Plus it's not necessarily the developer's fault. Each of the folks in my department has a different version of the VM we use...we sometimes catch errors that only occur in some versions and write workarounds, because we can't trust our clients to have the latest and greatest. And since the problem occurs in our software, they blame us, even when it's not our fault.
I'm sure tons of folks at MS are using old machines. Testers, developers, installation engineers, hell even managers that can't accept the downtime to hand their laptops over for new versions of things.
The developer didn't write the worm, he just caught it because he wasn't careful. That's like blaming the woman for getting pregnant!
It's pretty fucking spiteful to blame us "naderites" for Gore's loss. Gore's campaign WAS more than uninspired...he didn't have the charisma nor the leadership to run a country. He came off in his books and his television appearances as a boorish self serving middle manager type who claims to want what's "best for the company" while pursuing his own quasi useful projects. Sound like Bush? Shit yes. Neither of these men could lead a country. They want what their party wants, and will only follow the advise of those people who tell them what they want to hear.
Whereas Nader is a born leader, a consumer activist, a man of science, a person who has worked in Washington forever and managed to maintain both his integrity and his point of view. Nader would have been an excellent president. Hell, he still may be.
And yet, voting for I thought would be the best candidate is just making a statement? Maybe you should go back to that Constitution you accuse people of "non-understanding," and find where it says anything about only having two parties, or that they both have to serve non-entities like corporations and interest groups.
If there is ever going to be change in the country, it's going to come from all of the disgusted non-voters and all of the disgruntled swing voters coming together and realizing that a third party candidate doesn't have to be a Ross Perot nutjob, or Howard Stern running for Governor. The Green party is an international organization devoted to putting government into the hands of people and out of the hand of committees and organizations which squelch moral opinions or repackage hate as virtue and Mr. Nader has a history of doing exactly that. No scandals or selfishness. If that's not worth voting for, but Al and that sellout Mccarthiest Liberman are, well then shit I'm running for president of Iraq.
I listen to a LOT of different music -- jazz, rock, classical, hip hop, soul, ska, punk, funk, folk, "alt" rock, latin, electronic -- and I usually get in a hankering for a genre. I then put the genre on random, like a radio station that ONLY plays stuff I like (with no commericals;)). 30 gig on my iPod means I don't have to sacrifice GZA's "Words from the Genius" from my "Old School / Lyrical Hip Hop" genre just because I added Dylan's "Live from Carnegie Hall, 10/31/64" (available on iTunes store and I *DO* suggest it) to my "Live and Acoustic" genre.
There's no such thing as "enough space," because as soon more is available I find a new way to enjoy it. And I don't think any of us should fall into the "640k is enough for everybody" trap.
That article's assertation that the Nomad has better battery life than the iPod is, from experience, just false. Unless they managed to find a 60 gig HD that's 3 times as efficient as their 20 gig HDs.
And what the author of the previous meant was, having the mp3s show up in a directory he can just stick files in. I don't think any developer that expects to allow searching or browsing based on ID3 tags can do this. It would require the player to read, detect and process the tags after you'd copied them, and keep some kind of internal list managed. That takes a LOT of processor power, more than the average MP3 player's DSP should be expected to perform. After all, ID3 tags can be as big as 10k. Having a running list of information on a player program, which can be used to manage this data and format it for the poor dumb player is a Good Thing...and iTune's methodology (either drag and drop, or sync...i choose d&d) for doing so is great.
Of course, if you want to just stick things in directories and treat them as albums in alphabetical play order like we did in the stone ages, Philips makes some great MP3CD players.
I've listened to my iPod on my JE Labs 300B tube amp. Why should you be impressed? Because the JEL is much higher resolution than the average transistor amp, and so it delivers a louder version of what you hear on headphones across a full soundstage. And 128 kbit AAC sounds better than even my 192 kbit minimum HQ VBR recordings on MP3. Just listen to the resolution phase of a cymbal hit with somebody singing over it...there's no stereo washing, no audible squaring of the signal. Personally, I don't rip at 128kbit even with AAC...I use 192 kbit minimum, just to deliver as much breathing room as possible to the compiler.
Which is why I got a 30 gig iPod and not a Zen. That, and the smaller size, better battery life, cool retro Mac SE font, simple navigation, iTunes/MusicMatch integration, tough seamless touch controls (great for use at the gym...no need to worry about my sweat ruining expensive hardware), note reader and backlight which matches my car's interior lights. These things (specially the battery life) are well worth the $100 price difference and size drop.
Of course, you might be one of these assholes who needs everything cheap and hackable. I have one here at work who over the years has at spent least $1000 on mp3 players from Rios to Apex DVD players to that dumb Nomad keychain player and was apalled that I just wanted to use the thing as an mp3 player. When I mentioned I sold my Toshiba e740 with wireless and a gig of flash memory, for way less than it was worth to buy this thing, I thought he was going to hit me with his Archos jukebox. And that thing weighs like 5 pounds!
Because while Media Player shoves it's "neat feature" tits in my face, iTunes acts like a media player.
Because while MS touts its skinnability and plugins, iTunes lets me manage my 200 gigabyte music collection across three networked hard drives and DVDs with a simple, clean interface that I didn't like at first, but easily understood, and I grew to love.
Because while MS makes simple things difficult and asks me questions I don't know the answers to, iTunes makes high quality guesses for me by default, and lets me decide if I want to.
Because while Media Player allows you to import as tinny WMV files, iTunes lets me import as AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF...and by default, it's 192 kbit Mp3. Quality and portability are first; specialization is second.
