I was always kinda amused that they got away with the blatant rip-off of the RCA "listening to his master's voice" dog logo for SoundEdit. I still have SE16 kicking around on some zip somewhere, haven't used it in years.
RE: MS buying up Macromedia would REALLY SUCK. I have always liked Macromedia products, especially compared to Adobe and OTHER software companies. I even *gasp* like Flash (Homestarrunner, people? HELLO?!?) and am sick of all the whining geeks do about Flash intros, as if that was the worst abuse of Web technology out there. Losing Flash to The Dark Side(TM) would be a real step backward for everyone.
I was going to say the same thing. Glad someone beat me to it.
Also, Q: wouldn't there necessarily be a dynamic "smearing" in the D/A, AMP, and driver stages? Especially with cheap gear? Wouldn't the kind of cover over dynamic "holes" in the signal?
Welcome to the world of REAL innovation. The reason this project "failed" was it failed to be attractive to investors. This has NOTHING to do with the technical merits and possible future market value of such an invention (and family of inventions, as the tech matures). It has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that most investors are timid. Governments included.
Investors are so afraid of being burned by something that seems weird (ie: anything that has a remote chance of sparking a revolution in design) to take a long term risk on a great project. This happens with dumb and smart projects alike, without discrimination. And the ones that get funding are as likely to be losers as not.
The gatekeepers of capitol are painfully myopic when it comes to sponsoring cheap, smaller projects with lots of potential. There is more gravy in the big projects where everyone gets to fly around for a lot of meetings and stuff. Great, romantic, crazy enterprises are squashed with great vigour and relish by established interests. They are a threat to a stable mediocrity. Institutions crave control over a well-established domain, using a sort of clumsy Machiavellianism, a fumbling management of things: Reactive. Defensive. Mean.
Advancement and paradigm-shifting requires a tiger of innovative ideas, a world-breaker: the Market houses only those who worship the image of the tiger, while playing their monkey games on high, quite happy with their habit of competing for an unbroken world.
You know what the REAL problem these guys had? No interest from the U.S. Army. Too bad, they could have been wicked for forward observing. And I think fuel cells would have been a great "synergistic" technology. Maybe we'll see this again soon.
Anyone who has gone through the 20 years of Mac trials and tribulations knows that there is NO WAY you can say Mac fans are ipso facto Apple fans. Remember the late 80s? Remember the contempt in which Apple was held by people who ADORED their Macintoshes? No, probably not.
So now iSteve is back in the driver seat and has somewhat mended that emotional/ideological/theological rift, and all the recent "Switchers" probably have no idea of Apple's tortured history. That has probably erased any distinction between love for the platform and love for the company from the average geek's brain, but not mine. Lessons learned from the days of Mr. Pepsi are hard to forget: in fact, loving the Macintosh in all it's incarnations probably means you are MORE passionate in your love/hate relationship with Apple.
So, verily, I don't think the typical Mac user is so braindead that they "believe Apple can't do any wrong".
The whole point of the Arms Race of the Cold War was to bankrupt the USSR. Some Sov leaders (like Kruschev) even understood that going head to head with the U.S. in a nuclear arms race would mean throwing away any chance to build a "peace-time" economy. Unfortunately for them, the adept brinkmanship and propaganda machine of the West was too good not to fall for it. End result: USSR and USA both have giant arsenals, and only the USA has a healthy economy. Exit the Communists.
The current thinking in the Whitehouse is the same: trick China, then Korea, India, Pakistan, etc. etc. into building a nuclear arsenal, anti-anti-ballistic missile systems, Star Wars tech, etc. and sit back and watch them chew through their GDP in a vain attempt to play catch-up. Then, when their economies are wrecked, move in and offer to run things for them (as in Russia now... here, let us help you... strings? what strings?).
The only problem being, Mutually Assured Destruction doesn't scale. Can you say "deer in headlights"?
