The loudness war didn't start cranking up until about 1990, so most CDs pressed before then don't suffer from it. (This is why so many "digital remaster" CD releases sound crummy compared with the earlier CD release!) Those early CDs often sound better than the LP version.
The CD format is really fantastic when it's used properly and not abused. It was billed as a technological wonder when it was introduced, and it mostly lived up to the billing. The only things I would change are the fragile little jewel boxes and setting some kind of mastering standard to reverse sonic havoc wreaked by the Loudness War.
I thought by now we'd all be using ARM-based netbooks (or smartbooks, if you insist) with Pixel Qi displays. Everyone said the technology was coming, but it's getting upwards of two years now since this stuff was promised. NVidia is already cranking out Tegra 2 chips and working on Tegra 3. Pixel Qi displays are in production. There are plenty of netbook-optimized Linux distros now, and there is Linux support for ARM. They components seem to all be in place. So. . . What's the hold up? Where are the goods?
All I'm seeing in netbooks are basically the same Wintel machines with the same specs as last year, or updates so timid that they make my eyes glaze over.
Expensive? How would this be expensive? AFAIK the Pixel Qi display shouldn't be much (if any) more expensive than a standard LCD (the technology came out of OLPC). The Tegra 2 should be cheaper than the guts of most netbooks. And as for the size. . . Usually making them smaller is what costs, not making them bigger.
When are all those ARM-based netbooks with Linux that we were promised going to show up? I'll take one with a Tegra 2 processor, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and a Pixel Qi display please!
I'll pay extra for one in a form factor more like a Macbook Air, with a little extra screen, decent sized trackpad, etc.
Yes, Polywell is "unconfirmed" as to whether it can really work. Just like Focus Fusion, and Cold Fusion (which probably isn't even fusion as such, but some kind of effect seems to be happening), and all the other alternatives that are struggling to scrape together a shoestring budget -- they're all going to be "unconfirmed" until somebody spends some money to confirm or refute them. Now we see the folly of pouring tens of billions into one experiment while letting all the others starve.
From what I've read about this incident, and about the trial, I'm outraged. It really burns me up.
First up, I find myself wondering what was wrong with the jurors. Whenever jurors come out of a trial wringing their hands with anguish and making all kinds of sorrowful excuses for their own verdict, and start crying about how they "had to" convict someone who they didn't really think did anything wrong, I find myself wanting to tear my own hair out in frustration. Are they nuts? How did our society come to this point? When the jury is called upon for a verdict, they are responsible. They've got no business putting the blame on the judge's instructions, or on some minute technicality. They are supposed to think for themselves at least a little bit. This is why we have jury trials.
Secondly, I find myself wondering about the prosecutor. Somebody made the decision to press this case and bring it to trial with this evidence and these arguments. He clearly wasn't doing the public any service. His community should be told about this. His neighbors should be told about it. Let him face their opprobrium, and then see if he's eager to pull this sort of stunt again!
A four-inch scope (like the classic Edmund Astroscan that I started with) can show good examples of all the major object types in the night sky.
The moon looks great in any kind of telescope. Get a moon filter and expect to spend some time on it.
If the scope and eyepiece are decent, the rings of Saturn and the Galilean moons of Jupiter should be easy targets, and cloud bands on Jupiter just about visible, though you won't see much detail. Likewise Mars. . . Easy to see the planet, but no details. Phases of Venus should be easy. Mercury is dependent on good timing and can be hard to spot. Uranus is another tricky object to find in a scope, since it only looks like a faint star until you get the scope right on it.
When you get into "deep sky objects" like galaxies, nebulas, and star clusters. . . All these can be seen in a 4-inch scope, but you'll have to pick the biggest and brightest examples of them. You'll also have to explain that they're going to see a faint fuzzy splotch when they peer through the lens, not fireworks or something out of Hubble.
For one thing, electric vehicles are considerably more energy-efficient than gasoline or diesel fueled vehicles. Even though they don't carry as much energy on board, a much greater percentage of the energy they carry does, in fact, reach the wheels.