Basically, iTunes follows one of the important rules of good software: simplicity before generality, making common things easy and complicated things possible. And if you want to install Audion, etc...you can still do so. Apple treats my computer like it was mine, and iTunes does the same with my music library. Microsoft wants to get its hand down the pants of my PC and I can't effing stand that. That's the difference.
True, true. Last night I spent $15 on a 25 year old Elvis Costello album and $20 on a brand new compilation featuring Hieroglyphics. $20, for a damn 12 track compilation. Of course, I coulda just bought that new fitty cent abum they's playin' on the pop radio, there. Did you know he's been shot? Or maybe I could buy that Good Charlotte record where he complains about famous people having problems in their personal lives, because as we all know money is the first step to happiness. Alas, I cry for the lost spectre of punk music...Shelter, take me away!
Seriously, it's embarassing how much the industry caters to "typical" tastes in music Notice I didn't say "BAD" tastes...I've bought a lot of really cool albums from commerical outlets. But if you're into anything even slightly left of the dial, you're screwed. They just don't have the space to dedicate to anything different that isn't guaranteed to sell. Which leads to such stupidity as my local FYE having three copies of the Super Saver version of Carly Simon's greatest hits, but can't even order the Beta Band's Hot Shots II when I ask.
There is so much music out there in the world right now that there's no way a traditional media outlet can survive, without becoming a more or less a warehouse and charging massive prices as a sort of "stocking fee" for carrying wierd shit. Internet music services, however, aren't tied to this. Stocking a new AAC compressed album takes about 100 meg of space, or around 8.3 cents on today's storage market. If it doesn't sell...well, nobody's hurting.
$.99 may seem like a lot if you're still thinking of a CD as a $10 entity. But it would have save me $7 yesterday...$8 if I didn't download the dumb 40 second intro.
The government is very explicit with educational expenses you can itemize. Books are not included and neither are mandatory fees...just tuition -- UNLESS it's directly related to your CURRENT career. So if i take linguistics (future career) classes, i can only write off the tuition for that classes' credits, and with calc classes (current career) I can write off pretty much everything. However, you might be able to write it off as a development tool; i am. The general rule is items used 80% (i think) of the time for work can be written off. My iPod has my current codebase and tasklist on it 100% of the time. So you know, there's $500.
Of course, the problem is getting the auditor to believe that.
That's because a good FPS is immersive. You turn the lights off, get into, and the interface makes you a killer, not a guy clicking on shit. If you've never felt the adrenaline surge of a good run, never felt the demon getting unleashed in a game of deathmatch, well it's no wonder you're bored. I have to put up with the same complaints every time my friend and I get excited about a new FPS...we love that feeling, it's something you don't get from any other video game, it's the closest to a real OUTDOOR SPORTS rage that a PC game can get.
Which is i think why so many people don't like FPS. They often take reflexes, hand-eye coordination, a tactical mind, and a cutthroat attitude. Resource control is rarely as helpful as fine motor control. It's a physical game, even if all you are moving is your index finger. And most typical gamefans HATE that. If you like the subtleties of Warcraft 3 or the gameplay dynamics of Masters of Orion or the breasts of Tomb Raider, you're going to hate the "click one button or t'other" dynamics of UT.
Oh, I should probably add that a lot of people who don't like FPS games suck at them and are merely punk bitches who should suck down my rockets. If I don't they'll kick me out of my clan.
Well, comparing UT to UT2k3, I'd have to say the latest, greatest patch is pretty great, so I'll pay for it. I always price games thusly: price / hours I'll enjoy it = price per hour. If it's less than $10, it's about as valuable as a bitchin' concert. If it's less than $4.5, it's about as valuable as a movie. If it's less than $.50, it's about as valuable as a really great CD. I put some 200 hours into the first unreal (value 10 cents per hour since i got it in the bargain bin) and about 100 into the latest (value $.50). If my friends agree to go on a month long FPS spree, it'll be way worth it.
Remember, development costs money and they don't owe you upgrades. They don't even owe you fixes. But since this also means you don't owe them any allegiance, they fix what they feel they can't sell, and everything beyond that is a gift for your loyalty.
I'm not making a public/private distinction...i'm making a marketplace/meetingplace disctinction. And yes...if you set up shop in the same way a corporation does, and try to reach a mass market the way they do, rather than deal with things on the "massively micro" level, YES you are going to have to deal with their type of rules.
And that's exactly what I said. I didn't have to think long about it. Maybe you should have a nice long READ.
Tell me, AC, do you really disagree with Quantum Mechanics? Or do you disagree with the silly way it describes the universe?
My wife goes into the changing room. She's either naked or she aint, but I don't know for sure. I surely wouldn't say she's 50% naked. But that doesn't change the essence of the uncertainty.
Fact is, if everything's a guess, then all the tiny margins of error can easily grow to be quite large. All the "pretty sures" can add up to one big "WRONG." Think of it like a stoplight. It's either red or green, about the same time each color. I pass ten of them on my way to work. Each red light knocks a minute off my drive time. Probability says there's even odds each one will be red, so on the average I'm losing 5 minutes from stoplights. But on the 1/1024 chance that I hit all reds, I am losing 10 minutes. If I bank on the average, there's a chance I'll be 5 minutes late.