Come on, man! Not everyone is going to be able to afford audiophile gear, and I *really* don't think that consumer gear is going to catch up in terms of quality any time soon. Even if the standard audio format becomes 96kHz/24bit, you are STILL going to need a wicked amp ($5000? maybe not that much, but definitely in the $1000+ range) and either near field monitors or *very* good headphones.
Most people by components in the $200-400 range, and most have their MP3-playing computers hooked up to ghetto blasters or pretty weak sub/satellite systems. Hardly the kind of thing that gives you a clean, uncoloured, full spectrum sound with maximum dynamic range. MP3s at 256kbps sound just fine in that arena.
Until you can hear the difference on cheap gear, your argument doesn't apply to 99% of the music-listening market.
As far as I can remember, democracy requires an active citizenry who understand the issues before them, who engage in public dialogue, and who excercise their political power by engaging in the decision-making process (normally through voting, which is still a pretty weak system, IMHO).
Business requires a passive market of consumers who believe everything they are told, surrender their rights to whatever licences are associated with the product/service, and are willing to complain ineffectively to phone support drones from a third company. And the only effect they have on decision-making is by holding voting shares in the business.
Then again, the real difference is that in a democracy it is "one person, one vote". Hardly so in business, where it is "one dollar, one vote".
So, in your conception "democracy" allows for rule by the wealthy. Which, I guess, is pretty much the standard definition of democracy these days, so I'll shut up now.
Have you ever BEEN to Canada, man? Ever sat out in the middle of August in hot, humid Ottawa? Or watched the sun NOT set north of 60? Or enjoyed spring weather in the middle of december in Calgary because of a Chinook?
Do you think it gets colder in Toronto than, say, Minneapolis? And I live in Vancouver, where it almost never snows all year. It just rains hella.
Don't worry, most of your countrymen don't have a clue, either.
expect a great deal of political and legal pressure for Canada to fall in line with the other states.
Is it just me, or does that sound like "fall into like with the other (United) states" as opposed to "the other (International) states"? I'm a paranoid Canadian, I know. But I get sick of my country being joked about as "the 51st state". Maybe I'm just being too sensitive, eh?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't sound like a Sony product for the home, but one for the cable companies, right? I'm sure Sony will have consumer products associated with this (ie PS2, some new PVR, other integrated A/V gear), but with stupid-sounding buzzwords like "Legacy CA Agnostic", it must be aimed a the pointy-haired crowd out there.
Anyone know who they are competing with? Is this a transport protocol + hardware, or the other way around?
Good review of the fuel issue. Do you know what kind of "energy density" you can get with hydrogen locked up in a metal-hydride? Is it about the same as, say, methanol?
What excites me about this product is that a) I can now stop seeming like a crackpot when I wax poetic about the wonders of fuel cell technologeh (most people don't seem to believe how revolutionary this is! why?!?) and b) now (or soon) me and my friends can have a nice, hippy-friendly rave in the middle of nowhere, and won't have to worry about masking the sound of a generator with MASSIVE WAVES OF TECHNO AND GOA-TRANCE. Granted, we'd probably play it that loud anyway... but what about the breakdowns and ambient passages?
Also we'd have to hook up a couple of these puppies to make sure we have a lots of power (I think the specs say it can push 1600W for a couple of seconds, maybe the next generation will have more oomph). But I really look forward to getting one in a couple of years... Instant Burning Man! just add water!
I think you are missing something. What makes great science fiction is politics and psychology. I have never read a single science fiction piece that really got into my skull that wasn't challenging some present-day assumption about society or the individual.
I think all great science fiction seeks to answer not just "what if?" but "where do we go from here?". The technology in science fiction is not just a prop, it is usually a disguise for an topical issue in the here-and-now. "Sci-fi" that uses technology as a "gee-whiz" element is just fantasy or action dressed up as science fiction.
Personally, the best stuff I've ever read has been short stories. Something about SF has always lent itself to short, concise explorations of a single theme. I think novels tend to get tricky, since you need a few themes and a really strong philosophy to back it up.
