I would think that a decent probability and statistics class would go a long way towards developing and reinforcing (with math!) critical-thinking skills, which would benefit society immeasurably.
Let's see, the current Social Security 'deficit' is $1.8 trillion--all tied up in US Treasury Bonds. Now, I've owned bonds and I can tell you that, printed right on them is the phrase, "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States." Interestingly, I don't own bonds any more because their rate of return was too low. They are, however, regarded as one of the safest investments anywhere.
Digging a little deeper, I see that just over $7 billion in Bonds are in circulation right now. In fact, smilin' George Bush has
most of his own money in bonds.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I just want to believe that the old US of A is good for it...
As I recall, flourescent light ballasts double the line frequency (presumably using a tuned resonant filter--I'd guess an LC tank) to 120 Hz (or perhaps some other multiple of 60 Hz). BTW, Electromagnetic interference in this frequency range is not in the radio frequency (RF) range (ELF transmissions notwithstanding); its correct designation is "EMI".</nit>
Now for the bad news: a surprisingly vast amount of professional audio gear uses 1/4" unbalanced connectors. Of the synths, samplers, and effects processors in my studio, maybe a quarter of them have balanced outputs. (The mixers, of course, have balanced line and balanced mic inputs and outputs). This means I have to spend considerable effort routing cables to minimize 60 Hz inductance from power cables. The inverse-square law applies in this case: the farther audio lines are from power lines, the better 60 Hz line noise is rejected. In situations where proximity between the two is unavoidable, I try to cross them at 90-degree angles to minimize inductance.
Getting back to your question... For myself, a music studio is primarily an auditory experience; I don't want a lot of bright light. Reflections on device displays or monitors are distracting and detract from my enjoyment of working in the studio. Plus, when I have other musicians or clients in the studio, I want them to focus on the music, not their visual surroundings. My solution is to use low power (25-40W) incandescent fixtures, usually aimed at walls or ceilings to provide soft, indirect lighting. (If I need to work from a score or other paper material, I'll us a task light.) This solution provides more than adequate light to find my way around in the studio without running into things and creates a warm working environment, all without sucking down huge gobs of electricity.
Incidentally, I have sometimes wondered if tight twisted-pair cables would help with EMI rejection for audio the way it does for data transmission (i.e. ethernet over CAT5). I welcome the thoughts of any EEs out there with some experience in this area.
I suspect that the DNC is doing their part to contribute to the re-count fund. Hell, if they emailed their base with nothing more than the news--not even asking for donations, they'd probably get enough folks to contribute to the fund that the GL consortium would have enough cash on hand to demand re-counts in as many states as they'd like.
Neither of these--in fact, no significant voting reform measure will ever make it to the floor--it will die in committee first.
I cannot imagine a congress that would vote to jeopardize the established selection process of its members. If reform is ever to come to the voting process, it will have to come in the form of a voters' initiative.
Google's never heard of 'em; AnyWho's never heard of 'em; their phone number is either bogus or unlisted, ditto for their admin email address.
WHOIS:
www.citizensunited-interactive.org
G Squared Interactive
c/o Network Solutions
Herndon, VA 20172-447
(570) 708-8780
pz74s7h92ge@networksolutionsprivateregistration.co m
I suppose if I were making inflammatory political statements (right-wing, left-wing, or other-wing), I'd use anonymizers, too. But don't ICANN rules require legitimate contact info for domain registration?
...And it wouldn't matter anyway. The 'V' in VLK is for Volume. VLK corporate editions are so IS guys can deploy to a bunch of machines without 'activating' the license for each one.
For Question 6, regarding support for the proposed ITER fusion resaerch facility, Bush responded that, "ITER is a critically important experiment to test the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a source of electricity and hydrogen."
"...and hydrogen.
I'm hard-pressed to come up with a better example of the vast chasm between science and the Bush administration.
Dear George, hydrogen is what a fusion reaction "BURNS", not what it PRODUCES.
What's particularly disturbing is that Bush's answers were very clearly vetted by someone with decent communication skills and some understanding of science. How did such a glaring error slip past the vetting process?
The conservative blog Powerline has a roiling debate or series of charges that the documents published by CBS last night are forgeries.
The basis of the claim is that the sort of proportional font spacing evidenced in the memoranda wasn't available at the time in question. It only came later with word processors and computers and laser printers. Basically, they say, all people had back then were old fashioned block-type typewriters.
On the face of it, that sounds logical to me. But the editor of the site has now posted the comments of at least one reader who says such machines were actually widely available at the time.
It seems worth noting that the White House accepted the documents as genuine and even began releasing them to other journalists yesterday evening -- though it's not clear to me whether they were releasing their own copies or simply passing on what CBS had given them.
