Actually it's more like A Symbol and Another Symbol. It's up to humans to assign meanings to those symbols. But since most computers have built in instructions for performing arithmetic and logical operations it could be argued that 1/0 and True/False are the most natural interpretations.
There is a simple technical fix to the shouting problem which is to feed the phone users voice back through the earpiece. I think it's known as sidetone in the telecoms industry.
When you have a normal conversation you unconsciously adjust the level of your own voice relative to other people talking and the general background noise level. Phone designers can use this fact to provide some control over the volume at which people talk when using the phone.
The amount of feedback has to be carefully judged otherwise you will talk to quietly and the user at the other end won't hear you properly. I suspect that this feature is left off of mobile phones because if people speak louder then the speach quality will be better at the other end.
This is one of the poorest arguments for ambulances. By this argument, it's amazing that human beings have managed to survive for millions of years without ambulances.
But synthesizers still can't match real instruments
But sythesisers *are* real instruments. And good hardware synths might be expensive but no more so than a professional quality "conventional" instrument (a friend of mine just spent 2500 pounds on an electric guitar for instance)
I think there's a danger of getting confused between sythesised and pre-programmed music here. Most synthesisers can be played and even programmed to a greater or lesser extent in real time. Also any decent synth controller whether keyboard, guitar or wind instrument based provides real time expressive control of the instrument.
Not that there is anything fundamentally wrong with pre-programmed music. It offers the abillity to create and juxtopose sounds and textures in ways that just would not be possible otherwise (just listen to some of sample based works of genius by yello). Music that is created in the studio doesn't always lend itself to live performance but it is no less of a valid art form for that.
Where synthesised music starts to go wrong for me is when people try to use it to imitate or stand in for other musicians and instruments. It's never convincing and usually just sounds completely naff.
And don't forget the pioneering work of Tangerine Dream. They performed (live) large scale improvised works using synthesizers and sequencers way back in the '70s. Programing and, performing everything on the spot. In fact in the context of live performance the line between programing and playing a synthesiser is hard to define
IMHO synths are real musical instruments and in the hands of a good player are every bit as expresive as any other instrument.
And only declare a symbol once! A number of so called 'engineers' where I work put external function declarations in C source files because they've C&Pd some code and can't be arsed to find for the appropriate header file (or don't know how to change the make file to include it). Worse still are people who call a function without even declaring it at all - because "It only takes int params so there's no neeed". Idiots!
I recently got management to launche a campaign to reduce the number of warnings caused by this sort of idiocy (we get about 5000 from a full rebuild). What do I find now? "#pragma nowarn", etc... give me strength!
As far as I know javascript does not have any exploits since without an exposed object model to operate on it can't do anything. It is purely a scripting language and its capabilities can be no greater than the thing that is being scripted. The thing that makes lastmeasure (shudder) posible is not javascript but the browsers object model - which would be just as easily exploited in any browser based scripting language.
So that I can listen to the BBC's massive audio archives. Some of it is now available in Windows Media format but you still can't access most of the site without using Real Player. Real Player may be (is) crap but having to miss out on the BBC's listen again pages would be even more crap.
I'm not comfortable with the idea that if you are not doing anything wrong then you have no need to worry. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong when I use the bathroom or go to bed at night but I don't want cameras in there.
I'd rather have a few features that are well designed and work properly than a lot of buggy software loaded down wih poorly designed, half completed features that shows obvious signs of having been rushed out of the door.
Take this crappy Sharp GX10 thing that vodafone have foisted on me. It takes pictures and has an infrared port but can you transfer the pictures to your PC via infrared? Not likely, you have to send them via email! The only thing the infra red offers is a modem. Add to this a calendar that you can't attach alarms to! an email address field that won't accept punctuation. A WAP browser that although usefull locks up after a bit of use... how I wish I hadn't lost my old Nokia.
imho windows based PCs are pretty poorly adapted to serve as the main TV set, DVD player etc.
First there are the physical aspects such as display contrast, fan noise and the noise given off by most DVD drives. These can be fixed but only if you spend more money on parts.
Then there are the software related problems such as the virus scanner kicking in or windows update needing attention or performance problems caused by heap fragmentation etc... this always happens at a crucial point in the drama. You can disable all this auto updating but then all the routine houskeeping has to be added to the list of inconveniences compared to traditional AV gear
I also have a half baked theory that the PC architecture is not capable of properly synchronizing sound and video due to the sound card and video card being seperately clocked. Hence the little glitches that occur in both when watching AV material on a PC. Maybe somebody with more technical knowledge of PC internals can enlighten me on this.
