You are correct, the magnetic field is passive, and extremely small. Realize that the tuners are already holding against considerable tension (enough to bow the neck of most guitars visibly, and many 12-strings have met an early end due to the constant pull distorting the entire instrument). The magnetic effects of the pickup entirely negligable (dangle an iron needle near the strings and see how it DOESN'T deflect).
More likely, he has a badly formed nut, a sub-optimal tuner, or the strings are still stretching. My money would be on the nut, which is quite common, particularly (for some reason) on the G string. If the groove is too narrow, or incorrectly angled, the string binds in it, only becomes evenly-tensioned along it's length after playing for a few minutes. A bit of emery cloth can make a world of difference in such a case. You can usually spot this problem by listening carefully as you tune -- if the note jumps suddenly it's a sure sign the nut needs help.
This would be an excellent tool for the professional musician. I'm a moderatly skilled guitarist and perform small gigs on the side for giggles and pocket change -- usually on a twelve string acoustic.
IMHO the posts about "ruining the musicians ear" are bogus. If you RTFA you'll see that this gizmo allows the scales to be tempered to suit the musicians taste. You want to modulate the B-string a few hertz flat -- go ahead, that's what a tempered scale is. Besides, you develop a good ear by playing a well-tuned instrument, not by compensating mentally for a discordant mess.
I have a reasonably good ear, and use harmonics when "ear tuning" because they're more accurate than the fret placement (and less subject to the rising tone problems caused by fretting the previous string, which raises it's tone slightly). I'm at least as good as the cheap electronic tuners, but not as good as the higher-end needle-guage based units. Based on the price of this unit, I'm betting it uses a pretty high quality tuner - far better than most guitarists ear!
Having strings 1 hertz off doesn't make much difference on a six-string played with high distortion at a rock concert. But on a twelve string, even a small difference between paired strings leads to an unpleasant audible "beating". The same thing happens with classical guitars, where it becomes annoying (usually when lower strings are fretted above the twelvth fret, and sound out of sync with a supposedly identical note played on a higher string).
So, this unit is faster than a human, more accurate than a human, allows complete control over scale tempering, and stores a couple of hundred alternate tunings. It's got me beat hands down, and I suspect that's why professionals are paying nearly 4g to get one!
Actually, it's truth in advertising. Internet exploder initially starts using first-person sigular, "I", but as soon as the user installs a non-microsoft add-on (think Add-server, keystroke logger etc), it correctly switches to the plural "We".
Did anybody else notice that the site design was eerily similar to that of Grocklaw? I wonder whose design they stole for the balloon? I wonder if they know about . . . (clutches tinfoil hat more tightly).
I agree. A douple of years ago I hired on to a govt. contractor after bailing from a failing dot-bomb. Their IP clause looked singularly draconian, and I raised some polite objections.
We talked, quite equitably, for a time before they very politely declined to aquiese to my requests. I asked for some time to consider the issue, and was immediately hustled off to start making money for the company.
The paperwork just gradually fell off my desk, and into the waste-basket before I found time to fill it out. Within a few days, everything else got filed, and I'm going on three years here.
I also agree with an earlier post who said basically "don't be a pinhead about it". I work outside of work. Only a couple of my office mates know anything about it, and I keep my work time strictly segregated, so my current employer gets the effort they're paying me for. Ethically, I'm above board and sleep well at night.
Should the company ever try to assert control over my home-grown projects, they'll have to do it WITHOUT a signed IP contract, which I find a comforting thought. Hooray for bad book-keeping!
Sorry, this is off-topic, but I can't resist!
I'm a VW afficionado . . . I've owned (and loved) three vanagons. I gave up on them after I was rear-ended at a stop sign, and pushed into the car in front of me. The front-end collision was minor, but there was significant cabin intrusion. Very Scary. We bought a Eurovan with dual air bags, and haven't looked back. It lacks a bit of "Farvegnugen", but it's a heck of a lot safer.
So, get a Eurovan, and take a trip instead of working as a game programmer!
Hmm, I thought more of "The Two Towers", with Microsoft as Sauron and SCO as Sauromon. "Beneath the baleful, ever-watching eye of Redmond, backed by the endless undead-lawyer armies of SCO, who can stand?"