The deeper point is that CBS reported that they had handwriting experts scrutinize these documents to ascertain their authenticity. It seems hard to imagine they'd go to such lengths to have experts analyze them and not check out something so obvious as seeing if they'd been written by a typewriter that was in existence at time. (Hard to imagine or, if true, unimaginably stupid.)
One way or another, I doubt we'll have to speculate about this for very long. This question about what sort of typesets were available in 1973 should be easy enough to settle.
Actually, atheism cannot be considered a religion at all; it's very name a:not and theism:belief in the existence of a god or gods excludes it from religion:belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator of the universe altogether.
If you want to call it a belief system, I'm happy to agree with you; atheism is very much a belief system. it is not, however, a religion./pedantic diatribe
There are a number of different factors at play here. Let's dispense with the obvious stuff first:
Game audio includes a good deal more than just music; crucial parts of any gaming experience include the sound effects and environmental sound. Clearly, whether a particular sound exists in RL or not, it must sound as convincingly real as possible, otherwise some degree of immersion in the game is lost.
Getting back to the music, there are two elements at work here: I'll call them mood music and thematic music.
Mood music is essentially decoration: musical sound effects, if you will. Just as the spoken voice can convey different emotions, mood music uses reasonably well-understood concepts of tone to create and dissipate tension, thus altering the mood of the gameplay. When done very well, the viewer/gamer rarely notices mood music on a conscious level. It gets processed on an almost subconscious level, which is great because there's no "processing cost" to add this "channel" to the viewing/gaming experience.
Thematic music, particularly in games or movies, is the music a composer writes to unify the work--give it its own character, if you will. As such, yes, it definitely needs a dominant, memorable melody. Two of the key techniques of a successful musical composition are repetition and surprise.
Imagine for a moment that I'm a composer. What I'll do is take a strong melody and play with it, setting up the listeners' expectations. Once I have the listener comfortable with the main thematic elements: the melody, the harmonic progression, and the rhythm, I can alter those elements to greater or lesser degrees. This is what keeps the music from getting as stale as "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." I can even depart from the thematic elements altogether, albeit for a short time. Doing this radically change the listeners' expectations; it drags them out of their complacent listening and forces them to sit up and take notice. As such, this technique works well as an audible underscore to a dramatic transition in the movie/game mood or environment.
At the end of the movie/game, though, a good composer will usually resolve to the main thematic elements. This helps tie the various experiences of the game/movie into a more cohesive whole and also helps to underscore that the game or movie is over.
My IBM T40--with the 6600mAH extended-life battery, regularly provides 7-8 hours of office use. I'm not watching DVDs but I am spinning a second 60GB 9.5mm hard drive in the swappable drive bay (where the DVD normally sits).
1.6GHz Pentium M
14" Screen @ 1400x1050
I also totally dig the white LED keyboard light [Fn+PgUp] for working at night or on those long red-eye flights.
Too right. The Wasteland cover was utterly badass. I really wish EA would let someone pick up the license for this. Fallout--even though one of my favorites of all time--had a very different feel.
Cutting back on caffeine is not a bad place to start.
It's helpful to know how much caffeine levels vary between different forms of liquid refereshment.. Your average 12 ounce cup of drip coffee, for example, has between four and six times as much caffeine as the same volume of Mountain Dew. (Note that the figures on the website are based on '7 oz' cups. Who the hell has even seen a 7 oz cup?)
I'll readily concede your argument. And may I just say that your knowledge of marine life is vastly superior to that of any Slashdotter I have ever encountered.:~)
Still, it seems ridiculous to loudly proclaim the discovery of the smallest vertebrate in the world and then show me a picture of an extra-large one.
Am I the only one who thinks they're showing a picture of the wrong fish?
The areticle clearly states that the stout infantfish is ~7mm long. The picture shows a fish that is clearly 10mm long. Which makes me think that the picture they're actually showing is a picture of the world's second smallest fish, the goby fish.
First of all, I'm of the very-supportable impression that standards are a good thing. Few things in web design are quite as annoying as having to detect and code for different browsers.
Second, I think we can all agree that--despite the "L" in XML and XHTML that these are not programming languages but markup languages. While there are clever things that can be done to markup, especially with XSLT and XSL:FO, markup languages are not procedural--and therefore not programming lanuguages--the way C++, Basic, or JavaScript (to name a few) are.
Third, XML and XHTML, especially when used in conjunction with XSLT and XSL:FO, are vastly more versatile than HTML without being much harder to write. Not being programming languages, you can even create XML/XSL/XHTML documents in any text editor and validate them for free at W3C.