For another thing, you take no account of how much range is actually required for a car to be practical and attractive to buyers. Gas cars don't have 300 miles range because everybody requires 300 miles range. They have 300 miles range because that's easy to do with gasoline. The question of how short a range people are willing to accept is largely unknown, because the issue rarely comes up with gasoline.
Finally, you yourself hinted at the reason why electric cars could replace gas cars, when ". ..liquid fuel is no longer a readily available competitor. .." If you get up one morning and gas is $10/gallon, and you have to search for a gas station that is still open and has some to sell, and then wait in line for a couple of hours, and then discover you don't have the proper ration card allowing you to buy a few gallons. . . Then you might just develop a sudden burning desire for an electric car.
If the Peak Oil faction is right, such scenario could be only a few years away.
If this technology becomes widespread (which is far from certain, because the price needs to come down a lot). . . It could mean an end to the Cult of Celebrity, or the Cult of Stardom, that actors today enjoy.
Human beings are instinctively "hard-wired" to recognize and respond to faces. When we see the faces of actors on the screen, and become familiar with them, we begin to feel -- falsely -- as if we know them. They start to seem like friends. They become trusted. And thus the Cult of Celebrity begins.
The Avatar technology could eventually lead to actors being treated more like voice actors in animated features, or like the puppeteers who made The Muppet Show and The Dark Crystal. Because that's effectively what they become. . . Puppeteers. They lend their voices and actions to characters, but you don't see their real faces. Such persons can be recognized, and often are recognized, for their talents. However, we tend not to look toward them for. . . political endorsements. . . social activism. . . gossip about their private lives. . . and so forth. They don't get the Cult of Celebrity.
And I think that's healthy. I'd like to see the Cult of Celebrity lay down and die.
I can seriously see the advantages of Chrome OS in an ultra-portable device. . . netbook, smartbook, Crunchpad-like gadget. . . Simplicity and efficiency and speed are needed there, and it could have a real advantage.
NO WAY can I see it replacing my OS on my primary desktop computer (currently an iMac BTW). I can't see web apps replacing: Second Life, iTunes, Aperture, GIMP, my word processors and text editors, games, and a number of other programs.
I find a couple of these assumptions highly questionable. ..
The small crew of a merchant ship even armed with deadly weapons would be hard pressed to stop a determined pirate attack
Killing pirates likely will just piss off the aforementioned larger and better armed group of pirates.
Pirates are looking to make money, not get killed. It shouldn't take much armed resistance (with lethal weapons, not toys) to change that risk-versus-reward balance and discourage them.
This one comment from the bacteria expert set off a red flag with me: "But it turns out that the magnetic bacteria make some very unique shapes of magnetite crystals. And one of the organisms we work with on Earth makes particles that look virtually identical to what we see from Mars in the meteorite."
Virtually identical? What are the odds?
OK, that's a rhetorical question. I have no idea what the odds are. But it would suggest going the extra mile in ruling out terrestrial contamination, before we declare life on Mars.
Can somebody explain to me some legal theory under which the FCC -- or the federal government, for that matter -- has any authority to regulate the content of videogames?
I understood the rationale behind regulating broadcasting. If stuff is going out over the public airwaves, then the public -- by proxy of their humble servants in the government -- should have power to oversee its contents, to ensure that broadcasts are of benefit to the general populace.
Videogames, last I checked, were not broadcast over the public airwaves. They are bought and sold as private transactions.
And before anybody says "commerce clause". . . I can see how that would enable the federal government to regulate or tax the sale of games across state lines, regardless of their content. But if they started evaluating the contents and discriminating between games, then that bumps up against the 1st Amendment.
Caveat: I am not a constitutional scholar. (However, some people who apparently *are* constitutional scholars seem to have appalling ignorance of, or disregard for, these issues.)
Maybe "most apps for Linux are free and the source is available" partly due to difficulties of distributing and installing binaries?
The whole Linux distribution and installation system (such as, with apt-get) is great for setting up a server, but it's very awkward and unnatural for desktop apps. Apple is far ahead in that respect, and I see no reason why Linux shouldn't follow their lead.
I read an opinion somewhere, and it made sense to me, that Linux treats all software as system software -- as part of the OS installation, effectively. System software and desktop apps ought to be handled differently.