Even if you are sure you know the truth, that margin for error can still bite your ass. The only think you can be sure of is what can't possibly be true -- eg, getting all brown lights or my wife buying a $200 thong bikini. Which is why I'm not so sure the speed of light won't be broken. I'm not so sure that entropy always increases. I'm not sure there isn't a benevolent god who listens to our prayers. But I'm goddamn sure that he doesn't want us to stick our hands over our eyes, our fingers in our ears, and scream "LALALAALALAAAA" every time we see something we can't explain with our current philosophy.
I think this system seems to make everybody at happy. Think about it: if you are very religious about sending movies back quickly, you're always getting something new. You've always got a position in the "One In" queue. So you have more chances to get that hard-to-find movie.
People like me, who hold a disk for a long time because they like to intone every scene into memory (or are just lazy), aren't going to get more than one or two chances per month to get that must-have film. To keep it fair, and to keep the probability that either me or my diligent friend will get the movie about equal odds, you've got to weight my chances.
Yeah, it's partly to increase the probability that people who are thinking of quitting will stay on, but even so it's the only way to make things statistically fair.
Well, no. Corporations DON'T own our speech -- in our houses, in pubs, on the street, over IM, on bulletin boards, etc. Privately, you can say whatever the fuck you want and be as slanderous and liberlous and vindictive as you like.
But when you enter their arena -- when you post on a popular public website that takes money for advertisements and sells access to its forums -- you have to play by their rules. You can't bitch and moan that you have no rights and expect to have them smile on your infringement merely because you are a bit player.
You know, the same rules that American Greetings is "hiding behind" are preventing Vivendi from stealing the likeness of Gabe, Tycho and Div and using them in crappy saturday morning cartoons. They're preventing COO magazine from copying this post, and pasting as an editorial.
"Corporations are evil" is a stupid thing to say. Amnesty International is incorporated. Apple and Red Hat are incorporated. Hell, my coworker is an incorporated contractor. Since the things you listed are heavily advertised, I think what you mean is that advertising is evil. I disagree: advertising is the only means that most companies have to promote their products to a general audience. Believe it or not, it provides a service that the list of available companies in the phone book does not. Sure, some forms of advertising are manipulative, invasive and, well, stupid, but at the same time, my mini hosting company got 20 times the business the one month I advertised it actively than it has before or after. If I wanted to run a business that made enough money to live off of, I'd have to advertise all the time. You can't say it's evil for small businesses to want to succeed, and you can't restrict large multinational corporations from doing what my one man ass can do.
Maybe you just meant that bastardized popular culture is evil. That I agree with -- I thought the film version of Fight Club was terrible. I'll going back to my Black Keys album now.
Well, that's kind of a simplification. Absolute truth does exist, but the problem is that we can't ever figure out what it is. "The act of observing disturbs the absurd."
You say "All conflict comes from not being in sync with truth." I say "truth cannot be known." Since you can't come into sync with something you don't know, there is no answer to the problem.
And yet, people seeking "truth" intrude on others to get it. The inquisition sought truth, as did Josef Mengele and all the great chemical and nuclear polluters. Science is by nature an intrusive, destructive force -- disturbing the observed, to one degree or another, every time.
You seem it's better than fundamentalist mythology, and I tend to agree with you -- but only so far as I feel people are willing to give up superstition when it's wrong -- eg, not reproducable and not needed to explain the results of an observation. I don't think this is true. Hell, I still cross my fingers and throw salt over my shoulder and I don't think the rigors of calc-based physics are going to drum these things out of my fool monkey brain. I shudder to think of the ignorance other people believe in the face of evidence...you know, like not believing they have a fool monkey brain in the first place.
In reference to the earliest of civilizations, there isn't a multicultural angle because there weren't really disperate cultures. At least not in the way we think of them -- civillizations were very limited in size, and scope, and up until 100,000 - 50,000 years ago were pretty well centered in a tiny region in the middle east.
"Ethnicity" wasn't an issue with early humans. There were no ethnic groups, in fact we were all probably about the same colour and lived in nearly the exact same way. It wasn't until humans started to spread out, lost contact with each other, stopped cross breeding, etc, that there was really any difference in groups of people. And philosophical differences in culture are a big luxury and offshoot of agriculture...one that stems from having a group of people who can sit around and do nothing but bullshit all day.
But even today, one can pretty well ignore the "multicultural angle" when talking in broad terms about gender relations. Every culture still has a defininition of what is "men's work" and what is "women's work," and as we all move into a "Third Wave" culture, the lines between the two are blurring. You don't need to have all the particulars exact to prove that, though if you'd like to know them, pick up anything written by the Tofflers in the 1990s.
As for "being ethnocentric" being a detriment to my post...dude, did you read it? I was POINTING OUT that archeologists are arguing exactly that, that the classical Western view on male/female work sharing was not supported by the archeological record. I was POINTING OUT that many modern archeologists are trying to establish a model which does not apply modern cultural viewpoints to the evidence of ancient cultures. Maybe you haven't taken Intro to Logic yet, but when somebody is arguing against having an ethnic bias in the first place, they're not being ethnocentric.
More importantly...since energy can neither be created nor destroyed, doesn't this effectively reduce the vibrations themselves as well?
Which means other great things besides generating "free" energy...basically, it reduces the need for vibrational dampening systems, and reduces the overall wear and tear on a machine. Even if it's only a minute difference, it could have a profound effect on the reliability of machines from combustion engines to eletrical transformers, and possibly a reduction in transient EMF (due to induction in steel casings vibrating near a magenetic field) as well!
All these cool things actually lead me to believe that the idea doesn't work. It seems too good to be true...a little extra power, less maintenance and maybe even cleaner signals? Like Stewie said, "This is so good it HAS to be fattening."
