That split infinitive was completely acceptable. A few anal grammarians decided that infinitives were something to never split, just because you can't do it in Latin (where an infinitive is ONE WORD!). It doesn't make things harder to comfortably understand! Why should it be "illegal" in English?
They DO say "let us go boldy..." rather than "let us boldly go..." (which IMO is unfortunate as it deemphasizes the Boldly relative to the Go). I feel certain that David Foster Wallace mentioned this specific instance of infinitive splitting in his excellent April 2001 article in Harpers Magazine "Tense Present" which everyone who is marginally interested in such things should read, but I, for the life of me, couldn't find it.
Talk of a red clearance citizen using a blue termination booth is treasonous! You are undoubtably a mutant communist trying to undermine everything the Computer has done for us! Clear grounds for termination.
I don't think anybody would consider treatments for sickle-cell anemia (which occurs primarily in Africans and African-Americans) immoral genetic engineering, for instance.
Not really on topic, but the reason that sickle-cell anemia is more prevalant in Africa (and other tropical regions) is as follows:
Sickle-cell anemia is a recessive trait. If you have only one of them, you are not anemic. However, for whatever reason, you ARE more resistant to malaria.
I would worry that they would be able to keep it up
I was a regular webvan customer (there's no real close grocery store, and I don't have/want a car). I did worry that they'd be able to keep it up. But that didn't really affect my day to day shopping through them - get the convenience while you can - it's not like you're signing an exclusivity contract with them or anything.
Did they have a means for you to add on to your order if it was still N hours before delivery?
Yes, you could change your order before.. I think it was 8:00p the night before. I think they should have done an N hours before. Or even better - when they print out the order to fill, THEN disallow changes. So you can change it so long as nobody's started working on it.
As for the I need it now market.. A cross between webvan and kozmo would have been perfect.
Re:Non-computer games having a tough time now
on
SJGames Layoffs
·
· Score: 1
I dunno. I see a lot more board games these days than ever before. Maybe I'm just turning into a fanatic, but... I guess that doesn't do Steve Jackson that much good since most of the ones I see and play aren't SJ (US distribution is usually covered by Rio Grande)..
"We guarantee that this product will reduce your risk of heart disease" is basically their alternative. No, they don't know very much for certain. All they know is that there are statistical correlations and that it's however likely that they're not just a fluke in the data. They also don't know for certain that their experiement wasn't flawed or skewed in some way.
out, for instance, the guys selling those green hilighter pens for $20 a piece
Yeah, yeah, I linked to it earlier. If you really want a kick, try reading some reviews of them on AudioReview.com (the site where people can defend their idiot consumer decisions). Incedently I've seen the belt-drive cd player used as an argument that those green pens work. It wasn't a very compelling argument ("If cd playback weren't extremely touchy, why would Parasound make a belt-drive cd player" was the gist if it).
Thanks for the heads up on the DAC speed. I don't spend enough time thinking in the analog world to have a really good handle on oversampling. Is it their boast then pretty much equivalent to advertising 8x oversampling? (a feature I have definitely seen on less exotic cd players)
My 19" monitor dissipates 125W, with no active cooling. I guess it is adequately ventilated, in that I'm not stacking lots of stuff on top of it or encasing it in styrofoam or anything, but I'm not really going out of my way or anything. Same with my speakers.
My halogen lamp turns nearly 300W of electrical power directly into heat (the rest turns into light, bounces around a bit, and then turns into heat).
http://www.cec-international.de/pages/s8.htm - good for a laugh. Here's what they have to say for themselves: (emphasis mine)
The TL1 is the
world`s first belt driven CD
transport. The development of the TL1 started
on the technical conclusion that in their basic
aspects,analog turntables and digital CD
players are the same. Although the speed of a
CD varies,the changes take place in tiny
increments.In other words the speed during a
certain time period can be seen as constant.