Copyright isn't property. It's a monopoly granted by the government -- in theory, as a subsidy to promote creative works which will later (after a "limited time" as per the US Constitution) become freely available to all. In practice, it's been corrupted into a scheme that locks creative works up indefinitely.
I'm a libertarian, and I would like nothing more than to see copyright go away. Even if the laws were reformed to try and restore their original function, it's not clear that it would really work in the digital age.
Yes, but. . . A lot of post offices in far-flung parts of the country are not profit centers by any stretch. Regardless of whether the USPS as a whole is making money (it hasn't always), they're required to provide service everywhere and subsidize those remote little offices in the back country.
Getting back to the original topic, one might be tempted to draw analogy with providing internet service to people in rural areas. . .
We got electricity thanks to the REA. According to Wikipedia: "In the 1930s, the U.S. lagged significantly behind Europe in providing electricity to rural areas due to the unwillingness of power companies to serve farmsteads." Sound like a familiar problem? Maybe we need a Rural Internet Administration.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
A right is a legal protection from the power of the government. So, if you have a "right" to a broadband internet connection, that just means the government can't take your broadband away from you. Which is, I've got to say, something I've not heard about being a problem in the USA neither.
By analogy, the "right to keep and bear arms" doesn't mean the government is required to start issuing rifles and ammo to the populace. It just means if you've got one, they can't take it from you.
An entitlement, on the other hand, is something that somebody is obligated to give you. In this case, it seems that the government of Finland is going to pay for stringing cables all over the country -- except for "about 2,000 (households) in far-flung corners of the country", as per the article. Actually, the article is sort of vague about exactly who pays for what. . .
If this crazy idea did, in fact, turn out to be true. . . It could be used to create an improbability engine.
A device to create a higgs bosun must fail. The most robust the design of the machine, the less likely it is to fail. Therefore, by creating ever more soundly engineered and constructed devices, one could summon forth ever more unlikely events to prevent them from working.
It's a dangerous exercise, though. You can't be sure whether the unlikely event is going to be a simple failure of a (very solidly constructed) superconducting magnet, or something more like a fleet of alien constructor ships arriving to demolish the planet and make way for a hyperspace bypass.
Some of us remember the widespread mania for Win95 when it came out, and how people tut-tutted over poor "beleaguered Apple" who made a good computer but were just clueless when it came to marketing. (Apple? Are they still in business? Not for much longer, I'm sure. ..)
Today I have founded a new organization, the Virtual Worlds Liberation Front (VWLF)! . We shall agitate against "permission flags" and others forms of DRM and copy protection in virtual worlds. If necessary, we shall strive to create new worlds free from these digital chains!
. Think about it. . . How would the WWW have been hobbled if nobody could look at the HTML code of most web pages to learn how it works? How about you couldn't link to websites outside of your own domain? (That would pretty much kill the whole point of the thing, wouldn't it?) What if you had to buy JPEG images, and they couldn't be modified, or transferred to other servers, or even used on more than one page at a time? (Forget about Google Images!) The inhabitants of Second Life have come to take these kinds of absurd restrictions for granted. Plus, there are occasional witch hunts against "pirates" running copybot, or glintercept, or various hacked viewer programs -- even though these tools can be used for perfectly legitimate purposes.
. This sad state of affairs, more than anything else, is what's hobbling the growth of virtual worlds. The VWLF will work toward establishing environments based on sharing and collaboration, not restrictions and punishment.
. For those who think it can't work. . . The WWW works. Linux works. Wikipedia works. A virtual world with freedom can work!
"Unless it is really cheap, I don't see, why many people would rush to buy it."
When you wake up one morning and find gas is $10 / gallon. . .
When you have to search for a gas station that's open for business, and wait in a long, long line, while hoping there will be some gas left by the time you get to the front. . .
When you finally make it to the front of the line and find out you don't have the right ration card and aren't allowed to buy any today. . .
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The loudness war didn't start cranking up until about 1990, so most CDs pressed before then don't suffer from it. (This is why so many "digital remaster" CD releases sound crummy compared with the earlier CD release!) Those early CDs often sound better than the LP version.
