Crap. I didn't see the grandparent you were replying to.
At any rate, this still looks shady as shit. Republicans seem to be doing their damnedest to disenfranchise and I'm not convinced that's not happening here, and if not here, it certainly is happening elsewhere. I'll be glad when this circus is over (for a while).
This Salon article (http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/) goes a lot further and looks at how the software could be used in setting up a "man in the middle" attack, changing the results after tabulation. It also quotes a memo from the EAC named “Software and Firmware modifications are not de minimis changes” which says:
“Ohio election law provides for experimental equipment only in a limited number of precincts per county,” they report. “Installing uncertified and untested software on central tabulation equipment essentially affects every single precinct in a given county.”
This would seem to be more than what is allowed by the "experimental" exception. I don't know if fraud is really occurring in this case, but installing uncertified software patches four days before the election in nearly 40 precincts of the lynchpin swing state looks shady as shit to me.
Husted is the same Republican Secretary of State that tried to completely eliminate early voting in Ohio (which disproportionally disenfranchises Democratic voters), and frankly, I don't trust him as far as I can throw him. There will be lawyers.
Yeah, number 2 was kind of a letdown since Broken Sword 1 is one of my all-time favorite adventure games...not as much of a letdown as Broken Sword 3, though. I'm currently playing Broken Sword 4 and so far, there are no fscking crate puzzles (who puts crates everywhere, what the hell?), so that's a plus. We'll see how it goes.
The speech was devoid of many specifics and lacking in gusto, but at least it was long... The stream of random sentences at the end was a particularly odd touch, along with the "fight with me," fight, fight, fight thing at the end. Why is everything so damn violent at the RNC? RNC = Fight, drill, attack, pit-bull, etc, DNC = hope, change, diplomacy, community service, etc.
McCain seemed to imply that he would put school vouchers back on the table, though he didn't call them out by name, likely on purpose.
The next guy who says "Drill, baby. Drill!" gets a punch in the throat.
I was going to write something witty and mildly suggestive. like "hey, so THOSE are the guys that inspect all those condoms that say things like inspected by No.4. I could be that number 4! Look out ladies." (Score:3, Funny)
Then I realized that this is Slashdot, and most of us couldn't get laid if it was our jobs. (badum pum. ah-thankyou) Score:2, Funny or Score:2, Insightful....But THEN I realized once again that this is Slashdot, and that this story contains computers and myriad potential for dick jokes! (Score:5, Super Awesomeness OMG)
So uh.... I could totally be that Number 4 inspector!...something something computer security! ???? Profit!!
Look, just because KDE's UI is laid out differently than Microstf's OSes, that doesn't make it better. They all have their strengths. Win 2000 is functional but not flashy, OSX is damn pretty but not as customizable, GNOME took some ideas from OS9 and Win 98 and smacked them together to form a UI that looks nice and gets out of my way, KDE is incredibly customizable but honestly, I'd rather jab pointy things into my eyeballs than look at the default KDE for any period of time. It's a designer's nightmare. It's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer designs his own car, with the bubble dome, tail fins, and big gulp cup holders (HDE?). Clean that isht up and we'll talk.
The funny thing is, Monster Cable (which is overpriced) is made in the same factory as Hosa cable (which is not). Anyone who's ever worked at a music store knows the Monster Cable usually comes in a Hosa box.
Anyone that actually spends $8000 on speaker cable is not a fan of music but a fan of the stereo which happens to play music. Audiophiles are like the guys who add the most expensive aftermarket parts to the most expensive car they can buy because they equate $$$ with quality. At a certain point, there's a diminishing return on your investment. Does that new air intake REALLY make your car go faster? They'll argue to the death that it does, of course.
Exactly. Dynamics as a sound shaping tool on individual tracks is pretty damn useful. It helps put everything into it's pocket and makes building a cohesive mix a lot easier. Even 2 mix compression used sparingly can really make a mix come together. 2 mix compression is the form most often abused and is the most important one NOT to mess up. People who don't know what they're doing do the most damage at that step.
I'm mostly talking about rock/pop music here. Recording an orchestra is a whole different ballgame. For one, they don't usually close-mic sources so you couldn't compress individual sources(and you shouldn't have to in that case) nor would you want to crush the stereo mix either at all either.
