Is it physically possible to have a 5K pulse wave that's very thin? Not 22K, _5K_. But so thin that the pulse is 1/4 of the duration of the wave.
If you try to sample this at 44.1 and reconstruct it, you're hosed- you have substantial problems based on the fact that the pulse would be quite accurately tracked by a 20K rate but you're trying to force a 22.05K rate to track it. It doesn't help to throw away all the very obvious and unavoidable over-20K components (come on, _5K_ and you get only a couple of harmonics? That's nuts): you're still hosed by the interference pattern that is produced, because these are not simply a pile of sine-tones: they are sine-tones (lots of them) AT SPECIFIC TIMES. Just because 20K is lower than 22.05K doesn't mean 22.05K is going to do even a remotely acceptable job of sampling it.
Remember that we are talking about a _5K_ wave here, not something absurdly high. Do you not think you can hear the difference between a really thin pulse wave and a sine at _5K_? Yet the pulse only needs to be about 1/4 width to cause really severe problems with sampling- specifically, a rapidly cycling distortion component that will go from 0% distortion to severely, severely distorted at a rate fast enough to make up an entirely new, harmonically unrelated tone! This is only lessened by throwing away frequencies over 20K, not entirely fixed. You can lessen it a lot more effectively by throwing away all frequencies over _10K_ but come on- whoever heard of a pulse wave with only two harmonics? Our 5K pulse wave would be unrecognizable- this has to be considered distortion.
I'm afraid Nyquist is mostly crap- it would be fine if all musical frequencies were exact subdivisions of 44.1K, but when you start dealing with real-world frequencies, you start having these intermodulation problems, and the problem is not that you're not having the supersonic frequencies, the problem is that the resulting intermodulation effects are cyclical degradations of continuous tones and produce _inharmonic_ tones. It's very hard to hear slight differences in harmonic tones but it's not hard to hear problems when there are inharmonic tones being synthesized.
Extra credit- what inharmonic tone is generated by the distortion on a 5K 1/4 width pulse wave sampled at 44.1K? Use as much treble-rolloff as you want, it'll always be the same intermodulation frequency. Anybody good enough at math to say what frequency is generated as intermodulation distortion?:)
Believe what you want, but there was an old quad format that operated by adding amplitude modulated 50K tones. I'm told it worked. There's not much room for theory here: it would either work or not, you're saying it couldn't, and what I hear it did work in the real world. Not that quad ever became mainstream:)
Console yourself with the fact that after relatively few playings the AM quad information would be scraped off the LPs anyhow;)
It's one bit. On or off. Here's how it works: imagine a waveform- at any point the angle of the wave might be up / or down \ or just flat -
The way the Sony thing works is like this: at each point the encoder asks 'am I above or below the actual wave form?' If it's above, it reduces the angle of its recording by X degrees. If it's below, it increases it by that much. It is constantly overshooting and crossing over the actual waveform- at about 2 megahertz, not some mere 96K. At no point does it record the signal voltage itself- it only follows the changes in angle, at a rate so high that it's way beyond anything that will be recorded, and it's kind of 'lossy' as it'll almost never be _exactly_ on the target waveform- the oscillation of it tracking the waveform will be higher than 96K anyhow and it will be a _sine_ oscillation, not the square-stepped, nasty distortions of raw PCM sampling, so it won't even need to be filtered.
I'd love to see this actually catch on- as far as sound is concerned, nothing else should be needed. The interesting thing is this- could this format be _synthesised_ digitally? I'm picturing some future sort of audio workstation where you have all the modern gimmicks like pitch correction, EQ plugins etc, but you never resample anything- just overlay all the different sample rates you end up with, seamlessly:)
It would be interesting to see the venerable Yamaha DX-7 redone with this technology for its audio outputs!:)
Funny you should say that- I just posted a relentlessly technical analysis of exactly why this is potentially a killer technology, and here you are with a perfect analogy;)
The difference between this and CD audio _is_ quite comparable with the difference between DVD and VHS- except there is no change that I can see in listening behavior- it's all audio quality. I'd check it out- if I don't miss my guess the difference will drop your jaw. It's not a question of 'all of a sudden the high frequencies are X times louder, thanks Sony': the frequency ranges may not seem any different. However, the technology has the capacity to produce an extended range with _no_ filter ringing of any sort, plus effectively infinite bit depth (I'd be _very_ interested to know exactly how they are doing playback- is it essentially an analog circuit steered by the digital data?). The result will be this: the sound will be bigger, lusher, more vivid yet warmer at the same time. It'll be like a 35mm film photograph compared with a generic digital camera- the 'liquid' quality should come across even on very cheesy speakers, to some extent, but of course the finer the equipment the better. Actually, if you played it over those Klipsch Promedias the differences should be particularly striking- the Klipsch use a sort of horn loading on the sats for both the woofer and tweeter, and this will maximise the increased transient dynamics. Those are relatively affordable computer/multimedia speakers and some Slashdotters probably have them- the acoustic power output they have are what will show off this new format, there will be some very hot peaks in the signal, felt more than heard.
Again, VHS to DVD is a pretty good analogy for what this format would do, and the frequency range is not the most significant factor- effective bit depth is important but the capacity for slew rate and lack of HF ringing from lowpass filters are really the killer aspects. It _will_ come across even on humble speakers (actually the rock bottom cheapness ones may be better than feature-laden mid-level crud w. 7 band equalisers). I want one, but only if I can record to it, as I don't care in the slightest what Sony artists are doing lately.:)
I _hope_ this becomes common technology- there are some extraordinarily important things about it. A little background:
16 bits isn't enough. That's _really_ obvious at this point- no professional works in 16 bits except for the final CD output. Mix busses have to be many times that in the digital domain, but even if you mix with ideal noiseless coloration-less electronics there's a really big difference between monitoring an undigitised feed of the signal with monitoring the 16 bit output.
44.1K isn't enough either. This is not primarily due to people being able to hear beyond 20K (though you can sense such sounds to some extent- why do you think smashing glass or dropped plates make you jump? Viciously loud supersonic transients), it's due to the brick-wall filters required. High end amplifier designers go to great lengths to get their pass-bands up into the megahertz (and nobody claims humans hear that!) because cutting off lower causes interactions across the entire frequency band. Cutting off at 22K is just ridiculous.
Now, how does the Sony approach compare? The neat thing about the bit rate is that it's effectively infinite bit rate- it's not a finite set of voltage levels but just one bit very fast tracing a voltage level that could be anywhere. This is substantially beyond even 24 bit- a major, major advance. That's gonna be very noticable.
As for frequency, there is a surprise in store here. It may or may not be competitive with advanced PCM encoding at say 96K- but two very, very important points:
There doesn't need to be _any_ brickwall filter on the output- provided a circuit can be made to output this stuff that doesn't merely calculate it as a super-PCM-encoding and D/A converter. If the format can feed a sort of very high frequency analog synthesiser, no filter is needed- which is critical, because...
...the potential slew rate of this technology is just astronomical. I hope the power supply of the players is up to it- if not there will be some very effective power supply mods waiting to be done, such as backing up the power supply with MIT Multicaps (a film cap that can produce very very high instantaneous voltage). Basically, if you fed this technology a big square wave, it might not be able to turn the corners of the wave instantly, but the vertical parts of the wave would be _vertical_- no brick-wall-filtered system can get anywhere close to this.
We're talking absurdly high transient peak voltages here: this is why high end audiophiles use absurdly heavy cables and absurdly powerful amplifiers, to let those peaks through. It doesn't hurt the speakers: this isn't RMS or even 'peak' wattage, the spikes are of such short duration that you can feed speakers many times the maximum 'peak' voltage if it's only for a microsecond, and high end systems do just that.
Where do you find such peaks? Easy- The Who;) seriously, The Who is a _good_ example, but symphony orchestras are also good for this. The capacity for this type of extreme and essentially 'inaudible' (too brief!) transient translates to the ability to produce the _sensation_ of loudness- for instance, you could easily make many systems play 'Live At Leeds' and sound loud and bright and kind of grating and ear-splitting, but with this technology it would be less grating but more _electrifying_ and the impact would be like having the living people right there playing at you, not just a bunch of very loud sounds. Alternately, you could play big orchestra crescendos and the resulting sound would be _huge_, not just loud but as big as a live performance.
It's really not hard to make stuff sound 'loud', but making it _feel_ loud is something else. If you don't have that, the loudness ends up being just a grating, thin surface, which is actually a very good description of the sound of most pop recordings these days:) the irony is that this technology is coming around just when the recording industry's pushing sounds that are substantially worse than even CD audio can produce...
Bottom line: I want one. Specifically, I want this to _master_ to. I have quite a bit of stuff that loses about 2/3 of its potential when made into 44/16 (eight tracks of 48/20 output analog and mixed with passive resistance mixing will tend to do that- I once figured the rough equivalent resolution was about a 64 bit mix bus, possibly higher) Maybe I should try to wheedle Sony out of a recorder;)
If your barf looks like that, I don't want to know what you've been eating:)
Seriously, it is kind of a weird design choice. The reason it comes off like that is largely the rounded edges (screen edges, logo), high contrast, and the bordering effect of the screen edging/handle. Following the square outline of the laptop only rounding it and adding a crude handle shape essentially makes it look like the laptop's shape is defined by some large child's 3D crayon:) you could define the shape and essence of the design very easily with a large crayon by drawing the shape of that outline/handle, and adding the logo. This is the technical background for why you think it looks like barf:)
It _would_ make a killer design for a child's laptop. Pity they don't have the disposable income for it;) that'll teach you to fall in love with a corporation's product!;)
I'd rather see them make newer better watermarks that degrade the sound even MORE >:)
After all, these guys are my competition! I can put in a lot of hard work getting my sound to be warmer and richer and more expensive-sounding than theirs, but how unutterably sweet it is to have them not only destroying their own sounds through loudness wars on radio (massive, brutal overcompression) but to see them, on top of _that_, inserting digital watermarks to further ruin their sound quality:)
I wonder what it would take to convince them to master all of their recordings by playing them through an old transistor radio and re-recording it with radio shack microphones on a sound blaster PC card in a tin closet?:) Call it pre-emptive analog security bypassing, that's the ticket...