Based on this result CEC developed a
completely new CD playback system,which is
free from acoustic feedback, has a higher
signal to noise ratio and eliminates jitter. CEC
use a low torque motor which drives via a
precision belt a heavy stabilizer.The stabilizer
not only secures the CD disc but also increase
its inertia 26 times. The extremely heavy drive
mechanism floats on a dual suspension
system with high noise absorption. The result:
Music reproduction on its highest level
They also sell one with a 24 bit 356khz DAC, in case you can find some cds with that kind of information on them, or something.
That depends on how much power you're using. If you're only throwing out a hundred or two watts per channel, dissipating that is not so difficult. And including the amplifier as part of the speakers means they can be tuned to each other - as is done in most active studio monitors (say, the Mackie HR824's)
Unless you have a very large space or very power-hungry speakers, or are deaf, I can't see why you'd need much more power than that.
Categorization of audio gear & recommendations
on
Insanely Audiophile
·
· Score: 4
As I see it there are three (mostly) distinct markets for audio equipment.
The 'consumer' market. This tends to be cheapish to middle-priced and is often (distressingly) designed to look like an SUV. You'll probably be able to find something in this which sounds 'adequate'. The correlation between price and performance is moderately strong, though with a fairly high variance. Typically where you'll find the most 'features' (various playback modes, DSP effects, et cetera).
The 'audiophile' market. Expensive stuff with minimal controls (often nothing more than just a power buton!) and stylish design . Really tweaked marketing - both the buyers and the sellers use lots of completely unquantifiable terms. With all the sales-driven pseudoscience the correspondence between price and performace is fairly loose.
The studio or 'pro audio' market. Designed for people whose job is to understand what's going on and to know what the numbers mean. If you want a flat frequency response, this is the place to look. No bullshit with gold interconnects - if you want good connections, use balanced cables. You also get the advantage that mixing boards are prefered over recivers (and you can get a good one for less than a comparable preamp). Definitely the tightest correspondence between price and performance. The biggest downside I have experienced using these in a home setting is that nothing's typically engineered around a 5.1 configuration. But it is what they used to master most of the things you're listening to.
The secret to oregon trail is to buy -32000 bullets, and then use the revenue from that to buy thousands of oxen, which will allow you to make the trip in 1 day.
The fact is, all code used in government should be GPL'd by the freedom of information act. I, for one, feel that the software that processes the info that is kept on me should be available for my perusal.
No, the point is that all code written by the government should enter into the public domain. It should not be GPL'd, BSDL'd, or anything else. Those all require retension of copyright, and government produced documents should be owned by us all (public domain).
If the government extends an existing product, however, that doesn't suddenly mean that that government is allowed to violate that product's license - if it's commercial software, they must pay like everyone else. If it's GPL'd software, they must GPL their changes like everybody else. If it's BSDL'd software, they can do whatever they wish with their changes - my recommendation would be submitting them to the maintainer of the project, in accordance with the spirit of Open Source software development, but they don't need to.
Okay, just take the spdif output of your cd player and plug it into your sblive - perfect digital copy. Even if you don't have a setup that can handle that, enough people do that it's moot.
As a related aside, I've a friend who's entire audio system goes through his computer - he stores his music in 2 300 sony cds changers, with toslink optical outputs fed into his linux box. The clever bit is: Since they're Sony audio components, they use the s-link remote control interface - which he hacked up his parallel port to speak. So now he can rip and encode (stream?) any of his cds from anywhere in the world that he can get out on port 22 from.
I just want to point this out, since it's important, but I believe the definitions state that reducing from one NP-Complete problem to another has to be able to be done in P time.
Re:This is a Bad thing
on
NSA Inside?
·
· Score: 2
The NSA has no motivation to release any technology that they cannot crack. It would be like the police departments handing out radar detectors.
Not really. The NSA has an interest in helping American networks more intrusion-resistant. It has an interest in preventing DDOS attacks on various nodes of the internet which will become more and more important to our way of life. It has an interest in keeping files locked up on American computers only on those computers. This is national security. If it's harder to hack their job is already easier - catching the crook is a subordinate goal to preventing the crime.
For larger projects where there's maybe 6 megs of code, intimately understanding what's going on everywhere is a lot less appealing. Especially if there are 3 or more people working on the project at the same time.