Of course, the underlying problem with this thesis is the presumption that men hunted while women foraged. While this seems to make sense to us, seeing as we've been dealing with the male breadwinner stereotype for at least the past thousand years, the archeological record does not necessarily agree with it. While there is evidence that men hunted, there is no evidence that they did not assist in the foraging and domestic chores, and in fact fingerprints in pottery seem to indicate that both men and women shared in these.
Keep in mind that hunting was a difficult enterprise, physically strenuous and dangerous. You couldn't just nick off to Wal-mart and buy a 22 -- you had a sharpened stick and some obsidian flakes and that's about it. So it makes evolutionary sense that cultures that kept their women away from the hunt would prosper -- fewer dead or injured women that way. That doesn't mean that men did nothing else -- there's a lot of evidence that foraging was the primary source of food. Anybody who thinks women were just going to shut up and let the ment lounge around while they toiled hasn't been nagged to clean the garage.
Yeah, I think there's an evolutionary benefit to nagging.
My Intro to Archeology professor was a feminist (ostensibly because he had an open marriage and wanted to tag some college tail, not happening the guy was sleazy and still wore tight jeans from the 1970s) and loved to bring up the dichotomy between the classic "Man as Hunter/Scholar" and post modern "Woman as Gatherer/Nurturer" theories of human evolution, as well as what was supported by the meager evidence. In essence, it seemed to prove that neither sex "had it easy" and he went on to tie this into the historical record and a nice long lecture about how modern gender roles are thrusting women into the workplace without removing their previous roles in the home and how this is changing faster than men's roles and how men should clean the the house more, blah blah. I kinda slept through most of that.
My wife, however, took excellent notes, which she is referring to to this day.
20% moochers who make friends and family use the net for them. Reminds me of my friend's jewish roommate who made us open the door for him on Yom Kippur.
17% idiots who gave up on complicated concepts like "back arrows" and "typing." Also people who balked at the expense of fixing computers and dealing with ISP bullshit (heh they should have gone webslum)
24% true luddites, or people who have better stuff to do, depending on how you look at it.
It also says that the majority of these folks (56%) don't plan on going online, that they don't have the social or technical skills to do so, and so I say good riddance. Doesn't look like our community is missing out on anything.
One thing that bothers me is their "special look" at disabled users. They never define "diabled," and I think they are defining a disabled person on the internet as somebody whose disability directly effects internet use (basically, the blind and those with difficulty using the mouse). Therefore, it's kind of self fulfilling...if it's hard and expensive to do something, you're not going to do it. I think if you look at the numbers of people with learning diabilities, physical impairments and debilitating illnesses who go online, you might discover the exact opposite -- that the buffering effect of online chat makes it easier to communicate, that the ability to move at one's own pace makes it easier to concentrate and comprehend. Shit, my first CS teacher was wheelchair bound with Lou Gherig's disease. Computers turned a crippling illness into a chance for him to make good money and a real impact on kids.
Now to squeeze them into a compactflash slot so I can listen to the White Album uncompressed. And can you imagine a RAID of these things?
No, seriously. Put them in a pluggable format, allow me to daisychain them bandolier style, and there's my infinitely expandable mp3 player/portable hard disc. You could build it into a belt and take the place of slung Palm Pilots and flip phones as the elite fashion accessory of the geek world.
I should point out that in a lot of ways, Nissan is the sworn enemy of the Volkswagen speed freak. Basically, the problem is that we all believe that the VWs are basically great cars which can be tuned into race demons. Nissan, however, makes shitty cars whose specs always look better than VWs, and therefore people who only look at specs naturally assume it's a better car.
It boils down to this: VW racers tend to care more about compression ratios, turbo spool points, back pressure, boost pressure, aluminum clutch plates and overengineered Torsen all wheel drive systems; while Nissan racers tend to put a bunch of fucking blue nylon tape on the hood, cut the springs, and call it a day.
When I was test driving two years ago, I found myself behind the wheel of a Nissan at a couple different lots. Each car scared the hell out of me. The suspension was way too tight and managed to somehow be jagged in both the attack and resolution. The steering was loose but the steering system made it feel tight...the exact opposite of the VW. Same with the gearbox (though VW does have a problem with "uncertainty" in their transmissions, and if you've driven an A4 Jetta you know what I mean). And the engine...well, Nissan's engines are pretty good, but like most japanese cars they've got no freaking torque. Adding a passenger and a duffel bag is a good way to cut your acceleration in half.
What really irks us, though, is how Nissan seems to be stealing VW's design plans. Compare the sentra redesign in 2000 with the Jetta redesign in 1998.5...they change the same things. Then take a look at the 2003 Maxima, and for that matter the 2002 Altima, and compare them to the sillouette of the 1998 Passat. Again, these cars look more like the Passat than they do their own previous models! At least until you get inside, or own one for a year or so. After 5 years on the road, my GLX Passat looks better than my friend's 2 year old Maxima, with a similar commute. Hell, if it wasn't for all the roadsalt and scratches from SUV owners slamming their doors into me trying to get their kids out of a car seat 5 feet off the ground, this car would totally cherry.
It's a silly racer's quarrel, like Chevy vs Ford. I'm not going to get a little decal of Calvin pissing on an Altima, but it feels good to see a Nissan get trashed.
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Plus it's not necessarily the developer's fault. Each of the folks in my department has a different version of the VM we use...we sometimes catch errors that only occur in some versions and write workarounds, because we can't trust our clients to have the latest and greatest. And since the problem occurs in our software, they blame us, even when it's not our fault.
