Probably because it would be fairly easy (size permitting) to see repetition in a simple shape like a torus. That's just a three dimensional version of Asteroids.
This is really a shame too. MIDI offers the potential to micromanage every instrument if you like, but so often sample libraries don't have the necessary nuance (or worse, you might not have space in your sampler for everything you want) Instruments with a fast attack can be worked around pretty well by bringing up the volume from something very low, but there's not much you can do with stuff like "slow strings". That's the sort of patch that's pretty much guaranteed never to sound good in a classical setting.
I've noticed that some of the best synth programming appears in the music from the tracker scene. There's a bunch of people who have a very good handle on what their software can do, and they often push it to the max. Ditto for some of the music targeted at the OPL chips in older Sound Blasters.
I'm with you almost all the way, except on compiling not benefiting from parallelization. If that were the case, programs like distcc would be pointless.
I do have my doubts about Intel's "more cores than you can shake a stick at" approach. I can't see the use in more than a few full-speed cores. They all have to be able to get at instructions quickly or most will just spin their wheels so hundreds of cores are a big challenge in more than just a making them fit and operate together sense. How much can we parallelize before most of the cores are doing little to nothing because their caches are empty? For that matter, the average user doesn't usually utilize one CPU core fully. Even on Dual-core (including actual dual CPU) desktop machines both cores are rarely needed for a responsive computer.
Intel's standpoint seems to be that there's a world of data crunching lurking in all our computers (automated photo sorting, face recognition, and photo-realistic rendering), but none of these strike me as killer apps waiting to happen. All are things we could get used to and come to depend on, but I don't think any of them are being held back just because of our computing capacity, although photo-realistic rendering may be close. I'm pretty sure these aren't solved problems yet. Even if we were itching to do all this, one can only sort so many photos. It seems a bit wasteful to have all that power waiting around most of the time. Are we really nearly living in a world in which computing power is so plentiful that we can have that kind of ability even though we hardly ever use it?
On the other hand, AMD's approach seems to have more immediate application. Video/audio encoding and other parallel processes are things that many of us do do frequently. A couple hundred cores could be pressed into use for this, but that seems much less elegant than purpose-built hardware.
I don't know which approach will be best in the long-run. Probably both. It does seem to me that Intel is at best a few years to early to be hyping large numbers of cores.
The way you've mixed fact and utter bullshit together is intriguing. While it's true that some sound cards do come with a wavetable synth these days (or more likely rely on the synth bundled with Windows), merely using a halfway decent synth won't "sound almost as great as any recording". In fact listening (with Timidity, no less) to the file you reference leaves me astonished at your lack of perception.
A synth is an instrument like any other. In other words it takes as much skill to orchestrate a full orchestra as it does to play any one instrument. In light of this, it's ludicrous to make a blanket statement like "In these days of wavetable synths, any throw-away MIDI file sounds almost as good as leaning over the conductor's shoulder."
I'll quickly concede that given a very good MIDI file and a decent synth you'll get something fairly good, but not because wavetable synths are some magic bullet that turns crap into gold. It would be because of the quality of the MIDI file, completely and absolutely. You know how they say that a good musician can make even a lousy instrument sound great? Well they say it because it's true. The quality of an instrument means very little to anyone except the people stuck playing them. If you play that same good MIDI file through the lamest synth you can find it's still going to sound phenomenal. Likewise, playing the MIDI files you've linked to will sound passable at best (depending on instrumentation -- harpsichords won't suffer from the lack of attention to dynamics) on whatever synth you choose.
In summary, MIDI isn't any better than it once was. MIDI has always been fine. Unfortunately, orchestrators are no better than they were a few years ago. Don't get me wrong; I'm not down on MIDI, just on horrible MIDI files. It's a misrepresentation of available MIDIs to recommend them to classical music fans with working ears. A MIDI file *can* sound good. The odds you're likely to find this file? About the same as the odds of finding the fountain of youth. All the good orchestrators are at work on stuff like movie scores.
"As a clueless amateur who has managed to lay my hands on a few instruments, I now prepare to deliver my infallible wisdom. First of all, he's not actually playing those instruments. He just recorded video clips and rearranged them. So you see, he didn't actually have to play the notes in order or at any particular time. Real instrumentalists *do* have to play notes in sequence. Ergo, he is a terrible musician.
Even though I'm a musician in the loftiest, most pure sense of the word, I am not rich and famous. I now mention a current band to show that I am 'with it'. I also hate them for their success. I've never been part of a real recording session, but I know just how it works, and quite frankly, this guy does not meet my own personal standards of musicianship.
So while this guy may be skilled at making music, he is not a skilled musician. This is so obvious that I can't be bothered to explain my logic."
