If the guitar is in tune with itself, an internal computer can shift pitches to give alternate tunings. That's what the Line6 Variax does. The problem is that if the guitar isn't in tune with itself, how does the guitar computer know if you are out of tune, or if you're just bending a string? You could run a guitar through an Antares Auto-Tune, but then when you bent a string, it would jump from one pitch to the next like a piano, and you'd lose a lot of the guitar's expressiveness for soloing.
The good thing about the Gibson is that you only pull on the knob when you have strummed the open strings, so the guitar knows that no notes are being bent... it knows what the pitches should be when you strum open strings, so it has no problem tuning it to those pitches.
Your idea could be implemented if, like on the Gibson, there were a button to let the guitar know it was in "tuning mode." When the button was pressed, the guitar would listen to see how out of tune it was, then when the button was released, the pitch-correction computer inside could change the pitch of each string by exactly the right amount to bring the guitar's output into tune, although the strings themselves would still be out of tune, and you could still bend them all you want without having the pitch "snap" to the next note like a vocal that has been auto-tuned.
Gibson's self-tuning guitar uses an entirely different technology from the Line6 Variax. Both can give you alternate tunings with the press of a button, but only the Gibson physically changes string tension to tune an out-of-tune guitar.
With the line6, you have to get the guitar into tune through normal means, and then the guitar's internal software will shift the pitch of the strings a predetermined amount to make it sound as if the guitar is in an alternate tuning (there's a great tutorial here on how to do this with a Line6 Variax guitar and the Workbench software which comes with certain Line6 hardware, or can be purchased separately.)
The Gibson, on the other hand, uses little motors to change the tension of the strings. So if you bump the tuners of the Gibson against a microphone stand, throwing the guitar out of tune, all you have to do is turn the guitar volume down so no one hears what you are doing, strum all the strings, and pull the knob to tell the guitar to tune itself. With a Variax, you'd have to tune by ear or with an electronic tuner in this circumstance.
I could see Line6 eventually offering a self-tuning bridge, giving the best of both worlds - infinite choices of virtual pickups, bodies, and scale lengths, alternate tunings at the touch of a button, as well as the ability to get the instrument into tune with itself with the touch of a button. I'm drooling just thinking about it.
I'm wondering why royalties would need to be dropped to make a profit at 25 cents per song? I'll just throw some numbers out here and see if they stick:
If you could sell blocks of 10 songs, that would get you $2.50 minus 1.00 in royalties at ten cents per song, minus 15 cents for credit card processing fees and 6 cents for the bandwidth = $1.29 in profit per transaction. Let's say you spend $1.00 on advertising per customer, that takes it down to.29 per transaction; if you could pull in 1000 customers per day, that would get you $290, after sending half to the military-industrial complex for taxes you'd get to keep $145 per day, or $52,925 per year.
I don't know if I'd aim for a pricepoint of 25 cents per song for everything... established artists could be sold at 50 cents per song, which would put an album at $5.00 - still in the hot-dog-and-soda range, and people might value it more if they paid a little more for it. New artists looking for more exposure could go for.25 per song or $2.50 per album (the hotdog XOR soda range) and get more impulse buyers. This seems pretty reasonable to me, but I'd like to hear what objections people have...
Sounds like a good subject for a Slashdot poll: What is your least favorite thing about the record companies that make up the RIAA?
For me, it would be hard to choose, although my choices would probably be these (in this order:)
They screw the artists with contracts which basically amount to indentured servitude.
They screw the consumers with excessive markups (made possible by # 3 below)
They have destroyed the integrity of radio with the ongoing practice of payola
They engage in mean-spirited legal attacks against defenseless people
They eat babies.
Well, that about sums it up for why I don't like major labels. Luckily, there are tons of great bands putting out their own stuff, so I can support the bands directly and avoid giving any cash to Their Satanic Majesties. Really we don't need these companies. We can support our local music scenes and independent touring bands. Do it for the poor little babies that the RIAA would purchase and eat if they got your money. That's right - think of the children!
BTW, can anyone here say "fair play and substantial justice" without snickering? No? Then you aren't qualified for a spot on the Supreme Court. But don't feel bad - neither am I.
Your request for documentation sparked my curiosity, so I went looking... After half an hour of searching the 'net, it seems to be the case that Larry Craig has never mentioned homosexuals either in Congressional debate or in any publication. He has of course voted along with most of the Republican party and part of the Democratic party, against the best interests of homosexuals, but it looks to me like depictions of him as a hardcore gay-hater are quite inflated.
He's most likely just another "good ole boy" who is willing to sell the rights of gays down the river in exchange for some bubba votes back home and some mutual back scratching from his GOP colleagues. This makes his outing less of a story, and makes him less of a tragic villain. Probably so many exaggerations are flying around because we like to hear a good dramatic story, and the reality of the situation isn't all that engaging.
Not that homophobia in Congress isn't a bad thing, and not that he didn't participate in it with his votes, but Larry Craig wasn't at the center of it, and he was never Jerry Falwell's right-hand man. Maybe the next scandal will be more titillating:-).