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Actually it's more like A Symbol and Another Symbol. It's up to humans to assign meanings to those symbols. But since most computers have built in instructions for performing arithmetic and logical operations it could be argued that 1/0 and True/False are the most natural interpretations.
I personally go to great lengths never to offend the tooth fairy either.
When you have a normal conversation you unconsciously adjust the level of your own voice relative to other people talking and the general background noise level. Phone designers can use this fact to provide some control over the volume at which people talk when using the phone.
The amount of feedback has to be carefully judged otherwise you will talk to quietly and the user at the other end won't hear you properly. I suspect that this feature is left off of mobile phones because if people speak louder then the speach quality will be better at the other end.
This is one of the poorest arguments for ambulances. By this argument, it's amazing that human beings have managed to survive for millions of years without ambulances.
But sythesisers *are* real instruments. And good hardware synths might be expensive but no more so than a professional quality "conventional" instrument (a friend of mine just spent 2500 pounds on an electric guitar for instance)
Oh dear I should have read tepples' post before posting
The GIGO principle applies to compputer music just as much as to data processing. You get out what you put in.
Not that there is anything fundamentally wrong with pre-programmed music. It offers the abillity to create and juxtopose sounds and textures in ways that just would not be possible otherwise (just listen to some of sample based works of genius by yello). Music that is created in the studio doesn't always lend itself to live performance but it is no less of a valid art form for that.
Where synthesised music starts to go wrong for me is when people try to use it to imitate or stand in for other musicians and instruments. It's never convincing and usually just sounds completely naff.
IMHO synths are real musical instruments and in the hands of a good player are every bit as expresive as any other instrument.
I recently got management to launche a campaign to reduce the number of warnings caused by this sort of idiocy (we get about 5000 from a full rebuild). What do I find now? "#pragma nowarn", etc... give me strength!
I'll have to add it to my collection of VST plug-ins. The more the better.
I'm suprised that nobody has emulated the SID chip in software yet.
I think it should have said "hoarders of C64s". After all you'd have to be a bit of a junk collector to still have one.
Interestingly, GEM is now freely available as OpenGEM available under the GPL license.
I call that a pretty good trade. Where exactly can I find a deal like that - I've got a couple of old keyboards up in the loft.
Abort, Retry or Fail? I never did work out the difference between Abort and Fail.
As far as I know javascript does not have any exploits since without an exposed object model to operate on it can't do anything. It is purely a scripting language and its capabilities can be no greater than the thing that is being scripted. The thing that makes lastmeasure (shudder) posible is not javascript but the browsers object model - which would be just as easily exploited in any browser based scripting language.
Thanks for the link I'll give it a try.
Nah - it's just a stunt. They might as well just put 3 copies of the CD in the box and save you the trouble of copying it yourself.
So that I can listen to the BBC's massive audio archives. Some of it is now available in Windows Media format but you still can't access most of the site without using Real Player. Real Player may be (is) crap but having to miss out on the BBC's listen again pages would be even more crap.
I'm not comfortable with the idea that if you are not doing anything wrong then you have no need to worry. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong when I use the bathroom or go to bed at night but I don't want cameras in there.
Take this crappy Sharp GX10 thing that vodafone have foisted on me. It takes pictures and has an infrared port but can you transfer the pictures to your PC via infrared? Not likely, you have to send them via email! The only thing the infra red offers is a modem. Add to this a calendar that you can't attach alarms to! an email address field that won't accept punctuation. A WAP browser that although usefull locks up after a bit of use... how I wish I hadn't lost my old Nokia.
First there are the physical aspects such as display contrast, fan noise and the noise given off by most DVD drives. These can be fixed but only if you spend more money on parts.
Then there are the software related problems such as the virus scanner kicking in or windows update needing attention or performance problems caused by heap fragmentation etc... this always happens at a crucial point in the drama. You can disable all this auto updating but then all the routine houskeeping has to be added to the list of inconveniences compared to traditional AV gear
I also have a half baked theory that the PC architecture is not capable of properly synchronizing sound and video due to the sound card and video card being seperately clocked. Hence the little glitches that occur in both when watching AV material on a PC. Maybe somebody with more technical knowledge of PC internals can enlighten me on this.
But can you have information without configuration?
Best first post in a long time.