Terrific! Your posts here are inspiring, Schwab- brilliant thinking. I'd like to add another concept or two to your arsenal: commissions should not be overlooked. Your example for Carmack is like "I am making X, give me this much or I'll refuse to release it". I think that's a bad bluff to attempt- what if someone leaks it? Consider, instead, someone going to Carmack and saying "Hey, I really want Y." "Well, that's great, but I'm making X." "But I really want Y! Can you do Y instead?""What's it worth to you?" That's commissions.
Your observations about identifying the artist are right on- that's why I for one am very excited about one of the 'fingerprinting' technologies being developed. Basically it will be possible to do net searches in the future on snippets of unlabelled digital audio and return the artist's current website/information. This is incredibly important in a world where the information flows so freely- an example, if you use Napster you'll find all sorts of utterly unrelated bands uploaded mistakenly as They Might Be Giants. This is great for TMBG but unhelpful for the real artists- with the sort of fingerprinting we're talking about this would be trivially fixed, and anyone could track down the true creator's identity easily- again, _reputation_ is the key concept. It will become possible to accurately associate a positive musical experience with a specific name no matter how obscure and non-mainstream: compare this with the days of broadcast radio where you had to first fight just to get _on_ the radio and then pray/pay for the DJ to actually announce your name in association with it! This sort of gatekeeper will become a thing of the past- though it'll still have a place, with the new type of DJ being someone of known good taste and ability to audition more new stuff than most people have.
I can relate an anecdote of stuff that's still going on, that illustrates your point. I used to have music on mp3.com (before they turned their contract towards the Dark Side;) ). It's not mainstream at all- in fact some of it is rather user-hostile, for instance a strange marimba-driven track named Bone Dragon. None of this brought me pop stardom, understandably- but I know my way around a mixing desk and build a lot of radical, high-performance equipment that goes against the habitual sonic dreck people inflict upon their recordings these days (see Britney Spears...), and I attracted some attention from some iconoclasts, and in fact I built *REPUTATION* as someone who could get a sound, an impressively professional sound. This has led me to the point where I'm seriously contemplating doing sound engineering work for a startup (not RIAA) that I've been talking to, and in fact already have a sale of commercial rights for a piece of my music waiting for when the deals are finalised (I'm also making extensive use of my sharpness and paranoia in relation to the contract that people will end up seeing- another area of reputation getting involved). And the first piece of music to find a home in this new context is... 'Bone Dragon'. Yes! The totally uncommercial, peculiar one! *g*
The point is- reputation is fscking _gold_ man. It is substantially more important than immediate cash. The fact that 'Bone Dragon' is out there as lots of mp3s, with my blessing upon their further noncommercial copying, does _not_ make it licensed for commercial use. If someone wants to run that in an advertisement they have to talk to _me_! (If they want to add cheesy singing munchkin jingles to it they'd better be offering a LOT of money, and I mean a LOT. Background use or use under narration does not tend to destroy the soul of the music so readily.) And if they want something else that's like that- again, they have to talk to me. Commercial interests can't legally copy and use the free music I have out there being copied under fair use- and _nobody_ can copy what hasn't been performed yet.
It all reminds me of some of the tenets of the Progressive Party (for which I'll do some voting this November). They are not big fans of inherited wealth, or of wealth derived from high lofty positions. If you think about that a bit you see that what they're advocating is a much tighter link between WORK and wealth- and that speaks for me, very much. Trouble is, I'm a musician (among other things) and that industry is utterly fixated on the creation of intellectual property which is expected to go on earning money _without_ me, for longer than I live. Frankly, I can't see the logic behind this. Okay, supposing I write a hit song and record it wonderfully- certainly that's worth being paid for. Once it's been recorded- then what? Where is the justification that I should be _entitled_ to never work again based on having done really great work once upon a time?
I don't see it, so I am essentially unperturbed by the idea of tossing my music and work out there for the world to scavenge and copy back and forth unpayingly. If I'm any good at it, there'll be people who like what I do- like it well enough that they _ask_ for more, or want me to spend my time engineering _their_ music or some such activity. "Shut up and play your guitar!" "Mix my album!" "Do more ambient!" And the answer is of course "What's it worth to you?". My ability to earn a living wage ought to be tied to my willingness to _keep_ _working_ and producing stuff to benefit people.
For this reason I completely and totally disrespect the RIAA and everything they stand for, and have total contempt for SDMI. It's just more attempts to impose a price on something that was once rare and has become a commodity too cheap to meter- art. Instances of art in the digital domain are too cheap to meter, they are free, there's no sense even _trying_ to mess around with micropayments and that crap (you'll be nickel-and-dimed to death!). Art is free. ARTISTS ARE EXPENSIVE. Think commissions, 'patrons'. If you can imagine a sort of art you _can_ get someone to produce it- what's it worth to you?
Um, the boycott was irrelevant because it DIDN'T TAKE A SKILLED HACKER to break all the watermarks. Reminds me of genetic algorithm stuff- out of ten thousand poverty stricken script kiddies, there were enough smart guesses to result in solid cracks for every single one of the watermarks. And of course the same thing would've happened 'in the wild' and the information would've been distributed far and wide.
The thing is- what does it matter? These people do not HAVE another idea. That was it! That was their only hope (and at that, it was against the advice of the computer industry members). Now they're just totally _hosed_.
The EFF being unable to stop 10,000 random script kiddies from trying to crack lame encryption is one thing. The EFF stopping draconian 'anti-hacker' special interest legislation from passing is _quite_ another. There's a limit to how fascist you can conveniently get in US government- and the hackers were _invited_ to crack SDMI, remember. There was a $10,000 prize for Christ's sake! Nobody's going to get far trying to paint the hackers as evil conspirators after _that_.
Yes, the poll _would_ look like that. Possibly just a, b, and c;)
However, everything else you're talking is nonsense. Microsoft is not profitable in its core business- it is running a pyramid scheme on its stock valuation and literally makes more money issuing its own stock than it does on sales of its own products. Pyramid schemes are of questionable value, because they always crash in the end, perpetual geometric growth being impossible. And finally, it's hardly been decided on a whim, that is absurd: read the Findings of Fact and consider that the judicial system took months to figure out that statement of the situation, starting with someone (Jackson) so unbiased that he didn't even understand the tech details and learned them through the course of the case (I suppose it would be better if the judge was a Debian hacker? No, wait, how about an MCSE? _That_ would be unbiased eh?).
Face it, the ruling for breakup was fair, reasoned, sensible, measured, and the only reason it's in question now is because Microsoft lawyers will (in violation of lawyer ethics?) practice a 'screaming baby tantrum' method of their craft, in which they don't care the slightest for the truth of the situation (that is surely obvious to them) but will practice their _craft_ on behalf of their client right over the edge of falsification, nonsense and obstruction of justice. They will claim _anything_ that will obstruct the guilty verdict, and are. It's the legal version of the same practices that dragged MS into court repeatedly.
The legal process may only _appear_ to mirror MSFT's wish for an outcome. It's had to deal with this sort of psychotic legal advocacy before, and understandably, the course through wild baseless accusations of unfairness and vigilanteism is not to rush out a verdict, but to drop into low gear and crank on the torque- OF COURSE things slowed down, OF COURSE they sort of spilt the difference between the DOJ's demand for normal procedure and MSFT's wild insistence on four times the normal resources. This is _procedure_ not outcome. It's the same thing as Jackson's splitting his decision into findings of fact (wildly unlikely to be overruled because they do not _come_ with results) and findings of law (which of course are being appealed until MS lawyers are blue in the face). In this case, the decision to allow absurdly long times for the appeal and expanded resources- just as if it were a retrial but with the FoF still admissible- is another cornerstone in the eventual thrashing MS will be getting at the hands of the Supreme Court, because the bottom line is- Courts are not terribly impressed with wild baseless contempt for their decisions. MS going through judges like a wood-chipper is NOT REALLY HELPFUL to them- because judges are aware of what happened to previous judges, as Jackson was with Sporkin, and it makes them dig in their heels, focus on the hard core of legal justice, and to build their responses in such a way that the out-of-control defendant has little leeway to cause more damage, as Jackson did with the FoF.
The slower the wheels of justice turn, the more finely they will grind. Microsoft seems to not understand this- and they are setting themselves up, and the economy at large up, for a very nasty fall. Imagine, _after_.NET gets shoehorned into every area of net commerce, _after_ MSFT illegally seizes control of world communications and most of the IT functions of most governments, having them get brutally broken up by the Supreme Court! I am afraid the Supremes take legal process pretty seriously- the idea of them being 'bought' is stupid, and even if they fumbled things this time MS would only get sued _again_ and inevitably either MS _becomes_ the government or gets broken by the government for rampant contempt for the law- there's no middle ground, just a delaying of one or the other outcome.
