, my friend. Identifying how you can be a unique vessel for a truthful message is far more difficult than using weakly nostalgic old lech writers as the cover for your fears.
People are mobilizing in hundreds of cities this week to protest the WTO. Granted, many of the
demonstrations will be simplistic and over-earnest bore-fests. I agree that this is a problem. Shit should be exciting. But the political necessity is very real. The WTO can veto legislation retroactively if they find that it "hampers trade," and they can do it secretly. This is simply unprecedented, unless one thinks of the Dutch East India Company and its ability to declare war on nations. The WTO is actually far more effective I think. It is not one company, but a consortium of many companies from many nations.
Lessee, Canada has nationalized health care? Why, that's a barrier to U.S. insurance companies who want to do business there! Hmm, France subsidizes its own filmmakers? Those protectionist jerks! Not giving Big Daddy and End of Days a fair chance in the market place, who do they think they are?
You think these scenarios sound far-fetched? Think again. If your way of life depended on decisions made by the WTO (and it inevitably does, even if the consequences aren't clear yet), you might find it easier to develop the will necessary to get over your embarrassment at shouting as loud as you can in the streets. You think that's the road to totalitarianism? Well, you're entitled to your opinion. But I think you've got it backwards.
I have had Microsoft brand USB speakers plugged into my Windows 98 box since spring, though, and they were only the market six months before that.
Check it out - it's a USB subwoofer. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it works like this: the iMac recognizes your subwoofer the moment you plug it in and - get this - tweaks the EQ of the already excellent H-K speaker system in the iMac to compensate for all that bass that just showed up. Now that is cool.
I'm pretty sure I read a while back that they selected the name from a computer-generated list. Apparently it's very popular now to take a bunch of vague prefixes and suffixes, and run them thru some script that generates thousands of possible combinations. They do this because 1. there are so many names that are already trademarked and 2. they clearly can't come up w/anything themselves. trans ante supra meta meta trans trans meta what evah
Most browsers can definitely render endashes (not that common) and emdashes (most common). Any style manual should tell you that no space is allowed between these-the dashes, that is-and the words or clauses they set off. The HTML code is ampersand, pound sign, 150, semicolon (endash) and 151 for the em variety. Though I've always felt most browsers rendered that emdash a little long--it's more like an ememdash.
+++
Chromalon
elisha@nojunkmail.bway.net