You're right about your pickup being safer than the Pinto despite having the gas tank in the same location... the Pinto's rear bumper was called "ornamental" at the time. And while the bumper on the Crown Victoria isn't wimpy, the problem there seems to stem from the fact that people seem to run into parked Crown Vics while doing 70 MPH - this goes with the territory of being a police vehicle. It's going to be parked next to the freeway some of the time, or sometimes even on the freeway, if there has been an accident and the Crown Vic is being used as a barrier to keep accident victims from getting run over. So for a normal rear-end collision where the crashee and the crasher are both going pretty fast, the Crown Vic wouldn't be that bad because the difference in speeds isn't that great, but the difference between parked and 70 MPH is a situation that (as far as I know) cars aren't tested for during the design process. Since the safety of the whole country's police officers and deputies is at stake, I think it would be reasonable for the Federal government to hand Ford some cash to design the next version for maximum rear-end-impact safety.
For some reason the Pinto issue and the carbon fiber airplane issue of the main thread reminds me of a documentary I once saw on the old British Lotus race cars. Apparently the head engineer at Lotus was so weight-conscious that if the car didn't fall apart as it crossed the finish line, he considered the components to have been made too heavy, and would lighten them before the next race. This policy cost them a few drivers, who got frustrated at the questionable reliability and safety of the cars it gave them. You can't get something for nothing, and the crash-resistant mass of your truck (and my truck, a Ford with one gas tank in front of the rear axle and one behind it) will eventually go the way of the dinosaurs as we run out of gas to push these beasts around. I'm pretty sure the vehicles of the future will be electric, and they'll be made out of something strong yet lightweight like carbon fiber. Hopefully we won't see any dangerous Lotus-like extremes from car manufacturers on the way from here to there.
Although it's been available in aftermarket parts for a while, it's now available in production cars as well... the current BMW M3 has a carbon-fiber roof. Sure, it's a $50k production car, but I expect the material will trickle down to more and more vehicles each year. It's strong and light, and we need strong, light materials to increase fuel-efficiency across the board.
The problem with the Pinto was that in a rear-end collision, the gas tank, which was located behind the axle, could be pushed into the differential-housing bolts, causing the tank to rupture.
GP is most likely referring to "The Myth of the Ford Pinto Case," written in 1991 by Gary Schwartz, in which he pointed out that the fatality rates per million cars on the road was lower for Pintos as compared with a number of other comparable subcompact cars. It's an interesting read.
The original 1960-63 Corvair had a tendency to fishtail especially if the tires weren't properly inflated (and the "proper" tire inflations, , but (1) later Corvairs fixed that problem, and (2) a number of other cars of that era had a tendency to fishtail. From 1965 on, the Corvair had an excellent fully-independent rear suspension like the Corvette.
So could the original Corvair, the Pinto, and the Crown Victoria have been designed better? Sure. Were their designs worse than average? Maybe not. Will cars be designed better in the future as a result of all this attention that has been brought to design flaws? I hope so.
Steve Albini has been around the industry for a while, and here is what he has to say on the matter... Also, Courtney Love of Hole pretty much agrees with his assessment. When you factor in "recoupable expenses" bands really don't get much at all from recordings until they hit gold or platinum. Of course, YMMV and I sincerely hope that it does.
The record companies that make up the RIAA have provided income for some artists, and debt for others.
Before the abolition of slavery in the US, some abolitionists refused to buy cotton clothing, because the cotton in it had been picked by slaves. And although buying cotton clothing provided jobs for the slaves, their opposition to the system was too strong for them to want to be a part of it.
I feel similarly about the major record labels. The bands on major labels which I am most likely to enjoy (because they're doing something innovative) are the same bands who are most likely to get screwed by the system. I can't buy a major-label CD with a clear conscience, because I'm handing money to a system that abuses musicians. I can, however, buy tickets to shows with independent musicians when they come to my town (which is, luckily for me, all the time) and when I'm at the show, I can buy their CD right from the band, ensuring that they get most of the money from the CD purchase. The Internet also makes it possible to go straight to the artist for music, and the proliferation of cheap, relatively-high-quality computer recording equipment frees bands from the need to go to major labels just to get their recording bills paid.
This is the wave of the future; big record labels are now just dinosaurs biding their time. As more and more of us get our music directly from the artists (either in person or over the Internet) and directly support the artists (either through CD sales or some sort of online micro payment or "tip jar" system, more and more artists will be able to make a living without dealing with the treacherous major labels.
Today's well-paid musicians got that way making 50 cents per disc sold... it should hypothetically be even easier to do well if you get 5 bucks for disc, or even 2 or 1. All that needs to happen is for the music-buying public to vote with their wallets against the "music industry" and for the musicians themselves.
BTW, I'm a musician, and I've been able to put out a good CD every year or two while still holding down a full-time tech job... I'm not at all worried about the talent pool drying up if the majors go out of business. There are plenty of people out there making music because they love doing it and don't need to make any money at it to make it worthwhile. And for the few who can make a living at it without selling their soul, that's great... hopefully there can be more of them in the future as more of us turn our backs on major-label music and support more independent musicians.
The sample you linked to is unpleasant, but most of us don't spend much time listening to pure sine waves at any frequency.
A better example of what sound in the 14-15khz frequency range has to offer would be to take a recording of an orchestra and do an A/B comparison of the original recording, and a version of the recording where an equalizer has been used to minimize those frequencies. The orchestra would sound "duller." Even though the fundamental notes the individual instruments were playing were of a much lower frequency, the overtones produced by acoustic instruments make up a lot of the tonal color people tend to like about them.