I'm sure tons of folks at MS are using old machines. Testers, developers, installation engineers, hell even managers that can't accept the downtime to hand their laptops over for new versions of things.
The developer didn't write the worm, he just caught it because he wasn't careful. That's like blaming the woman for getting pregnant!
It's pretty fucking spiteful to blame us "naderites" for Gore's loss. Gore's campaign WAS more than uninspired...he didn't have the charisma nor the leadership to run a country. He came off in his books and his television appearances as a boorish self serving middle manager type who claims to want what's "best for the company" while pursuing his own quasi useful projects. Sound like Bush? Shit yes. Neither of these men could lead a country. They want what their party wants, and will only follow the advise of those people who tell them what they want to hear.
Whereas Nader is a born leader, a consumer activist, a man of science, a person who has worked in Washington forever and managed to maintain both his integrity and his point of view. Nader would have been an excellent president. Hell, he still may be.
And yet, voting for I thought would be the best candidate is just making a statement? Maybe you should go back to that Constitution you accuse people of "non-understanding," and find where it says anything about only having two parties, or that they both have to serve non-entities like corporations and interest groups.
If there is ever going to be change in the country, it's going to come from all of the disgusted non-voters and all of the disgruntled swing voters coming together and realizing that a third party candidate doesn't have to be a Ross Perot nutjob, or Howard Stern running for Governor. The Green party is an international organization devoted to putting government into the hands of people and out of the hand of committees and organizations which squelch moral opinions or repackage hate as virtue and Mr. Nader has a history of doing exactly that. No scandals or selfishness. If that's not worth voting for, but Al and that sellout Mccarthiest Liberman are, well then shit I'm running for president of Iraq.
I listen to a LOT of different music -- jazz, ;)). 30 gig on my iPod means I don't have to sacrifice GZA's "Words from the Genius" from my "Old School / Lyrical Hip Hop" genre just because I added Dylan's "Live from Carnegie Hall, 10/31/64" (available on iTunes store and I *DO* suggest it) to my "Live and Acoustic" genre.
rock, classical, hip hop, soul, ska, punk, funk, folk, "alt" rock, latin, electronic -- and I usually get in a hankering for a genre. I then put the genre on random, like a radio station that ONLY plays stuff I like (with no commericals
There's no such thing as "enough space," because as soon more is available I find a new way to enjoy it. And I don't think any of us should fall into the "640k is enough for everybody" trap.
That article's assertation that the Nomad has better battery life than the iPod is, from experience, just false. Unless they managed to find a 60 gig HD that's 3 times as efficient as their 20 gig HDs.
And what the author of the previous meant was, having the mp3s show up in a directory he can just stick files in. I don't think any developer that expects to allow searching or browsing based on ID3 tags can do this. It would require the player to read, detect and process the tags after you'd copied them, and keep some kind of internal list managed. That takes a LOT of processor power, more than the average MP3 player's DSP should be expected to perform. After all, ID3 tags can be as big as 10k. Having a running list of information on a player program, which can be used to manage this data and format it for the poor dumb player is a Good Thing...and iTune's methodology (either drag and drop, or sync...i choose d&d) for doing so is great.
Of course, if you want to just stick things in directories and treat them as albums in alphabetical play order like we did in the stone ages, Philips makes some great MP3CD players.
Here's the tie breaker.
I've listened to my iPod on my JE Labs 300B tube amp. Why should you be impressed? Because the JEL is much higher resolution than the average transistor amp, and so it delivers a louder version of what you hear on headphones across a full soundstage. And 128 kbit AAC sounds better than even my 192 kbit minimum HQ VBR recordings on MP3. Just listen to the resolution phase of a cymbal hit with somebody singing over it...there's no stereo washing, no audible squaring of the signal. Personally, I don't rip at 128kbit even with AAC...I use 192 kbit minimum, just to deliver as much breathing room as possible to the compiler.
Which is why I got a 30 gig iPod and not a Zen. That, and the smaller size, better battery life, cool retro Mac SE font, simple navigation, iTunes/MusicMatch integration, tough seamless touch controls (great for use at the gym...no need to worry about my sweat ruining expensive hardware), note reader and backlight which matches my car's interior lights. These things (specially the battery life) are well worth the $100 price difference and size drop.
Of course, you might be one of these assholes who needs everything cheap and hackable. I have one here at work who over the years has at spent least $1000 on mp3 players from Rios to Apex DVD players to that dumb Nomad keychain player and was apalled that I just wanted to use the thing as an mp3 player. When I mentioned I sold my Toshiba e740 with wireless and a gig of flash memory, for way less than it was worth to buy this thing, I thought he was going to hit me with his Archos jukebox. And that thing weighs like 5 pounds!
Actually, there are clients for the macintosh for all three networks.
And let's not forget the "dead" Hotline network. The first p2p app? Still going strong on mac.
I'm really sorry you have no argument. Maybe you can get one for your next post?
Because while Media Player shoves it's "neat feature" tits in my face, iTunes acts like a media player.
Because while MS touts its skinnability and plugins, iTunes lets me manage my 200 gigabyte music collection across three networked hard drives and DVDs with a simple, clean interface that I didn't like at first, but easily understood, and I grew to love.
Because while MS makes simple things difficult and asks me questions I don't know the answers to, iTunes makes high quality guesses for me by default, and lets me decide if I want to.
Because while Media Player allows you to import as tinny WMV files, iTunes lets me import as AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF...and by default, it's 192 kbit Mp3. Quality and portability are first; specialization is second.