Fourth, every markup language--and every programming language--I've ever encountered has reserved characters that have to be replaced by escapes. Maybe it's just me, but I've seen more than a few instances of & n b s p;.
The whole point is to make web pages more friendly to their audiences and, at the end of the day, you're only going to the trouble to even create a web page so that you can reach an audience.
Re:Probably a less popular answer but....
on
Workplace Monotony?
·
· Score: 1
And here's the crazy thing about working: If you actually go to the trouble of selecting a job that is within your skill set, you can actually do things that make your employer more money (Hint: If your company makes more money and they have you to thank for it, then you make more money too!).
Caution: The more 'innovative' your new money-maker is, the more you'll want to have proved the concept before you announce it.
I know this all sounds like corporate-drone, party-line drivel, but finding engaging things to do that are within your job scope just isn't that hard to do. And when the next company-wide RIF rolls around, your manager will fight to protect your job. Even if he/she can't, you'll have a badass list of accomplishments to add to your CV when you're out hunting for your next job.
Get (or have, or mod) a job with decent bandwidth and that allows you to bring your own hardware. Build a cheap PC with a decent-sized hard drive and use that as your off-site storage.
Even the best job isn't likely to allow you to set up a server that's accessible to the world-at-large on their network, but it's easy enough to serve the files from your home PC and pull them from there when you're at the office.
Of course, you'll want to secure access to both the home-based server and the office-based backup and encrypt anything sensitive that you leave at the office.
I don't know about you, but it seems a bit much to ask me to pay twice the price of a good DVD. Call me a nut, but I'm guessing the average production cost for a PC game is a bit less than that of a motion picture (even allowing for a smaller audience).
Even so, I'm happy to pay cash for a truly enjoyable and well-made game like FarCry or HL2. I'm even happier if I'm paying from a game from a little-known (and not-well-funded) developer like CryTech to fund their future endeavors.
I used to buy almost every new game I could get my hands on. Anymore, though, I see a game price on a store shelf and I spend a lot more time thinking over whether I really want it or not--the pricing has driven the product out of the impulse-buying range.
Slashdot Mirror
I would think that a decent probability and statistics class would go a long way towards developing and reinforcing (with math!) critical-thinking skills, which would benefit society immeasurably.
"There's no money in simple criminal prosecution! Civil suits are where the dough is!"
Money is nice, but sometimes you just want to see the bastards rot in jail.
Let's see, the current Social Security 'deficit' is $1.8 trillion--all tied up in US Treasury Bonds. Now, I've owned bonds and I can tell you that, printed right on them is the phrase, "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States." Interestingly, I don't own bonds any more because their rate of return was too low. They are, however, regarded as one of the safest investments anywhere.
Digging a little deeper, I see that just over $7 billion in Bonds are in circulation right now. In fact, smilin' George Bush has most of his own money in bonds.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I just want to believe that the old US of A is good for it...
As I recall, flourescent light ballasts double the line frequency (presumably using a tuned resonant filter--I'd guess an LC tank) to 120 Hz (or perhaps some other multiple of 60 Hz). BTW, Electromagnetic interference in this frequency range is not in the radio frequency (RF) range (ELF transmissions notwithstanding); its correct designation is "EMI".</nit>
Now for the bad news:
a surprisingly vast amount of professional audio gear uses 1/4" unbalanced connectors. Of the synths, samplers, and effects processors in my studio, maybe a quarter of them have balanced outputs. (The mixers, of course, have balanced line and balanced mic inputs and outputs). This means I have to spend considerable effort routing cables to minimize 60 Hz inductance from power cables. The inverse-square law applies in this case: the farther audio lines are from power lines, the better 60 Hz line noise is rejected. In situations where proximity between the two is unavoidable, I try to cross them at 90-degree angles to minimize inductance.
Getting back to your question...
For myself, a music studio is primarily an auditory experience; I don't want a lot of bright light. Reflections on device displays or monitors are distracting and detract from my enjoyment of working in the studio. Plus, when I have other musicians or clients in the studio, I want them to focus on the music, not their visual surroundings. My solution is to use low power (25-40W) incandescent fixtures, usually aimed at walls or ceilings to provide soft, indirect lighting. (If I need to work from a score or other paper material, I'll us a task light.) This solution provides more than adequate light to find my way around in the studio without running into things and creates a warm working environment, all without sucking down huge gobs of electricity.
Incidentally, I have sometimes wondered if tight twisted-pair cables would help with EMI rejection for audio the way it does for data transmission (i.e. ethernet over CAT5). I welcome the thoughts of any EEs out there with some experience in this area.