That being said, a version of a recording of an orchestra with the 14-15khz band boosted would tend to sound "harsher" than the original recording. Ideally, a recording should have the same amount of each audible frequency range of sound as you might experience in the room with the original instrument. And although a 15khz sine wave is not pleasant, there are pleasant things to be found in that range... you can play with a graphic or parametric EQ, either in software or in hardware, while listening to a CD to hear what I mean.
China also claims that Taiwan is a "rogue province" even though their island has never been governed (or even occupied) by the Communist party. The current government of Taiwan evolved from the government that was in control of mainland China before the Communists took over. Taiwan was the only piece of land the Red army didn't conquer.
Fortunately, the old government stole a lot of priceless ancient Chinese art on their way out, and they now have it on display in museums... most of what was left behind was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.
Taiwan has a democratic government which the United States has been pressured to step away from in recent years by the People's Republic of China... And they make a heck of a motherboard! I will be very sad when they get invaded and we do nothing about it because the PRC owns us.
Farmers plant and harvest crops in exchange for money, which is in itself a pretty nonlethal occupation. Global agribusiness companies that lobby for subsidies and access to third-world markets are much more directly responsible for those deaths, and the fact that we have a government by and for the highest bidder doesn't help matters any, either.
The only thing that will stop this system and prevent further third-world deaths is if we all get off our butts, reorganize the priorities of our government, and reclaim the power that has been given to multinational corporations... and in a way, since we're too lazy to do that, we are all responsible for what is going on over there. It's not the farmers, it's us. Me included.
A real President who does what he thinks is right rather than doing what will finance his next campaign would be a good start, like Dennis Kucinich on the left or Ron Paul on the right. Corruption is more important than ideology to me at this point, and those two seem to be the only ones running who aren't willing to whore themselves out to Satan for a big fat war chest.
I basically do what you are suggesting by using a whitelist of valid email addresses for my domain. If an attempt is made to send an email to an address that isn't on the list, my email firewall (which happens to be LogSat's Spam Filter ISP) immediately drops the connection. Doing this has drastically reduced the amount of processing power on the mail server, and bandwidth on my Internet connection, taken up by spammers!
Here's an example of how mailing lists can be useful: I'm into music and bicycles, and I get periodic emails from several online vendors of music and bike gear letting me know what specials they are having, and quite often I see something I like in these emails, so I click a link and go shopping. I opted in to these mailing lists, and they help me find deals I wouldn't otherwise be aware of.
I wouldn't probably think to check a forum for an announcement on a free-shipping sale or a closeout on last year's tires, but if it comes in an email, it gets my attention, and I appreciate that.
My ISP offers spam-filtering, but I have turned it off because too many of these mailing lists I like were getting caught in its trap. So I agree that mailing lists make spam filtering more difficult, but I personally see them as being worth the hassle.
Not true. The money stays in the economy either way. The same principle applies to theft: Let's say that A steals $10 from B. The economy doesn't care if A spends that $10 or if B spends that $10. It's still in the economy either way, and no economic slowdown (as posited by GGP) ensues.
In economic terms, it doesn't matter if someone is "doing something that doesn't need doing" or not... it's still economic activity. If Mr. Burns gets gold-plated fixtures installed in his bathroom, that's economic activity. If he uses that same money to feed the hungry, that's economic activity as well. The fact that you may disapprove of one or the other of these expenditures does not change the net impact on the economy, and neither expenditure will cause an economic slowdown in the way described by GGP.
While I agree with your conclusion that the creep should knock it off, I don't agree with your economic analysis.
Those 200 extra zorkmids don't stay in your pocket once you get them. You spend them, the same way the customer would have spent them, on new clothes and home improvements, and they travel through the economy in exactly the same way. The only difference is that you get the new clothes and home improvements, and he doesn't.
Maybe if you are rich and the customer is poor, you might invest the zorkmids instead of spending them, or if he is rich and you are poor, he would have invested them instead of spending them like you would, and depending on whether the economy "needs" spending or investment more at that particular moment in time, one or the other actions would be better for it. But if you are just as likely to spend or invest as he is, the net impact on the economy of you ripping him off is zero.
That doesn't, of course, make it right. No one should ever rip anyone off. But if they do, it won't necessarily slow down the economy.
There are many retailers who do more than simply sell products to customers who come in asking for that specific product. They may have their own clientèle who will buy whatever they recommend, and they may have a huge advertising budget which they can use to push whatever product they feel like pushing. If a retailer is mailing out a million glossy catalogs 12 times a year and if you make that retailer happy, your product might be on the cover of that catalog, you have a pretty good incentive to make the retailer happy! If your product is available from someone on ebay for 30% less, the retailer would be less inclined to push your product and more inclined to find a product with less competition. The ultimate expression of the inverse relationship between competition and profitability is the "house brand" which is impossible to customers to comparison-shop, and therefore makes the most money for the retailer.
This leverage which large retailers can have against suppliers explains why manufacturers put up with all the hassles of dealing with WalMart: they may end up with a smaller profit margin on each unit sold, but in return they will get a huge market share and a high volume of sales, just because they are the brand that people happen to find when they walk in to WalMart.