Sorry man:) I hate to burst your balloon- well, no, actually I enjoy bursting your balloon >:) but that's the reality. If you're not smart enough to figure it out you have only yourself to blame. Microsoft do make more off options than the sale of their 'product', Microsoft will choose to turn against their own products to maximise profit, and they certainly are sharp enough to understand all this.
Now, if you're talking about the snippy remarks about Dubya getting elected and imposing a national operating system, that was an admittedly sick joke, and nobody would be happier than I to see it remain entirely fantasy (or nightmare). However, I wouldn't rule it out that easily- the idea was, 'Here's an outlandish, nightmare projection that I HOPE can't possibly happen!', hence the 'I'm picturing Dubya getting elected' rather than 'This is going to happen! The sky is falling, we're all going to DIE!' It's a combination joke/scare tactic and shouldn't be written off _too_ easily: remember how badly Microsoft wants to in effect impose a Microsoft Tax on everyone and not have to do any more work, just do new icons and count money. You shouldn't be so quick to assume they can't get paid a tax administered by the government- haven't you heard of corporate welfare? Dubya's just the sort to rubberstamp such a proposal, too.
Sorry- you strike out;) you have no argument but ridicule and you're asking people to stop thinking. I'm not making these arguments because of karma troll bonus points, but because the situation both alarms and fascinates me, and I want to put the same evidence in front of people and see if they reach the same conclusion. In this case, I am taking Bill Parish's figures on the breakdown of MS income (I believe he got this from their annual reports and renamed the pie pieces?) for the argument that they're making more in the stock market than they are selling products, I'm assuming the top MS people are _not_ stupid idiots, and with regard to cutting projects I don't think I really need to remind slashdotters of the list of abandoned 'strategic' MS projects that tied up competition's resources for long enough to take care of the threat through further MS expansion. The difference is that I'm suggesting there is no MS project that couldn't be abandoned or defunded if PR activities would return greater profits through stock manipulation. That said, canning Office would _hurt_ the stock price not help it, and you'll not see them admitting to such a thing. On the other hand, Farenheit/COOL/C#/.NET and on and on- which will be the next to quietly fade off the radar, and do you think these fade-offs happen because someone at MS _lost_ _track_ of the project? They're killed because new products are not the most profitable thing MS could be doing, and they're killed quietly so it doesn't hurt the stock price- which _is_ the most profitable thing MS is doing.
You may now post "*yawn*" in the classic tradition of lazy-ass Usenet trolls;)
On the face of it, this fights against one of Microsoft's own revenue streams- sale of operating systems. They get nowhere near as much from OEMs as they do from retail sales.
At the same time, however, they get more from flooding the world with stock options and MS stock than they do from their actual products (not an exxageration!). In this sense, protecting mindshare is substantially more important than protecting retail sales of the products. They cannot be simply a product sold at the store- they must be 'what you use when you have a computer' or the stock pyramid will collapse sooner. (It's going to collapse sooner or later, but MSFT wishes it to be later.)
Conclusion: Microsoft are fully and consciously aware of their situation balancing product sales against stock market valuation, and are choosing in full awareness to abandon their own products wherever necessary to prop up the pyramid of their stock valuation, which is essentially valuable solely because it is valuable (price/earnings ratio is flatly delusional, even if you don't count the fact that MSFT increasingly operates at a loss and papers this over with issuing of options- 'printing money' to hide the problem). A page like this one _cannot_ come from an organisation that considers its OSes to be a product sold in stores alongside other ones.
I think this has disturbing implications. It suggests that they understand their true situation all too well and embrace it- that they would literally cut the budget for things like bug-fixing and developing stable technology, in order to pay for attempts to persuade the world that there is literally no choice but to use Microsoft for everything. This is not to sell more products- the product is no longer important to them at all, they make more money on stock valuation than they do on products and are apparently sharp enough to have figured this out.
Things could get interesting- especially with the Presidential election. I'm personally voting for Nader, unhesitatingly- and I almost hope Dubya wins as a result of this, because then the situation could get so appalling as to _force_ public reaction. I'm picturing Dubya passing legislation making Doze the Official State Operating System and issuing every citizen a yearly license to use it, paid for out of taxes. Meanwhile MS quietly scraps all technical development and puts the budgets towards lobbying... this would be a very interesting situation because, when you do crazy things like that, who will enforce it? Taxation going directly to Microsoft is the best bet. Doing things like criminalising Linux or whatever (surely tempting- call it a hacker OS) is much less reliable, because who's going to enforce it? There's the prospect of 'blue laws' around computer issues if companies like MS get to put through whatever legislation they like.
Hold on a second- isn't it true that the reason the P111 outperforms the P4 is because of the absurdly long pipeline in the design?
What if I want my uberG4 for doing _work_ rather than spinning tiny wheels really fast? It's as if you don't understand how different PPC chips are and have been, from x86. They have always been register-rich and loaded with cache compared with x86- let's have more of that. Let's have an uberG4 in which the cache will fit, say, Quake III:) then the pentium people can boast of their higher clocks all they want while their computers spin their tiny wheels constantly loading stuff into their teeny 'high speed zones', and the uberG4 will be about TORQUE and will slowly overtake the pentiums for good.
(Yes, I know that quake framerates are hard to come by on MacOS- one word, ATI- no, two words, ATI and Doom: Quake III is not inherently a super complicated program. The reissue of Doom looks to be a _lot_ more demanding. The difference could well favor the G4- having a compiler use loads of huge registers to speed things is dead simple compared to the twisted arcanity that will be necessary for P4 and beyond)
It's a pyramid scheme- the amount of 'income' involved with this sort of thing is _substantially_ more than the income associated with what supposedly is their core business. MSFT and Cisco are not stock brokers: their core businesses are supposedly not issuing stock, but writing software and building routers respectively (a simplification, but get the picture?).
If Microsoft entirely gave up on all the programming activities that cost them billions a year, and did nothing _but_ issue options and buy up other companies, taking their technologies and ceasing work on them and giving the newly taken over employees more options, would you still think this made any kind of sense? Why do you think it makes sense when they make a pretense at being a technology company?
This is not a picture of a technology company, and still less is it 'creation of wealth', and other companies should be encouraged to hang tough and _not_ do the same: this behavior is a pyramid scheme centering on stock valuation, and pyramids END. It is useless, productless, pointless money-juggling, impressive-looking while the 'pyramid' builds, but destined (like all pyramids) to crash. When it does it's gonna take the US economy, and probably the world, with it. (possibly excepting Japan- Japan has been there done that in recent years, that's why their 'miraculous economic recovery' crashed and burned. They see right through this sort of thing- fresh hindsight is helpful to do that.)
There's nothing about this situation that is good unless you are convinced of one of these things:
pyramids expand forever
money is so hypothetical that it needn't _ever_ be associated with tangible assets
the future can't be other than the present, no matter what.
The first is just dumb- if you believe that why aren't you becoming wealthy off a thousand idiotic spams? They are pyramids too. The reality is that you'll lose your money. So, too, with MSFT and Cisco.
The second is cute- very cute. Isn't having a 27 million dollars going to be enough, by definition? Well, wouldn't having 27 million Deutschemarks (better yet, Reichsmarks) be enough? There are plenty of Germans who can tell of times in their history when that would have just about bought a loaf of bread. A currency can be devalued to amazing, absurd levels- if everybody had 27 million dollars of *insert stock here* but no actual assets other than this, boom, suddenly it takes 27 million _US_ dollars to buy a loaf of bread. It _can_ happen here.
Finally, the idea that the future must be the same in kind as the present- just an extrapolation of it- is seductive but doesn't stand up to real-world experience. Some days it's sunny and others it rains. If it's sunny a _whole_ _lot_ does that prove that rain can't happen? If termites are eating the foundations of your house there will be a long period where nothing visible happens. Does this mean nothing will ever happen? Some processes happen out of sight of those who don't want to look at them. Termites would be one. In the context of MSFT and Cisco, the process would be a devaluation of money (inflation) caused by these stock pyramid schemes- the amount of 'money' being 'paid' goes up and up and up, but the amount of work being compensated doesn't. As the process accelerates and expands it becomes more exciting the farther it departs from reality. Look at AAPL for a picture of reality- temporarily swept up with the stock market, an earnings warning (and a profit is still anticipated!) 'corrected' the stock down to where it is barely in excess (or under?) the company's tangible assets! That was a brutal over 50% crunch- and stopped only because the price/earnings ratio hit the bottom stop and the stock ended up right down at the valuation of Apple's substantial physical resources and positive revenue. What happens when MSFT corrects and seeks _its_ level of physical resources and actual revenue? In 1999 they _lost_ ten _billion_ dollars and made it up solely by issuing more options! This is major, major trouble waiting to happen. I would have to really _protest_ the notion that it is 'good'. Are you a 'faith stockbroker', like a faith healer? Or is it a new religious movement professing faith in the ever-extending pyramid? Maybe you could make a stock out of this belief alone, and sell it based on no revenue or business at all, just that it will increase forever. I suggest 'JMST', to stand for Jamestown:P
If your version of 'paid out to the employees' == 'gave them worthless paper instead of money' then I'd like to see you pass it at the local Costco;)
Hasn't MSFT lost about half its valuation since the peak? Not only is it a pyramid scheme (see Bill Parish's analysis) but it is running out of steam. Choke this down: MSFT basically lost ten _billion_ dollars just in '99 and hid it with accounting trickery. How much are they losing now, struggling to not completely fail with W2K migration against Gartner Group advisories, to kluge together.NET and paper over the many quietly failed projects like Fahrenheit (sp?)? The real losses are _accelerating_ not reversing, and they can only pay people in options- they _cannot_ meet payroll if they had to pay people actual money.