I suspect that the DNC is doing their part to contribute to the re-count fund. Hell, if they emailed their base with nothing more than the news--not even asking for donations, they'd probably get enough folks to contribute to the fund that the GL consortium would have enough cash on hand to demand re-counts in as many states as they'd like.
Neither of these--in fact, no significant voting reform measure will ever make it to the floor--it will die in committee first.
I cannot imagine a congress that would vote to jeopardize the established selection process of its members. If reform is ever to come to the voting process, it will have to come in the form of a voters' initiative.
Who the hell is "G Squared Interactive?"
o m
Google's never heard of 'em; AnyWho's never heard of 'em; their phone number is either bogus or unlisted, ditto for their admin email address.
WHOIS:
www.citizensunited-interactive.org
G Squared Interactive
c/o Network Solutions
Herndon, VA 20172-447
(570) 708-8780
pz74s7h92ge@networksolutionsprivateregistration.c
I suppose if I were making inflammatory political statements (right-wing, left-wing, or other-wing), I'd use anonymizers, too. But don't ICANN rules require legitimate contact info for domain registration?
Just curious...
...And it wouldn't matter anyway. The 'V' in VLK is for Volume. VLK corporate editions are so IS guys can deploy to a bunch of machines without 'activating' the license for each one.
For Question 6, regarding support for the proposed ITER fusion resaerch facility, Bush responded that, "ITER is a critically important experiment to test the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a source of electricity and hydrogen."
"...and hydrogen.
I'm hard-pressed to come up with a better example of the vast chasm between science and the Bush administration.
Dear George, hydrogen is what a fusion reaction "BURNS", not what it PRODUCES.
What's particularly disturbing is that Bush's answers were very clearly vetted by someone with decent communication skills and some understanding of science. How did such a glaring error slip past the vetting process?
From http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/:
The conservative blog Powerline has a roiling debate or series of charges that the documents published by CBS last night are forgeries.
The basis of the claim is that the sort of proportional font spacing evidenced in the memoranda wasn't available at the time in question. It only came later with word processors and computers and laser printers. Basically, they say, all people had back then were old fashioned block-type typewriters.
On the face of it, that sounds logical to me. But the editor of the site has now posted the comments of at least one reader who says such machines were actually widely available at the time.
It seems worth noting that the White House accepted the documents as genuine and even began releasing them to other journalists yesterday evening -- though it's not clear to me whether they were releasing their own copies or simply passing on what CBS had given them.
The deeper point is that CBS reported that they had handwriting experts scrutinize these documents to ascertain their authenticity. It seems hard to imagine they'd go to such lengths to have experts analyze them and not check out something so obvious as seeing if they'd been written by a typewriter that was in existence at time. (Hard to imagine or, if true, unimaginably stupid.)
One way or another, I doubt we'll have to speculate about this for very long. This question about what sort of typesets were available in 1973 should be easy enough to settle.
Actually, atheism cannot be considered a religion at all; it's very name a: not and theism: belief in the existence of a god or gods excludes it from religion: belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator of the universe altogether.
/pedantic diatribe
If you want to call it a belief system, I'm happy to agree with you; atheism is very much a belief system. it is not, however, a religion.
It's FlashBlock now.
Isn't that like bragging about your Packard Bell 486SX-25 running Windows 95 on a 14" grayscale monitor? With no mouse?
There are a number of different factors at play here. Let's dispense with the obvious stuff first:
Game audio includes a good deal more than just music; crucial parts of any gaming experience include the sound effects and environmental sound. Clearly, whether a particular sound exists in RL or not, it must sound as convincingly real as possible, otherwise some degree of immersion in the game is lost.
Getting back to the music, there are two elements at work here: I'll call them mood music and thematic music.
Mood music is essentially decoration: musical sound effects, if you will. Just as the spoken voice can convey different emotions, mood music uses reasonably well-understood concepts of tone to create and dissipate tension, thus altering the mood of the gameplay. When done very well, the viewer/gamer rarely notices mood music on a conscious level. It gets processed on an almost subconscious level, which is great because there's no "processing cost" to add this "channel" to the viewing/gaming experience.
Thematic music, particularly in games or movies, is the music a composer writes to unify the work--give it its own character, if you will. As such, yes, it definitely needs a dominant, memorable melody. Two of the key techniques of a successful musical composition are repetition and surprise.