Another good example is the musical instrument market, where Guitar Center/Musicians Friend is the 600-pound gorilla. Certain manufacturers make a guitar with a MAP of $200, and another, identical guitar in an "exclusive" color that only GC/MF gets to sell, with a slightly different model number, and a MAP of $190. Mom-and-pop stores can't get that "exclusive" color, and if they grumble about the same guitar being sold below their MAP, the manufacturer points to the fact that this one has a different model number and says "it's apples and oranges... this is a different product." This kind of leverage a large retailer can use against a vendor is, I think, what GP was referring to when he mentioned the willingness of his company to cater to the interests of a retailer with whom they do a lot of business each year. If making that retailer unhappy means losing the sales that come from having that retailer push your product instead of other competing products, you'll want to make that retailer happy even if it means making other, smaller retailers unhappy.
You have a number of very valid concerns here, but I'm not sure that videotaping arrests will make these social ills much worse than they already are:
It is unfortunate that employers are starting to ask about arrests, as it negates the presumption of innocence (to the extent that I could imagine it becoming illegal to ask about arrests in a job interview for just that reason) but having a videotape of the arrest won't add anything to that fact.
The cop shows blur out people's faces because they are often being arrested in their homes (where there is a presumption of privacy,) and because the producers are using the footage in a commercial product and don't want to be hit up for royalties. The ACLU wants people videotaping police interaction that occurs in public, for use in court. That's a very different situation, and blurring shouldn't be necessary (or desirable.)
It is also unfortunate that celebrities are hounded by photographers. Everyone should get a life and mind their own business. Paris Hilton's inconsequential troubles have been pushing real news, about people getting killed etc, aside for months now. I stopped going to the cnn.com homepage because I was tired of having my intelligence insulted by their asinine choice of "top stories." But this won't make that situation any worse than it already is.
Let's go after the real problems here, not a potentially very helpful solution. Let's bring back "innocent until proven guilty." Let's get the press to leave the celebrities alone and start paying some attention to government corruption. And let's give cameras to residents of neighborhoods where the cops think they can get away with unnecessary violence and other unbecoming conduct. There's no conflict. I see where you're coming from, but I'd hate to see this baby get thrown out with the bathwater.
As you suggest, the law in question is stupid, as are thousands of other laws. But if the officer were acting professionally, he wouldn't make an arrest for any of these laws. Part of being a professional police officer is exercising proper discretion as to when to make an arrest.
Contrary to your statement, officers are generally not obligated to enforce any particular law. If they were obligated to enforce every infraction of every law they ever witnessed, their entire day would consist of arresting everyone violating the speed limit directly in front of the police station, they'd never make it three blocks down the street, and many more important laws would be broken on streets with no police station.
Police officers are expected to use intelligent discretion to enforce the laws which will have the greatest impact in improving the quality of life of the community. That means some prioritization is necessary. Arresting murderers and rapists is an excellent use of police resources, and is quite easy to justify. Arresting jaywalkers and people who litter on the sidewalk is a poor use of police resources, and is harder to justify. Each arrest takes time, effort, and money which could be better used elsewhere in the community. Police officers' time is particularly valuable because just by walking or driving down a street, they can deter crime! A key question for police priorities could be, "is what I'm doing more or less productive than simply cruising down the street?" As a taxpayer and a citizen, I have an interest in police using their time wisely. An officer arresting someone for videotaping a publicly-accessible event was clearly not using his publicly-funded time wisely, just as setting up a strict speed trap in front of the police station is also not a wise use of resources.
Furthermore, I speculate that this officer was probably not aware that the wiretapping law could be used in this case. I wouldn't expect a traffic cop to be well-versed in wiretapping laws. He arrested the guy with the camera, then, according to the original article, "The wiretap charge was filed after consultation with a deputy district attorney." Chances are he was embarrassed about having lost his temper ("He said he held the camera in plain view and turned it on when the officer yelled at his pal") so he arrested the guy, probably for "disorderly conduct" or some other catch-all, then went to the DA's office to see if there was anything better to charge him with. Maybe the guy's pal was being a jerk and deserved to be yelled at. But if it was justified, the cop had nothing to hide, and in either case he had no legitimate reason to go after the guy with the camera.
For the record, I got an A in civics class... I'm a nerd, after all!
For several years I've been running LogSat Software's Spam Filter ISP in front of my Exchange server. It uses SPF, blacklists, and Bayesian filtering to keep spam out, and between SPF and the blacklists, about 97% of the incoming spam connections I used to get are now disconnected immediately. The savings in bandwidth (and in processing power and storage space on my mail server) has been enormous.
It allows me to set up a whitelist of the legitimate email addresses in my domain, and if an email tries to come in to an address that isn't on the whitelist, the connection is immediately dropped. So no more endless stream of "abernathy@mydomain.com,abraham@mydomain.com..." spam clogging up my badmail folder. YMMV, but I tried a number of different antispam products before settling on this one, and I'm a very happy camper.
