If I pick up my violin and play Mozart, then that's not music because I didn't write the notes? (assume for the moment that I can play the violin sufficiently well to reproduce the piece more or less in the manner Mozart intended) Or is it just the sound? Then is Mozart played on a synthesizer not music, because it isn't expressive on the part of the performer (a machine)? What if the synthesizer is so good that the human ear can't differentiate between it and a recording of a virtuoso violinist?
What about a compositum, where I've taken a cool backbeat from another song, and improvise over that? According to your definition, what I'd be playing would be art, but the backbeat that (perhaps) provides the inspiration was originally music when played by the original creator, but now that I'm re-using it, it isn't music? Is the whole of it music, or just the part?
What about a boom-box? If I have a recording of Itzhak Perlman playing that same Mozart piece, is it music if I play it out loud? Or was it only music the first time he played it?
I'm terribly sorry, but you've done nothing but muddy the waters. Perhaps you could make a more precise definition that I could work with? Also, you seem very angry -- that's a strange self defeating choice as a method to appreciate art or music.
Boy, am I glad you piped up. I can't tell you how much I hate to find myself tapping my toe to what I believe to be some catchy tune, just to find that not only is it popular, but now you're telling me that it wasn't even music. Boy, I'm so ashamed, I should probably post this anonymously.
Can you just go ahead and define music for us, and settle it once and for all? Thanks, that'd be just grand of you -- it'll save me lots of undue embarrassment.
Oh yeah, well I just inherited a code base of 2.8 trillion lines of assembly code, and I have to read it over a 12.734 baud VAX connection! Why, back in my day...
Anyway... I've taken on a few large-scale software projects before, and my approach has always been "read twice, hack once". I agree with the the parent, and I'll add a note: for the love of everything sacred and unholy, use revision control, and don't trust it -- that is, back up incessantly. Document the hell out of your process. Once you've really learned the system, you might want to back out some of the newbie mistakes that you're making right now.
And yes. Learning a big system takes a lot of time -- you should be reading much more than writing until you've learned it. I find it helpful to diagram dependencies / draw up finite state machines.
True, you need a browser to use Sage's GUI, but you certainly mustn't run Mozilla. It works in every reasonably modern browser, including Chrome (despite my opposition to supporting beta browsers) -- hell -- Willam Stein even uses from his iPhone. If you can't get it to run under NoScript... that's because it uses lots of javascript, and you've disabled it. It's like complaining that your car gets bad gas mileage after you let the air out of the tires!
However, I must disagree with your description of Sage as "labyrinthine". It's got gobs of documentation that's easy to find and navigate, and it's a Python, which is ridiculously easy to learn. Furthermore, the community is large, and it's easy to get help, both on irc and over the mailing lists.
(disclaimer -- I'm a Sage developer, and I love the notebook)
I just read up on "reactionless drives" and I don't agree. If this works, it will be similar to the Dean drive. From a naive point of view, it'll look like a reactionless drive. But on closer inspection, work is being done on the magnetic fields in a vacuum -- just like the Dean drive does work on the surface it rests on via friction.
does anyone else not find the idea of them eventually forming some semblance of civilization possible
I dunno, we've been studying humans for a few thousand years and still don't have any evidence that species evolved from primates can form a civilization...
- Personal communication between myself and my wife.
I'm not ashamed about anything we say to eachother in private; there's nothing illegal, scandalous, or even risqué going on in our emails. No employer would fire us for the content, nobody would lynch us, etc. All the same, it's very personal, and I don't want to share with the world.
I replied to FP because on cursory inspection of the replies, nobody seemed to be pointing out the obvious. Since the "ask slashdot" was (per the norm) somebody begging for the obvious to be pointed out to them, they definitely won't read past the first thread.
Wut? Academia is all like "YOU CAN'T LOOK AT IT YOU'RE NOT AN EXPERT!!! ZOMG! AND YOU'RE A WOMAN GET OUT BEFORE MY PRECIOUS ACADEMIC BRAIN CATCHES COOTIES".
She's got an idea that perhaps nobody else has tried before. Now all she needs is a grad student in Medieval Italian who doesn't have a thesis project yet. Of course... it's ridiculously easy to come up with anagrams in English -- and Italian has a smaller alphabet and a higher vowel density, so my concern is that this might be an exercise in reading tea leaves.
You're a fan of disorganized religion, eh? How's that work? You get lost on your way to church, and when you get there, the priest has NO idea where he saw God last, much less where he is now? The name of the GOd or goDs change all the time, as does their message(s)? The priest keeps forgetting to put pants on, but that's ok because the pulpit will cover up the naughty bits if he can ever find it...
Hmm... yes, this does sound more entertaining than an organized religion. Where can I sign up? Oh, you lost the form? Well... call back if you find it...
Oh, I dunno... if the trolls are organized about it, they could change the article 1-2 letters at a time into pretty much whatever they wanted. By my calculation, 70% of words in the English dictionary are connected by sequences of distance-2 Levenshtein edits.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahah, you see my point! I don't gnaw my fingernails in terror because I back up regularly!
Check the context. We were talking about the definition of music, not who gets credit for what.
There isn't one. All software has bugs. Even your revision control system. Don't trust it. Make backups. Redundancy is the only way to be safe.
If I pick up my violin and play Mozart, then that's not music because I didn't write the notes? (assume for the moment that I can play the violin sufficiently well to reproduce the piece more or less in the manner Mozart intended) Or is it just the sound? Then is Mozart played on a synthesizer not music, because it isn't expressive on the part of the performer (a machine)? What if the synthesizer is so good that the human ear can't differentiate between it and a recording of a virtuoso violinist?