The CD format is really fantastic when it's used properly and not abused. It was billed as a technological wonder when it was introduced, and it mostly lived up to the billing. The only things I would change are the fragile little jewel boxes and setting some kind of mastering standard to reverse sonic havoc wreaked by the Loudness War.
Post processing (de-noise and de-click) is done with software called Diamond Cut ( http://www.diamondcut.com/ ).
I don't suppose you know of any similar software that runs on a Mac?
I thought by now we'd all be using ARM-based netbooks (or smartbooks, if you insist) with Pixel Qi displays. Everyone said the technology was coming, but it's getting upwards of two years now since this stuff was promised. NVidia is already cranking out Tegra 2 chips and working on Tegra 3. Pixel Qi displays are in production. There are plenty of netbook-optimized Linux distros now, and there is Linux support for ARM. They components seem to all be in place. So. . . What's the hold up? Where are the goods?
All I'm seeing in netbooks are basically the same Wintel machines with the same specs as last year, or updates so timid that they make my eyes glaze over.
Expensive? How would this be expensive? AFAIK the Pixel Qi display shouldn't be much (if any) more expensive than a standard LCD (the technology came out of OLPC). The Tegra 2 should be cheaper than the guts of most netbooks. And as for the size. . . Usually making them smaller is what costs, not making them bigger.
When are all those ARM-based netbooks with Linux that we were promised going to show up? I'll take one with a Tegra 2 processor, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and a Pixel Qi display please!
I'll pay extra for one in a form factor more like a Macbook Air, with a little extra screen, decent sized trackpad, etc.
Hello? Anybody out there?
I'm sure those "top scientists" have given a lot of thought to the size of ITER and its budget -- as they plan their retirements around it.
Yes, Polywell is "unconfirmed" as to whether it can really work. Just like Focus Fusion, and Cold Fusion (which probably isn't even fusion as such, but some kind of effect seems to be happening), and all the other alternatives that are struggling to scrape together a shoestring budget -- they're all going to be "unconfirmed" until somebody spends some money to confirm or refute them. Now we see the folly of pouring tens of billions into one experiment while letting all the others starve.
What's your source on that? I've never heard of any such videos.
From what I've read about this incident, and about the trial, I'm outraged. It really burns me up.
First up, I find myself wondering what was wrong with the jurors. Whenever jurors come out of a trial wringing their hands with anguish and making all kinds of sorrowful excuses for their own verdict, and start crying about how they "had to" convict someone who they didn't really think did anything wrong, I find myself wanting to tear my own hair out in frustration. Are they nuts? How did our society come to this point? When the jury is called upon for a verdict, they are responsible. They've got no business putting the blame on the judge's instructions, or on some minute technicality. They are supposed to think for themselves at least a little bit. This is why we have jury trials.
Secondly, I find myself wondering about the prosecutor. Somebody made the decision to press this case and bring it to trial with this evidence and these arguments. He clearly wasn't doing the public any service. His community should be told about this. His neighbors should be told about it. Let him face their opprobrium, and then see if he's eager to pull this sort of stunt again!
A four-inch scope (like the classic Edmund Astroscan that I started with) can show good examples of all the major object types in the night sky.
The moon looks great in any kind of telescope. Get a moon filter and expect to spend some time on it.
If the scope and eyepiece are decent, the rings of Saturn and the Galilean moons of Jupiter should be easy targets, and cloud bands on Jupiter just about visible, though you won't see much detail. Likewise Mars. . . Easy to see the planet, but no details. Phases of Venus should be easy. Mercury is dependent on good timing and can be hard to spot. Uranus is another tricky object to find in a scope, since it only looks like a faint star until you get the scope right on it.
When you get into "deep sky objects" like galaxies, nebulas, and star clusters. . . All these can be seen in a 4-inch scope, but you'll have to pick the biggest and brightest examples of them. You'll also have to explain that they're going to see a faint fuzzy splotch when they peer through the lens, not fireworks or something out of Hubble.
Your analysis is simple-minded and flawed. . .
For one thing, electric vehicles are considerably more energy-efficient than gasoline or diesel fueled vehicles. Even though they don't carry as much energy on board, a much greater percentage of the energy they carry does, in fact, reach the wheels.