The issue isn't the peaking itself. A peak happens when a signal has surpassed what the receiver of that sound was designed for. If you pump a really loud signal into a preamp on a mixing console (even a small cheap one these days) and the "peak" light has come on, it means the signal is too loud for the equipment. It results in audible distortion and you should turn it down. What a compressor would do in this case is take the full spectrum, from lowest to highest point of the sound frequency and compress in a way that in effect, makes the highest and lowest frequencies squish into a tighter waveform. It's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, but then shaving off the corners of the square peg to make it fit. In effect, you're avoiding actual peaking or overloading of the equipment so you can turn the signal up louder without overload. Therein lies the problem.
Compression is a necessary part of recording. Judicious use of compression can make a mix really come together and fit everything into it's right place. Notice that I said judicious. It's unfortunately a very useful tool which can easily be abused. OVER compression starts to result in the degradation of the signal. Sometimes you can hear it "pumping and breathing." Over compression is nasty, plus it destroys dynamics. Forget that crescendo on the second movement. Your violin solo is now exactly as loud as your entire orchestra. Are you excited yet? It's also extremely tiring to listen to. Take a pure square wave and pump it through a speaker. Look at that speaker and notice how fast and constantly the speaker cone is vibrating. Take your newfangled over compressed rock/pop CD and extract audio into some sort of multitracking software like Pro Tools or Ardour even. Expand the view a bit and look at the wave form. Looks a lot like a square wave the way the tops and bottoms of that wave form are chopped off doesn't it? Extract audio from a cd you really like from say, the mid 60s. Look at the wave form. There are peaks and valleys and quiet parts and loud parts, the tops and bottoms of the waveform are not chopped off. Now imagine what that new over compressed pop/rock record is doing to your eardrum even at low volume while keeping in mind the speaker cone. Your ear works a lot like that speaker cone. It's vibrating exactly as fast as that speaker cone. It's a mechanical part. There is fatigue involved. Plus it's just boring to listen to. It sucks out emotion and excitement.
By the time you hear your average top 40 hit on the radio, it has been compressed during recording twice (on individual sound sources and probably again when a stereo mix is produced), during mastering, then again at the radio station. Radio stations want their station to catch your ear, plus it helps in keeping signal strength over long distances. Labels want louder songs to compete with the other loud songs, bands want their record to sound like this other loud record, mastering engineers are asked by either the band or the label to make it as loud as possible. You know who's paying the bill so they do it. Recording engineers can be pressured to over-compress by the band or label or just by wanting to have a job in the next year and they might do it as well. Even if they turn in a good balanced mix for mastering, it's a crap shoot whether their mixes will sound the same when the record actually gets put out.
I currently work as a CSR for a multinational consumer electronics company. As far as this job category goes, we're pretty cozy. All full-time employees get benefits and I definitely make more than $9.00/hr.
We're traditionally known for having good service by customers. In fact, people downright love us (though some people will never be happy no matter what). The thing is, most of the time (especially with the portables), when it stops working, it's something they did. We ask as many questions as we can in a non-accusing tone and if at the end of that, they haven't straight-up admitted what they did to it or there isn't a specific, obvious problem that can be explained only by physical damage, we take their word for it. (by the way, we don't have a script so much as an information database)
For obvious physical damage issues (why is my screen all black and inky?) if it's within the warranty period they get an automatic discount. If they yell about it we negotiate, if they still yell about any price at all we go "Ok look, this is what happened, this is why it's not covered but we're going to make an exception for you. Next time this happens, we charge you." In this case the customer feels they've "won" but honestly it costs us way less money to fix their system at a further discount or for free than it does to lose them as a customer. They're happy, we're happy. Let's all hug.
We're trained to be able to make those judgment calls. I will admit that not all companies are so forward thinking. I've had my own share of customer support hell but the company I work for does it right.
It is easy to get riled up and want to reach out and punch someone if they're yelling at you for something they clearly did but you kind of have to "zen" that out and ignore it. Them's the breaks.
This is true of course but pretty much everyone that isn't tone deaf can pick out a "decent" sound. After that, a "great" sound or even a "good" sound is more subjective and becomes a matter of degrees and intent the further along you go. Some people think "decent" is good enough and stop there. Other people think "great" will never be good enough. Some people don't know a horseshoe from a hand grenade.
