Maybe you shouldn't include Tolkien in your education series. All he said is that the cave troll skewered Frodo with the spear. Peter Jackson is the genius who decided to put Frodo against a wall so there would be no where for all of that kinetic energy to go except right into Frodo's tiny, weak little heart.
Jackson needs the education; leave the one true god, errr Tolkien, out of this.
Here's a link to a company, AS-E, who manufactures some of the most respected Backscatter equipment.
For a sample of some slightly frightening pictures check out these images: http://www.as-e.com/technology/image_1.html
If somebody has time, it might be good to provide a mirror for these images.
There are so many, many items I'd like to refute in this discussion. Arrh. I guess I'll start here.
Shut up with this insane law enforcement hacker bullshite. If you are joking, I think your humor is a bit too dry for the/. crowd. This theory is stupid on so many levels.
First, if the Feds wanted transmission records on somebody, you better believe they would just make Charter monitor the individual(s). They certainly would not fscking hack Charter's DHCP server. With the Patriot Act and legal precedent being set (like Verizon), it's getting more and more common for ISP's to cooperate with law enforcement quickly and quietly. (I have no hard facts to support this statement, only common sense and grapevine knowledge.)
Second, let's pretend that the FBI was hacking into ISP systems, and quite poorly might I add. Do you really think the lackey's answering the phones after hours are going to be in on this covert operation? Somehow I doubt it.
I'm not saying the US federal gov't doesn't hack into corporations and personal computers. In fact, from my understanding they definitely are penetrating selected systems. I just find this kind of paranoia and alarmism ("Let's just hope that it's not *your* email address.") repulsive.
Sorry for attacking you so much. It's Friday at 4:30 and the project lead just walked in to my office to tell me that I'm going to need to come in on Sunday to finish this fscking data conversion for Monday morning.
Re:An honest question - who cares?
on
AAC Put To The Test
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm not sure what the original post meant, but from my days working in the psych labs, "triple blind" is a colloquial term for when the two parties are not aware of the test or the true nature of the test.
For example, I am the researcher, and you are the subject. I am giving you the Pepsi challenge. I do not know which container has Pepsi, and which one was Coke. I administer the test. However, Xavier, the research director has been slowly increasing the temperature in the room to observe if this affects your and my interpersonal communication.
1. You are ignorant of the test data. 2. I am ignorant of the test dat. 3. We are both ignorant of the true test.
I think their selection is tolerable. I have been able to find a little bit of most things, i.e., they might only have two of Jane's Addiction's 4+ CDs, but they do have something. I am only on my third day of this trial period, but I am actually extremely pleased with the service.
The software is typical Real bloat, and it is unconfigurable to an annoyting degree. It not unattractive, and it is fairly easy to use. It can definitely be improved, but it's tolerable.
What I have started to fall in love with are Real's streaming channels. Here are the categories of channels: Rock/Pop Alternative/Punk Rap/Hip-Hop Soul/R&B Country Jazz Electronica/Dance Worl d/Reggae Classical Oldies Vocal New Age Sacred/Gospel Blues Folk Easy Listening Soundtracks/Musicals Children/Holiday
Each category has somewhere between 1 (Children/Holiday) and 19 (Rock/Pop) channels. I have been listening to the Indie Rock and the Ambient channels a lot at work, and I've been surprised and delighted with Real's quality of song selection. Not only do they play songs by some of my favorite artists in these genres, but they have introduced me to some really wonderful new artists. I've already bought two CDs of artists I discovered on this service. Also, a small box displays interesting tidbits of information about each song/artist as the song is being played.
I don't care if I can't copy the songs to my mp3 player of burn a cd. That's not why I want an MP3 service really. If am going to buy music, I am just going to buy a cd. I have a good backup that truly can sound better than any mp3 version (on the right equipment), and I can do anything I want with the mp3s I rip from it. If I am paying for music, I don't want restrictions.
With the Real service, I am not really paying for music. I am paying for a very high quality, on-demand, highly configurable Internet radio station.
For $10/month (only $5 for first three months), I get unlimited streaming access to over 325,000 songs. I can't listen to those songs without a computer and broadband connection. That kind of sucks, but it's only $10/month.