Agreed. A few years ago I worked (like everyone else) for a dot.com startup as the head of IT. It was a great little firm, with an intuitive, useful product that could potentially save their clients a substancial amount of time and effort. I emphasize this because most failed dot.coms failed to have product or a profit model that made any sense.
They put their effort and more money than the owners could afford into developing the product, holding off launching until the product was well-refined, robust and thoroughly tested.
By the time they launched, they had little money for marketing or packaging. We watched companies with a fraction of our technical savvy make (and lose) several fortunes.
The firm in question lived and died in the starting gate, with a well-developed chunk of software and a few patents to mark their passing.
Marketing and Money are more than afterthoughts, they are the meat and potatoes of business. If you don't have them, stick to writing GPL software, at least your poverty won't surprise you!
Like everyone else posting here, I've been diagnosed with ADD. Fortunately, my symptoms are relatively mild, and I've been able to function pretty normally without medication. So, I can get away with the "gut it out, learn adaptive techniques and deal with it" approach.
My son, however, is another matter entirely. He's a great guy, but he's got ADHD in a FAR more acute form than I do. Lesson one, not everyone diagnosed with this disorder is in the same boat. Like good parents, we took our little darling to the doctor soon after he started kindergarten, where the teacher didn't appreciate his caroming off the walls like a biological billard ball. Ritlin, of course, was prescribed immediately.
My happy little fireball turned into a mopey, depressed little jellyfish. The teachers were happy -- he was now easy to control! Back to the doctor -- adjusting dosages gave big improvements, but never was just right. The side-effects were as bad as the ADHD.
They changed drugs, Adderol(sp) and several others. The doctor was getting testy, saying we should be satisfied with "good enough". We changed doctors. Lesson two: Keep trying!
FINALLY, a doctor tried Imapramine. It's an old-style antidepressant, with some interesting side-effects (like "slowing down" the mental machinery a bit). My son never had the anger problems and antisocial behavior frequently associated with ADHD, he just couldn't concnentrate - my wife would make him literally sit on his hands while she tried to help him with school work, and he'd just vibrate with unspent energy. It was a long-shot, but the doctor thought my son's symptoms might respond to the side-effects of Imaprimamine. It worked beautifully. He's still pretty "bouncy", but he's in control of himself. His grades are, frankly, not stellar. He's happy, productive, inquisitive, and alert, not doped-up on the typical ADD drugs. Lesson three Decide what results you want, realizing that the goal isn't necessarily to make your kid "just like everyone else", but to the best version of them they can be.
Anyway, ADD/ADHD IS a serious problem, unless you have a mild case like mine, and every treament has plusses and minuses. During the years we were trying different treatments, I got to see my son put through an emotional and physical taffy-puller, but we found a treatment that seems to fit HIS situation well, reducing the symptoms that are limiting to him without impairing or redefining who he is beneath it all. Keep working at it, and you should find something that works for your daughter.
Yeah, my 'little' boy is almost 17. He used to be a lego-maniac, then lost interest. Recently, he's starting playing with them again, building a huge castle in his bedroom. I bought him a 40-pound box of Lego's from ebay for Christmans (yeah, it was excessive, but I had fun!).
The strange part is, he and I built stuff all Christmas vacation, and I had a ball. Last week, for no good reason, I bought a pirate ship, and I'm old enough to know better!
Anyway, lego's are fun for people of all ages, and kids are just a good excuse.
First, I really want to cheer these guys on, this is a great achievement, and I hope the champagne corks are popping all over Scaled Composite's.
On the other hand, I visited their site from a server running 800x600, and I really hope they hire a web-site designer someday. Ack! There's a huge static graphic in the top frame, and a tiny window for THE REST OF THE SITE. I mean, I can read like 3 lines of text! This graphic may be fine for a splash screen, but it makes it impossible to read the content! The only thing they could do to improve it is jam it full of flash and add a few blink tags, then it would be PERFECT!
Hah! My anonymity was digitally protected, regarldess of it's dubious efficacity! Since you have seen through it, you are in flagrant violation of the DMCA, please turn yourself over to the proper authorities, you law-breaking hacker vermin!;-)
Now, as anonymous coward, I can ask what I would otherwise be embarrased to. How do you disable copying, but allow ISO's to be burned?