I completely agree that you can make great records with any gear. Hell, there are some records that I really like that were recorded on a 4-track portastudio. The thing is, great gear does not a great record make. I'll be damned if it doesn't help but people do get all wrapped up in it. The most important parts of the equation are the musicians and the engineers. Any jackass can throw up a Neumann U-87 and have it sound decent. A great engineer can throw up any (much cheaper) Audio Technica condenser mic and knock you on your ass. It all depends on what you're going after of course but the main reason to go to a pro studio is the engineer followed by the quality of the rooms, THEN the gear. Recording in your dorm room is just peachy but if you don't know much about engineering, your record's going to sound like it was recorded in a dorm room. Here's the point: Know your gear. If you don't, you need to pay someone that does and can make a great record with a pair of shit radio shack mics.
To the guy that replied to parent message saying something about it all coming down to EQs, there isn't a surer way to completely suck the life out of a recording than with over-equalization (besides over-compression that is). I think he was referring to Logic too. Digital EQ. ick.
Not difficult at all. I got 100% right on the first try. I don't think those midi clips were recorded using a player piano though. They're most likely from a synthesized source, just like your sound blaster's midi synthesizer(maybe a bit better admittedly). You can always tell; the attack, decay, timbre are all wrong. Alternately, you can have a facsimile based on one sampled note, very often C3. To get all the other notes, that sample of c3 is pitched up or down. Again, you can tell it from the real thing because c3 might sound amazing but all the other notes have an odd synthetic timbre to them, getting odder the further away you get from C3. But now if you have an actual MIDI player piano recreating a virtuoso's performance, that would be very hard to tell appart from the real deal.
I don't know about you folks but many of the CDs (albums) I own are quite close if not right on the 79 min mark. Which begs the question, how are they going to fit compressed audio files on some of those? I guess they aren't. This is in fact artificially limiting the size available on CDs today. Way to take two step backwards guys.
Admittedly, I tend not to listen to mainstream music (ninjatune, warp records in the most part so this does not affect me directly for now.... but... what happens if somehow, smaller labels are forced to use this scheme?
The very small labels sometimes have their CDs printed by large manufacturers such as Universal and the like. Might they be subjected to the same protection scheme?
The whole thing just stinks all around. Always has.
Under Red Hat's plan, all of these schools would get a massive amount of hardware. Some of these schools may not even have computers in the first place or have decrepit 486s. Who cares what OS they're running? It's all about the hardware.
- the schools might already have licenses to windows software, what's stopping them from installing windows on the newly donated hardware? Also, if they at some point in time scrounge up enough loot for the MS software, what's stopping them from installing it then? Hardware would just be one less thing to buy.
-the schools might not have hardware in the first place (we're talking poorer areas here) and maybe, just maybe a hard to use by the layperson (but ultimately rewarding) computer is better than no computer at all. Am I right or am I right?
There are a few things I can think of right off the bat that schools could use under linux.
Star Office/Open Office, GIMP, the INTERNET for crying out loud, various programming languages (high school mostly). Shit, they could even get MAYA if they had the cash. I'm sure there's plenty more. The only thing lacking would be the kiddie "educational" and "edutainment" software.
These would be very usable computers no matter what OS they end up running.
I don't think this is going to happen but it would be really, really nice.
Speaking of "the shat" and Hasselhoff singing (badly I imagine) something equally as offensive: The theme music. cringe. Must be tailored to a tribble's ears. cringe some more.
Promising start though...
Right. I live in Toronto and schtuff so I get canadian news straight from the proverbial horse's mouth (Corel being a company out of Ottawa Ontario). I was watching TV an hour or two ago and Pulse 24 (kinda like cnn's headline news) reported that Corel was not backing out of linux as previously mentioned.... I could be dead wrong on this. I don't know... Can anyone confirm?
Slashdot Mirror
Crap. I didn't see the grandparent you were replying to.
At any rate, this still looks shady as shit. Republicans seem to be doing their damnedest to disenfranchise and I'm not convinced that's not happening here, and if not here, it certainly is happening elsewhere. I'll be glad when this circus is over (for a while).
