When, for example, can you say that I will *not* support a certain version of Windows. Can you say that now about Windows 98? How about 95?"
I do not support windows. Not now, not then, not ever. Fuck that ugly piece of shit. The sooner more people agree with me, the sooner we can rid the planet of that bloated abortion of an OS.
i hate AC's and would like to see it abolished - I think everyone should post with their "names" - however:
Notice this line:
The sum of these covers an area of nearly 77,000 km2. In fact, the reserve that is deemed to be technologically retrievable today is estimated at 280-300Gb (billion barrels). This is larger than the Saudi Arabia oil reserves, which are estimated at 240Gb. The total reserves for Alberta, including oil not recoverable using current technology, are estimated at 1,700- 2,500Gb.
At what cost to the environment? Pump that much carbon into the world, and we're fucked. Period.
it looks |
The new iMac is much more practical and forward thinking. The big space waster is the screen, while the computer components continue to miniaturise.
This bookshelf box stuff is just a waste of space.
I mean, this is the same bunch of creepy cheap bastards who charge households a license fee for EVERY TV in their home!
It's ridiculous!
My advice to Brit digiDJ's: Just Go For It. It's easier to beg forgiveness than it is to ask permission. Also: they have to CATCH you first, and then they have to jam a pole up their butt so hard that they think you need to be persecuted.
Stupid fascist fuckers.
If you're some superstar DJ - pay their mizzable tax and shut them up, but if you're just jamming the dancefloor in some flunky club filled with a bunch of lackluster poseurs - fuck 'em.
Apple should set up their software so that the "hooks" on the.Mac servers can be put on ANY server, and let people use their Apple Software on their own ISPs. so, this way, my GarageBand "podcast" can be sent instantly to my ISP (yahoo). They could charge more for Garageband then because it would be WORTH more.
Nuclear Power will get us over for a while. but hydrogen is bullshit. It takes more energy to make H than what you get from burning it. Therefore it is an energy sink, esp. if you get it from cracking H2O. It's better to simply use the electricity you make to crack the water As Electricity to Do Work than to blow it on H.
Nuclear power has promise, though. Especially if we can get IFR reactors going. There is sufficient fuel to power IFR type facilities for many many years. This results because the IFR is a breeder reactor which can utilize uranium 238 and damn near anything else that's densely radioactive. There isn't much of a future for standard fission reactors, and fast breeders are politically insane - but Integral Fast Reactors could really be the ticket for quite some time.
Or, at least until the oil gets so expensive we can't build computers to control the reactors...
1865 - Locomotive Act (amended 1878) - restricted the speed of horse-less vehicles to 4mph in open country and 2 mph in towns. Act required three drivers for each vehicle - 2 to travel in the vehicle and one to walk ahead carrying a red flag... - the Red Flag Act.
1896 - Repeal of 1865 'Red Flag Act' after nearly two decades of strong support from horse interests. Horse-less vehicles now free to travel faster than walking pace! Royal Automobile Club founded. First RAC London to Brighton run held to celebrate the new era of speed. Race was won by Americans who didn't stop for lunch like the rest of the contestants...figures...
As has been true since the start, iPod owners mostly fill up their players from their own CD collections or swipe tunes from file-sharing sites.
Well, hot DAMN! That was hard to figure out.
Frankly I don't DL tunage from file sharing sites - it's too slow and a pain in the ass. What I do is every few months I go to a LAN party and trade multiple Gigabytes of mp3 files at a go. My friends and I have similar tastes (eclectic, but uncompromising, with some few guilty pleasures...like my friend Ryan who has this bizarre affection for James Taylor, even though lately his collection favours Death Metal and Industrial... I honestly don't get it...) so we all get to throw music at each other (Maaaaan - this record is AWESOME - you GOTTA listen to this... etc.) while we eat excellent food and drink enough likker to stun an ox. And all the files move at an order of magnitude or three faster than DLing them over my crappy DSL line.