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If the guitar is in tune with itself, an internal computer can shift pitches to give alternate tunings. That's what the Line6 Variax does. The problem is that if the guitar isn't in tune with itself, how does the guitar computer know if you are out of tune, or if you're just bending a string? You could run a guitar through an Antares Auto-Tune, but then when you bent a string, it would jump from one pitch to the next like a piano, and you'd lose a lot of the guitar's expressiveness for soloing.
The good thing about the Gibson is that you only pull on the knob when you have strummed the open strings, so the guitar knows that no notes are being bent... it knows what the pitches should be when you strum open strings, so it has no problem tuning it to those pitches.
Your idea could be implemented if, like on the Gibson, there were a button to let the guitar know it was in "tuning mode." When the button was pressed, the guitar would listen to see how out of tune it was, then when the button was released, the pitch-correction computer inside could change the pitch of each string by exactly the right amount to bring the guitar's output into tune, although the strings themselves would still be out of tune, and you could still bend them all you want without having the pitch "snap" to the next note like a vocal that has been auto-tuned.
Gibson's self-tuning guitar uses an entirely different technology from the Line6 Variax. Both can give you alternate tunings with the press of a button, but only the Gibson physically changes string tension to tune an out-of-tune guitar.
With the line6, you have to get the guitar into tune through normal means, and then the guitar's internal software will shift the pitch of the strings a predetermined amount to make it sound as if the guitar is in an alternate tuning (there's a great tutorial here on how to do this with a Line6 Variax guitar and the Workbench software which comes with certain Line6 hardware, or can be purchased separately.)
The Gibson, on the other hand, uses little motors to change the tension of the strings. So if you bump the tuners of the Gibson against a microphone stand, throwing the guitar out of tune, all you have to do is turn the guitar volume down so no one hears what you are doing, strum all the strings, and pull the knob to tell the guitar to tune itself. With a Variax, you'd have to tune by ear or with an electronic tuner in this circumstance.
I could see Line6 eventually offering a self-tuning bridge, giving the best of both worlds - infinite choices of virtual pickups, bodies, and scale lengths, alternate tunings at the touch of a button, as well as the ability to get the instrument into tune with itself with the touch of a button. I'm drooling just thinking about it.
...or the males consider their favorite inanimate technological objects to be "coworkers."
Come on, I can't be the only one here who has kissed a computer!
I'm wondering why royalties would need to be dropped to make a profit at 25 cents per song? I'll just throw some numbers out here and see if they stick:
.29 per transaction; if you could pull in 1000 customers per day, that would get you $290, after sending half to the military-industrial complex for taxes you'd get to keep $145 per day, or $52,925 per year.
.25 per song or $2.50 per album (the hotdog XOR soda range) and get more impulse buyers. This seems pretty reasonable to me, but I'd like to hear what objections people have...
If you could sell blocks of 10 songs, that would get you $2.50 minus 1.00 in royalties at ten cents per song, minus 15 cents for credit card processing fees and 6 cents for the bandwidth = $1.29 in profit per transaction. Let's say you spend $1.00 on advertising per customer, that takes it down to
I don't know if I'd aim for a pricepoint of 25 cents per song for everything... established artists could be sold at 50 cents per song, which would put an album at $5.00 - still in the hot-dog-and-soda range, and people might value it more if they paid a little more for it. New artists looking for more exposure could go for
I would advise against it. 4 of 5 backup singers say that "that shit is B-A-N-A-N-A-S."
For me, it would be hard to choose, although my choices would probably be these (in this order:)
- They screw the artists with contracts which basically amount to indentured servitude.
- They screw the consumers with excessive markups (made possible by # 3 below)
- They have destroyed the integrity of radio with the ongoing practice of payola
- They engage in mean-spirited legal attacks against defenseless people
- They eat babies.
Well, that about sums it up for why I don't like major labels. Luckily, there are tons of great bands putting out their own stuff, so I can support the bands directly and avoid giving any cash to Their Satanic Majesties. Really we don't need these companies. We can support our local music scenes and independent touring bands. Do it for the poor little babies that the RIAA would purchase and eat if they got your money. That's right - think of the children!This is the case referred to by the parent post.
BTW, can anyone here say "fair play and substantial justice" without snickering? No? Then you aren't qualified for a spot on the Supreme Court. But don't feel bad - neither am I.
Your request for documentation sparked my curiosity, so I went looking... After half an hour of searching the 'net, it seems to be the case that Larry Craig has never mentioned homosexuals either in Congressional debate or in any publication. He has of course voted along with most of the Republican party and part of the Democratic party, against the best interests of homosexuals, but it looks to me like depictions of him as a hardcore gay-hater are quite inflated.
:-).
He's most likely just another "good ole boy" who is willing to sell the rights of gays down the river in exchange for some bubba votes back home and some mutual back scratching from his GOP colleagues. This makes his outing less of a story, and makes him less of a tragic villain. Probably so many exaggerations are flying around because we like to hear a good dramatic story, and the reality of the situation isn't all that engaging.
Not that homophobia in Congress isn't a bad thing, and not that he didn't participate in it with his votes, but Larry Craig wasn't at the center of it, and he was never Jerry Falwell's right-hand man. Maybe the next scandal will be more titillating
Some of us learn grammar from video games...
All your base are belong to us!