"It helps Sonic to fight against the flock of metallic maniacs with its Attack of Supersonic Turn and to defeat the Dr. Ivo Robotnik"... or else it gets the hose again!
I'll tell you what happened: nothing. Lazy Web designers have always been so concerned with making a site look "just right", that they need to use some little trick that only works in one browser or another... then to make the site look "just right" in some other browser requires a whole lot of replacement markup and probably a some swapping javascript, if not a completely different set of pages.
I'm even lazier. I could care less about "just right". I use style sheets, my site looks fine in Lynx. Admittedly, I am not using lots of sliced up graphics and javascript, but that's because I am not very sophisticated: I code by hand.
Personally, I think designers should make up their minds and either use Flash for complete presentation control or style sheets and vanilla (X)HTML to reach as wide an audience as possible. All the crap I see in "View/Source" makes me cringe.
I think you mean "effete". I don't think a translator droid has the equipment for that sort of thing. Must be the English accent. Still, you'd think a geek would cut a droid some slack for not coming off like a storm-trooper....
Not to beat up on you any further (I see the other geeks have done a pretty thorough job of that), but I disagree. Your investment of time, talent, and money in making the album is just that: an investment. Nobody guaranteed you a profit.
Now, given the REALITY of the situation these days, you have a choice: sign a contract with a label, let them run things, and hope you get some money out of all their hype and networking. And get pirated, if anyone likes your stuff.
Or, you can go directly to letting people pirate your stuff, and with a little marketing effort of your own, hope that enough people want more of the same to make your money back.
I'd say the odds are pretty tight either way. Playing gigs aint exactly a goldmine either, though. So tough for you: you are finding out that being a musician/composer does not guarantee you a life of leisure and wealth. Join the club.
So cry me a river about your production costs. If you had a reasonable expectation of making money on it, you probably already did before the mp3s started flying around. And like everyone says: prove that pirating hurts sales overall.
Anyhow, it comes down to this: do you want people to hear your music, or do you want to make money. They can't BOTH be your first choice, man.
What a dramatic term: The Darknet. Rhymes with "Terrorist" and "Pedophile", I suppose.
Anyhow, my point:
Can anyone see how DRM will actually WORK work? Like, we end up with a stable set of technologies that make it very difficult (if not impossible) to pirate copyrighted media? I can't.
All I can forsee is a quicksand scenario where the DRM technology changes so quickly, in an effort to stay "one step ahead" (hah!) of pirates, that the average user experience is complicated beyond What The Market Will Bear. Who wants to buy a cd player for their car, when in two years they will have to replace it to play the New CDs?
I'm guessing the trend will be towards digital radio and play-once licences. Selling discs is like selling tapes is like selling vinyl. Once you've sold it, it's no longer under your control.
BTW: Other than a slight degradation in signal, and a lot of sitting around waiting, what is so hard about taking an analog signal and re-digitizing it? Isn't this a pretty good low-tech way to get around any form of CD-based DRM?
It takes too long to qualify your attacks when you have to accurately represent things. Understanding a complex world is hard. It is much easier to make ridiculous generalizations that support your preconceptions. You burn too many cycles trying to see what is really there, so prejudice serves as a sort of blurring filter on reality. You don't see the details, just the colours.
Hence, bigots are just being more efficient with their brains. Not more effective, mind. Just quicker to come to conclusions, and then stop thinking. Leaves more time to watch TV.
Maybe if we send a 30Hz tone directly into the floor, we can give you the added sensory data to turn you into a breakdancing, body-rocking machine. (sorry... no disrespect intended)
BTW: do you know how the Whirling Dervishes do their thing? they spin with their heads held still, cocked at what looks like a 45 degree angle, and turned into the spin. I know that ballet dancers hold their heads still, and then whip them around 180 degrees into a spin, which helps with orientation.
How does the Dervish method help, though? Does the inner-ear eventually ignore a constant acceleration? A friend thought that the angle would make the dancer feel like they were "rising" and help them with their balance. Looks pretty hard though.