I use Linux regularly, but I'm a configuration lightweight. I've used several of the OSS CD-buring programs, but they all appear to be general purpose. I don't know enough to even begin to guess at how to set this up, can someone enlighten me?
Please keep the flames to a minimum, this is an honest question from an ignorant devotee, not a troll!
</USING>
I've always the SCO logo looked like a red globe with a blue Mickey Mouse just rotating into view. I wasn't sure if they were claiming to be a Mickey-Mouse company or if they were conjoined with Di$ney somehow.
Thanks for explaining what SCO's logo is supposed to be!
Spoonboy,
Amen, your parents would be proud of you, and if you have children, they can count themselves lucky. With your addtional explanion I find myself completely in agreement with you. Using technical superiority to undermine a healthy relationship is a poor choice. Using any means at all to disrupt a tyrannical rule (even within a home) is necessary to preserve one's sense of dignity. Long live SSL-tunneling and port forwarding!
No offense intended, but I strongly disagree with the use of subterfuge and dissimulation in ANY sort of personal interaction, especially a parent/child relationship. All meaningful relations are based on trust, and you're childish actions undermine that.
We have several computers in my home, and my children are allowed internet access without filters or artificial safety nets, other than a moral framework we've tried to teach them since they were in diapers. I trust my kids, not to be perfect, but to be honest with me, to let me help them become good adults, and to council with me when they have problems. They make mistakes, and occationally pull some real bloopers, but I think they trust me to be in their corner, to listen to them seriously, and to give the best council I possibly can. In my family, both parents and children are allowed to make mistakes, but honesty is expected from everyone.
My children have their own user accounts, email addresses, network shares etc. I don't pry into their accounts. I do occasionally check the network logs (if they're all checking out bondage sites, I may have missed a part of their education somewhere!). I would be very concerned if one of my children started playing your "I'm too smart for you to track" games with me. -- not because I want to control their lives, but because it would indicate a lack of trust.
One last comment-- you've been watching too many Disney shows (you know, were the bumbling idiot is always an adult authority figure that the clever kids have to outsmart). I work with a bevy of VERY clever geeks, most of whom are middle aged parental, and you know what? We "get" unix/linux/security etc. We wrote most of it, and our brains haven't turned to tapioca yet, we just don't equate posting AOL IM's in L33t 5p34K with technical accumen.
Finally, an unregulated P2P file-sharing platform! If we all work together we can share in an automous, free, file-trading mecca on our personal orbital joy-wagon.
Hummm - bandwidth - yeah, something the size of a pumpkin probably can't stream simultaneous video to all of slashdot, can it? But if you all pitch in, it will be enough for ME!!!!!!
[ Me exits stage left with evil laugh. ..]
On a more serious note, I can't believe a scientist didn't differentiate between mass and weight, especially since weight varies inversely with distance (altitude), and clouds float at highly divergent altitudes. A cirrostratus cloud of a given mass will have noticeably less weight than a cumulous cloud of the same mass. Maybe low-altitude clouds are measured in African elephants, while high-altitude clouds are measured in Asian elephants?
I'll probably get modded troll, but I don't have a problem with using the best tools for the job.
A variety of electronics are available to enhance vocal performance, and I think they have their place. In the computer world, is it "cheating" to use an IDE rather than a basic text editor for coding? Is using a cluster or network-distributed service to achieve lighting-fast performance somehow dishonerable? We use the best tools we can find meet our goals. Musicans are doing exactly the same thing
Here's a quick example: I'm an amature musician. I'm a decent vocalist with some decidedly third-rate guitar skills. A few months ago a friend who has his own basement studio asked me to come over and cut a few tracks.
One of the songs had a two-and-a-half octave range. I can hit just over three octaves, but the musical value of the extremes is questionable. This piece called for a thick, rich, bluesy presentation, which is especially hard to reproduce at the edges of the vocal range. Even after transposing for my voice, there were a couple of high parts where I sounded pretty thin and reedy, and a couple of lows that were gravely. Multiple takes didn't help, that's all I could deliver.