You're right about your pickup being safer than the Pinto despite having the gas tank in the same location... the Pinto's rear bumper was called "ornamental" at the time. And while the bumper on the Crown Victoria isn't wimpy, the problem there seems to stem from the fact that people seem to run into parked Crown Vics while doing 70 MPH - this goes with the territory of being a police vehicle. It's going to be parked next to the freeway some of the time, or sometimes even on the freeway, if there has been an accident and the Crown Vic is being used as a barrier to keep accident victims from getting run over. So for a normal rear-end collision where the crashee and the crasher are both going pretty fast, the Crown Vic wouldn't be that bad because the difference in speeds isn't that great, but the difference between parked and 70 MPH is a situation that (as far as I know) cars aren't tested for during the design process. Since the safety of the whole country's police officers and deputies is at stake, I think it would be reasonable for the Federal government to hand Ford some cash to design the next version for maximum rear-end-impact safety.
For some reason the Pinto issue and the carbon fiber airplane issue of the main thread reminds me of a documentary I once saw on the old British Lotus race cars. Apparently the head engineer at Lotus was so weight-conscious that if the car didn't fall apart as it crossed the finish line, he considered the components to have been made too heavy, and would lighten them before the next race. This policy cost them a few drivers, who got frustrated at the questionable reliability and safety of the cars it gave them. You can't get something for nothing, and the crash-resistant mass of your truck (and my truck, a Ford with one gas tank in front of the rear axle and one behind it) will eventually go the way of the dinosaurs as we run out of gas to push these beasts around. I'm pretty sure the vehicles of the future will be electric, and they'll be made out of something strong yet lightweight like carbon fiber. Hopefully we won't see any dangerous Lotus-like extremes from car manufacturers on the way from here to there.
Although it's been available in aftermarket parts for a while, it's now available in production cars as well... the current BMW M3 has a carbon-fiber roof. Sure, it's a $50k production car, but I expect the material will trickle down to more and more vehicles each year. It's strong and light, and we need strong, light materials to increase fuel-efficiency across the board.
The problem with the Pinto was that in a rear-end collision, the gas tank, which was located behind the axle, could be pushed into the differential-housing bolts, causing the tank to rupture.
GP is most likely referring to "The Myth of the Ford Pinto Case," written in 1991 by Gary Schwartz, in which he pointed out that the fatality rates per million cars on the road was lower for Pintos as compared with a number of other comparable subcompact cars. It's an interesting read.
Ford is once again under scrutiny for putting gas tanks behind the axle, this time in the Crown Victoria (aka Police Interceptor.)
The original 1960-63 Corvair had a tendency to fishtail especially if the tires weren't properly inflated (and the "proper" tire inflations, , but (1) later Corvairs fixed that problem, and (2) a number of other cars of that era had a tendency to fishtail. From 1965 on, the Corvair had an excellent fully-independent rear suspension like the Corvette.
So could the original Corvair, the Pinto, and the Crown Victoria have been designed better? Sure. Were their designs worse than average? Maybe not. Will cars be designed better in the future as a result of all this attention that has been brought to design flaws? I hope so.
Steve Albini has been around the industry for a while, and here is what he has to say on the matter... Also, Courtney Love of Hole pretty much agrees with his assessment. When you factor in "recoupable expenses" bands really don't get much at all from recordings until they hit gold or platinum. Of course, YMMV and I sincerely hope that it does.
The record companies that make up the RIAA have provided income for some artists, and debt for others.
Before the abolition of slavery in the US, some abolitionists refused to buy cotton clothing, because the cotton in it had been picked by slaves. And although buying cotton clothing provided jobs for the slaves, their opposition to the system was too strong for them to want to be a part of it.
I feel similarly about the major record labels. The bands on major labels which I am most likely to enjoy (because they're doing something innovative) are the same bands who are most likely to get screwed by the system. I can't buy a major-label CD with a clear conscience, because I'm handing money to a system that abuses musicians. I can, however, buy tickets to shows with independent musicians when they come to my town (which is, luckily for me, all the time) and when I'm at the show, I can buy their CD right from the band, ensuring that they get most of the money from the CD purchase. The Internet also makes it possible to go straight to the artist for music, and the proliferation of cheap, relatively-high-quality computer recording equipment frees bands from the need to go to major labels just to get their recording bills paid.
This is the wave of the future; big record labels are now just dinosaurs biding their time. As more and more of us get our music directly from the artists (either in person or over the Internet) and directly support the artists (either through CD sales or some sort of online micro payment or "tip jar" system, more and more artists will be able to make a living without dealing with the treacherous major labels.
Today's well-paid musicians got that way making 50 cents per disc sold... it should hypothetically be even easier to do well if you get 5 bucks for disc, or even 2 or 1. All that needs to happen is for the music-buying public to vote with their wallets against the "music industry" and for the musicians themselves.
BTW, I'm a musician, and I've been able to put out a good CD every year or two while still holding down a full-time tech job... I'm not at all worried about the talent pool drying up if the majors go out of business. There are plenty of people out there making music because they love doing it and don't need to make any money at it to make it worthwhile. And for the few who can make a living at it without selling their soul, that's great... hopefully there can be more of them in the future as more of us turn our backs on major-label music and support more independent musicians.
The sample you linked to is unpleasant, but most of us don't spend much time listening to pure sine waves at any frequency.