I think this is just an attempt at getting all those Mach 3 razor packs back out in front of shoppers. It must make it hard to sell them when they are locked up with the cigarettes all the time.
This way, they can promote impulse shopping and avoid getting those damn things lifted by nimble-fingered, course-bearded hoodlums like me. I mean, c'mon! Who wants to pay $12 for four damn razors? Gimme a break! Now I'll have to line my pockets with aluminum foil or something...
I find it curious that you aren't allowed to criticize something unless you have a substitute readily available. Saying "this sucks (and here's why), but I don't really know how to improve/replace it" is somehow wrong.
Well, actually, it isn't. It's perfectly okay to point out the flaws in someone's argument or theory. It is not up to the critic to make a better theory, it is up to those who claim they have all the answers to defend their supposed Omniscience. And let's face it: traditional Western economics is supposed to be the best possible solution to all the world's problems.
I guess pointing out how that is false makes one pretty unpopular with the masses that have invested in it. Those of us with less to lose should keep on hammering the point home. Screw the orthodoxy.
You're right. No picture on this story = Big Tease
on
Go Go Gadget Minisaw
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· Score: 2
Although he sounds more like he is following in the footsteps of the "One Man Band Maniac" tradition, rather than the "MIT Media Lab Maniac" tradition, this guy sounds like he is miles ahead of most self-styled cyborgs (Mann, et al) in the integration of technology into his person. I would doubt this guy takes great pleasure with the efficiency with which he can perform various necessary tasks. And he no doubt wears it almost all the time.
We all know the geeks with a tool belt from hell, but it only makes sense that it will move into the realm of tactical vests and load-bearing harnesses, or truly functional clothing that has been engineered with sensors, processors, power systems, etc. into it. Eric most likely doesn't have a real good digital rig going, but that's beside the point: it's functional integration. We shouldn't be biased against low-tech, in particular the need for powered systems should not be the criteria a definition of "cyborg".
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I was always kinda amused that they got away with the blatant rip-off of the RCA "listening to his master's voice" dog logo for SoundEdit. I still have SE16 kicking around on some zip somewhere, haven't used it in years.
RE: MS buying up Macromedia would REALLY SUCK. I have always liked Macromedia products, especially compared to Adobe and OTHER software companies. I even *gasp* like Flash (Homestarrunner, people? HELLO?!?) and am sick of all the whining geeks do about Flash intros, as if that was the worst abuse of Web technology out there. Losing Flash to The Dark Side(TM) would be a real step backward for everyone.
I was going to say the same thing. Glad someone beat me to it.
Also, Q: wouldn't there necessarily be a dynamic "smearing" in the D/A, AMP, and driver stages? Especially with cheap gear? Wouldn't the kind of cover over dynamic "holes" in the signal?
Welcome to the world of REAL innovation. The reason this project "failed" was it failed to be attractive to investors. This has NOTHING to do with the technical merits and possible future market value of such an invention (and family of inventions, as the tech matures). It has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that most investors are timid. Governments included.
Investors are so afraid of being burned by something that seems weird (ie: anything that has a remote chance of sparking a revolution in design) to take a long term risk on a great project. This happens with dumb and smart projects alike, without discrimination. And the ones that get funding are as likely to be losers as not.
The gatekeepers of capitol are painfully myopic when it comes to sponsoring cheap, smaller projects with lots of potential. There is more gravy in the big projects where everyone gets to fly around for a lot of meetings and stuff. Great, romantic, crazy enterprises are squashed with great vigour and relish by established interests. They are a threat to a stable mediocrity. Institutions crave control over a well-established domain, using a sort of clumsy Machiavellianism, a fumbling management of things: Reactive. Defensive. Mean.
Advancement and paradigm-shifting requires a tiger of innovative ideas, a world-breaker: the Market houses only those who worship the image of the tiger, while playing their monkey games on high, quite happy with their habit of competing for an unbroken world.