If it was any other dotcom, they would be _toast_ but any fraud is based on a lot of social engineering, and this one's had a good long run. Think about it- the argument around Slashdot is typically 'is it right/sane that MSFT is so wildly successful and popular when their products/practices suck so bad?', but the idea that MSFT is wildly successful is rarely challenged. Yet when you look at the information (again, Parish is useful- people seem to challenge his interpretation but not his numbers and facts) you see that their sales are a miserably small proportion of their income and most of it comes from an options pyramid scam and 'corporate welfare' (I'd be interested to see more data on that. Define 'corporate welfare'?). This is nothing like a sustainable business model, much less 'thriving on innovation', yet because of the sheer scale of the exercise it goes largely unquestioned.
The upshot is, we're about due for another Great Depression based on the fact that too much of the economy is focussed on these pyramid-type companies- ones that have valuation wildly in excess of their revenue and assets, ones that are fostering mad speculation on the basis of _stock_ performance which reinforces the pyramid scheme until it collapses. As Parish shrewdly points out, doing this allows these companies the ability to stomp all over companies that are actually practicing _sustainable_ business models, potentially endangering them and putting them at risk of being 'out-competed' by the ones that buy into the pyramid scheme heavily. There's this one small problem: pyramids end. Always. You can tell it's starting to happen when the 'growth' _stops_ being geometric and levels off- the model doesn't allow for that, and the pyramid crashes at that point, hosing everybody who got left holding the bag.
The danger in a Microsoft setting the tone for the modern economy is this- as they are willing to go right over the edge into illegal practices to protect their pyramid but it will still end at some point, the risk is that all the pyramiding companies will successfully stomp all over 'old business models' and the old-style companies will go out of business, unable to employ people. The result would be a larger and larger percentage of the workforce paid in options as the companies adopt the MSFT pyramid model in order to keep up- options for pumping gas, options for shelf stocking at Wal-Mart- then when the pyramid tops out and collapses, it takes the ENTIRE economy out with it. That could be worse than the Great Depression- hell, through the 90s my (GenX) age bracket suffered exactly the unemployment and income burdens recorded in the Great Depression and nobody batted an eyelash because the yuppies still made their money. This time it won't be a yuppie-exempt crash- far from it.
I'd say the best thing to do is to realise that there's no disaster that someone doesn't profit by- and if you're determined to buy into the whole stock thing get ready to short like a madman, but better still, lay plans for a post-pyramid world. That means, accept being stomped on for the moment and build businesses that focus on _real_ revenue and do real work for real money- even though that is totally a losing strategy at the moment. Nothing else will survive the market correction we're due to receive- things will be incredibly nasty but with a head start in _serious_ business practices (rather than pyramid-focussed wish-fulfillment valuation) it's going to be a terrific opportunity for anyone willing to really work.
Constructive criticism you want? Fine- MSFT and CSCO's problem aren't that they're not paying taxes. Their problem is that the ONLY ARGUMENT that they're making a PROFIT is this evasion of paying taxes _or_ normal wages. It's not about them not paying taxes, it's that they have no business being stock market heavyweights when they lose shitloads of money! That's just asking for trouble! End of story.
Eh, whatever the point of this current exercise I would like to mention that survival of the fittest is an EPIPHENOMENON! It is not a freaking Moral Law- honestly, people behave as though this were some religious issue (usually when _they_ reckon they are 'fit'), carrying on like 'But aren't unfit things _supposed_ to die and get out of the way?'
No. No, there is no justification for that attitude- in fact I daresay many of these people are posting from the USA- which was established on a political _repudiation_ of 'survival of the fittest', which is why it is a republic and not a just-count-up-all-the-votes democracy.
With regard to extinct species, I can think of nothing about making clever simulations of them (in new contexts- gee, sounds like 'evolution' or something) that is so bad as this notion that there is a _moral_ basis behind extinction. How do you know the guar doesn't have some amazing biochemical thing to learn from- perhaps _not_ the guar but specifically the 99% guar 1% cow that will be brought into the world? The bottom line is that _we_ are part of nature, like it or not- we are not nearly so ingenious as to foresee and control the results of all our tinkerings, and not nearly so clever as to take on the force of Darwin and claim it for our own. We _cannot_ truly survive as if we are an entirely outside force to nature- nor can we act as if nature is completely beyond us and never to be tampered with. We and our actions are a part of the ecosystem, like it or not. We're going to continue to use our cunning little monkey brains to do all sorts of things- it is right that we should take an interest in the genetic diversity of the planet but let's not fool ourselves about the role this places us in. As we start to experiment in these areas we continue to be part of nature and if we screw stuff up it's not some moral punishment for hubris- nature tends to be unpleasant to humans in arctic temperatures without warm clothing, or to moths whose protective coloration can't adapt fast enough to soot-blackened trees- or to humans who invent uberdiseases with genetic engineering. If by messing around with extinct species we develop the skill and experience to not inflict the equivalence of brush wildfires on ourselves (i.e. push nature too far and it snaps back at you and then moves on), that will make it all worthwhile.
Well, I'm not supposed to say this on ZDnet, but-
on
RIAA CEO Speaks
·
· Score: 2
Die!
That about sums up the patience I have for dear Hilary and her organisation.
Rather than sit around on Slashdot composing an elaborate reply to Hilary and taking her oh so seriously, I did something better tonight- I remastered every track from my 'Dragons' album (that some people around here kinda liked) through a special passive resistance mixer I recently built just for the purpose. It kicks ass, now I have the masters for CDs that will sound _much_ bigger and better than the old mp3.com CDs (left that place 'cause they messed up the contract)
For technical geek slashdotters interested in building this sort of ADAT mixer, here are the key factors to the design:
totally passive, no tone controls, just 8 attenuators and switching networks for pan- avoid loading the outputs of the ADAT too much or the resulting signal will be so soft that your computer will add noise again just amplifying it
use good wire, that's about the only thing that can degrade the sound: no electronic parts unless you count resistors and pots and switches. No amplification at all: no IC or transistor or opamp or FET noise at all.
Some limiting is useful as you can't make a glass master for CD pressing from a recording with overs (clipping the digital), but using this type of mixer the dynamic peaks are just unbelievably powerful- you'll be at -20 half the time unless those peaks can be limited somehow. And you can limit them without a single amplification stage- in an evil but clever way.
A pair of diodes between the signal and ground produces a 'distortion box', only it has to be a very hot signal to clip. If they are on the output of the mixer network, almost nothing will actually clip through these diodes, but the hottest peaks will. To make things even more interesting you can put an inductor in series with the pair of diodes- then, only lower frequencies will be 'flattened' and the highs will be noticably enhanced because the diodes seem to show a bit of leakage- it's a subtle effect but very useful. I'm using a rotary switch and five different sets of inductors as the sole 'tone control' on the mixer- affects the mix's approach to 'presence'. It's a neat blend of total low noise low coloration passive mixing and still getting to limit peaks:)
I've ordered CD blanks to make these and other CDs from- can hardly wait for them to arrive. It's been a huge amount of work but it's so worth it- the only way to deal with the music industry these days is to _scorn_ it and DIY, all the way. If you create you have the right to dictate your own terms: on every single CD blank (with full-color label print) I have the words "all commercial rights reserved- noncommercial copying OKAY":) I'm also going to be making my own mp3s of all this (with LAME- yay! Mac people seeking LAME, search for the program 'CokaCoda'- Japanese LAME drag-and-drop port) and putting them up on besonic.com (unless they too come across with ugly contractual terms in which case I'll go elsewhere)
Bite me, Hilary! I don't care _how_ many people you brainwash into sneering at do-it-yourself artists, I don't care _how_ many artists you rip off. Normally I am not a combative person but enough is enough. Your people have done enough damage. Die!
If I don't miss my guess that one is by Wendy Carlos, and is justifiably famous. I found it for you:
http://www.wendycarlos.com/+wcco.html. The original record is out of print and the transcendent benevolence of the record companies never saw fit to release it on CD- looks like Wendy Carlos (also, interestingly, the Residents) found some sort of small label to do this (distributed by Rykodisc- I'm not sure if this is a vanity indie or not). Carlos has recently regained rights to a lot of her music from the record companies- God knows how:)
Your assumption that there are bands that make a seriously fat paycheck, while it seems plausible, isn't backed up by the facts. There might be thirty that make _a_ paycheck (break even). There are too damn many that go bankrupt. Hell, a surprising number of _multiplatinum_ _sellers_ go bankrupt (MC Hammer, TLC etc etc). Russia is probably better unless you're counting pure cash flow- hit bands in this country _do_ see amazing cash flow, vast sums they are compelled to spend on studios and video shoots etc. Unfortunately they tend not to _keep_ this money, so it hardly can be considered 'income'.
I've noticed this a lot, because I'm one of the drug addicts myself. I don't _use_... I haven't _used_ for quite a few years... but I'm still a drug addict in spirit, it's a defining part of my personality. That drive and unsatisfaction is what keeps me going, doing things and trying to beat some imaginary limit that other people don't seem to see. Nothing's ever enough- no drug was ever enough- and nothing I do is never enough. But I'll say this- not using, and having a comparatively saner life, makes it a _lot_ easier to cope with this general not-enoughness.