Enter the magic of electronics. A couple of days later, my friend wanted me to come over to cut another harmony track, and check the vocals. I wasn't sure I ever wanted to hear this piece again, but I was amazed. It sounded just like me, without any noticable "robotic" tones or alteration. However, where I'd been thin or raspy I heard a full, well rounded voice with plenty of harmonics and depth. RJ (my buddy) muttered something about filters, compression, flanging, etc. The track was great, and I love to have friends listen to it, but I could never duplicate that performace live. In my opinion, that's not cheating, it's debugging. Which of you, finding a deficiency in your code, can allow it to remain unaltered?, well, neither can I!;-)
I've had to deal with the same problem several times, as I've built a number of specific applications based on a common underlying framework, to which I retain the copyright etc.
Frequently, in the course of developing a specific application, enhancements to the underlying libraries are needed (thus the dual code-base and liscensing problem). I have always had good luck explaining to the firms who hire me that I can save a great deal of time (an money) when developing their application by utilizing my libraries. I agree to grant them a long-term liscense to use my libraries as a condition of the contract. My contract also spells out that any changes made in the underlying library are copyrighted by me, even though such changes may have been mandated by, and created as part of, their project.
I've had a couple of companies question this arrangement (huffy lawyer types mostly). I explain that I'll be more than happy to write a product entirely free of my libraries, but that doing so will doubtless add several hundred billable hours to the development/debugging cycle. They quickly conclude that as long as I agree not to charge ongoing fees for the use of my libraries they'll happily grant me the copyright.
So far, it's worked like a charm. If a feature is specific to their business, it goes in the application code, if it has broader application, it goes in MY code, I bill for the hours, and I have an even better set of libraries to dangle in front of the next client.
I first thought this was a troll, but after some reflection you make a valid point. Music has always been, in some fashion, a community property, but that has slowly changed, and now we are embroiled in a dispute that will ultimately decide to whom "music" in the abstract as well as the concrete sense belongs.
The recording inst industry is not that old. While it originally controlled only the distribution of recordings of their member-artists and publication of sheet music, it now seeks to extend the definition of copyright to cover all performance and reproduction rights.
If a songwriter produces a good piece, and Brittney Spears sings it, they (and by extension thier representatives, the RIAA) have the right to limit its distribution and charge any amount they deem appropriate for copies of it. Unlike most people on slashdot, that seems reasonable to me. If they charge too much I just won't buy it. Supply and demand would ultimately throttle the RIAA even without outside intervention.
However, in attemtping to exert control over ALL aspects of the song (the RIAA routinely closes down sites offering the lyrics to songs!), as well as all performance (hypothetically including my off-key warblings in the shower), they've gone too far. A book or a movie, once experienced, becomes part of our aggregate gestalt, and subject to re-expression. How many of us have quoted favorite lines from movies, books or plays? How many of us hum favorite tunes as we drive? Every experiece shapes the individual, shared experiences shape culture. By asserting iron-fisted control over the media which forms the bulk of our shared experience, the industry is asserting ownership of modern culture. (Think about this -- it goes deeper than it looks, particularly if you have a good psych background.
It would be preposterouse to allow our shared culture and individual expression to be owned, liscened and regulated by an amoral corporation. Enslaving a man's body is atrocious, and enslaving the mind even more so.
Given the inability of the industry to regulate their greed and mitigate their control, it may indeed be necessary to eliminate them for the good our our culture.
As the original poster noted, this would not destroy music, it would return it to the people. Big bands and zillion-dollar rock-stars would would suffer, but skilled musicians would thrive. Maybe, without the album covers and big-dollar promotional deals, musical ability would be more important than sex appeal in determining the value of the art. Musicians and songwriters were able to make a good living long before copyrights and recording contracts.
I go to folk festivals, shanty-sings, and ref-faires featuring brilliant musicians and songwriters, peddling their fare without contracts and thuggish enforcement. Their CD's are produced in smaller, less-capable studios, yet sell for the same price as the commercial ones. Strangely, I enjoy the music more, there is a depth to the performance of a 40-year-old street musician that can't be matched by the pampered beauty-queen/singers favored by the media. Perhaps it is time for we the people to take ownership of "music" away from the RIAA . . .