A better example of what sound in the 14-15khz frequency range has to offer would be to take a recording of an orchestra and do an A/B comparison of the original recording, and a version of the recording where an equalizer has been used to minimize those frequencies. The orchestra would sound "duller." Even though the fundamental notes the individual instruments were playing were of a much lower frequency, the overtones produced by acoustic instruments make up a lot of the tonal color people tend to like about them.
That being said, a version of a recording of an orchestra with the 14-15khz band boosted would tend to sound "harsher" than the original recording. Ideally, a recording should have the same amount of each audible frequency range of sound as you might experience in the room with the original instrument. And although a 15khz sine wave is not pleasant, there are pleasant things to be found in that range... you can play with a graphic or parametric EQ, either in software or in hardware, while listening to a CD to hear what I mean.
Excellent point about Britain and America.
China also claims that Taiwan is a "rogue province" even though their island has never been governed (or even occupied) by the Communist party. The current government of Taiwan evolved from the government that was in control of mainland China before the Communists took over. Taiwan was the only piece of land the Red army didn't conquer.
Fortunately, the old government stole a lot of priceless ancient Chinese art on their way out, and they now have it on display in museums... most of what was left behind was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.
Taiwan has a democratic government which the United States has been pressured to step away from in recent years by the People's Republic of China... And they make a heck of a motherboard! I will be very sad when they get invaded and we do nothing about it because the PRC owns us.
Farmers plant and harvest crops in exchange for money, which is in itself a pretty nonlethal occupation. Global agribusiness companies that lobby for subsidies and access to third-world markets are much more directly responsible for those deaths, and the fact that we have a government by and for the highest bidder doesn't help matters any, either.
The only thing that will stop this system and prevent further third-world deaths is if we all get off our butts, reorganize the priorities of our government, and reclaim the power that has been given to multinational corporations... and in a way, since we're too lazy to do that, we are all responsible for what is going on over there. It's not the farmers, it's us. Me included.
A real President who does what he thinks is right rather than doing what will finance his next campaign would be a good start, like Dennis Kucinich on the left or Ron Paul on the right. Corruption is more important than ideology to me at this point, and those two seem to be the only ones running who aren't willing to whore themselves out to Satan for a big fat war chest.
I basically do what you are suggesting by using a whitelist of valid email addresses for my domain. If an attempt is made to send an email to an address that isn't on the list, my email firewall (which happens to be LogSat's Spam Filter ISP) immediately drops the connection. Doing this has drastically reduced the amount of processing power on the mail server, and bandwidth on my Internet connection, taken up by spammers!
Here's an example of how mailing lists can be useful: I'm into music and bicycles, and I get periodic emails from several online vendors of music and bike gear letting me know what specials they are having, and quite often I see something I like in these emails, so I click a link and go shopping. I opted in to these mailing lists, and they help me find deals I wouldn't otherwise be aware of.
I wouldn't probably think to check a forum for an announcement on a free-shipping sale or a closeout on last year's tires, but if it comes in an email, it gets my attention, and I appreciate that.
My ISP offers spam-filtering, but I have turned it off because too many of these mailing lists I like were getting caught in its trap. So I agree that mailing lists make spam filtering more difficult, but I personally see them as being worth the hassle.
Not true. The money stays in the economy either way. The same principle applies to theft: Let's say that A steals $10 from B. The economy doesn't care if A spends that $10 or if B spends that $10. It's still in the economy either way, and no economic slowdown (as posited by GGP) ensues.
In economic terms, it doesn't matter if someone is "doing something that doesn't need doing" or not... it's still economic activity. If Mr. Burns gets gold-plated fixtures installed in his bathroom, that's economic activity. If he uses that same money to feed the hungry, that's economic activity as well. The fact that you may disapprove of one or the other of these expenditures does not change the net impact on the economy, and neither expenditure will cause an economic slowdown in the way described by GGP.
While I agree with your conclusion that the creep should knock it off, I don't agree with your economic analysis.
Those 200 extra zorkmids don't stay in your pocket once you get them. You spend them, the same way the customer would have spent them, on new clothes and home improvements, and they travel through the economy in exactly the same way. The only difference is that you get the new clothes and home improvements, and he doesn't.
Maybe if you are rich and the customer is poor, you might invest the zorkmids instead of spending them, or if he is rich and you are poor, he would have invested them instead of spending them like you would, and depending on whether the economy "needs" spending or investment more at that particular moment in time, one or the other actions would be better for it. But if you are just as likely to spend or invest as he is, the net impact on the economy of you ripping him off is zero.
That doesn't, of course, make it right. No one should ever rip anyone off. But if they do, it won't necessarily slow down the economy.
There are many retailers who do more than simply sell products to customers who come in asking for that specific product. They may have their own clientèle who will buy whatever they recommend, and they may have a huge advertising budget which they can use to push whatever product they feel like pushing. If a retailer is mailing out a million glossy catalogs 12 times a year and if you make that retailer happy, your product might be on the cover of that catalog, you have a pretty good incentive to make the retailer happy! If your product is available from someone on ebay for 30% less, the retailer would be less inclined to push your product and more inclined to find a product with less competition. The ultimate expression of the inverse relationship between competition and profitability is the "house brand" which is impossible to customers to comparison-shop, and therefore makes the most money for the retailer.