I still have to watch it, very often- I won't drink coffee 'cause I go nuts with it until you can eat it with a fork:) but I'll drink tea and cola or Mountain Dew and work straight through the night until 8 in the morning, or 10, or noon- a 14-hour continuous stretch is about my limit and that's without coke or amphetamines. It causes problems for me sometimes *shrug* whatever, I'm just not _built_ for 9-to-5 hours. The important thing to me is that I can still be me without smoking pot or using other drugs or getting drunk- and I'm not a bit surprised to see that there are a lot of techs out there burning themselves up in addictions. Hell, who else would work that hard but an addict? It's up to the people involved if they want to die or change their whole approach to life (at least as far as what substances fuel 'em). Changing them into nonaddict boring reliable slow-type people is not an option;)
In recent work you've done for us, the quality has been slipping- oh, in spirit it's everything we could ask for, but if we may refresh your memory by this passage of 'Competitive Astroturfing':
...the key aspect to be aware of is tone: it is dangerously counterproductive to incorporate the physical or combative metaphor, as it elicits a rebellious response. Always maintain a tolerant, amused, superiour attitude, so that the targets form the desire to be like you in your friendly mockery of the victim technology. The actual facts involved are less than important- mood is everything, and the tone of your discourse is more important than the content.
Now, where do you get this 'kick in the teeth' language? Isn't that LITERALLY one of the examples you learned in training classes, almost a cliche? You know perfectly well that talk is for the management track, NOT undercover relations. So much of your post was in perfect form- the 'too busy hacking the Cue:Cat' (extra points for correctly spelling its name- elicits subconscious assumption of accuracy elsewhere), the '31337 H4X0R' (textbook assertion of the reality you're paid to present)... it's a shame you blew all this out of the water with your aggressive overtones. Please work harder at staying within the CA guidelines- it is important that this job be done RIGHT, as people are already beginning to not...
Doh!
...with love and discipline, your handlers in Undercover Relations:)
Slashdot Mirror
If you try to sample this at 44.1 and reconstruct it, you're hosed- you have substantial problems based on the fact that the pulse would be quite accurately tracked by a 20K rate but you're trying to force a 22.05K rate to track it. It doesn't help to throw away all the very obvious and unavoidable over-20K components (come on, _5K_ and you get only a couple of harmonics? That's nuts): you're still hosed by the interference pattern that is produced, because these are not simply a pile of sine-tones: they are sine-tones (lots of them) AT SPECIFIC TIMES. Just because 20K is lower than 22.05K doesn't mean 22.05K is going to do even a remotely acceptable job of sampling it.
Remember that we are talking about a _5K_ wave here, not something absurdly high. Do you not think you can hear the difference between a really thin pulse wave and a sine at _5K_? Yet the pulse only needs to be about 1/4 width to cause really severe problems with sampling- specifically, a rapidly cycling distortion component that will go from 0% distortion to severely, severely distorted at a rate fast enough to make up an entirely new, harmonically unrelated tone! This is only lessened by throwing away frequencies over 20K, not entirely fixed. You can lessen it a lot more effectively by throwing away all frequencies over _10K_ but come on- whoever heard of a pulse wave with only two harmonics? Our 5K pulse wave would be unrecognizable- this has to be considered distortion.
I'm afraid Nyquist is mostly crap- it would be fine if all musical frequencies were exact subdivisions of 44.1K, but when you start dealing with real-world frequencies, you start having these intermodulation problems, and the problem is not that you're not having the supersonic frequencies, the problem is that the resulting intermodulation effects are cyclical degradations of continuous tones and produce _inharmonic_ tones. It's very hard to hear slight differences in harmonic tones but it's not hard to hear problems when there are inharmonic tones being synthesized.
Extra credit- what inharmonic tone is generated by the distortion on a 5K 1/4 width pulse wave sampled at 44.1K? Use as much treble-rolloff as you want, it'll always be the same intermodulation frequency. Anybody good enough at math to say what frequency is generated as intermodulation distortion? :)
Console yourself with the fact that after relatively few playings the AM quad information would be scraped off the LPs anyhow ;)
The way the Sony thing works is like this: at each point the encoder asks 'am I above or below the actual wave form?' If it's above, it reduces the angle of its recording by X degrees. If it's below, it increases it by that much. It is constantly overshooting and crossing over the actual waveform- at about 2 megahertz, not some mere 96K. At no point does it record the signal voltage itself- it only follows the changes in angle, at a rate so high that it's way beyond anything that will be recorded, and it's kind of 'lossy' as it'll almost never be _exactly_ on the target waveform- the oscillation of it tracking the waveform will be higher than 96K anyhow and it will be a _sine_ oscillation, not the square-stepped, nasty distortions of raw PCM sampling, so it won't even need to be filtered.
I'd love to see this actually catch on- as far as sound is concerned, nothing else should be needed. The interesting thing is this- could this format be _synthesised_ digitally? I'm picturing some future sort of audio workstation where you have all the modern gimmicks like pitch correction, EQ plugins etc, but you never resample anything- just overlay all the different sample rates you end up with, seamlessly :)
It would be interesting to see the venerable Yamaha DX-7 redone with this technology for its audio outputs! :)
The difference between this and CD audio _is_ quite comparable with the difference between DVD and VHS- except there is no change that I can see in listening behavior- it's all audio quality. I'd check it out- if I don't miss my guess the difference will drop your jaw. It's not a question of 'all of a sudden the high frequencies are X times louder, thanks Sony': the frequency ranges may not seem any different. However, the technology has the capacity to produce an extended range with _no_ filter ringing of any sort, plus effectively infinite bit depth (I'd be _very_ interested to know exactly how they are doing playback- is it essentially an analog circuit steered by the digital data?). The result will be this: the sound will be bigger, lusher, more vivid yet warmer at the same time. It'll be like a 35mm film photograph compared with a generic digital camera- the 'liquid' quality should come across even on very cheesy speakers, to some extent, but of course the finer the equipment the better. Actually, if you played it over those Klipsch Promedias the differences should be particularly striking- the Klipsch use a sort of horn loading on the sats for both the woofer and tweeter, and this will maximise the increased transient dynamics. Those are relatively affordable computer/multimedia speakers and some Slashdotters probably have them- the acoustic power output they have are what will show off this new format, there will be some very hot peaks in the signal, felt more than heard.
Again, VHS to DVD is a pretty good analogy for what this format would do, and the frequency range is not the most significant factor- effective bit depth is important but the capacity for slew rate and lack of HF ringing from lowpass filters are really the killer aspects. It _will_ come across even on humble speakers (actually the rock bottom cheapness ones may be better than feature-laden mid-level crud w. 7 band equalisers). I want one, but only if I can record to it, as I don't care in the slightest what Sony artists are doing lately. :)
- 16 bits isn't enough. That's _really_ obvious at this point- no professional works in 16 bits except for the final CD output. Mix busses have to be many times that in the digital domain, but even if you mix with ideal noiseless coloration-less electronics there's a really big difference between monitoring an undigitised feed of the signal with monitoring the 16 bit output.
- 44.1K isn't enough either. This is not primarily due to people being able to hear beyond 20K (though you can sense such sounds to some extent- why do you think smashing glass or dropped plates make you jump? Viciously loud supersonic transients), it's due to the brick-wall filters required. High end amplifier designers go to great lengths to get their pass-bands up into the megahertz (and nobody claims humans hear that!) because cutting off lower causes interactions across the entire frequency band. Cutting off at 22K is just ridiculous.
Now, how does the Sony approach compare? The neat thing about the bit rate is that it's effectively infinite bit rate- it's not a finite set of voltage levels but just one bit very fast tracing a voltage level that could be anywhere. This is substantially beyond even 24 bit- a major, major advance. That's gonna be very noticable.As for frequency, there is a surprise in store here. It may or may not be competitive with advanced PCM encoding at say 96K- but two very, very important points:
- There doesn't need to be _any_ brickwall filter on the output- provided a circuit can be made to output this stuff that doesn't merely calculate it as a super-PCM-encoding and D/A converter. If the format can feed a sort of very high frequency analog synthesiser, no filter is needed- which is critical, because...
- ...the potential slew rate of this technology is just astronomical. I hope the power supply of the players is up to it- if not there will be some very effective power supply mods waiting to be done, such as backing up the power supply with MIT Multicaps (a film cap that can produce very very high instantaneous voltage). Basically, if you fed this technology a big square wave, it might not be able to turn the corners of the wave instantly, but the vertical parts of the wave would be _vertical_- no brick-wall-filtered system can get anywhere close to this.
We're talking absurdly high transient peak voltages here: this is why high end audiophiles use absurdly heavy cables and absurdly powerful amplifiers, to let those peaks through. It doesn't hurt the speakers: this isn't RMS or even 'peak' wattage, the spikes are of such short duration that you can feed speakers many times the maximum 'peak' voltage if it's only for a microsecond, and high end systems do just that.Where do you find such peaks? Easy- The Who ;) seriously, The Who is a _good_ example, but symphony orchestras are also good for this. The capacity for this type of extreme and essentially 'inaudible' (too brief!) transient translates to the ability to produce the _sensation_ of loudness- for instance, you could easily make many systems play 'Live At Leeds' and sound loud and bright and kind of grating and ear-splitting, but with this technology it would be less grating but more _electrifying_ and the impact would be like having the living people right there playing at you, not just a bunch of very loud sounds. Alternately, you could play big orchestra crescendos and the resulting sound would be _huge_, not just loud but as big as a live performance.