Mmy wife is a reasonably successful fiction author, and I have published a fair number of articles/papers in my own right.
Society has agreed to grant us an exclusive lisense to copy, produce, sell and pimp our work so that we can make a profit. During the copyright term, society will bear the cost of enforcing severe restrictions on anyone who might
impair our ability to make money from our creativity. In exchange for this service, we acknowledge that at some point in time our work becomes public domain, grist for the vast mill of human creativity.
I don't know what you write, but I'll stake my bottom dollar that you built your work on the bones of numerous others. By enforcing perpetual copyright you are impoverishing the common pool that ALL creative people draw from.
As people in arid areas say, "Don't hog the waterhole, buddy, we're all thirsty!"
As a final note -- if you've put thousands of hours into your book you'd best hope it's the next Harry Potter, because most authors have to work a lot a faster than that if they expect to keep Top Ramen on the table . . .
Slashdot Mirror
More likely, he has a badly formed nut, a sub-optimal tuner, or the strings are still stretching. My money would be on the nut, which is quite common, particularly (for some reason) on the G string. If the groove is too narrow, or incorrectly angled, the string binds in it, only becomes evenly-tensioned along it's length after playing for a few minutes. A bit of emery cloth can make a world of difference in such a case. You can usually spot this problem by listening carefully as you tune -- if the note jumps suddenly it's a sure sign the nut needs help.
IMHO the posts about "ruining the musicians ear" are bogus. If you RTFA you'll see that this gizmo allows the scales to be tempered to suit the musicians taste. You want to modulate the B-string a few hertz flat -- go ahead, that's what a tempered scale is. Besides, you develop a good ear by playing a well-tuned instrument, not by compensating mentally for a discordant mess.
I have a reasonably good ear, and use harmonics when "ear tuning" because they're more accurate than the fret placement (and less subject to the rising tone problems caused by fretting the previous string, which raises it's tone slightly). I'm at least as good as the cheap electronic tuners, but not as good as the higher-end needle-guage based units. Based on the price of this unit, I'm betting it uses a pretty high quality tuner - far better than most guitarists ear! Having strings 1 hertz off doesn't make much difference on a six-string played with high distortion at a rock concert. But on a twelve string, even a small difference between paired strings leads to an unpleasant audible "beating". The same thing happens with classical guitars, where it becomes annoying (usually when lower strings are fretted above the twelvth fret, and sound out of sync with a supposedly identical note played on a higher string).
So, this unit is faster than a human, more accurate than a human, allows complete control over scale tempering, and stores a couple of hundred alternate tunings. It's got me beat hands down, and I suspect that's why professionals are paying nearly 4g to get one!
Actually, it's truth in advertising. Internet exploder initially starts using first-person sigular, "I", but as soon as the user installs a non-microsoft add-on (think Add-server, keystroke logger etc), it correctly switches to the plural "We".
Did anybody else notice that the site design was eerily similar to that of Grocklaw? I wonder whose design they stole for the balloon? I wonder if they know about . . . (clutches tinfoil hat more tightly).
I also agree with an earlier post who said basically "don't be a pinhead about it". I work outside of work. Only a couple of my office mates know anything about it, and I keep my work time strictly segregated, so my current employer gets the effort they're paying me for. Ethically, I'm above board and sleep well at night.
Should the company ever try to assert control over my home-grown projects, they'll have to do it WITHOUT a signed IP contract, which I find a comforting thought. Hooray for bad book-keeping!
Sorry, this is off-topic, but I can't resist! I'm a VW afficionado . . . I've owned (and loved) three vanagons. I gave up on them after I was rear-ended at a stop sign, and pushed into the car in front of me. The front-end collision was minor, but there was significant cabin intrusion. Very Scary. We bought a Eurovan with dual air bags, and haven't looked back. It lacks a bit of "Farvegnugen", but it's a heck of a lot safer. So, get a Eurovan, and take a trip instead of working as a game programmer!
Hmm, I thought more of "The Two Towers", with Microsoft as Sauron and SCO as Sauromon. "Beneath the baleful, ever-watching eye of Redmond, backed by the endless undead-lawyer armies of SCO, who can stand?"