You know what the REAL problem these guys had? No interest from the U.S. Army. Too bad, they could have been wicked for forward observing. And I think fuel cells would have been a great "synergistic" technology. Maybe we'll see this again soon.
Or not. Screw innovation. I want a burrito.
Anyone who has gone through the 20 years of Mac trials and tribulations knows that there is NO WAY you can say Mac fans are ipso facto Apple fans. Remember the late 80s? Remember the contempt in which Apple was held by people who ADORED their Macintoshes? No, probably not.
So now iSteve is back in the driver seat and has somewhat mended that emotional/ideological/theological rift, and all the recent "Switchers" probably have no idea of Apple's tortured history. That has probably erased any distinction between love for the platform and love for the company from the average geek's brain, but not mine. Lessons learned from the days of Mr. Pepsi are hard to forget: in fact, loving the Macintosh in all it's incarnations probably means you are MORE passionate in your love/hate relationship with Apple.
So, verily, I don't think the typical Mac user is so braindead that they "believe Apple can't do any wrong".
I was looking for the 3-page rant, for sure.
The whole point of the Arms Race of the Cold War was to bankrupt the USSR. Some Sov leaders (like Kruschev) even understood that going head to head with the U.S. in a nuclear arms race would mean throwing away any chance to build a "peace-time" economy. Unfortunately for them, the adept brinkmanship and propaganda machine of the West was too good not to fall for it. End result: USSR and USA both have giant arsenals, and only the USA has a healthy economy. Exit the Communists.
The current thinking in the Whitehouse is the same: trick China, then Korea, India, Pakistan, etc. etc. into building a nuclear arsenal, anti-anti-ballistic missile systems, Star Wars tech, etc. and sit back and watch them chew through their GDP in a vain attempt to play catch-up. Then, when their economies are wrecked, move in and offer to run things for them (as in Russia now... here, let us help you... strings? what strings?).
The only problem being, Mutually Assured Destruction doesn't scale. Can you say "deer in headlights"?
Come on, man! Not everyone is going to be able to afford audiophile gear, and I *really* don't think that consumer gear is going to catch up in terms of quality any time soon. Even if the standard audio format becomes 96kHz/24bit, you are STILL going to need a wicked amp ($5000? maybe not that much, but definitely in the $1000+ range) and either near field monitors or *very* good headphones.
Most people by components in the $200-400 range, and most have their MP3-playing computers hooked up to ghetto blasters or pretty weak sub/satellite systems. Hardly the kind of thing that gives you a clean, uncoloured, full spectrum sound with maximum dynamic range. MP3s at 256kbps sound just fine in that arena.
Until you can hear the difference on cheap gear, your argument doesn't apply to 99% of the music-listening market.
As far as I can remember, democracy requires an active citizenry who understand the issues before them, who engage in public dialogue, and who excercise their political power by engaging in the decision-making process (normally through voting, which is still a pretty weak system, IMHO).
Business requires a passive market of consumers who believe everything they are told, surrender their rights to whatever licences are associated with the product/service, and are willing to complain ineffectively to phone support drones from a third company. And the only effect they have on decision-making is by holding voting shares in the business.
Then again, the real difference is that in a democracy it is "one person, one vote". Hardly so in business, where it is "one dollar, one vote".
So, in your conception "democracy" allows for rule by the wealthy. Which, I guess, is pretty much the standard definition of democracy these days, so I'll shut up now.
Have you ever BEEN to Canada, man? Ever sat out in the middle of August in hot, humid Ottawa? Or watched the sun NOT set north of 60? Or enjoyed spring weather in the middle of december in Calgary because of a Chinook?
Do you think it gets colder in Toronto than, say, Minneapolis? And I live in Vancouver, where it almost never snows all year. It just rains hella.
Don't worry, most of your countrymen don't have a clue, either.
Now we must beware the Robotech Masters who will surely launch an attack on Stanford in order to learn the secrets of humanity's ultimate power!!