This leverage which large retailers can have against suppliers explains why manufacturers put up with all the hassles of dealing with WalMart: they may end up with a smaller profit margin on each unit sold, but in return they will get a huge market share and a high volume of sales, just because they are the brand that people happen to find when they walk in to WalMart.
Another good example is the musical instrument market, where Guitar Center/Musicians Friend is the 600-pound gorilla. Certain manufacturers make a guitar with a MAP of $200, and another, identical guitar in an "exclusive" color that only GC/MF gets to sell, with a slightly different model number, and a MAP of $190. Mom-and-pop stores can't get that "exclusive" color, and if they grumble about the same guitar being sold below their MAP, the manufacturer points to the fact that this one has a different model number and says "it's apples and oranges... this is a different product." This kind of leverage a large retailer can use against a vendor is, I think, what GP was referring to when he mentioned the willingness of his company to cater to the interests of a retailer with whom they do a lot of business each year. If making that retailer unhappy means losing the sales that come from having that retailer push your product instead of other competing products, you'll want to make that retailer happy even if it means making other, smaller retailers unhappy.
You have a number of very valid concerns here, but I'm not sure that videotaping arrests will make these social ills much worse than they already are:
It is unfortunate that employers are starting to ask about arrests, as it negates the presumption of innocence (to the extent that I could imagine it becoming illegal to ask about arrests in a job interview for just that reason) but having a videotape of the arrest won't add anything to that fact.
The cop shows blur out people's faces because they are often being arrested in their homes (where there is a presumption of privacy,) and because the producers are using the footage in a commercial product and don't want to be hit up for royalties. The ACLU wants people videotaping police interaction that occurs in public, for use in court. That's a very different situation, and blurring shouldn't be necessary (or desirable.)
It is also unfortunate that celebrities are hounded by photographers. Everyone should get a life and mind their own business. Paris Hilton's inconsequential troubles have been pushing real news, about people getting killed etc, aside for months now. I stopped going to the cnn.com homepage because I was tired of having my intelligence insulted by their asinine choice of "top stories." But this won't make that situation any worse than it already is.
Let's go after the real problems here, not a potentially very helpful solution. Let's bring back "innocent until proven guilty." Let's get the press to leave the celebrities alone and start paying some attention to government corruption. And let's give cameras to residents of neighborhoods where the cops think they can get away with unnecessary violence and other unbecoming conduct. There's no conflict. I see where you're coming from, but I'd hate to see this baby get thrown out with the bathwater.
As you suggest, the law in question is stupid, as are thousands of other laws. But if the officer were acting professionally, he wouldn't make an arrest for any of these laws. Part of being a professional police officer is exercising proper discretion as to when to make an arrest.
Contrary to your statement, officers are generally not obligated to enforce any particular law. If they were obligated to enforce every infraction of every law they ever witnessed, their entire day would consist of arresting everyone violating the speed limit directly in front of the police station, they'd never make it three blocks down the street, and many more important laws would be broken on streets with no police station.
Police officers are expected to use intelligent discretion to enforce the laws which will have the greatest impact in improving the quality of life of the community. That means some prioritization is necessary. Arresting murderers and rapists is an excellent use of police resources, and is quite easy to justify. Arresting jaywalkers and people who litter on the sidewalk is a poor use of police resources, and is harder to justify. Each arrest takes time, effort, and money which could be better used elsewhere in the community. Police officers' time is particularly valuable because just by walking or driving down a street, they can deter crime! A key question for police priorities could be, "is what I'm doing more or less productive than simply cruising down the street?" As a taxpayer and a citizen, I have an interest in police using their time wisely. An officer arresting someone for videotaping a publicly-accessible event was clearly not using his publicly-funded time wisely, just as setting up a strict speed trap in front of the police station is also not a wise use of resources.
Furthermore, I speculate that this officer was probably not aware that the wiretapping law could be used in this case. I wouldn't expect a traffic cop to be well-versed in wiretapping laws. He arrested the guy with the camera, then, according to the original article, "The wiretap charge was filed after consultation with a deputy district attorney." Chances are he was embarrassed about having lost his temper ("He said he held the camera in plain view and turned it on when the officer yelled at his pal") so he arrested the guy, probably for "disorderly conduct" or some other catch-all, then went to the DA's office to see if there was anything better to charge him with. Maybe the guy's pal was being a jerk and deserved to be yelled at. But if it was justified, the cop had nothing to hide, and in either case he had no legitimate reason to go after the guy with the camera.
For the record, I got an A in civics class... I'm a nerd, after all!
For several years I've been running LogSat Software's Spam Filter ISP in front of my Exchange server. It uses SPF, blacklists, and Bayesian filtering to keep spam out, and between SPF and the blacklists, about 97% of the incoming spam connections I used to get are now disconnected immediately. The savings in bandwidth (and in processing power and storage space on my mail server) has been enormous.
It allows me to set up a whitelist of the legitimate email addresses in my domain, and if an email tries to come in to an address that isn't on the whitelist, the connection is immediately dropped. So no more endless stream of "abernathy@mydomain.com,abraham@mydomain.com..." spam clogging up my badmail folder. YMMV, but I tried a number of different antispam products before settling on this one, and I'm a very happy camper.