Basically, iTunes follows one of the important rules of good software: simplicity before generality, making common things easy and complicated things possible. And if you want to install Audion, etc...you can still do so. Apple treats my computer like it was mine, and iTunes does the same with my music library. Microsoft wants to get its hand down the pants of my PC and I can't effing stand that. That's the difference.
True, true. Last night I spent $15 on a 25 year old Elvis Costello album and $20 on a brand new compilation featuring Hieroglyphics. $20, for a damn 12 track compilation. Of course, I coulda just bought that new fitty cent abum they's playin' on the pop radio, there. Did you know he's been shot? Or maybe I could buy that Good Charlotte record where he complains about famous people having problems in their personal lives, because as we all know money is the first step to happiness. Alas, I cry for the lost spectre of punk music...Shelter, take me away!
Seriously, it's embarassing how much the industry caters to "typical" tastes in music Notice I didn't say "BAD" tastes...I've bought a lot of really cool albums from commerical outlets. But if you're into anything even slightly left of the dial, you're screwed. They just don't have the space to dedicate to anything different that isn't guaranteed to sell. Which leads to such stupidity as my local FYE having three copies of the Super Saver version of Carly Simon's greatest hits, but can't even order the Beta Band's Hot Shots II when I ask.
There is so much music out there in the world right now that there's no way a traditional media outlet can survive, without becoming a more or less a warehouse and charging massive prices as a sort of "stocking fee" for carrying wierd shit. Internet music services, however, aren't tied to this. Stocking a new AAC compressed album takes about 100 meg of space, or around 8.3 cents on today's storage market. If it doesn't sell...well, nobody's hurting.
$.99 may seem like a lot if you're still thinking of a CD as a $10 entity. But it would have save me $7 yesterday...$8 if I didn't download the dumb 40 second intro.
The government is very explicit with educational expenses you can itemize. Books are not included and neither are mandatory fees...just tuition -- UNLESS it's directly related to your CURRENT career. So if i take linguistics (future career) classes, i can only write off the tuition for that classes' credits, and with calc classes (current career) I can write off pretty much everything. However, you might be able to write it off as a development tool; i am. The general rule is items used 80% (i think) of the time for work can be written off. My iPod has my current codebase and tasklist on it 100% of the time. So you know, there's $500.
Of course, the problem is getting the auditor to believe that.
That's because a good FPS is immersive. You turn the lights off, get into, and the interface makes you a killer, not a guy clicking on shit. If you've never felt the adrenaline surge of a good run, never felt the demon getting unleashed in a game of deathmatch, well it's no wonder you're bored. I have to put up with the same complaints every time my friend and I get excited about a new FPS...we love that feeling, it's something you don't get from any other video game, it's the closest to a real OUTDOOR SPORTS rage that a PC game can get.
Which is i think why so many people don't like FPS. They often take reflexes, hand-eye coordination, a tactical mind, and a cutthroat attitude. Resource control is rarely as helpful as fine motor control. It's a physical game, even if all you are moving is your index finger. And most typical gamefans HATE that. If you like the subtleties of Warcraft 3 or the gameplay dynamics of Masters of Orion or the breasts of Tomb Raider, you're going to hate the "click one button or t'other" dynamics of UT.
Oh, I should probably add that a lot of people who don't like FPS games suck at them and are merely punk bitches who should suck down my rockets. If I don't they'll kick me out of my clan.
Well, comparing UT to UT2k3, I'd have to say the latest, greatest patch is pretty great, so I'll pay for it. I always price games thusly: price / hours I'll enjoy it = price per hour. If it's less than $10, it's about as valuable as a bitchin' concert. If it's less than $4.5, it's about as valuable as a movie. If it's less than $.50, it's about as valuable as a really great CD. I put some 200 hours into the first unreal (value 10 cents per hour since i got it in the bargain bin) and about 100 into the latest (value $.50). If my friends agree to go on a month long FPS spree, it'll be way worth it.
Remember, development costs money and they don't owe you upgrades. They don't even owe you fixes. But since this also means you don't owe them any allegiance, they fix what they feel they can't sell, and everything beyond that is a gift for your loyalty.
I'm not making a public/private distinction...i'm making a marketplace/meetingplace disctinction. And yes...if you set up shop in the same way a corporation does, and try to reach a mass market the way they do, rather than deal with things on the "massively micro" level, YES you are going to have to deal with their type of rules.
And that's exactly what I said. I didn't have to think long about it. Maybe you should have a nice long READ.
Tell me, AC, do you really disagree with Quantum Mechanics? Or do you disagree with the silly way it describes the universe?
My wife goes into the changing room. She's either naked or she aint, but I don't know for sure. I surely wouldn't say she's 50% naked. But that doesn't change the essence of the uncertainty.
Fact is, if everything's a guess, then all the tiny margins of error can easily grow to be quite large. All the "pretty sures" can add up to one big "WRONG." Think of it like a stoplight. It's either red or green, about the same time each color. I pass ten of them on my way to work. Each red light knocks a minute off my drive time. Probability says there's even odds each one will be red, so on the average I'm losing 5 minutes from stoplights. But on the 1/1024 chance that I hit all reds, I am losing 10 minutes. If I bank on the average, there's a chance I'll be 5 minutes late.
Even if you are sure you know the truth, that margin for error can still bite your ass. The only think you can be sure of is what can't possibly be true -- eg, getting all brown lights or my wife buying a $200 thong bikini. Which is why I'm not so sure the speed of light won't be broken. I'm not so sure that entropy always increases. I'm not sure there isn't a benevolent god who listens to our prayers. But I'm goddamn sure that he doesn't want us to stick our hands over our eyes, our fingers in our ears, and scream "LALALAALALAAAA" every time we see something we can't explain with our current philosophy.