It's really not hard to make stuff sound 'loud', but making it _feel_ loud is something else. If you don't have that, the loudness ends up being just a grating, thin surface, which is actually a very good description of the sound of most pop recordings these days :) the irony is that this technology is coming around just when the recording industry's pushing sounds that are substantially worse than even CD audio can produce...
Bottom line: I want one. Specifically, I want this to _master_ to. I have quite a bit of stuff that loses about 2/3 of its potential when made into 44/16 (eight tracks of 48/20 output analog and mixed with passive resistance mixing will tend to do that- I once figured the rough equivalent resolution was about a 64 bit mix bus, possibly higher) Maybe I should try to wheedle Sony out of a recorder ;)
Seriously, it is kind of a weird design choice. The reason it comes off like that is largely the rounded edges (screen edges, logo), high contrast, and the bordering effect of the screen edging/handle. Following the square outline of the laptop only rounding it and adding a crude handle shape essentially makes it look like the laptop's shape is defined by some large child's 3D crayon :) you could define the shape and essence of the design very easily with a large crayon by drawing the shape of that outline/handle, and adding the logo. This is the technical background for why you think it looks like barf :)
It _would_ make a killer design for a child's laptop. Pity they don't have the disposable income for it ;) that'll teach you to fall in love with a corporation's product! ;)
After all, these guys are my competition! I can put in a lot of hard work getting my sound to be warmer and richer and more expensive-sounding than theirs, but how unutterably sweet it is to have them not only destroying their own sounds through loudness wars on radio (massive, brutal overcompression) but to see them, on top of _that_, inserting digital watermarks to further ruin their sound quality :)
I wonder what it would take to convince them to master all of their recordings by playing them through an old transistor radio and re-recording it with radio shack microphones on a sound blaster PC card in a tin closet? :) Call it pre-emptive analog security bypassing, that's the ticket...
Your observations about identifying the artist are right on- that's why I for one am very excited about one of the 'fingerprinting' technologies being developed. Basically it will be possible to do net searches in the future on snippets of unlabelled digital audio and return the artist's current website/information. This is incredibly important in a world where the information flows so freely- an example, if you use Napster you'll find all sorts of utterly unrelated bands uploaded mistakenly as They Might Be Giants. This is great for TMBG but unhelpful for the real artists- with the sort of fingerprinting we're talking about this would be trivially fixed, and anyone could track down the true creator's identity easily- again, _reputation_ is the key concept. It will become possible to accurately associate a positive musical experience with a specific name no matter how obscure and non-mainstream: compare this with the days of broadcast radio where you had to first fight just to get _on_ the radio and then pray/pay for the DJ to actually announce your name in association with it! This sort of gatekeeper will become a thing of the past- though it'll still have a place, with the new type of DJ being someone of known good taste and ability to audition more new stuff than most people have.
I can relate an anecdote of stuff that's still going on, that illustrates your point. I used to have music on mp3.com (before they turned their contract towards the Dark Side ;) ). It's not mainstream at all- in fact some of it is rather user-hostile, for instance a strange marimba-driven track named Bone Dragon. None of this brought me pop stardom, understandably- but I know my way around a mixing desk and build a lot of radical, high-performance equipment that goes against the habitual sonic dreck people inflict upon their recordings these days (see Britney Spears...), and I attracted some attention from some iconoclasts, and in fact I built *REPUTATION* as someone who could get a sound, an impressively professional sound. This has led me to the point where I'm seriously contemplating doing sound engineering work for a startup (not RIAA) that I've been talking to, and in fact already have a sale of commercial rights for a piece of my music waiting for when the deals are finalised (I'm also making extensive use of my sharpness and paranoia in relation to the contract that people will end up seeing- another area of reputation getting involved). And the first piece of music to find a home in this new context is... 'Bone Dragon'. Yes! The totally uncommercial, peculiar one! *g*
The point is- reputation is fscking _gold_ man. It is substantially more important than immediate cash. The fact that 'Bone Dragon' is out there as lots of mp3s, with my blessing upon their further noncommercial copying, does _not_ make it licensed for commercial use. If someone wants to run that in an advertisement they have to talk to _me_! (If they want to add cheesy singing munchkin jingles to it they'd better be offering a LOT of money, and I mean a LOT. Background use or use under narration does not tend to destroy the soul of the music so readily.) And if they want something else that's like that- again, they have to talk to me. Commercial interests can't legally copy and use the free music I have out there being copied under fair use- and _nobody_ can copy what hasn't been performed yet.
It all reminds me of some of the tenets of the Progressive Party (for which I'll do some voting this November). They are not big fans of inherited wealth, or of wealth derived from high lofty positions. If you think about that a bit you see that what they're advocating is a much tighter link between WORK and wealth- and that speaks for me, very much. Trouble is, I'm a musician (among other things) and that industry is utterly fixated on the creation of intellectual property which is expected to go on earning money _without_ me, for longer than I live. Frankly, I can't see the logic behind this. Okay, supposing I write a hit song and record it wonderfully- certainly that's worth being paid for. Once it's been recorded- then what? Where is the justification that I should be _entitled_ to never work again based on having done really great work once upon a time?
I don't see it, so I am essentially unperturbed by the idea of tossing my music and work out there for the world to scavenge and copy back and forth unpayingly. If I'm any good at it, there'll be people who like what I do- like it well enough that they _ask_ for more, or want me to spend my time engineering _their_ music or some such activity. "Shut up and play your guitar!" "Mix my album!" "Do more ambient!" And the answer is of course "What's it worth to you?". My ability to earn a living wage ought to be tied to my willingness to _keep_ _working_ and producing stuff to benefit people.
For this reason I completely and totally disrespect the RIAA and everything they stand for, and have total contempt for SDMI. It's just more attempts to impose a price on something that was once rare and has become a commodity too cheap to meter- art. Instances of art in the digital domain are too cheap to meter, they are free, there's no sense even _trying_ to mess around with micropayments and that crap (you'll be nickel-and-dimed to death!). Art is free. ARTISTS ARE EXPENSIVE. Think commissions, 'patrons'. If you can imagine a sort of art you _can_ get someone to produce it- what's it worth to you?
Why would the new watermark be any different? The whole thing was a useless endeavor from the start.
The thing is- what does it matter? These people do not HAVE another idea. That was it! That was their only hope (and at that, it was against the advice of the computer industry members). Now they're just totally _hosed_.
The EFF being unable to stop 10,000 random script kiddies from trying to crack lame encryption is one thing. The EFF stopping draconian 'anti-hacker' special interest legislation from passing is _quite_ another. There's a limit to how fascist you can conveniently get in US government- and the hackers were _invited_ to crack SDMI, remember. There was a $10,000 prize for Christ's sake! Nobody's going to get far trying to paint the hackers as evil conspirators after _that_.
Anyone checked to see if they sold all of them to help along the >50% stock collapse Apple had? >:)
Nixon was impeached for less. (He resigned only because impeachment was a certainty.)
However, everything else you're talking is nonsense. Microsoft is not profitable in its core business- it is running a pyramid scheme on its stock valuation and literally makes more money issuing its own stock than it does on sales of its own products. Pyramid schemes are of questionable value, because they always crash in the end, perpetual geometric growth being impossible. And finally, it's hardly been decided on a whim, that is absurd: read the Findings of Fact and consider that the judicial system took months to figure out that statement of the situation, starting with someone (Jackson) so unbiased that he didn't even understand the tech details and learned them through the course of the case (I suppose it would be better if the judge was a Debian hacker? No, wait, how about an MCSE? _That_ would be unbiased eh?).
Face it, the ruling for breakup was fair, reasoned, sensible, measured, and the only reason it's in question now is because Microsoft lawyers will (in violation of lawyer ethics?) practice a 'screaming baby tantrum' method of their craft, in which they don't care the slightest for the truth of the situation (that is surely obvious to them) but will practice their _craft_ on behalf of their client right over the edge of falsification, nonsense and obstruction of justice. They will claim _anything_ that will obstruct the guilty verdict, and are. It's the legal version of the same practices that dragged MS into court repeatedly.
The legal process may only _appear_ to mirror MSFT's wish for an outcome. It's had to deal with this sort of psychotic legal advocacy before, and understandably, the course through wild baseless accusations of unfairness and vigilanteism is not to rush out a verdict, but to drop into low gear and crank on the torque- OF COURSE things slowed down, OF COURSE they sort of spilt the difference between the DOJ's demand for normal procedure and MSFT's wild insistence on four times the normal resources. This is _procedure_ not outcome. It's the same thing as Jackson's splitting his decision into findings of fact (wildly unlikely to be overruled because they do not _come_ with results) and findings of law (which of course are being appealed until MS lawyers are blue in the face). In this case, the decision to allow absurdly long times for the appeal and expanded resources- just as if it were a retrial but with the FoF still admissible- is another cornerstone in the eventual thrashing MS will be getting at the hands of the Supreme Court, because the bottom line is- Courts are not terribly impressed with wild baseless contempt for their decisions. MS going through judges like a wood-chipper is NOT REALLY HELPFUL to them- because judges are aware of what happened to previous judges, as Jackson was with Sporkin, and it makes them dig in their heels, focus on the hard core of legal justice, and to build their responses in such a way that the out-of-control defendant has little leeway to cause more damage, as Jackson did with the FoF.