For another thing, you take no account of how much range is actually required for a car to be practical and attractive to buyers. Gas cars don't have 300 miles range because everybody requires 300 miles range. They have 300 miles range because that's easy to do with gasoline. The question of how short a range people are willing to accept is largely unknown, because the issue rarely comes up with gasoline.
Finally, you yourself hinted at the reason why electric cars could replace gas cars, when ". . .liquid fuel is no longer a readily available competitor. . ." If you get up one morning and gas is $10/gallon, and you have to search for a gas station that is still open and has some to sell, and then wait in line for a couple of hours, and then discover you don't have the proper ration card allowing you to buy a few gallons. . . Then you might just develop a sudden burning desire for an electric car.
If the Peak Oil faction is right, such scenario could be only a few years away.
Are you sure you aren't really an Amiga at heart?
If this technology becomes widespread (which is far from certain, because the price needs to come down a lot). . . It could mean an end to the Cult of Celebrity, or the Cult of Stardom, that actors today enjoy.
Human beings are instinctively "hard-wired" to recognize and respond to faces. When we see the faces of actors on the screen, and become familiar with them, we begin to feel -- falsely -- as if we know them. They start to seem like friends. They become trusted. And thus the Cult of Celebrity begins.
The Avatar technology could eventually lead to actors being treated more like voice actors in animated features, or like the puppeteers who made The Muppet Show and The Dark Crystal. Because that's effectively what they become. . . Puppeteers. They lend their voices and actions to characters, but you don't see their real faces. Such persons can be recognized, and often are recognized, for their talents. However, we tend not to look toward them for. . . political endorsements. . . social activism. . . gossip about their private lives. . . and so forth. They don't get the Cult of Celebrity.
And I think that's healthy. I'd like to see the Cult of Celebrity lay down and die.
I can seriously see the advantages of Chrome OS in an ultra-portable device. . . netbook, smartbook, Crunchpad-like gadget. . . Simplicity and efficiency and speed are needed there, and it could have a real advantage.
NO WAY can I see it replacing my OS on my primary desktop computer (currently an iMac BTW). I can't see web apps replacing: Second Life, iTunes, Aperture, GIMP, my word processors and text editors, games, and a number of other programs.
I find a couple of these assumptions highly questionable. . .
The small crew of a merchant ship even armed with deadly weapons would be hard pressed to stop a determined pirate attack
Killing pirates likely will just piss off the aforementioned larger and better armed group of pirates.
Pirates are looking to make money, not get killed. It shouldn't take much armed resistance (with lethal weapons, not toys) to change that risk-versus-reward balance and discourage them.
This one comment from the bacteria expert set off a red flag with me: "But it turns out that the magnetic bacteria make some very unique shapes of magnetite crystals. And one of the organisms we work with on Earth makes particles that look virtually identical to what we see from Mars in the meteorite."
Virtually identical? What are the odds?
OK, that's a rhetorical question. I have no idea what the odds are. But it would suggest going the extra mile in ruling out terrestrial contamination, before we declare life on Mars.
Can somebody explain to me some legal theory under which the FCC -- or the federal government, for that matter -- has any authority to regulate the content of videogames?
I understood the rationale behind regulating broadcasting. If stuff is going out over the public airwaves, then the public -- by proxy of their humble servants in the government -- should have power to oversee its contents, to ensure that broadcasts are of benefit to the general populace.
Videogames, last I checked, were not broadcast over the public airwaves. They are bought and sold as private transactions.
And before anybody says "commerce clause". . . I can see how that would enable the federal government to regulate or tax the sale of games across state lines, regardless of their content. But if they started evaluating the contents and discriminating between games, then that bumps up against the 1st Amendment.
Caveat: I am not a constitutional scholar. (However, some people who apparently *are* constitutional scholars seem to have appalling ignorance of, or disregard for, these issues.)
Maybe "most apps for Linux are free and the source is available" partly due to difficulties of distributing and installing binaries?
The whole Linux distribution and installation system (such as, with apt-get) is great for setting up a server, but it's very awkward and unnatural for desktop apps. Apple is far ahead in that respect, and I see no reason why Linux shouldn't follow their lead.