This Salon article (http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/) goes a lot further and looks at how the software could be used in setting up a "man in the middle" attack, changing the results after tabulation. It also quotes a memo from the EAC named “Software and Firmware modifications are not de minimis changes” which says:
“Ohio election law provides for experimental equipment only in a limited number of precincts per county,” they report. “Installing uncertified and untested software on central tabulation equipment essentially affects every single precinct in a given county.”
This would seem to be more than what is allowed by the "experimental" exception. I don't know if fraud is really occurring in this case, but installing uncertified software patches four days before the election in nearly 40 precincts of the lynchpin swing state looks shady as shit to me.
Husted is the same Republican Secretary of State that tried to completely eliminate early voting in Ohio (which disproportionally disenfranchises Democratic voters), and frankly, I don't trust him as far as I can throw him. There will be lawyers.
You know you just described game consoles, right?
Yeah, number 2 was kind of a letdown since Broken Sword 1 is one of my all-time favorite adventure games...not as much of a letdown as Broken Sword 3, though. I'm currently playing Broken Sword 4 and so far, there are no fscking crate puzzles (who puts crates everywhere, what the hell?), so that's a plus. We'll see how it goes.
No, it's not just you.
The speech was devoid of many specifics and lacking in gusto, but at least it was long... The stream of random sentences at the end was a particularly odd touch, along with the "fight with me," fight, fight, fight thing at the end. Why is everything so damn violent at the RNC? RNC = Fight, drill, attack, pit-bull, etc, DNC = hope, change, diplomacy, community service, etc.
McCain seemed to imply that he would put school vouchers back on the table, though he didn't call them out by name, likely on purpose.
The next guy who says "Drill, baby. Drill!" gets a punch in the throat.
I was going to write something witty and mildly suggestive. like "hey, so THOSE are the guys that inspect all those condoms that say things like inspected by No.4. I could be that number 4! Look out ladies." (Score:3, Funny)
...But THEN I realized once again that this is Slashdot, and that this story contains computers and myriad potential for dick jokes! (Score:5, Super Awesomeness OMG)
...something something computer security!
Then I realized that this is Slashdot, and most of us couldn't get laid if it was our jobs. (badum pum. ah-thankyou) Score:2, Funny or Score:2, Insightful.
So uh.... I could totally be that Number 4 inspector!
????
Profit!!
Look, just because KDE's UI is laid out differently than Microstf's OSes, that doesn't make it better. They all have their strengths. Win 2000 is functional but not flashy, OSX is damn pretty but not as customizable, GNOME took some ideas from OS9 and Win 98 and smacked them together to form a UI that looks nice and gets out of my way, KDE is incredibly customizable but honestly, I'd rather jab pointy things into my eyeballs than look at the default KDE for any period of time. It's a designer's nightmare. It's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer designs his own car, with the bubble dome, tail fins, and big gulp cup holders (HDE?). Clean that isht up and we'll talk.
The funny thing is, Monster Cable (which is overpriced) is made in the same factory as Hosa cable (which is not). Anyone who's ever worked at a music store knows the Monster Cable usually comes in a Hosa box.
Anyone that actually spends $8000 on speaker cable is not a fan of music but a fan of the stereo which happens to play music. Audiophiles are like the guys who add the most expensive aftermarket parts to the most expensive car they can buy because they equate $$$ with quality. At a certain point, there's a diminishing return on your investment. Does that new air intake REALLY make your car go faster? They'll argue to the death that it does, of course.
Exactly. Dynamics as a sound shaping tool on individual tracks is pretty damn useful. It helps put everything into it's pocket and makes building a cohesive mix a lot easier. Even 2 mix compression used sparingly can really make a mix come together. 2 mix compression is the form most often abused and is the most important one NOT to mess up. People who don't know what they're doing do the most damage at that step.
I'm mostly talking about rock/pop music here. Recording an orchestra is a whole different ballgame. For one, they don't usually close-mic sources so you couldn't compress individual sources(and you shouldn't have to in that case) nor would you want to crush the stereo mix either at all either.