I think this system seems to make everybody at happy. Think about it: if you are very religious about sending movies back quickly, you're always getting something new. You've always got a position in the "One In" queue. So you have more chances to get that hard-to-find movie.
People like me, who hold a disk for a long time because they like to intone every scene into memory (or are just lazy), aren't going to get more than one or two chances per month to get that must-have film. To keep it fair, and to keep the probability that either me or my diligent friend will get the movie about equal odds, you've got to weight my chances.
Yeah, it's partly to increase the probability that people who are thinking of quitting will stay on, but even so it's the only way to make things statistically fair.
Well, no. Corporations DON'T own our speech -- in our houses, in pubs, on the street, over IM, on bulletin boards, etc. Privately, you can say whatever the fuck you want and be as slanderous and liberlous and vindictive as you like.
But when you enter their arena -- when you post on a popular public website that takes money for advertisements and sells access to its forums -- you have to play by their rules. You can't bitch and moan that you have no rights and expect to have them smile on your infringement merely because you are a bit player.
You know, the same rules that American Greetings is "hiding behind" are preventing Vivendi from stealing the likeness of Gabe, Tycho and Div and using them in crappy saturday morning cartoons. They're preventing COO magazine from copying this post, and pasting as an editorial.
"Corporations are evil" is a stupid thing to say. Amnesty International is incorporated. Apple and Red Hat are incorporated. Hell, my coworker is an incorporated contractor. Since the things you listed are heavily advertised, I think what you mean is that advertising is evil. I disagree: advertising is the only means that most companies have to promote their products to a general audience. Believe it or not, it provides a service that the list of available companies in the phone book does not. Sure, some forms of advertising are manipulative, invasive and, well, stupid, but at the same time, my mini hosting company got 20 times the business the one month I advertised it actively than it has before or after. If I wanted to run a business that made enough money to live off of, I'd have to advertise all the time. You can't say it's evil for small businesses to want to succeed, and you can't restrict large multinational corporations from doing what my one man ass can do.
Maybe you just meant that bastardized popular culture is evil. That I agree with -- I thought the film version of Fight Club was terrible. I'll going back to my Black Keys album now.
I must be tired. I have no idea why I typed "absurd" instead of "observed" in that PP.
Well, that's kind of a simplification. Absolute truth does exist, but the problem is that we can't ever figure out what it is. "The act of observing disturbs the absurd."
You say "All conflict comes from not being in sync with truth." I say "truth cannot be known." Since you can't come into sync with something you don't know, there is no answer to the problem.
And yet, people seeking "truth" intrude on others to get it. The inquisition sought truth, as did Josef Mengele and all the great chemical and nuclear polluters. Science is by nature an intrusive, destructive force -- disturbing the observed, to one degree or another, every time.
You seem it's better than fundamentalist mythology, and I tend to agree with you -- but only so far as I feel people are willing to give up superstition when it's wrong -- eg, not reproducable and not needed to explain the results of an observation. I don't think this is true. Hell, I still cross my fingers and throw salt over my shoulder and I don't think the rigors of calc-based physics are going to drum these things out of my fool monkey brain. I shudder to think of the ignorance other people believe in the face of evidence...you know, like not believing they have a fool monkey brain in the first place.
They taught you wrong, boy!
In reference to the earliest of civilizations, there isn't a multicultural angle because there weren't really disperate cultures. At least not in the way we think of them -- civillizations were very limited in size, and scope, and up until 100,000 - 50,000 years ago were pretty well centered in a tiny region in the middle east.
"Ethnicity" wasn't an issue with early humans. There were no ethnic groups, in fact we were all probably about the same colour and lived in nearly the exact same way. It wasn't until humans started to spread out, lost contact with each other, stopped cross breeding, etc, that there was really any difference in groups of people. And philosophical differences in culture are a big luxury and offshoot of agriculture...one that stems from having a group of people who can sit around and do nothing but bullshit all day.
But even today, one can pretty well ignore the "multicultural angle" when talking in broad terms about gender relations. Every culture still has a defininition of what is "men's work" and what is "women's work," and as we all move into a "Third Wave" culture, the lines between the two are blurring. You don't need to have all the particulars exact to prove that, though if you'd like to know them, pick up anything written by the Tofflers in the 1990s.
As for "being ethnocentric" being a detriment to my post...dude, did you read it? I was POINTING OUT that archeologists are arguing exactly that, that the classical Western view on male/female work sharing was not supported by the archeological record. I was POINTING OUT that many modern archeologists are trying to establish a model which does not apply modern cultural viewpoints to the evidence of ancient cultures. Maybe you haven't taken Intro to Logic yet, but when somebody is arguing against having an ethnic bias in the first place, they're not being ethnocentric.
More importantly...since energy can neither be created nor destroyed, doesn't this effectively reduce the vibrations themselves as well?
Which means other great things besides generating "free" energy...basically, it reduces the need for vibrational dampening systems, and reduces the overall wear and tear on a machine. Even if it's only a minute difference, it could have a profound effect on the reliability of machines from combustion engines to eletrical transformers, and possibly a reduction in transient EMF (due to induction in steel casings vibrating near a magenetic field) as well!
All these cool things actually lead me to believe that the idea doesn't work. It seems too good to be true...a little extra power, less maintenance and maybe even cleaner signals? Like Stewie said, "This is so good it HAS to be fattening."