Also, you can burn certain songs to CD for $.79, as has been pointed out elsewhere, but I haven't really explored this much, as I have had no desire.
Anyhow, I highly recommend this service to people who feel similar to me. I really just want a badass Internet radio station, and Real's Rhapsody service is the best attempt I have seen so far.
If I'm going be supporting the RIAA with my money, by god, I want CD quality and the ability to manipulate the files however I wish.
Of course with copy-protected CD's and such, this option might be dying slowly.
Apple needs to get in tight with independent music labels and let bands choose what they want to charge for each song, minus some standard fee. For example, Apple can charge $.45 per song transaction fee, and if the band wants to each song to cost $.50, then the band would only get a $.05 return on each song.
They should really try to establish a legitimate community around this service. I'm thinking of something like AudioGalaxy, but with artists being fairly compensated.
Alright. Ogg Vorbis is gaining popularity, but most people are not willing / too busy to re-rip their collection.
If you really believe that Linux is not rapidly gaining popularity, you must be living in some closed-eyes, hands-over-ears world. Commercially backed distros like RedHat and Mandrake are making huge inroads into the server market, and even many of my non-IT friends have begun to ask me about Linux.
This kind of troll is just pathetic. But for some reason I just wasted three minutes replying. Oh well. I guess you win.
First, Kazaa has many 160 k/bps and 192 k/bps encoded mp3s, even of non-chart-topping bands, like Modest Mouse or Neutral Milk Hotel.
Second, it only takes a few minutes of searching to find some enticing d/ls. What else are you going to be doing while compiling or installing that new hardware? Reading/.?
Third, you sound pretty bitter about this man; I think you should relax a little. Kazaa is a nice service. I have found tons of good music there, from French Gypsy swing music to Pakistani Sufi chants. It's not AudioGalaxy; it doesn't have the fun indie music I like. But I'd rather support those artists anyway. And I've lost count of how many cds I've bought because I found a few quality tracks of a band on Kazaa or a similar p2p app.
I think you're just mad, because you wish you had more available bandwidth, which is understandable.
Completely deriding a human, saying that Kazaa users have no lives and "no music taste" is a little overgeneralizing, and it really just makes you look like an irrational fool.
Back to the main topic for a second, I don't see myself ever using a service like Apple's. If I like a couple songs on an album, I want to buy the whole album, and I want those songs to be very good quality. Listening to specific songs has started to feel somewhat cheap to me. When a band creates an entire album, they (usually) put a lot of effort into the order and flow of the songs and the feel of the album as a whole. It's much more enjoyable. I can see this service evolving into a good way to sample music legitimately, but they will need a much wider selection before that reality.
With no sarcasm and much sincere desire to obtain quality information, I ask you, JDevers, what should I read instead of New Scientist?
I read New Scientist infrequently, but it always seems interesting to me. I subscribe to various programming journals for my profession and The Economist for general global issues, and I would really like to subscribe to a couple general science magazines. In particular, I would like a magazine that covers all aspects of emerging science and technology, something that has in-depth articles providing real substance, understandable to those who have a strong science background but do not work in the topic's field. Also, I have been trying to find a computer journal that covers new hardware, without excessive hype.
Rarely I stop by the local college library, but I never find exactly what I want. And my professional/familial time commitments pretty much demand home delivery of a magazine. And I don't want to spend an excessive amount of money on a journal that I read for personal edification, not professional; for my budget, my limit on a subscription fee is around $100 per year.
If anybody has some good suggestions, I am eager to be enlightened.
Your nightmare scenario is a point of concern, but I do not fear this class division in the long term.
First, this process will be slow, and there will be interbreeding between GM and non-GM people. Each generation might have its own division, but the lesser class of each generation will likely be as good as the as the greater class of the previous generation.
Second, the GM process will eventually become routine, like childbirth. You don't see poor* people having babies out on the streets; they still manage to get to a hospital. Even that 60% of US households that are not connected to the Internet still manage to get healthcare.
Third, when a human becomes sufficiently intelligent, he begins to care about his fellow humans. Extreme intelligence and cruelty rarely combine. Of course there are exceptions, and I know some arrogant, solipsistic assholes. However, the majority of people I know who are true geniuses are also extremely thoughtful of others. They may not always be kind or patient, but they never seek malice or misfortune for others.