They put their effort and more money than the owners could afford into developing the product, holding off launching until the product was well-refined, robust and thoroughly tested.
By the time they launched, they had little money for marketing or packaging. We watched companies with a fraction of our technical savvy make (and lose) several fortunes. The firm in question lived and died in the starting gate, with a well-developed chunk of software and a few patents to mark their passing.
Marketing and Money are more than afterthoughts, they are the meat and potatoes of business. If you don't have them, stick to writing GPL software, at least your poverty won't surprise you!
My son, however, is another matter entirely. He's a great guy, but he's got ADHD in a FAR more acute form than I do. Lesson one, not everyone diagnosed with this disorder is in the same boat. Like good parents, we took our little darling to the doctor soon after he started kindergarten, where the teacher didn't appreciate his caroming off the walls like a biological billard ball. Ritlin, of course, was prescribed immediately.
My happy little fireball turned into a mopey, depressed little jellyfish. The teachers were happy -- he was now easy to control! Back to the doctor -- adjusting dosages gave big improvements, but never was just right. The side-effects were as bad as the ADHD.
They changed drugs, Adderol(sp) and several others. The doctor was getting testy, saying we should be satisfied with "good enough". We changed doctors. Lesson two: Keep trying!
FINALLY, a doctor tried Imapramine. It's an old-style antidepressant, with some interesting side-effects (like "slowing down" the mental machinery a bit). My son never had the anger problems and antisocial behavior frequently associated with ADHD, he just couldn't concnentrate - my wife would make him literally sit on his hands while she tried to help him with school work, and he'd just vibrate with unspent energy. It was a long-shot, but the doctor thought my son's symptoms might respond to the side-effects of Imaprimamine. It worked beautifully. He's still pretty "bouncy", but he's in control of himself. His grades are, frankly, not stellar. He's happy, productive, inquisitive, and alert, not doped-up on the typical ADD drugs. Lesson three Decide what results you want, realizing that the goal isn't necessarily to make your kid "just like everyone else", but to the best version of them they can be.
Anyway, ADD/ADHD IS a serious problem, unless you have a mild case like mine, and every treament has plusses and minuses. During the years we were trying different treatments, I got to see my son put through an emotional and physical taffy-puller, but we found a treatment that seems to fit HIS situation well, reducing the symptoms that are limiting to him without impairing or redefining who he is beneath it all. Keep working at it, and you should find something that works for your daughter.
The strange part is, he and I built stuff all Christmas vacation, and I had a ball. Last week, for no good reason, I bought a pirate ship, and I'm old enough to know better!
Anyway, lego's are fun for people of all ages, and kids are just a good excuse.
Thanks for all the information guys! It's appreciated. 8^)
First, I really want to cheer these guys on, this is a great achievement, and I hope the champagne corks are popping all over Scaled Composite's.
On the other hand, I visited their site from a server running 800x600, and I really hope they hire a web-site designer someday. Ack! There's a huge static graphic in the top frame, and a tiny window for THE REST OF THE SITE. I mean, I can read like 3 lines of text! This graphic may be fine for a splash screen, but it makes it impossible to read the content! The only thing they could do to improve it is jam it full of flash and add a few blink tags, then it would be PERFECT!
Hah! My anonymity was digitally protected, regarldess of it's dubious efficacity! Since you have seen through it, you are in flagrant violation of the DMCA, please turn yourself over to the proper authorities, you law-breaking hacker vermin! ;-)
Now, as anonymous coward, I can ask what I would otherwise be embarrased to. How do you disable copying, but allow ISO's to be burned?
I use Linux regularly, but I'm a configuration lightweight. I've used several of the OSS CD-buring programs, but they all appear to be general purpose. I don't know enough to even begin to guess at how to set this up, can someone enlighten me?
Please keep the flames to a minimum, this is an honest question from an ignorant devotee, not a troll!
</USING>
I've always the SCO logo looked like a red globe with a blue Mickey Mouse just rotating into view. I wasn't sure if they were claiming to be a Mickey-Mouse company or if they were conjoined with Di$ney somehow.