I read an opinion somewhere, and it made sense to me, that Linux treats all software as system software -- as part of the OS installation, effectively. System software and desktop apps ought to be handled differently.
Copyright isn't property. It's a monopoly granted by the government -- in theory, as a subsidy to promote creative works which will later (after a "limited time" as per the US Constitution) become freely available to all. In practice, it's been corrupted into a scheme that locks creative works up indefinitely.
I'm a libertarian, and I would like nothing more than to see copyright go away. Even if the laws were reformed to try and restore their original function, it's not clear that it would really work in the digital age.
Yes, but. . . A lot of post offices in far-flung parts of the country are not profit centers by any stretch. Regardless of whether the USPS as a whole is making money (it hasn't always), they're required to provide service everywhere and subsidize those remote little offices in the back country.
Getting back to the original topic, one might be tempted to draw analogy with providing internet service to people in rural areas. . .
We got electricity thanks to the REA. According to Wikipedia: "In the 1930s, the U.S. lagged significantly behind Europe in providing electricity to rural areas due to the unwillingness of power companies to serve farmsteads." Sound like a familiar problem? Maybe we need a Rural Internet Administration.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
A right is a legal protection from the power of the government. So, if you have a "right" to a broadband internet connection, that just means the government can't take your broadband away from you. Which is, I've got to say, something I've not heard about being a problem in the USA neither.
By analogy, the "right to keep and bear arms" doesn't mean the government is required to start issuing rifles and ammo to the populace. It just means if you've got one, they can't take it from you.
An entitlement, on the other hand, is something that somebody is obligated to give you. In this case, it seems that the government of Finland is going to pay for stringing cables all over the country -- except for "about 2,000 (households) in far-flung corners of the country", as per the article. Actually, the article is sort of vague about exactly who pays for what. . .
If this crazy idea did, in fact, turn out to be true. . . It could be used to create an improbability engine.
A device to create a higgs bosun must fail. The most robust the design of the machine, the less likely it is to fail. Therefore, by creating ever more soundly engineered and constructed devices, one could summon forth ever more unlikely events to prevent them from working.
It's a dangerous exercise, though. You can't be sure whether the unlikely event is going to be a simple failure of a (very solidly constructed) superconducting magnet, or something more like a fleet of alien constructor ships arriving to demolish the planet and make way for a hyperspace bypass.
Some of us remember the widespread mania for Win95 when it came out, and how people tut-tutted over poor "beleaguered Apple" who made a good computer but were just clueless when it came to marketing. (Apple? Are they still in business? Not for much longer, I'm sure. . .)
Today I have founded a new organization, the Virtual Worlds Liberation Front (VWLF)!
.
We shall agitate against "permission flags" and others forms of DRM and copy protection in virtual worlds. If necessary, we shall strive to create new worlds free from these digital chains!
.
Think about it. . . How would the WWW have been hobbled if nobody could look at the HTML code of most web pages to learn how it works? How about you couldn't link to websites outside of your own domain? (That would pretty much kill the whole point of the thing, wouldn't it?) What if you had to buy JPEG images, and they couldn't be modified, or transferred to other servers, or even used on more than one page at a time? (Forget about Google Images!) The inhabitants of Second Life have come to take these kinds of absurd restrictions for granted. Plus, there are occasional witch hunts against "pirates" running copybot, or glintercept, or various hacked viewer programs -- even though these tools can be used for perfectly legitimate purposes.
.
This sad state of affairs, more than anything else, is what's hobbling the growth of virtual worlds. The VWLF will work toward establishing environments based on sharing and collaboration, not restrictions and punishment.
.
For those who think it can't work. . . The WWW works. Linux works. Wikipedia works. A virtual world with freedom can work!
"Unless it is really cheap, I don't see, why many people would rush to buy it."
When you wake up one morning and find gas is $10 / gallon. . .
When you have to search for a gas station that's open for business, and wait in a long, long line, while hoping there will be some gas left by the time you get to the front. . .
When you finally make it to the front of the line and find out you don't have the right ration card and aren't allowed to buy any today. . .
Then you might want an electric car.