The issue isn't the peaking itself. A peak happens when a signal has surpassed what the receiver of that sound was designed for. If you pump a really loud signal into a preamp on a mixing console (even a small cheap one these days) and the "peak" light has come on, it means the signal is too loud for the equipment. It results in audible distortion and you should turn it down. What a compressor would do in this case is take the full spectrum, from lowest to highest point of the sound frequency and compress in a way that in effect, makes the highest and lowest frequencies squish into a tighter waveform. It's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, but then shaving off the corners of the square peg to make it fit. In effect, you're avoiding actual peaking or overloading of the equipment so you can turn the signal up louder without overload. Therein lies the problem.
Compression is a necessary part of recording. Judicious use of compression can make a mix really come together and fit everything into it's right place. Notice that I said judicious. It's unfortunately a very useful tool which can easily be abused. OVER compression starts to result in the degradation of the signal. Sometimes you can hear it "pumping and breathing." Over compression is nasty, plus it destroys dynamics. Forget that crescendo on the second movement. Your violin solo is now exactly as loud as your entire orchestra. Are you excited yet? It's also extremely tiring to listen to. Take a pure square wave and pump it through a speaker. Look at that speaker and notice how fast and constantly the speaker cone is vibrating. Take your newfangled over compressed rock/pop CD and extract audio into some sort of multitracking software like Pro Tools or Ardour even. Expand the view a bit and look at the wave form. Looks a lot like a square wave the way the tops and bottoms of that wave form are chopped off doesn't it? Extract audio from a cd you really like from say, the mid 60s. Look at the wave form. There are peaks and valleys and quiet parts and loud parts, the tops and bottoms of the waveform are not chopped off. Now imagine what that new over compressed pop/rock record is doing to your eardrum even at low volume while keeping in mind the speaker cone. Your ear works a lot like that speaker cone. It's vibrating exactly as fast as that speaker cone. It's a mechanical part. There is fatigue involved. Plus it's just boring to listen to. It sucks out emotion and excitement.
By the time you hear your average top 40 hit on the radio, it has been compressed during recording twice (on individual sound sources and probably again when a stereo mix is produced), during mastering, then again at the radio station. Radio stations want their station to catch your ear, plus it helps in keeping signal strength over long distances. Labels want louder songs to compete with the other loud songs, bands want their record to sound like this other loud record, mastering engineers are asked by either the band or the label to make it as loud as possible. You know who's paying the bill so they do it. Recording engineers can be pressured to over-compress by the band or label or just by wanting to have a job in the next year and they might do it as well. Even if they turn in a good balanced mix for mastering, it's a crap shoot whether their mixes will sound the same when the record actually gets put out.
It's a shite state of affairs all around.
Great! I'll help them get the word out.
Douches
Con
Everyone
Beautiful.
I currently work as a CSR for a multinational consumer electronics company. As far as this job category goes, we're pretty cozy. All full-time employees get benefits and I definitely make more than $9.00/hr.
We're traditionally known for having good service by customers. In fact, people downright love us (though some people will never be happy no matter what). The thing is, most of the time (especially with the portables), when it stops working, it's something they did. We ask as many questions as we can in a non-accusing tone and if at the end of that, they haven't straight-up admitted what they did to it or there isn't a specific, obvious problem that can be explained only by physical damage, we take their word for it. (by the way, we don't have a script so much as an information database)
For obvious physical damage issues (why is my screen all black and inky?) if it's within the warranty period they get an automatic discount. If they yell about it we negotiate, if they still yell about any price at all we go "Ok look, this is what happened, this is why it's not covered but we're going to make an exception for you. Next time this happens, we charge you." In this case the customer feels they've "won" but honestly it costs us way less money to fix their system at a further discount or for free than it does to lose them as a customer. They're happy, we're happy. Let's all hug.
We're trained to be able to make those judgment calls. I will admit that not all companies are so forward thinking. I've had my own share of customer support hell but the company I work for does it right.
It is easy to get riled up and want to reach out and punch someone if they're yelling at you for something they clearly did but you kind of have to "zen" that out and ignore it. Them's the breaks.
This is true of course but pretty much everyone that isn't tone deaf can pick out a "decent" sound. After that, a "great" sound or even a "good" sound is more subjective and becomes a matter of degrees and intent the further along you go. Some people think "decent" is good enough and stop there. Other people think "great" will never be good enough. Some people don't know a horseshoe from a hand grenade.