*Poor meaning those struggling around the poverty line, not the homeless.
Unless of course, giant mulitnational corporations control the technology and only the very rich and powerful can afford the upgrades for themselves and their children.
Your points cannot be overemphasized, but your example of AI/robots is a little off. In that realm we are trying to recreate ourselves.
With genetic engineering, we are just trying to make a few improvements to ourselves, modify an existing product. It's a lot easier to tweak an engine than it is to create one from scratch.
However, I do have some fear of where this road leads, because from my experience, one should not go around tweaking a system until he understands it well enough to create it entirely on his own. It often leads to horrible, unanticipated results.
I have never understood "banning" certain types of research. What do we hope to accomplish?
Information longs to be free, and technology inherently desires improvement. If we don't allow certain scientific research, then this research will simply move to other countries, and the United States and its citizens will lose the opportunity to shape the methodoligies and goals of this research.
Perhaps a self-censorship system moderated by an international panel would work nicely, but it is utter foolishness (IMO) to let public opinion blindly dictate the direction of science. Enhancing the lives of the common citizen should always be the primary goal of science (IMO), but that doesn't mean that the public always/ever knows what is best.
I guess this is a step in the right direction. Have the most skilled in those fields moderate themselves. Sure, but I cringe whenever I see the words "censor" and "science" together in a sentence.
It seems that every week brings some new bill or rider or regulation whose intended goal is strip away yet another sliver of our shrinking collection of privacy rights and individual liberties.
Considering your unique set of experience and insight, what do you most fear in the impending struggle between the government's desire to have total information and the people's right to liberty? Or, in other words, against what do we need to be most vigilant?
Wow. I'm thinking the Wachowskis missed a incredibly opportunity here. Imagine seeing "There is no spork." on thousands of nerd-sites and in thousands of signatures. Ahhhh. It would have been priceless.
I am reminded of why I enjoyed the original Matrix so much, why I saw it three times in its opening week.
I am the only real programmer/computer-nerd/technophile in my circle of friends. The rest live primarily in the realms of literature, audio engineering/theory, and studio art. This fact is only important, because I remember them chiding me about the somewhat cliche plot and often hammy acting in the original Matrix. I couldn't exactly explain to them why I found the movie so thoroughly enjoyable. I didn't claim it to be a masterpiece, but I couldn't make them understand why I could and can still watch the movie so many times and still find it so entertaining.
If you read the article, you instantly feel the passion for innovation, Gaeta's and the Wachowskis' hunger to create new and beautiful cinematographic standards. And I think I can finally explain that to my snobby friends.
Sure, the story is a little trite. The acting, while strong in many places, has some definite flaws. But anyone who has a similar desire to understand complex systems and improve upon them, sees these hopes in the original Matrix. They are just a bunch of skilled and creative geeks trying to innovate new and beautiful tools. And as I'm sure many slashdotters understand, that fact makes me feel all warm and cozy inside.
There is merit to your point, but I think you are misconstruing the intent of the original parent post.
...telling people not to use a product because there are no decent competitors is just wrong.
I understood his point to be that people should consider not using TiVo, because there ARE decent competitor products. The only issue is that all of the current good rival products are computer-based and less user friendly.
Your post reminds me of many arguments for why people use Windows.
Heh. Your post is funny and indicative that you don't have much contact with Americans.
The average citizen of the United States is afraid of neither terrorism nor the government.
We are afraid that gas prices might go up more and that the economy might not rebound immediately. We are afraid that our children might be kidnapped. We are afraid that a minority group might erode our beautiful puritan culture. We are afraid of ourselves and our neighbors.
The culture of fear in the US is bizarrely ubiquitous and yet selective.
Slashdot Mirror
Moderated Troll? What!
I guess some loyal Aibo owner is feeling sensitive about his purchasing decisions.
Here here. Where are the goddamn flying cars?
And, speaking of technology disappointments, who wants some stinking robot dog? Where is my robot freshman-college-cheerleader? Answer me that!
Maybe you shouldn't include Tolkien in your education series. All he said is that the cave troll skewered Frodo with the spear. Peter Jackson is the genius who decided to put Frodo against a wall so there would be no where for all of that kinetic energy to go except right into Frodo's tiny, weak little heart.