Imagine for a moment that I'm a composer. What I'll do is take a strong melody and play with it, setting up the listeners' expectations. Once I have the listener comfortable with the main thematic elements: the melody, the harmonic progression, and the rhythm, I can alter those elements to greater or lesser degrees. This is what keeps the music from getting as stale as "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." I can even depart from the thematic elements altogether, albeit for a short time. Doing this radically change the listeners' expectations; it drags them out of their complacent listening and forces them to sit up and take notice. As such, this technique works well as an audible underscore to a dramatic transition in the movie/game mood or environment.
At the end of the movie/game, though, a good composer will usually resolve to the main thematic elements. This helps tie the various experiences of the game/movie into a more cohesive whole and also helps to underscore that the game or movie is over.
My IBM T40--with the 6600mAH extended-life battery, regularly provides 7-8 hours of office use. I'm not watching DVDs but I am spinning a second 60GB 9.5mm hard drive in the swappable drive bay (where the DVD normally sits).
1.6GHz Pentium M
14" Screen @ 1400x1050
I also totally dig the white LED keyboard light [Fn+PgUp] for working at night or on those long red-eye flights.
136/60 10
Too right. The Wasteland cover was utterly badass. I really wish EA would let someone pick up the license for this. Fallout--even though one of my favorites of all time--had a very different feel.
Cutting back on caffeine is not a bad place to start.
It's helpful to know how much caffeine levels vary between different forms of liquid refereshment.. Your average 12 ounce cup of drip coffee, for example, has between four and six times as much caffeine as the same volume of Mountain Dew. (Note that the figures on the website are based on '7 oz' cups. Who the hell has even seen a 7 oz cup?)
I'll readily concede your argument. And may I just say that your knowledge of marine life is vastly superior to that of any Slashdotter I have ever encountered. :~)
Still, it seems ridiculous to loudly proclaim the discovery of the smallest vertebrate in the world and then show me a picture of an extra-large one.
Am I the only one who thinks they're showing a picture of the wrong fish?
The areticle clearly states that the stout infantfish is ~7mm long. The picture shows a fish that is clearly 10mm long. Which makes me think that the picture they're actually showing is a picture of the world's second smallest fish, the goby fish.
Stupid beeb editor.
First of all, I'm of the very-supportable impression that standards are a good thing. Few things in web design are quite as annoying as having to detect and code for different browsers.
;.
Second, I think we can all agree that--despite the "L" in XML and XHTML that these are not programming languages but markup languages. While there are clever things that can be done to markup, especially with XSLT and XSL:FO, markup languages are not procedural--and therefore not programming lanuguages--the way C++, Basic, or JavaScript (to name a few) are.
Third, XML and XHTML, especially when used in conjunction with XSLT and XSL:FO, are vastly more versatile than HTML without being much harder to write. Not being programming languages, you can even create XML/XSL/XHTML documents in any text editor and validate them for free at W3C.
Fourth, every markup language--and every programming language--I've ever encountered has reserved characters that have to be replaced by escapes. Maybe it's just me, but I've seen more than a few instances of & n b s p
The whole point is to make web pages more friendly to their audiences and, at the end of the day, you're only going to the trouble to even create a web page so that you can reach an audience.
And here's the crazy thing about working: If you actually go to the trouble of selecting a job that is within your skill set, you can actually do things that make your employer more money (Hint: If your company makes more money and they have you to thank for it, then you make more money too!).
Caution: The more 'innovative' your new money-maker is, the more you'll want to have proved the concept before you announce it.
I know this all sounds like corporate-drone, party-line drivel, but finding engaging things to do that are within your job scope just isn't that hard to do. And when the next company-wide RIF rolls around, your manager will fight to protect your job. Even if he/she can't, you'll have a badass list of accomplishments to add to your CV when you're out hunting for your next job.
Here's a thought:
Get (or have, or mod) a job with decent bandwidth and that allows you to bring your own hardware. Build a cheap PC with a decent-sized hard drive and use that as your off-site storage.
Even the best job isn't likely to allow you to set up a server that's accessible to the world-at-large on their network, but it's easy enough to serve the files from your home PC and pull them from there when you're at the office.
Of course, you'll want to secure access to both the home-based server and the office-based backup and encrypt anything sensitive that you leave at the office.
I don't know about you, but it seems a bit much to ask me to pay twice the price of a good DVD. Call me a nut, but I'm guessing the average production cost for a PC game is a bit less than that of a motion picture (even allowing for a smaller audience).
Even so, I'm happy to pay cash for a truly enjoyable and well-made game like FarCry or HL2. I'm even happier if I'm paying from a game from a little-known (and not-well-funded) developer like CryTech to fund their future endeavors.
I used to buy almost every new game I could get my hands on. Anymore, though, I see a game price on a store shelf and I spend a lot more time thinking over whether I really want it or not--the pricing has driven the product out of the impulse-buying range.