I don't own an iPod - I listen to music in my head all the time, or just make up my own stuff, so I have no need for a personal music system.
If I did have an iPod (or similar device) I would simply put my fave tunes on it from my Truly Massive CD collection or use it to audition the tracks that were recommended to me at the LAN party. Tens of thousands of CDs come out every year, and if one out of a thousand is good, that makes for A LOT of music to hear. And if it is challenging and intelligent, it oftens takes several listenings to properly appreciate. Conversely, as a consequence, there isn't enough time to rummage through it all, so I end up deleting more than I keep, and even what I keep from a LAN party usually doesn't get enough rotation and I end up deleting that.
I have a 160 gig drive that has 135 gigs of (mostly) 192 audio, and I have it in continuous random play mode in iTunes. (The size of my collection is another reason I don't have an iPod...) It's the only way I am guaranteed to hear new music....
These people are looking to pathologise every possible human act, and then find a way to either train you out of it (and bill you out of your retirement), or medicate it (giving your money to giant pharmaceutical corporations).
One could make the same charge against the internet as one might charge the very act of reading. Do you READ EVERY DAY? Do you READ Erotic Stories? Do you READ and WRITE letters to friends and relatives? Do you play video games? Do you READ and act on Advertisements that suggest you piss away a year's wages in Las Vegas? WELL THEN! We can't HAVE THAT! WE MUST BAN READING! Train people to STOP READING, and if they can't medicate them out of the habit. A couple doses of Thorazine mixed with Xanax will probably do the trick!
This whole notion is such utter crap. My work *depends* on the internet - it's how I sell my work and how I (mostly) communicate with others. Why? Because they live all over the freakin' planet, and to call them on the phone would cost a small fortune, and to go visit is out of the question.
(arrives in Sydney Australia)
RS: Hi Tom! I'm just wondering, but are you going to be finishing your next DVD this month? If so, I sure would like a copy!
Tom E: Sorry, mate, it won't be finished till February, earliest. Maybe March.
RS: Oh, thanks - gotta go - next plane across the planet leaves in an hour. bye!
There is no such thing as an obsession, unless you view it as such, or said behaviour adversely impacts the lives of others. Example: If you spend every minute online, and all you do is game and DL pr0n and check/. every minute, AND YOU FIND IT IS GETTING IN THE WAY OF THINGS YOU WANT TO DO - then sure: you have a problem. But: imagine if you got paid to do that, or something very like it: suddenly the bahaviour isn't OCD? why is it when money comes into the picture, the diagnosis goes away?
People do all kinds of crazy shit all the time, and I think that's just fine. It adds colour to my life. If someone wants to plop themselves infront of a computer all day and night - and they see no problem with that, then FINE - I don't care. I think they're some kind of a fucking WHACKJOB - but as I said - the world is full of freaks. It's only when these people behaving in a specific way *no longer find it useful* and feel compelled to do it against their will, OR, what they are doing is harming someone else without their consent, THEN I get all itchy.
These "psychologists" are the same bunch of lame boneheads who write scripts for ADHD at the least sign of impatience or Social Anxiety Disorder because of simple shyness or apprehension. Fuck them and fuck Phizer / Glaxo / etc. for wasting money pathlogising the human personality.
(2) Arm yourself under the protections of the 2nd amendments. We're allowed guns not just to hunt prey, protect our country from foreign invaders, and ensure our private security, but also to protect ourselves from domestic threats (meaning from within our borders.) If and when our government has become so corrupt that reform through the ballot boxes is impossible, then it is time to turn to the ammo boxes. (I don't believe we are near that point at all. When we are, a whole lot more people will be reaching for their ammo boxes.)
Is bullshit. You can go on and on about protecting yourself from Big Brother, but Big Brother has Apache nightvision gunships that'll take you and your pathetic band of idiots out in a single burst from the cannons.