Jackson needs the education; leave the one true god, errr Tolkien, out of this.
Here's a link to a company, AS-E, who manufactures some of the most respected Backscatter equipment.
For a sample of some slightly frightening pictures check out these images:
http://www.as-e.com/technology/image_1.html
If somebody has time, it might be good to provide a mirror for these images.
You are pretty much right on the money. You even misspelled kitsch.
You forgot one cliche Slashdot component:
Posts attempting humor by summarizing Slashdot.
No diggity.
There are so many, many items I'd like to refute in this discussion. Arrh. I guess I'll start here.
/. crowd. This theory is stupid on so many levels.
Shut up with this insane law enforcement hacker bullshite. If you are joking, I think your humor is a bit too dry for the
First, if the Feds wanted transmission records on somebody, you better believe they would just make Charter monitor the individual(s). They certainly would not fscking hack Charter's DHCP server. With the Patriot Act and legal precedent being set (like Verizon), it's getting more and more common for ISP's to cooperate with law enforcement quickly and quietly. (I have no hard facts to support this statement, only common sense and grapevine knowledge.)
Second, let's pretend that the FBI was hacking into ISP systems, and quite poorly might I add. Do you really think the lackey's answering the phones after hours are going to be in on this covert operation? Somehow I doubt it.
I'm not saying the US federal gov't doesn't hack into corporations and personal computers. In fact, from my understanding they definitely are penetrating selected systems. I just find this kind of paranoia and alarmism ("Let's just hope that it's not *your* email address.") repulsive.
Sorry for attacking you so much. It's Friday at 4:30 and the project lead just walked in to my office to tell me that I'm going to need to come in on Sunday to finish this fscking data conversion for Monday morning.
Worthwhile hobbies? Adventures?
/.?
You mean, like, posting on
I'm not sure what the original post meant, but from my days working in the psych labs, "triple blind" is a colloquial term for when the two parties are not aware of the test or the true nature of the test.
For example, I am the researcher, and you are the subject. I am giving you the Pepsi challenge. I do not know which container has Pepsi, and which one was Coke. I administer the test. However, Xavier, the research director has been slowly increasing the temperature in the room to observe if this affects your and my interpersonal communication.
1. You are ignorant of the test data.
2. I am ignorant of the test dat.
3. We are both ignorant of the true test.
I think their selection is tolerable. I have been able to find a little bit of most things, i.e., they might only have two of Jane's Addiction's 4+ CDs, but they do have something. I am only on my third day of this trial period, but I am actually extremely pleased with the service.
p l d/Reggae
The software is typical Real bloat, and it is unconfigurable to an annoyting degree. It not unattractive, and it is fairly easy to use. It can definitely be improved, but it's tolerable.
What I have started to fall in love with are Real's streaming channels. Here are the categories of channels:
Rock/Pop
Alternative/Punk
Rap/Hip-Ho
Soul/R&B
Country
Jazz
Electronica/Dance
Wor
Classical
Oldies
Vocal
New Age
Sacred/Gospel
Blues
Folk
Easy Listening
Soundtracks/Musicals
Children/Holiday
Each category has somewhere between 1 (Children/Holiday) and 19 (Rock/Pop) channels. I have been listening to the Indie Rock and the Ambient channels a lot at work, and I've been surprised and delighted with Real's quality of song selection. Not only do they play songs by some of my favorite artists in these genres, but they have introduced me to some really wonderful new artists. I've already bought two CDs of artists I discovered on this service. Also, a small box displays interesting tidbits of information about each song/artist as the song is being played.
I don't care if I can't copy the songs to my mp3 player of burn a cd. That's not why I want an MP3 service really. If am going to buy music, I am just going to buy a cd. I have a good backup that truly can sound better than any mp3 version (on the right equipment), and I can do anything I want with the mp3s I rip from it. If I am paying for music, I don't want restrictions.
With the Real service, I am not really paying for music. I am paying for a very high quality, on-demand, highly configurable Internet radio station.
For $10/month (only $5 for first three months), I get unlimited streaming access to over 325,000 songs. I can't listen to those songs without a computer and broadband connection. That kind of sucks, but it's only $10/month.