Of course, the underlying problem with this thesis is the presumption that men hunted while women foraged. While this seems to make sense to us, seeing as we've been dealing with the male breadwinner stereotype for at least the past thousand years, the archeological record does not necessarily agree with it. While there is evidence that men hunted, there is no evidence that they did not assist in the foraging and domestic chores, and in fact fingerprints in pottery seem to indicate that both men and women shared in these.
Keep in mind that hunting was a difficult enterprise, physically strenuous and dangerous. You couldn't just nick off to Wal-mart and buy a 22 -- you had a sharpened stick and some obsidian flakes and that's about it. So it makes evolutionary sense that cultures that kept their women away from the hunt would prosper -- fewer dead or injured women that way. That doesn't mean that men did nothing else -- there's a lot of evidence that foraging was the primary source of food. Anybody who thinks women were just going to shut up and let the ment lounge around while they toiled hasn't been nagged to clean the garage.
Yeah, I think there's an evolutionary benefit to nagging.
My Intro to Archeology professor was a feminist (ostensibly because he had an open marriage and wanted to tag some college tail, not happening the guy was sleazy and still wore tight jeans from the 1970s) and loved to bring up the dichotomy between the classic "Man as Hunter/Scholar" and post modern "Woman as Gatherer/Nurturer" theories of human evolution, as well as what was supported by the meager evidence. In essence, it seemed to prove that neither sex "had it easy" and he went on to tie this into the historical record and a nice long lecture about how modern gender roles are thrusting women into the workplace without removing their previous roles in the home and how this is changing faster than men's roles and how men should clean the the house more, blah blah. I kinda slept through most of that.
My wife, however, took excellent notes, which she is referring to to this day.
Net avoiders are:
20% moochers who make friends and family use the net for them. Reminds me of my friend's jewish roommate who made us open the door for him on Yom Kippur.
17% idiots who gave up on complicated concepts like "back arrows" and "typing." Also people who balked at the expense of fixing computers and dealing with ISP bullshit (heh they should have gone webslum)
24% true luddites, or people who have better stuff to do, depending on how you look at it.
It also says that the majority of these folks (56%) don't plan on going online, that they don't have the social or technical skills to do so, and so I say good riddance. Doesn't look like our community is missing out on anything.
One thing that bothers me is their "special look" at disabled users. They never define "diabled," and I think they are defining a disabled person on the internet as somebody whose disability directly effects internet use (basically, the blind and those with difficulty using the mouse). Therefore, it's kind of self fulfilling...if it's hard and expensive to do something, you're not going to do it. I think if you look at the numbers of people with learning diabilities, physical impairments and debilitating illnesses who go online, you might discover the exact opposite -- that the buffering effect of online chat makes it easier to communicate, that the ability to move at one's own pace makes it easier to concentrate and comprehend. Shit, my first CS teacher was wheelchair bound with Lou Gherig's disease. Computers turned a crippling illness into a chance for him to make good money and a real impact on kids.
Now to squeeze them into a compactflash slot so I can listen to the White Album uncompressed. And can you imagine a RAID of these things?
No, seriously. Put them in a pluggable format, allow me to daisychain them bandolier style, and there's my infinitely expandable mp3 player/portable hard disc. You could build it into a belt and take the place of slung Palm Pilots and flip phones as the elite fashion accessory of the geek world.
I'll bet Don HO is psyched.
I should point out that in a lot of ways, Nissan is the sworn enemy of the Volkswagen speed freak. Basically, the problem is that we all believe that the VWs are basically great cars which can be tuned into race demons. Nissan, however, makes shitty cars whose specs always look better than VWs, and therefore people who only look at specs naturally assume it's a better car.
It boils down to this: VW racers tend to care more about compression ratios, turbo spool points, back pressure, boost pressure, aluminum clutch plates and overengineered Torsen all wheel drive systems; while Nissan racers tend to put a bunch of fucking blue nylon tape on the hood, cut the springs, and call it a day.
When I was test driving two years ago, I found myself behind the wheel of a Nissan at a couple different lots. Each car scared the hell out of me. The suspension was way too tight and managed to somehow be jagged in both the attack and resolution. The steering was loose but the steering system made it feel tight...the exact opposite of the VW. Same with the gearbox (though VW does have a problem with "uncertainty" in their transmissions, and if you've driven an A4 Jetta you know what I mean). And the engine...well, Nissan's engines are pretty good, but like most japanese cars they've got no freaking torque. Adding a passenger and a duffel bag is a good way to cut your acceleration in half.
What really irks us, though, is how Nissan seems to be stealing VW's design plans. Compare the sentra redesign in 2000 with the Jetta redesign in 1998.5...they change the same things. Then take a look at the 2003 Maxima, and for that matter the 2002 Altima, and compare them to the sillouette of the 1998 Passat. Again, these cars look more like the Passat than they do their own previous models! At least until you get inside, or own one for a year or so. After 5 years on the road, my GLX Passat looks better than my friend's 2 year old Maxima, with a similar commute. Hell, if it wasn't for all the roadsalt and scratches from SUV owners slamming their doors into me trying to get their kids out of a car seat 5 feet off the ground, this car would totally cherry.
It's a silly racer's quarrel, like Chevy vs Ford. I'm not going to get a little decal of Calvin pissing on an Altima, but it feels good to see a Nissan get trashed.
God I hope so. I'd hate to think that was an attempt to be funny. That song was so terrible it HAS to be biographical.