Starting from the top:
Thank you for you explanation of the nuances of playing an instrument. Because we all missed the part where he didn't actually play them. The way he just plunked a few notes then assembled them into a piece was kind of like the point, you know? At the beginning he showed us that.
Now your knowledge of modern music is somewhat lacking, both in the areas everyone should know (current groups) and in the areas you propose to explain (recording). Certainly the amount of editing any particular group needs varies, but speaking as someone with actual knowledge of the field, modern music is very heavily edited, and has been for a number of years. When he says that modern music is made "just like that" he's right on the money. A sample is generally longer than his, but there is a phenomenal amount of cut'n'paste work in every single song you hear on the radio (unless you're listening to oldies or acoustic music).
Nice attempt to make yourself look moderate here. "The man is skilled. Skilled at sampling and editing." These sound like words that would leave George Bush's mouth, by the way. You've managed to develop a strange definition of "musician" which doesn't seem to line up with whether a person makes music. I suggest syncing with reality at your earliest convenience!
Assuming you're using the Synaptics driver in X.org, it's much more configurable than the Windows version. Try "man synaptics" to see everything it does. Hardware permitting, it supports multi-finger taps (so you can click with up to three user-configurable buttons just by tapping with a different number of fingers), corner taps (triggering a button of your choice for each corner), vertical and horizontal scrolling (only one of which is supported under Windows, not that it works properly), and also circular scrolling, meaning that you can move your finger in a circle to scroll rather than a bunch of little strokes.
About a week ago the tag for articles suspected to be hoaxes read, "The truthiness of this article has been questioned." I would have brought it up, but I couldn't figure out where to do so. It's since been fixed.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe playing on a non-PvP server.
Probably because it would be fairly easy (size permitting) to see repetition in a simple shape like a torus. That's just a three dimensional version of Asteroids.
For that matter, old theories like jumping and tall buildings rule out a two dimensional universe.
Is God the bag? That seems unglamorous.
Not using hard drive space is a much bigger waste than putting stuff in it. What did you buy it for?
Gotcha. I couldn't figure out where her occupation had been mentioned, and all I could figure was that you thought she was a shopkeeper or something.
I don't think that "Turkish" is her occupation. Perhaps you don't know that "queuing up" means standing in line.
This is really a shame too. MIDI offers the potential to micromanage every instrument if you like, but so often sample libraries don't have the necessary nuance (or worse, you might not have space in your sampler for everything you want) Instruments with a fast attack can be worked around pretty well by bringing up the volume from something very low, but there's not much you can do with stuff like "slow strings". That's the sort of patch that's pretty much guaranteed never to sound good in a classical setting.
I've noticed that some of the best synth programming appears in the music from the tracker scene. There's a bunch of people who have a very good handle on what their software can do, and they often push it to the max. Ditto for some of the music targeted at the OPL chips in older Sound Blasters.
You're probably right about that. I suppose Gentoo users should be excited then.
I'm with you almost all the way, except on compiling not benefiting from parallelization. If that were the case, programs like distcc would be pointless.
I do have my doubts about Intel's "more cores than you can shake a stick at" approach. I can't see the use in more than a few full-speed cores. They all have to be able to get at instructions quickly or most will just spin their wheels so hundreds of cores are a big challenge in more than just a making them fit and operate together sense. How much can we parallelize before most of the cores are doing little to nothing because their caches are empty? For that matter, the average user doesn't usually utilize one CPU core fully. Even on Dual-core (including actual dual CPU) desktop machines both cores are rarely needed for a responsive computer.
Intel's standpoint seems to be that there's a world of data crunching lurking in all our computers (automated photo sorting, face recognition, and photo-realistic rendering), but none of these strike me as killer apps waiting to happen. All are things we could get used to and come to depend on, but I don't think any of them are being held back just because of our computing capacity, although photo-realistic rendering may be close. I'm pretty sure these aren't solved problems yet. Even if we were itching to do all this, one can only sort so many photos. It seems a bit wasteful to have all that power waiting around most of the time. Are we really nearly living in a world in which computing power is so plentiful that we can have that kind of ability even though we hardly ever use it?
On the other hand, AMD's approach seems to have more immediate application. Video/audio encoding and other parallel processes are things that many of us do do frequently. A couple hundred cores could be pressed into use for this, but that seems much less elegant than purpose-built hardware.
I don't know which approach will be best in the long-run. Probably both. It does seem to me that Intel is at best a few years to early to be hyping large numbers of cores.
I hate to tell you, but those acronyms would be just as mysterious if they were spelled out and put in a pretty GUI.
"Yeah. Would you chose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time ? I wouldn't."
There's something to be said for a guy who can poke around in brains without killing/zombifying enough people to be jailed.