The slower the wheels of justice turn, the more finely they will grind. Microsoft seems to not understand this- and they are setting themselves up, and the economy at large up, for a very nasty fall. Imagine, _after_ .NET gets shoehorned into every area of net commerce, _after_ MSFT illegally seizes control of world communications and most of the IT functions of most governments, having them get brutally broken up by the Supreme Court! I am afraid the Supremes take legal process pretty seriously- the idea of them being 'bought' is stupid, and even if they fumbled things this time MS would only get sued _again_ and inevitably either MS _becomes_ the government or gets broken by the government for rampant contempt for the law- there's no middle ground, just a delaying of one or the other outcome.
Talk about messy, furrfu.
Now, if you're talking about the snippy remarks about Dubya getting elected and imposing a national operating system, that was an admittedly sick joke, and nobody would be happier than I to see it remain entirely fantasy (or nightmare). However, I wouldn't rule it out that easily- the idea was, 'Here's an outlandish, nightmare projection that I HOPE can't possibly happen!', hence the 'I'm picturing Dubya getting elected' rather than 'This is going to happen! The sky is falling, we're all going to DIE!' It's a combination joke/scare tactic and shouldn't be written off _too_ easily: remember how badly Microsoft wants to in effect impose a Microsoft Tax on everyone and not have to do any more work, just do new icons and count money. You shouldn't be so quick to assume they can't get paid a tax administered by the government- haven't you heard of corporate welfare? Dubya's just the sort to rubberstamp such a proposal, too.
Sorry- you strike out ;) you have no argument but ridicule and you're asking people to stop thinking. I'm not making these arguments because of karma troll bonus points, but because the situation both alarms and fascinates me, and I want to put the same evidence in front of people and see if they reach the same conclusion. In this case, I am taking Bill Parish's figures on the breakdown of MS income (I believe he got this from their annual reports and renamed the pie pieces?) for the argument that they're making more in the stock market than they are selling products, I'm assuming the top MS people are _not_ stupid idiots, and with regard to cutting projects I don't think I really need to remind slashdotters of the list of abandoned 'strategic' MS projects that tied up competition's resources for long enough to take care of the threat through further MS expansion. The difference is that I'm suggesting there is no MS project that couldn't be abandoned or defunded if PR activities would return greater profits through stock manipulation. That said, canning Office would _hurt_ the stock price not help it, and you'll not see them admitting to such a thing. On the other hand, Farenheit/COOL/C#/.NET and on and on- which will be the next to quietly fade off the radar, and do you think these fade-offs happen because someone at MS _lost_ _track_ of the project? They're killed because new products are not the most profitable thing MS could be doing, and they're killed quietly so it doesn't hurt the stock price- which _is_ the most profitable thing MS is doing.
You may now post "*yawn*" in the classic tradition of lazy-ass Usenet trolls ;)
At the same time, however, they get more from flooding the world with stock options and MS stock than they do from their actual products (not an exxageration!). In this sense, protecting mindshare is substantially more important than protecting retail sales of the products. They cannot be simply a product sold at the store- they must be 'what you use when you have a computer' or the stock pyramid will collapse sooner. (It's going to collapse sooner or later, but MSFT wishes it to be later.)
Conclusion: Microsoft are fully and consciously aware of their situation balancing product sales against stock market valuation, and are choosing in full awareness to abandon their own products wherever necessary to prop up the pyramid of their stock valuation, which is essentially valuable solely because it is valuable (price/earnings ratio is flatly delusional, even if you don't count the fact that MSFT increasingly operates at a loss and papers this over with issuing of options- 'printing money' to hide the problem). A page like this one _cannot_ come from an organisation that considers its OSes to be a product sold in stores alongside other ones.
I think this has disturbing implications. It suggests that they understand their true situation all too well and embrace it- that they would literally cut the budget for things like bug-fixing and developing stable technology, in order to pay for attempts to persuade the world that there is literally no choice but to use Microsoft for everything. This is not to sell more products- the product is no longer important to them at all, they make more money on stock valuation than they do on products and are apparently sharp enough to have figured this out.
Things could get interesting- especially with the Presidential election. I'm personally voting for Nader, unhesitatingly- and I almost hope Dubya wins as a result of this, because then the situation could get so appalling as to _force_ public reaction. I'm picturing Dubya passing legislation making Doze the Official State Operating System and issuing every citizen a yearly license to use it, paid for out of taxes. Meanwhile MS quietly scraps all technical development and puts the budgets towards lobbying... this would be a very interesting situation because, when you do crazy things like that, who will enforce it? Taxation going directly to Microsoft is the best bet. Doing things like criminalising Linux or whatever (surely tempting- call it a hacker OS) is much less reliable, because who's going to enforce it? There's the prospect of 'blue laws' around computer issues if companies like MS get to put through whatever legislation they like.
What interesting times we live in...
What if I want my uberG4 for doing _work_ rather than spinning tiny wheels really fast? It's as if you don't understand how different PPC chips are and have been, from x86. They have always been register-rich and loaded with cache compared with x86- let's have more of that. Let's have an uberG4 in which the cache will fit, say, Quake III :) then the pentium people can boast of their higher clocks all they want while their computers spin their tiny wheels constantly loading stuff into their teeny 'high speed zones', and the uberG4 will be about TORQUE and will slowly overtake the pentiums for good.
(Yes, I know that quake framerates are hard to come by on MacOS- one word, ATI- no, two words, ATI and Doom: Quake III is not inherently a super complicated program. The reissue of Doom looks to be a _lot_ more demanding. The difference could well favor the G4- having a compiler use loads of huge registers to speed things is dead simple compared to the twisted arcanity that will be necessary for P4 and beyond)
If Microsoft entirely gave up on all the programming activities that cost them billions a year, and did nothing _but_ issue options and buy up other companies, taking their technologies and ceasing work on them and giving the newly taken over employees more options, would you still think this made any kind of sense? Why do you think it makes sense when they make a pretense at being a technology company?
This is not a picture of a technology company, and still less is it 'creation of wealth', and other companies should be encouraged to hang tough and _not_ do the same: this behavior is a pyramid scheme centering on stock valuation, and pyramids END. It is useless, productless, pointless money-juggling, impressive-looking while the 'pyramid' builds, but destined (like all pyramids) to crash. When it does it's gonna take the US economy, and probably the world, with it. (possibly excepting Japan- Japan has been there done that in recent years, that's why their 'miraculous economic recovery' crashed and burned. They see right through this sort of thing- fresh hindsight is helpful to do that.)
There's nothing about this situation that is good unless you are convinced of one of these things:
- pyramids expand forever
- money is so hypothetical that it needn't _ever_ be associated with tangible assets
- the future can't be other than the present, no matter what.
The first is just dumb- if you believe that why aren't you becoming wealthy off a thousand idiotic spams? They are pyramids too. The reality is that you'll lose your money. So, too, with MSFT and Cisco.The second is cute- very cute. Isn't having a 27 million dollars going to be enough, by definition? Well, wouldn't having 27 million Deutschemarks (better yet, Reichsmarks) be enough? There are plenty of Germans who can tell of times in their history when that would have just about bought a loaf of bread. A currency can be devalued to amazing, absurd levels- if everybody had 27 million dollars of *insert stock here* but no actual assets other than this, boom, suddenly it takes 27 million _US_ dollars to buy a loaf of bread. It _can_ happen here.
Finally, the idea that the future must be the same in kind as the present- just an extrapolation of it- is seductive but doesn't stand up to real-world experience. Some days it's sunny and others it rains. If it's sunny a _whole_ _lot_ does that prove that rain can't happen? If termites are eating the foundations of your house there will be a long period where nothing visible happens. Does this mean nothing will ever happen? Some processes happen out of sight of those who don't want to look at them. Termites would be one. In the context of MSFT and Cisco, the process would be a devaluation of money (inflation) caused by these stock pyramid schemes- the amount of 'money' being 'paid' goes up and up and up, but the amount of work being compensated doesn't. As the process accelerates and expands it becomes more exciting the farther it departs from reality. Look at AAPL for a picture of reality- temporarily swept up with the stock market, an earnings warning (and a profit is still anticipated!) 'corrected' the stock down to where it is barely in excess (or under?) the company's tangible assets! That was a brutal over 50% crunch- and stopped only because the price/earnings ratio hit the bottom stop and the stock ended up right down at the valuation of Apple's substantial physical resources and positive revenue. What happens when MSFT corrects and seeks _its_ level of physical resources and actual revenue? In 1999 they _lost_ ten _billion_ dollars and made it up solely by issuing more options! This is major, major trouble waiting to happen. I would have to really _protest_ the notion that it is 'good'. Are you a 'faith stockbroker', like a faith healer? Or is it a new religious movement professing faith in the ever-extending pyramid? Maybe you could make a stock out of this belief alone, and sell it based on no revenue or business at all, just that it will increase forever. I suggest 'JMST', to stand for Jamestown :P
Hasn't MSFT lost about half its valuation since the peak? Not only is it a pyramid scheme (see Bill Parish's analysis) but it is running out of steam. Choke this down: MSFT basically lost ten _billion_ dollars just in '99 and hid it with accounting trickery. How much are they losing now, struggling to not completely fail with W2K migration against Gartner Group advisories, to kluge together .NET and paper over the many quietly failed projects like Fahrenheit (sp?)? The real losses are _accelerating_ not reversing, and they can only pay people in options- they _cannot_ meet payroll if they had to pay people actual money.