Is it just me, or does that sound like "fall into like with the other (United) states" as opposed to "the other (International) states"? I'm a paranoid Canadian, I know. But I get sick of my country being joked about as "the 51st state". Maybe I'm just being too sensitive, eh?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't sound like a Sony product for the home, but one for the cable companies, right? I'm sure Sony will have consumer products associated with this (ie PS2, some new PVR, other integrated A/V gear), but with stupid-sounding buzzwords like "Legacy CA Agnostic", it must be aimed a the pointy-haired crowd out there.
Anyone know who they are competing with? Is this a transport protocol + hardware, or the other way around?
Good review of the fuel issue. Do you know what kind of "energy density" you can get with hydrogen locked up in a metal-hydride? Is it about the same as, say, methanol?
What excites me about this product is that a) I can now stop seeming like a crackpot when I wax poetic about the wonders of fuel cell technologeh (most people don't seem to believe how revolutionary this is! why?!?) and b) now (or soon) me and my friends can have a nice, hippy-friendly rave in the middle of nowhere, and won't have to worry about masking the sound of a generator with MASSIVE WAVES OF TECHNO AND GOA-TRANCE. Granted, we'd probably play it that loud anyway... but what about the breakdowns and ambient passages?
Also we'd have to hook up a couple of these puppies to make sure we have a lots of power (I think the specs say it can push 1600W for a couple of seconds, maybe the next generation will have more oomph). But I really look forward to getting one in a couple of years... Instant Burning Man! just add water!
I think you are missing something. What makes great science fiction is politics and psychology. I have never read a single science fiction piece that really got into my skull that wasn't challenging some present-day assumption about society or the individual.
I think all great science fiction seeks to answer not just "what if?" but "where do we go from here?". The technology in science fiction is not just a prop, it is usually a disguise for an topical issue in the here-and-now. "Sci-fi" that uses technology as a "gee-whiz" element is just fantasy or action dressed up as science fiction.
Personally, the best stuff I've ever read has been short stories. Something about SF has always lent itself to short, concise explorations of a single theme. I think novels tend to get tricky, since you need a few themes and a really strong philosophy to back it up.
Game description for Sonic The Hedgehog"
... or else it gets the hose again!
"It helps Sonic to fight against the flock of metallic maniacs with its Attack of Supersonic Turn and to defeat the Dr. Ivo Robotnik"
I'll tell you what happened: nothing. Lazy Web designers have always been so concerned with making a site look "just right", that they need to use some little trick that only works in one browser or another... then to make the site look "just right" in some other browser requires a whole lot of replacement markup and probably a some swapping javascript, if not a completely different set of pages.
I'm even lazier. I could care less about "just right". I use style sheets, my site looks fine in Lynx. Admittedly, I am not using lots of sliced up graphics and javascript, but that's because I am not very sophisticated: I code by hand.
Personally, I think designers should make up their minds and either use Flash for complete presentation control or style sheets and vanilla (X)HTML to reach as wide an audience as possible. All the crap I see in "View/Source" makes me cringe.
I think you mean "effete". I don't think a translator droid has the equipment for that sort of thing. Must be the English accent. Still, you'd think a geek would cut a droid some slack for not coming off like a storm-trooper....
Not to beat up on you any further (I see the other geeks have done a pretty thorough job of that), but I disagree. Your investment of time, talent, and money in making the album is just that: an investment. Nobody guaranteed you a profit.
Now, given the REALITY of the situation these days, you have a choice: sign a contract with a label, let them run things, and hope you get some money out of all their hype and networking. And get pirated, if anyone likes your stuff.
Or, you can go directly to letting people pirate your stuff, and with a little marketing effort of your own, hope that enough people want more of the same to make your money back.
I'd say the odds are pretty tight either way. Playing gigs aint exactly a goldmine either, though. So tough for you: you are finding out that being a musician/composer does not guarantee you a life of leisure and wealth. Join the club.
So cry me a river about your production costs. If you had a reasonable expectation of making money on it, you probably already did before the mp3s started flying around. And like everyone says: prove that pirating hurts sales overall.