I completely agree that you can make great records with any gear. Hell, there are some records that I really like that were recorded on a 4-track portastudio. The thing is, great gear does not a great record make. I'll be damned if it doesn't help but people do get all wrapped up in it. The most important parts of the equation are the musicians and the engineers. Any jackass can throw up a Neumann U-87 and have it sound decent. A great engineer can throw up any (much cheaper) Audio Technica condenser mic and knock you on your ass. It all depends on what you're going after of course but the main reason to go to a pro studio is the engineer followed by the quality of the rooms, THEN the gear. Recording in your dorm room is just peachy but if you don't know much about engineering, your record's going to sound like it was recorded in a dorm room. Here's the point: Know your gear. If you don't, you need to pay someone that does and can make a great record with a pair of shit radio shack mics.
To the guy that replied to parent message saying something about it all coming down to EQs, there isn't a surer way to completely suck the life out of a recording than with over-equalization (besides over-compression that is). I think he was referring to Logic too. Digital EQ. ick.
Not difficult at all. I got 100% right on the first try. I don't think those midi clips were recorded using a player piano though. They're most likely from a synthesized source, just like your sound blaster's midi synthesizer(maybe a bit better admittedly). You can always tell; the attack, decay, timbre are all wrong. Alternately, you can have a facsimile based on one sampled note, very often C3. To get all the other notes, that sample of c3 is pitched up or down. Again, you can tell it from the real thing because c3 might sound amazing but all the other notes have an odd synthetic timbre to them, getting odder the further away you get from C3. But now if you have an actual MIDI player piano recreating a virtuoso's performance, that would be very hard to tell appart from the real deal.
*ahem*
loser!
this message was generated by a Barrel of Albino Bruins just for you. yes you.
Indiana Jones: ...and the quest to not suck as much as Star Wars Episode I.
But seriously, this has the potential to be a monument to mediocrity although I'll reserve final judgement for when I see it, obviously.
I don't know about you folks but many of the CDs (albums) I own are quite close if not right on the 79 min mark. Which begs the question, how are they going to fit compressed audio files on some of those? I guess they aren't. This is in fact artificially limiting the size available on CDs today. Way to take two step backwards guys.
Admittedly, I tend not to listen to mainstream music (ninjatune, warp records in the most part so this does not affect me directly for now.... but... what happens if somehow, smaller labels are forced to use this scheme?
The very small labels sometimes have their CDs printed by large manufacturers such as Universal and the like. Might they be subjected to the same protection scheme?
The whole thing just stinks all around. Always has.
Under Red Hat's plan, all of these schools would get a massive amount of hardware. Some of these schools may not even have computers in the first place or have decrepit 486s. Who cares what OS they're running? It's all about the hardware.
- the schools might already have licenses to windows software, what's stopping them from installing windows on the newly donated hardware? Also, if they at some point in time scrounge up enough loot for the MS software, what's stopping them from installing it then? Hardware would just be one less thing to buy.
-the schools might not have hardware in the first place (we're talking poorer areas here) and maybe, just maybe a hard to use by the layperson (but ultimately rewarding) computer is better than no computer at all. Am I right or am I right?
There are a few things I can think of right off the bat that schools could use under linux.
Star Office/Open Office, GIMP, the INTERNET for crying out loud, various programming languages (high school mostly). Shit, they could even get MAYA if they had the cash. I'm sure there's plenty more. The only thing lacking would be the kiddie "educational" and "edutainment" software.
These would be very usable computers no matter what OS they end up running.
I don't think this is going to happen but it would be really, really nice.
Speaking of "the shat" and Hasselhoff singing (badly I imagine) something equally as offensive: The theme music. cringe. Must be tailored to a tribble's ears. cringe some more.
Promising start though...
Right. I live in Toronto and schtuff so I get canadian news straight from the proverbial horse's mouth (Corel being a company out of Ottawa Ontario). I was watching TV an hour or two ago and Pulse 24 (kinda like cnn's headline news) reported that Corel was not backing out of linux as previously mentioned.... I could be dead wrong on this. I don't know... Can anyone confirm?