If it was any other dotcom, they would be _toast_ but any fraud is based on a lot of social engineering, and this one's had a good long run. Think about it- the argument around Slashdot is typically 'is it right/sane that MSFT is so wildly successful and popular when their products/practices suck so bad?', but the idea that MSFT is wildly successful is rarely challenged. Yet when you look at the information (again, Parish is useful- people seem to challenge his interpretation but not his numbers and facts) you see that their sales are a miserably small proportion of their income and most of it comes from an options pyramid scam and 'corporate welfare' (I'd be interested to see more data on that. Define 'corporate welfare'?). This is nothing like a sustainable business model, much less 'thriving on innovation', yet because of the sheer scale of the exercise it goes largely unquestioned.
The upshot is, we're about due for another Great Depression based on the fact that too much of the economy is focussed on these pyramid-type companies- ones that have valuation wildly in excess of their revenue and assets, ones that are fostering mad speculation on the basis of _stock_ performance which reinforces the pyramid scheme until it collapses. As Parish shrewdly points out, doing this allows these companies the ability to stomp all over companies that are actually practicing _sustainable_ business models, potentially endangering them and putting them at risk of being 'out-competed' by the ones that buy into the pyramid scheme heavily. There's this one small problem: pyramids end. Always. You can tell it's starting to happen when the 'growth' _stops_ being geometric and levels off- the model doesn't allow for that, and the pyramid crashes at that point, hosing everybody who got left holding the bag.
The danger in a Microsoft setting the tone for the modern economy is this- as they are willing to go right over the edge into illegal practices to protect their pyramid but it will still end at some point, the risk is that all the pyramiding companies will successfully stomp all over 'old business models' and the old-style companies will go out of business, unable to employ people. The result would be a larger and larger percentage of the workforce paid in options as the companies adopt the MSFT pyramid model in order to keep up- options for pumping gas, options for shelf stocking at Wal-Mart- then when the pyramid tops out and collapses, it takes the ENTIRE economy out with it. That could be worse than the Great Depression- hell, through the 90s my (GenX) age bracket suffered exactly the unemployment and income burdens recorded in the Great Depression and nobody batted an eyelash because the yuppies still made their money. This time it won't be a yuppie-exempt crash- far from it.
I'd say the best thing to do is to realise that there's no disaster that someone doesn't profit by- and if you're determined to buy into the whole stock thing get ready to short like a madman, but better still, lay plans for a post-pyramid world. That means, accept being stomped on for the moment and build businesses that focus on _real_ revenue and do real work for real money- even though that is totally a losing strategy at the moment. Nothing else will survive the market correction we're due to receive- things will be incredibly nasty but with a head start in _serious_ business practices (rather than pyramid-focussed wish-fulfillment valuation) it's going to be a terrific opportunity for anyone willing to really work.
Constructive criticism you want? Fine- MSFT and CSCO's problem aren't that they're not paying taxes. Their problem is that the ONLY ARGUMENT that they're making a PROFIT is this evasion of paying taxes _or_ normal wages. It's not about them not paying taxes, it's that they have no business being stock market heavyweights when they lose shitloads of money! That's just asking for trouble! End of story.
No. No, there is no justification for that attitude- in fact I daresay many of these people are posting from the USA- which was established on a political _repudiation_ of 'survival of the fittest', which is why it is a republic and not a just-count-up-all-the-votes democracy.
With regard to extinct species, I can think of nothing about making clever simulations of them (in new contexts- gee, sounds like 'evolution' or something) that is so bad as this notion that there is a _moral_ basis behind extinction. How do you know the guar doesn't have some amazing biochemical thing to learn from- perhaps _not_ the guar but specifically the 99% guar 1% cow that will be brought into the world? The bottom line is that _we_ are part of nature, like it or not- we are not nearly so ingenious as to foresee and control the results of all our tinkerings, and not nearly so clever as to take on the force of Darwin and claim it for our own. We _cannot_ truly survive as if we are an entirely outside force to nature- nor can we act as if nature is completely beyond us and never to be tampered with. We and our actions are a part of the ecosystem, like it or not. We're going to continue to use our cunning little monkey brains to do all sorts of things- it is right that we should take an interest in the genetic diversity of the planet but let's not fool ourselves about the role this places us in. As we start to experiment in these areas we continue to be part of nature and if we screw stuff up it's not some moral punishment for hubris- nature tends to be unpleasant to humans in arctic temperatures without warm clothing, or to moths whose protective coloration can't adapt fast enough to soot-blackened trees- or to humans who invent uberdiseases with genetic engineering. If by messing around with extinct species we develop the skill and experience to not inflict the equivalence of brush wildfires on ourselves (i.e. push nature too far and it snaps back at you and then moves on), that will make it all worthwhile.
That about sums up the patience I have for dear Hilary and her organisation.
Rather than sit around on Slashdot composing an elaborate reply to Hilary and taking her oh so seriously, I did something better tonight- I remastered every track from my 'Dragons' album (that some people around here kinda liked) through a special passive resistance mixer I recently built just for the purpose. It kicks ass, now I have the masters for CDs that will sound _much_ bigger and better than the old mp3.com CDs (left that place 'cause they messed up the contract)
For technical geek slashdotters interested in building this sort of ADAT mixer, here are the key factors to the design:
- totally passive, no tone controls, just 8 attenuators and switching networks for pan- avoid loading the outputs of the ADAT too much or the resulting signal will be so soft that your computer will add noise again just amplifying it
- use good wire, that's about the only thing that can degrade the sound: no electronic parts unless you count resistors and pots and switches. No amplification at all: no IC or transistor or opamp or FET noise at all.
- Some limiting is useful as you can't make a glass master for CD pressing from a recording with overs (clipping the digital), but using this type of mixer the dynamic peaks are just unbelievably powerful- you'll be at -20 half the time unless those peaks can be limited somehow. And you can limit them without a single amplification stage- in an evil but clever way.
- A pair of diodes between the signal and ground produces a 'distortion box', only it has to be a very hot signal to clip. If they are on the output of the mixer network, almost nothing will actually clip through these diodes, but the hottest peaks will. To make things even more interesting you can put an inductor in series with the pair of diodes- then, only lower frequencies will be 'flattened' and the highs will be noticably enhanced because the diodes seem to show a bit of leakage- it's a subtle effect but very useful. I'm using a rotary switch and five different sets of inductors as the sole 'tone control' on the mixer- affects the mix's approach to 'presence'. It's a neat blend of total low noise low coloration passive mixing and still getting to limit peaks
:)
I've ordered CD blanks to make these and other CDs from- can hardly wait for them to arrive. It's been a huge amount of work but it's so worth it- the only way to deal with the music industry these days is to _scorn_ it and DIY, all the way. If you create you have the right to dictate your own terms: on every single CD blank (with full-color label print) I have the words "all commercial rights reserved- noncommercial copying OKAY"Bite me, Hilary! I don't care _how_ many people you brainwash into sneering at do-it-yourself artists, I don't care _how_ many artists you rip off. Normally I am not a combative person but enough is enough. Your people have done enough damage. Die!
If I don't miss my guess that one is by Wendy Carlos, and is justifiably famous. I found it for you: http://www.wendycarlos.com/+wcco.html. The original record is out of print and the transcendent benevolence of the record companies never saw fit to release it on CD- looks like Wendy Carlos (also, interestingly, the Residents) found some sort of small label to do this (distributed by Rykodisc- I'm not sure if this is a vanity indie or not). Carlos has recently regained rights to a lot of her music from the record companies- God knows how :)
Your assumption that there are bands that make a seriously fat paycheck, while it seems plausible, isn't backed up by the facts. There might be thirty that make _a_ paycheck (break even). There are too damn many that go bankrupt. Hell, a surprising number of _multiplatinum_ _sellers_ go bankrupt (MC Hammer, TLC etc etc). Russia is probably better unless you're counting pure cash flow- hit bands in this country _do_ see amazing cash flow, vast sums they are compelled to spend on studios and video shoots etc. Unfortunately they tend not to _keep_ this money, so it hardly can be considered 'income'.
Of course he's tired, on six hours sleep a night. Soon he'll be even more tired, working twice as hard on three hours of sleep a night :)
I still have to watch it, very often- I won't drink coffee 'cause I go nuts with it until you can eat it with a fork :) but I'll drink tea and cola or Mountain Dew and work straight through the night until 8 in the morning, or 10, or noon- a 14-hour continuous stretch is about my limit and that's without coke or amphetamines. It causes problems for me sometimes *shrug* whatever, I'm just not _built_ for 9-to-5 hours. The important thing to me is that I can still be me without smoking pot or using other drugs or getting drunk- and I'm not a bit surprised to see that there are a lot of techs out there burning themselves up in addictions. Hell, who else would work that hard but an addict? It's up to the people involved if they want to die or change their whole approach to life (at least as far as what substances fuel 'em). Changing them into nonaddict boring reliable slow-type people is not an option ;)
In recent work you've done for us, the quality has been slipping- oh, in spirit it's everything we could ask for, but if we may refresh your memory by this passage of 'Competitive Astroturfing':
Now, where do you get this 'kick in the teeth' language? Isn't that LITERALLY one of the examples you learned in training classes, almost a cliche? You know perfectly well that talk is for the management track, NOT undercover relations. So much of your post was in perfect form- the 'too busy hacking the Cue:Cat' (extra points for correctly spelling its name- elicits subconscious assumption of accuracy elsewhere), the '31337 H4X0R' (textbook assertion of the reality you're paid to present)... it's a shame you blew all this out of the water with your aggressive overtones. Please work harder at staying within the CA guidelines- it is important that this job be done RIGHT, as people are already beginning to not...Doh!