Thanks for explaining what SCO's logo is supposed to be!
Spoonboy, Amen, your parents would be proud of you, and if you have children, they can count themselves lucky. With your addtional explanion I find myself completely in agreement with you. Using technical superiority to undermine a healthy relationship is a poor choice. Using any means at all to disrupt a tyrannical rule (even within a home) is necessary to preserve one's sense of dignity. Long live SSL-tunneling and port forwarding!
No offense intended, but I strongly disagree with the use of subterfuge and dissimulation in ANY sort of personal interaction, especially a parent/child relationship. All meaningful relations are based on trust, and you're childish actions undermine that.
We have several computers in my home, and my children are allowed internet access without filters or artificial safety nets, other than a moral framework we've tried to teach them since they were in diapers. I trust my kids, not to be perfect, but to be honest with me, to let me help them become good adults, and to council with me when they have problems. They make mistakes, and occationally pull some real bloopers, but I think they trust me to be in their corner, to listen to them seriously, and to give the best council I possibly can. In my family, both parents and children are allowed to make mistakes, but honesty is expected from everyone.
My children have their own user accounts, email addresses, network shares etc. I don't pry into their accounts. I do occasionally check the network logs (if they're all checking out bondage sites, I may have missed a part of their education somewhere!). I would be very concerned if one of my children started playing your "I'm too smart for you to track" games with me. -- not because I want to control their lives, but because it would indicate a lack of trust.
One last comment-- you've been watching too many Disney shows (you know, were the bumbling idiot is always an adult authority figure that the clever kids have to outsmart). I work with a bevy of VERY clever geeks, most of whom are middle aged parental, and you know what? We "get" unix/linux/security etc. We wrote most of it, and our brains haven't turned to tapioca yet, we just don't equate posting AOL IM's in L33t 5p34K with technical accumen.
Finally, an unregulated P2P file-sharing platform! If we all work together we can share in an automous, free, file-trading mecca on our personal orbital joy-wagon. .]
Hummm - bandwidth - yeah, something the size of a pumpkin probably can't stream simultaneous video to all of slashdot, can it? But if you all pitch in, it will be enough for ME!!!!!!
[ Me exits stage left with evil laugh. .
Actually, Java uses unicode internally. You can use Kanji variable names if it makes you happy. ;-)
I like this orientation better, it kind of looks like a little slashdot!
On a more serious note, I can't believe a scientist didn't differentiate between mass and weight, especially since weight varies inversely with distance (altitude), and clouds float at highly divergent altitudes. A cirrostratus cloud of a given mass will have noticeably less weight than a cumulous cloud of the same mass. Maybe low-altitude clouds are measured in African elephants, while high-altitude clouds are measured in Asian elephants?
A variety of electronics are available to enhance vocal performance, and I think they have their place. In the computer world, is it "cheating" to use an IDE rather than a basic text editor for coding? Is using a cluster or network-distributed service to achieve lighting-fast performance somehow dishonerable? We use the best tools we can find meet our goals. Musicans are doing exactly the same thing
Here's a quick example: I'm an amature musician. I'm a decent vocalist with some decidedly third-rate guitar skills. A few months ago a friend who has his own basement studio asked me to come over and cut a few tracks.
One of the songs had a two-and-a-half octave range. I can hit just over three octaves, but the musical value of the extremes is questionable. This piece called for a thick, rich, bluesy presentation, which is especially hard to reproduce at the edges of the vocal range. Even after transposing for my voice, there were a couple of high parts where I sounded pretty thin and reedy, and a couple of lows that were gravely. Multiple takes didn't help, that's all I could deliver.
Enter the magic of electronics. A couple of days later, my friend wanted me to come over to cut another harmony track, and check the vocals. I wasn't sure I ever wanted to hear this piece again, but I was amazed. It sounded just like me, without any noticable "robotic" tones or alteration. However, where I'd been thin or raspy I heard a full, well rounded voice with plenty of harmonics and depth. RJ (my buddy) muttered something about filters, compression, flanging, etc. The track was great, and I love to have friends listen to it, but I could never duplicate that performace live. In my opinion, that's not cheating, it's debugging. Which of you, finding a deficiency in your code, can allow it to remain unaltered?, well, neither can I! ;-)
I've had to deal with the same problem several times, as I've built a number of specific applications based on a common underlying framework, to which I retain the copyright etc.