The way you've mixed fact and utter bullshit together is intriguing. While it's true that some sound cards do come with a wavetable synth these days (or more likely rely on the synth bundled with Windows), merely using a halfway decent synth won't "sound almost as great as any recording". In fact listening (with Timidity, no less) to the file you reference leaves me astonished at your lack of perception.
A synth is an instrument like any other. In other words it takes as much skill to orchestrate a full orchestra as it does to play any one instrument. In light of this, it's ludicrous to make a blanket statement like "In these days of wavetable synths, any throw-away MIDI file sounds almost as good as leaning over the conductor's shoulder."
I'll quickly concede that given a very good MIDI file and a decent synth you'll get something fairly good, but not because wavetable synths are some magic bullet that turns crap into gold. It would be because of the quality of the MIDI file, completely and absolutely. You know how they say that a good musician can make even a lousy instrument sound great? Well they say it because it's true. The quality of an instrument means very little to anyone except the people stuck playing them. If you play that same good MIDI file through the lamest synth you can find it's still going to sound phenomenal. Likewise, playing the MIDI files you've linked to will sound passable at best (depending on instrumentation -- harpsichords won't suffer from the lack of attention to dynamics) on whatever synth you choose.
In summary, MIDI isn't any better than it once was. MIDI has always been fine. Unfortunately, orchestrators are no better than they were a few years ago. Don't get me wrong; I'm not down on MIDI, just on horrible MIDI files. It's a misrepresentation of available MIDIs to recommend them to classical music fans with working ears. A MIDI file *can* sound good. The odds you're likely to find this file? About the same as the odds of finding the fountain of youth. All the good orchestrators are at work on stuff like movie scores.
Then perhaps one should have saved the file rather than piping it to mpg123.
Uh oh. Are "Free as in _________" jokes the next big thing on Slashdot? That would be free as in radicals if it were.
He's only as talentless as you are insightful.
Translation:
"As a clueless amateur who has managed to lay my hands on a few instruments, I now prepare to deliver my infallible wisdom. First of all, he's not actually playing those instruments. He just recorded video clips and rearranged them. So you see, he didn't actually have to play the notes in order or at any particular time. Real instrumentalists *do* have to play notes in sequence. Ergo, he is a terrible musician.
Even though I'm a musician in the loftiest, most pure sense of the word, I am not rich and famous. I now mention a current band to show that I am 'with it'. I also hate them for their success. I've never been part of a real recording session, but I know just how it works, and quite frankly, this guy does not meet my own personal standards of musicianship.
So while this guy may be skilled at making music, he is not a skilled musician. This is so obvious that I can't be bothered to explain my logic."
Starting from the top:
Thank you for you explanation of the nuances of playing an instrument. Because we all missed the part where he didn't actually play them. The way he just plunked a few notes then assembled them into a piece was kind of like the point, you know? At the beginning he showed us that.
Now your knowledge of modern music is somewhat lacking, both in the areas everyone should know (current groups) and in the areas you propose to explain (recording). Certainly the amount of editing any particular group needs varies, but speaking as someone with actual knowledge of the field, modern music is very heavily edited, and has been for a number of years. When he says that modern music is made "just like that" he's right on the money. A sample is generally longer than his, but there is a phenomenal amount of cut'n'paste work in every single song you hear on the radio (unless you're listening to oldies or acoustic music).
Nice attempt to make yourself look moderate here. "The man is skilled. Skilled at sampling and editing." These sound like words that would leave George Bush's mouth, by the way. You've managed to develop a strange definition of "musician" which doesn't seem to line up with whether a person makes music. I suggest syncing with reality at your earliest convenience!
Assuming you're using the Synaptics driver in X.org, it's much more configurable than the Windows version. Try "man synaptics" to see everything it does. Hardware permitting, it supports multi-finger taps (so you can click with up to three user-configurable buttons just by tapping with a different number of fingers), corner taps (triggering a button of your choice for each corner), vertical and horizontal scrolling (only one of which is supported under Windows, not that it works properly), and also circular scrolling, meaning that you can move your finger in a circle to scroll rather than a bunch of little strokes.
Truth off? We're presented with a succession of facts, and whoever ignores them best wins. The winner gets a career in politics.
My gut says you don't know what you're talking about.
And here's a link, as if my statement's truthiness needed augmentation.
About a week ago the tag for articles suspected to be hoaxes read, "The truthiness of this article has been questioned." I would have brought it up, but I couldn't figure out where to do so. It's since been fixed.
Good one. Now if that were usable in the same way, all Colbert's work would have been in vain. Luckily, you're just a grammatically challenged ./er.
With a UID that low, GP is likely dead.