Anyhow, it comes down to this: do you want people to hear your music, or do you want to make money. They can't BOTH be your first choice, man.
What a dramatic term: The Darknet. Rhymes with "Terrorist" and "Pedophile", I suppose.
Anyhow, my point:
Can anyone see how DRM will actually WORK work? Like, we end up with a stable set of technologies that make it very difficult (if not impossible) to pirate copyrighted media? I can't.
All I can forsee is a quicksand scenario where the DRM technology changes so quickly, in an effort to stay "one step ahead" (hah!) of pirates, that the average user experience is complicated beyond What The Market Will Bear. Who wants to buy a cd player for their car, when in two years they will have to replace it to play the New CDs?
I'm guessing the trend will be towards digital radio and play-once licences. Selling discs is like selling tapes is like selling vinyl. Once you've sold it, it's no longer under your control.
BTW: Other than a slight degradation in signal, and a lot of sitting around waiting, what is so hard about taking an analog signal and re-digitizing it? Isn't this a pretty good low-tech way to get around any form of CD-based DRM?
It takes too long to qualify your attacks when you have to accurately represent things. Understanding a complex world is hard. It is much easier to make ridiculous generalizations that support your preconceptions. You burn too many cycles trying to see what is really there, so prejudice serves as a sort of blurring filter on reality. You don't see the details, just the colours.
Hence, bigots are just being more efficient with their brains. Not more effective, mind. Just quicker to come to conclusions, and then stop thinking. Leaves more time to watch TV.
Maybe if we send a 30Hz tone directly into the floor, we can give you the added sensory data to turn you into a breakdancing, body-rocking machine. (sorry... no disrespect intended)
BTW: do you know how the Whirling Dervishes do their thing? they spin with their heads held still, cocked at what looks like a 45 degree angle, and turned into the spin. I know that ballet dancers hold their heads still, and then whip them around 180 degrees into a spin, which helps with orientation.
How does the Dervish method help, though? Does the inner-ear eventually ignore a constant acceleration? A friend thought that the angle would make the dancer feel like they were "rising" and help them with their balance. Looks pretty hard though.
Dammit. My internal editor just woke up, rubbed his eyes, and slapped me upside my head.
I think this is just an attempt at getting all those Mach 3 razor packs back out in front of shoppers. It must make it hard to sell them when they are locked up with the cigarettes all the time.
This way, they can promote impulse shopping and avoid getting those damn things lifted by nimble-fingered, course-bearded hoodlums like me. I mean, c'mon! Who wants to pay $12 for four damn razors? Gimme a break! Now I'll have to line my pockets with aluminum foil or something...
I find it curious that you aren't allowed to criticize something unless you have a substitute readily available. Saying "this sucks (and here's why), but I don't really know how to improve/replace it" is somehow wrong.
Well, actually, it isn't. It's perfectly okay to point out the flaws in someone's argument or theory. It is not up to the critic to make a better theory, it is up to those who claim they have all the answers to defend their supposed Omniscience. And let's face it: traditional Western economics is supposed to be the best possible solution to all the world's problems.
I guess pointing out how that is false makes one pretty unpopular with the masses that have invested in it. Those of us with less to lose should keep on hammering the point home. Screw the orthodoxy.
Although he sounds more like he is following in the footsteps of the "One Man Band Maniac" tradition, rather than the "MIT Media Lab Maniac" tradition, this guy sounds like he is miles ahead of most self-styled cyborgs (Mann, et al) in the integration of technology into his person. I would doubt this guy takes great pleasure with the efficiency with which he can perform various necessary tasks. And he no doubt wears it almost all the time.
We all know the geeks with a tool belt from hell, but it only makes sense that it will move into the realm of tactical vests and load-bearing harnesses, or truly functional clothing that has been engineered with sensors, processors, power systems, etc. into it. Eric most likely doesn't have a real good digital rig going, but that's beside the point: it's functional integration. We shouldn't be biased against low-tech, in particular the need for powered systems should not be the criteria a definition of "cyborg".