Also, you can burn certain songs to CD for $.79, as has been pointed out elsewhere, but I haven't really explored this much, as I have had no desire.
Anyhow, I highly recommend this service to people who feel similar to me. I really just want a badass Internet radio station, and Real's Rhapsody service is the best attempt I have seen so far.
Talk about code reuse...
God's not a deity.
He's just an advanced organic chemist with some crazy OOP skillz.
I think quitting smoking (again) is severely lowering my dopamine levels.
When I first looked at the topic, I saw, "Al Going Nowhere?" and I thought, "Great, now my personal failures are headlines on Slashdot."
If I'm going be supporting the RIAA with my money, by god, I want CD quality and the ability to manipulate the files however I wish.
Of course with copy-protected CD's and such, this option might be dying slowly.
Apple needs to get in tight with independent music labels and let bands choose what they want to charge for each song, minus some standard fee. For example, Apple can charge $.45 per song transaction fee, and if the band wants to each song to cost $.50, then the band would only get a $.05 return on each song.
They should really try to establish a legitimate community around this service. I'm thinking of something like AudioGalaxy, but with artists being fairly compensated.
Alright. Ogg Vorbis is gaining popularity, but most people are not willing / too busy to re-rip their collection.
If you really believe that Linux is not rapidly gaining popularity, you must be living in some closed-eyes, hands-over-ears world. Commercially backed distros like RedHat and Mandrake are making huge inroads into the server market, and even many of my non-IT friends have begun to ask me about Linux.
This kind of troll is just pathetic. But for some reason I just wasted three minutes replying. Oh well. I guess you win.
First, Kazaa has many 160 k/bps and 192 k/bps encoded mp3s, even of non-chart-topping bands, like Modest Mouse or Neutral Milk Hotel.
/.?
Second, it only takes a few minutes of searching to find some enticing d/ls. What else are you going to be doing while compiling or installing that new hardware? Reading
Third, you sound pretty bitter about this man; I think you should relax a little. Kazaa is a nice service. I have found tons of good music there, from French Gypsy swing music to Pakistani Sufi chants. It's not AudioGalaxy; it doesn't have the fun indie music I like. But I'd rather support those artists anyway. And I've lost count of how many cds I've bought because I found a few quality tracks of a band on Kazaa or a similar p2p app.
I think you're just mad, because you wish you had more available bandwidth, which is understandable.
Completely deriding a human, saying that Kazaa users have no lives and "no music taste" is a little overgeneralizing, and it really just makes you look like an irrational fool.
Back to the main topic for a second, I don't see myself ever using a service like Apple's. If I like a couple songs on an album, I want to buy the whole album, and I want those songs to be very good quality. Listening to specific songs has started to feel somewhat cheap to me. When a band creates an entire album, they (usually) put a lot of effort into the order and flow of the songs and the feel of the album as a whole. It's much more enjoyable. I can see this service evolving into a good way to sample music legitimately, but they will need a much wider selection before that reality.
With no sarcasm and much sincere desire to obtain quality information, I ask you, JDevers, what should I read instead of New Scientist?
I read New Scientist infrequently, but it always seems interesting to me. I subscribe to various programming journals for my profession and The Economist for general global issues, and I would really like to subscribe to a couple general science magazines. In particular, I would like a magazine that covers all aspects of emerging science and technology, something that has in-depth articles providing real substance, understandable to those who have a strong science background but do not work in the topic's field. Also, I have been trying to find a computer journal that covers new hardware, without excessive hype.
Rarely I stop by the local college library, but I never find exactly what I want. And my professional/familial time commitments pretty much demand home delivery of a magazine. And I don't want to spend an excessive amount of money on a journal that I read for personal edification, not professional; for my budget, my limit on a subscription fee is around $100 per year.
If anybody has some good suggestions, I am eager to be enlightened.
Or much like what Huxley wrote about.
Your nightmare scenario is a point of concern, but I do not fear this class division in the long term.
First, this process will be slow, and there will be interbreeding between GM and non-GM people. Each generation might have its own division, but the lesser class of each generation will likely be as good as the as the greater class of the previous generation.
Second, the GM process will eventually become routine, like childbirth. You don't see poor* people having babies out on the streets; they still manage to get to a hospital. Even that 60% of US households that are not connected to the Internet still manage to get healthcare.