For some reason I thing that Lorentz was one of these people
I don't know of Lorenz (I assume that's who you meant) doing any work with fractals directly. However he did a lot for chaos theory, by discovering a normal problem that displayed sensitive dependance on intitial conditions (he had a weather simulator. After seeing some interesting behaviour, he wanted to watch it again, so he typed in the same seeds, but they weren't printed out with the full precision that was used interally, so before long he got qualitatively different results. Trying to isolate this behaviour which struck him as odd (how can 0.000001 difference change everything?) he simplified his system and came up with the Lorenz Attractor - rather than settling on a point or into an oscillating pattern, his system approached a curve of infinite complexity - a strange attractor.
Slashdot Mirror
They also have a large amount of money floating around in their system earning THEM interest.
That split infinitive was completely acceptable. A few anal grammarians decided that infinitives were something to never split, just because you can't do it in Latin (where an infinitive is ONE WORD!). It doesn't make things harder to comfortably understand! Why should it be "illegal" in English?
..." rather than "let us boldly go ..." (which IMO is unfortunate as it deemphasizes the Boldly relative to the Go). I feel certain that David Foster Wallace mentioned this specific instance of infinitive splitting in his excellent April 2001 article in Harpers Magazine "Tense Present" which everyone who is marginally interested in such things should read, but I, for the life of me, couldn't find it.
They DO say "let us go boldy
Pet Peeve of mine:
Method - A means or manner of procedure, especially a regular and systematic way of accomplishing something
Methodology - A body of practices, procedures, and rules used by those who work in a discipline or engage in an inquiry; a set of working methods.
This is specifically addressed in dictionary.com's usage notes for methodology.
Talk of a red clearance citizen using a blue termination booth is treasonous! You are undoubtably a mutant communist trying to undermine everything the Computer has done for us! Clear grounds for termination.
I don't think anybody would consider treatments for sickle-cell anemia (which occurs primarily in Africans and African-Americans) immoral genetic engineering, for instance.
Not really on topic, but the reason that sickle-cell anemia is more prevalant in Africa (and other tropical regions) is as follows:
Sickle-cell anemia is a recessive trait. If you have only one of them, you are not anemic. However, for whatever reason, you ARE more resistant to malaria.
How well can your speakers/ears reproduce a 20000HZ square wave? They just get mashed down into a sine wave!
I would worry that they would be able to keep it up
I was a regular webvan customer (there's no real close grocery store, and I don't have/want a car). I did worry that they'd be able to keep it up. But that didn't really affect my day to day shopping through them - get the convenience while you can - it's not like you're signing an exclusivity contract with them or anything.
Did they have a means for you to add on to your order if it was still N hours before delivery?
Yes, you could change your order before.. I think it was 8:00p the night before. I think they should have done an N hours before. Or even better - when they print out the order to fill, THEN disallow changes. So you can change it so long as nobody's started working on it.
As for the I need it now market.. A cross between webvan and kozmo would have been perfect.
I dunno. I see a lot more board games these days than ever before. Maybe I'm just turning into a fanatic, but ... I guess that doesn't do Steve Jackson that much good since most of the ones I see and play aren't SJ (US distribution is usually covered by Rio Grande)..
"We guarantee that this product will reduce your risk of heart disease" is basically their alternative. No, they don't know very much for certain. All they know is that there are statistical correlations and that it's however likely that they're not just a fluke in the data. They also don't know for certain that their experiement wasn't flawed or skewed in some way.
turbonium?
If the sarcasm is sufficiently obvious, it's just a joke, not a troll.
out, for instance, the guys selling those green hilighter pens for $20 a piece
Yeah, yeah, I linked to it earlier. If you really want a kick, try reading some reviews of them on AudioReview.com (the site where people can defend their idiot consumer decisions). Incedently I've seen the belt-drive cd player used as an argument that those green pens work. It wasn't a very compelling argument ("If cd playback weren't extremely touchy, why would Parasound make a belt-drive cd player" was the gist if it).