Frequently, in the course of developing a specific application, enhancements to the underlying libraries are needed (thus the dual code-base and liscensing problem). I have always had good luck explaining to the firms who hire me that I can save a great deal of time (an money) when developing their application by utilizing my libraries. I agree to grant them a long-term liscense to use my libraries as a condition of the contract. My contract also spells out that any changes made in the underlying library are copyrighted by me, even though such changes may have been mandated by, and created as part of, their project.
I've had a couple of companies question this arrangement (huffy lawyer types mostly). I explain that I'll be more than happy to write a product entirely free of my libraries, but that doing so will doubtless add several hundred billable hours to the development/debugging cycle. They quickly conclude that as long as I agree not to charge ongoing fees for the use of my libraries they'll happily grant me the copyright.
So far, it's worked like a charm. If a feature is specific to their business, it goes in the application code, if it has broader application, it goes in MY code, I bill for the hours, and I have an even better set of libraries to dangle in front of the next client.
The recording inst industry is not that old. While it originally controlled only the distribution of recordings of their member-artists and publication of sheet music, it now seeks to extend the definition of copyright to cover all performance and reproduction rights.
If a songwriter produces a good piece, and Brittney Spears sings it, they (and by extension thier representatives, the RIAA) have the right to limit its distribution and charge any amount they deem appropriate for copies of it. Unlike most people on slashdot, that seems reasonable to me. If they charge too much I just won't buy it. Supply and demand would ultimately throttle the RIAA even without outside intervention.
However, in attemtping to exert control over ALL aspects of the song (the RIAA routinely closes down sites offering the lyrics to songs!), as well as all performance (hypothetically including my off-key warblings in the shower), they've gone too far. A book or a movie, once experienced, becomes part of our aggregate gestalt, and subject to re-expression. How many of us have quoted favorite lines from movies, books or plays? How many of us hum favorite tunes as we drive? Every experiece shapes the individual, shared experiences shape culture. By asserting iron-fisted control over the media which forms the bulk of our shared experience, the industry is asserting ownership of modern culture. (Think about this -- it goes deeper than it looks, particularly if you have a good psych background.
It would be preposterouse to allow our shared culture and individual expression to be owned, liscened and regulated by an amoral corporation. Enslaving a man's body is atrocious, and enslaving the mind even more so. Given the inability of the industry to regulate their greed and mitigate their control, it may indeed be necessary to eliminate them for the good our our culture.
As the original poster noted, this would not destroy music, it would return it to the people. Big bands and zillion-dollar rock-stars would would suffer, but skilled musicians would thrive. Maybe, without the album covers and big-dollar promotional deals, musical ability would be more important than sex appeal in determining the value of the art. Musicians and songwriters were able to make a good living long before copyrights and recording contracts.
I go to folk festivals, shanty-sings, and ref-faires featuring brilliant musicians and songwriters, peddling their fare without contracts and thuggish enforcement. Their CD's are produced in smaller, less-capable studios, yet sell for the same price as the commercial ones. Strangely, I enjoy the music more, there is a depth to the performance of a 40-year-old street musician that can't be matched by the pampered beauty-queen/singers favored by the media. Perhaps it is time for we the people to take ownership of "music" away from the RIAA . . .
Society has agreed to grant us an exclusive lisense to copy, produce, sell and pimp our work so that we can make a profit. During the copyright term, society will bear the cost of enforcing severe restrictions on anyone who might impair our ability to make money from our creativity. In exchange for this service, we acknowledge that at some point in time our work becomes public domain, grist for the vast mill of human creativity.
I don't know what you write, but I'll stake my bottom dollar that you built your work on the bones of numerous others. By enforcing perpetual copyright you are impoverishing the common pool that ALL creative people draw from.
As people in arid areas say, "Don't hog the waterhole, buddy, we're all thirsty!"
As a final note -- if you've put thousands of hours into your book you'd best hope it's the next Harry Potter, because most authors have to work a lot a faster than that if they expect to keep Top Ramen on the table . . .