Third, when a human becomes sufficiently intelligent, he begins to care about his fellow humans. Extreme intelligence and cruelty rarely combine. Of course there are exceptions, and I know some arrogant, solipsistic assholes. However, the majority of people I know who are true geniuses are also extremely thoughtful of others. They may not always be kind or patient, but they never seek malice or misfortune for others.
*Poor meaning those struggling around the poverty line, not the homeless.
Unless of course, giant mulitnational corporations control the technology and only the very rich and powerful can afford the upgrades for themselves and their children.
But that would neeeeeeever happen.
Heil Tessier-Ashpool. (what?)
Hahahahahaha.
So true.
Your points cannot be overemphasized, but your example of AI/robots is a little off. In that realm we are trying to recreate ourselves.
With genetic engineering, we are just trying to make a few improvements to ourselves, modify an existing product. It's a lot easier to tweak an engine than it is to create one from scratch.
However, I do have some fear of where this road leads, because from my experience, one should not go around tweaking a system until he understands it well enough to create it entirely on his own. It often leads to horrible, unanticipated results.
I have never understood "banning" certain types of research. What do we hope to accomplish?
Information longs to be free, and technology inherently desires improvement. If we don't allow certain scientific research, then this research will simply move to other countries, and the United States and its citizens will lose the opportunity to shape the methodoligies and goals of this research.
Perhaps a self-censorship system moderated by an international panel would work nicely, but it is utter foolishness (IMO) to let public opinion blindly dictate the direction of science. Enhancing the lives of the common citizen should always be the primary goal of science (IMO), but that doesn't mean that the public always/ever knows what is best.
I guess this is a step in the right direction. Have the most skilled in those fields moderate themselves. Sure, but I cringe whenever I see the words "censor" and "science" together in a sentence.
It seems that every week brings some new bill or rider or regulation whose intended goal is strip away yet another sliver of our shrinking collection of privacy rights and individual liberties.
Considering your unique set of experience and insight, what do you most fear in the impending struggle between the government's desire to have total information and the people's right to liberty? Or, in other words, against what do we need to be most vigilant?
Wow. I'm thinking the Wachowskis missed a incredibly opportunity here. Imagine seeing "There is no spork." on thousands of nerd-sites and in thousands of signatures. Ahhhh. It would have been priceless.
I am reminded of why I enjoyed the original Matrix so much, why I saw it three times in its opening week.
I am the only real programmer/computer-nerd/technophile in my circle of friends. The rest live primarily in the realms of literature, audio engineering/theory, and studio art. This fact is only important, because I remember them chiding me about the somewhat cliche plot and often hammy acting in the original Matrix. I couldn't exactly explain to them why I found the movie so thoroughly enjoyable. I didn't claim it to be a masterpiece, but I couldn't make them understand why I could and can still watch the movie so many times and still find it so entertaining.
If you read the article, you instantly feel the passion for innovation, Gaeta's and the Wachowskis' hunger to create new and beautiful cinematographic standards. And I think I can finally explain that to my snobby friends.
Sure, the story is a little trite. The acting, while strong in many places, has some definite flaws. But anyone who has a similar desire to understand complex systems and improve upon them, sees these hopes in the original Matrix. They are just a bunch of skilled and creative geeks trying to innovate new and beautiful tools. And as I'm sure many slashdotters understand, that fact makes me feel all warm and cozy inside.
There is merit to your point, but I think you are misconstruing the intent of the original parent post.
...telling people not to use a product because there are no decent competitors is just wrong.
I understood his point to be that people should consider not using TiVo, because there ARE decent competitor products. The only issue is that all of the current good rival products are computer-based and less user friendly.
Your post reminds me of many arguments for why people use Windows.
Heh. Your post is funny and indicative that you don't have much contact with Americans.
The average citizen of the United States is afraid of neither terrorism nor the government.
We are afraid that gas prices might go up more and that the economy might not rebound immediately. We are afraid that our children might be kidnapped. We are afraid that a minority group might erode our beautiful puritan culture. We are afraid of ourselves and our neighbors.
The culture of fear in the US is bizarrely ubiquitous and yet selective.