Thanks for the heads up on the DAC speed. I don't spend enough time thinking in the analog world to have a really good handle on oversampling. Is it their boast then pretty much equivalent to advertising 8x oversampling? (a feature I have definitely seen on less exotic cd players)
My 19" monitor dissipates 125W, with no active cooling. I guess it is adequately ventilated, in that I'm not stacking lots of stuff on top of it or encasing it in styrofoam or anything, but I'm not really going out of my way or anything. Same with my speakers.
My halogen lamp turns nearly 300W of electrical power directly into heat (the rest turns into light, bounces around a bit, and then turns into heat).
They also sell one with a 24 bit 356khz DAC, in case you can find some cds with that kind of information on them, or something.
That depends on how much power you're using. If you're only throwing out a hundred or two watts per channel, dissipating that is not so difficult. And including the amplifier as part of the speakers means they can be tuned to each other - as is done in most active studio monitors (say, the Mackie HR824's)
Unless you have a very large space or very power-hungry speakers, or are deaf, I can't see why you'd need much more power than that.
The secret to oregon trail is to buy -32000 bullets, and then use the revenue from that to buy thousands of oxen, which will allow you to make the trip in 1 day.
The fact is, all code used in government should be GPL'd by the freedom of information act. I, for one, feel that the software that processes the info that is kept on me should be available for my perusal.
No, the point is that all code written by the government should enter into the public domain. It should not be GPL'd, BSDL'd, or anything else. Those all require retension of copyright, and government produced documents should be owned by us all (public domain).
If the government extends an existing product, however, that doesn't suddenly mean that that government is allowed to violate that product's license - if it's commercial software, they must pay like everyone else. If it's GPL'd software, they must GPL their changes like everybody else. If it's BSDL'd software, they can do whatever they wish with their changes - my recommendation would be submitting them to the maintainer of the project, in accordance with the spirit of Open Source software development, but they don't need to.
If tobacco is the evil they say it is (and it is, to be sure), why don't they ban it outright? So that tobacco goes away, like drugs have?
Okay, just take the spdif output of your cd player and plug it into your sblive - perfect digital copy. Even if you don't have a setup that can handle that, enough people do that it's moot.
As a related aside, I've a friend who's entire audio system goes through his computer - he stores his music in 2 300 sony cds changers, with toslink optical outputs fed into his linux box. The clever bit is: Since they're Sony audio components, they use the s-link remote control interface - which he hacked up his parallel port to speak. So now he can rip and encode (stream?) any of his cds from anywhere in the world that he can get out on port 22 from.
I hope you're joking, since that's very illegal.
I just want to point this out, since it's important, but I believe the definitions state that reducing from one NP-Complete problem to another has to be able to be done in P time.
The NSA has no motivation to release any technology that they cannot crack. It would be like the police departments handing out radar detectors.
Not really. The NSA has an interest in helping American networks more intrusion-resistant. It has an interest in preventing DDOS attacks on various nodes of the internet which will become more and more important to our way of life. It has an interest in keeping files locked up on American computers only on those computers. This is national security. If it's harder to hack their job is already easier - catching the crook is a subordinate goal to preventing the crime.
For larger projects where there's maybe 6 megs of code, intimately understanding what's going on everywhere is a lot less appealing. Especially if there are 3 or more people working on the project at the same time.
For some reason I thing that Lorentz was one of these people I don't know of Lorenz (I assume that's who you meant) doing any work with fractals directly. However he did a lot for chaos theory, by discovering a normal problem that displayed sensitive dependance on intitial conditions (he had a weather simulator. After seeing some interesting behaviour, he wanted to watch it again, so he typed in the same seeds, but they weren't printed out with the full precision that was used interally, so before long he got qualitatively different results. Trying to isolate this behaviour which struck him as odd (how can 0.000001 difference change everything?) he simplified his system and came up with the Lorenz Attractor - rather than settling on a point or into an oscillating pattern, his system approached a curve of infinite complexity - a strange attractor.
Sorry, once I start typing, I just can't stop!