What about a compositum, where I've taken a cool backbeat from another song, and improvise over that? According to your definition, what I'd be playing would be art, but the backbeat that (perhaps) provides the inspiration was originally music when played by the original creator, but now that I'm re-using it, it isn't music? Is the whole of it music, or just the part?
What about a boom-box? If I have a recording of Itzhak Perlman playing that same Mozart piece, is it music if I play it out loud? Or was it only music the first time he played it?
I'm terribly sorry, but you've done nothing but muddy the waters. Perhaps you could make a more precise definition that I could work with? Also, you seem very angry -- that's a strange self defeating choice as a method to appreciate art or music.
Boy, am I glad you piped up. I can't tell you how much I hate to find myself tapping my toe to what I believe to be some catchy tune, just to find that not only is it popular, but now you're telling me that it wasn't even music. Boy, I'm so ashamed, I should probably post this anonymously.
Can you just go ahead and define music for us, and settle it once and for all? Thanks, that'd be just grand of you -- it'll save me lots of undue embarrassment.
Oh yeah, well I just inherited a code base of 2.8 trillion lines of assembly code, and I have to read it over a 12.734 baud VAX connection! Why, back in my day...
Anyway... I've taken on a few large-scale software projects before, and my approach has always been "read twice, hack once". I agree with the the parent, and I'll add a note: for the love of everything sacred and unholy, use revision control, and don't trust it -- that is, back up incessantly. Document the hell out of your process. Once you've really learned the system, you might want to back out some of the newbie mistakes that you're making right now.
And yes. Learning a big system takes a lot of time -- you should be reading much more than writing until you've learned it. I find it helpful to diagram dependencies / draw up finite state machines.
Join the fun! You can use a Linux calculator from your browser -- no Linux required!
http://sagenb.org/
True, you need a browser to use Sage's GUI, but you certainly mustn't run Mozilla. It works in every reasonably modern browser, including Chrome (despite my opposition to supporting beta browsers) -- hell -- Willam Stein even uses from his iPhone. If you can't get it to run under NoScript... that's because it uses lots of javascript, and you've disabled it. It's like complaining that your car gets bad gas mileage after you let the air out of the tires!
However, I must disagree with your description of Sage as "labyrinthine". It's got gobs of documentation that's easy to find and navigate, and it's a Python, which is ridiculously easy to learn. Furthermore, the community is large, and it's easy to get help, both on irc and over the mailing lists.
(disclaimer -- I'm a Sage developer, and I love the notebook)
But... Iron Man was a Fe male...
Try that with [person] replaced with "the president" in a public place. See how that goes, and report back here once you escape from gitmo.
I just read up on "reactionless drives" and I don't agree. If this works, it will be similar to the Dean drive. From a naive point of view, it'll look like a reactionless drive. But on closer inspection, work is being done on the magnetic fields in a vacuum -- just like the Dean drive does work on the surface it rests on via friction.
does anyone else not find the idea of them eventually forming some semblance of civilization possible
I dunno, we've been studying humans for a few thousand years and still don't have any evidence that species evolved from primates can form a civilization...
Another one for the list:
- Personal communication between myself and my wife.
I'm not ashamed about anything we say to eachother in private; there's nothing illegal, scandalous, or even risqué going on in our emails. No employer would fire us for the content, nobody would lynch us, etc. All the same, it's very personal, and I don't want to share with the world.
Yeah, probably. Because now you're guilty of possession of CP and destruction of evidence.
Nah... just do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK2tWVj6lXw
I replied to FP because on cursory inspection of the replies, nobody seemed to be pointing out the obvious. Since the "ask slashdot" was (per the norm) somebody begging for the obvious to be pointed out to them, they definitely won't read past the first thread.
Don't be dumb! Looks like you can get a pair of complete refill sets for $33 to me...
Yeah. These guys have a good front-end to WOW that takes care of all the trudgery:
http://progressquest.com/
Wut? Academia is all like "YOU CAN'T LOOK AT IT YOU'RE NOT AN EXPERT!!! ZOMG! AND YOU'RE A WOMAN GET OUT BEFORE MY PRECIOUS ACADEMIC BRAIN CATCHES COOTIES".
She's got an idea that perhaps nobody else has tried before. Now all she needs is a grad student in Medieval Italian who doesn't have a thesis project yet. Of course... it's ridiculously easy to come up with anagrams in English -- and Italian has a smaller alphabet and a higher vowel density, so my concern is that this might be an exercise in reading tea leaves.
You're a fan of disorganized religion, eh? How's that work? You get lost on your way to church, and when you get there, the priest has NO idea where he saw God last, much less where he is now? The name of the GOd or goDs change all the time, as does their message(s)? The priest keeps forgetting to put pants on, but that's ok because the pulpit will cover up the naughty bits if he can ever find it...
Hmm... yes, this does sound more entertaining than an organized religion. Where can I sign up? Oh, you lost the form? Well... call back if you find it...
I want polar bear for breakfast... fatty meats are best in the morning. I prefer leaner meats like cheetah for dinner.
I prefer a whitelist approach -- it's much harder for them to sneak shit in that way.
Oh, I dunno... if the trolls are organized about it, they could change the article 1-2 letters at a time into pretty much whatever they wanted. By my calculation, 70% of words in the English dictionary are connected by sequences of distance-2 Levenshtein edits.
Now I've seen everything.
No, I daresay you haven't.
Thanks, that's certainly what I meant. I apologize for my lapse in pedantry.