If these neocon shitbags can convince America's impoverished semiliterate youth to go blast the fuck out of a bunch of Iraqi men, women, and children to protect ExxonMobil's "right" to sell Iraqi oil to the Chinese (which is why the Chinese are funding the whole operation) then they'll certainly be able to get them to fry the ass of some moderately armed and poorly trained "domestic terrorist" squad armed with their 2nd amendment weapons.
Reach for the ammo box - go ahead - just like Baader-Meinhof or James Brown - go for it - see how long you last. 5, maybe 10 minutes before they get a fix on your position and dump a MOAB on your sorry stupid hide, and they will then cheerfully rake your shattered remains with an AC-130.
IF by some bizarre chance you or your buddies somehow survive that onslaught, they'll just round up your relatives and send them off to Gitmo for "interrogation" until you surrender. Meanwhile they'll hunt you all down with helicopters and ground troops. You won't stand a chance, and when you find out your wife or daughter are trussed up naked in Gitmo ready for an "internal examination" - you'll surrender. And then they'll kill the lot of you. "Accidentally" of course.
from her song, Extra Executives:
Extra Executives - Jane Siberry
blowing kisses off his face
like flies --- like little flies
blowing like a grouper fish
floating through the reefs
his card says executive
but it mumbles just a salesman
he's not sure just who you are
but you might be a good connection
extra executives with a general desire
extra executives with a general desire
general desire
general desire
he took a course in sales
he's never been the same
a certain way to do things
respect for expectations
his bank gets a promotion
but his brain gets a vacation
he's looking over your shoulder
at the party for a person
who will change his life
reward him somehow
hey... I'm talking to you
extra executives...
one time...
everything's an exercise
for the extra executive
he's not sure just who you are
but you might be a good connection
blowing kisses off his face
like flies --- like little flies
blowing like a grouper fish
floating through the reefs
waiting for that special deal in the sky
that he never has to trade in
the telephone call that never comes
the letter's not in the letter box
the handshake that will close the deal
the telegram that will change his life
extra executives with a general desire
extra executives with a general desire
general desire
general desire
he took a course in sales
he's never been the same
Re:Sensationalist Journalism?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
Saying "we're due for one" makes you a nice sucker for Las Vegas. You are never "due" for a hit. You had the same odds last time as you do this time. If you roll two dice 200 times without getting snake eyes, you are not "due" for them. You still have the same 1 in 36 odds as you did last roll.
I'vebeen engaged in making MIDI music since 1986 and have released a dozen CDs of my music, so I think I am qualified to discuss this issue to some degree. This would be a perfect time for me to advertise myself, but I don't believe in using slashdot that way, as I prefer the anonymity of being Ralph Spoilsport here - it allows me to make more provocative statements that might otherwise be out of character for my public persona as an artist. That said:
MIDI data - at its most basic - records that a note is played (note on) the note location (pitch), the duration of said note, and the volume (often expressed in terms of note velocity) and that the note has stopped playing (note off). However, there are other pieces of data that can be transmitted, such as patch change up, patch change down, pitchbend, and data generated from continuous controllers such as modulation wheels.
If you take a typical and ordinary piece of MIDI data, it only has detectible relation to a given piece of music if the note data is matched to tones produced by a synthesizer or sampler (or a computer program that functions as such) that permit the possibility of melody and harmony. If the tones are, for instance, Latin Percussion, and their is a different non-pitched tone for each note on the keyboard, one would be extremely hard pressed to detect that the MIDI data making it happen was derived of a particular song.
MIDI note data, in point of fact, has NOTHING to do with the timbres generated by the end device, be it synth, sampler, and computer. Also, MIDI note data is easily dislodged from time, and it can be cut up, pasted, and used to trigger other MIDI generators (such as arpeggiators), and can also be subjected to randomisation and processing schemes.
So, one could easily take some drippy POS tune from the likes of Celine Dion, delete entire ranges of its data, take a section that might be too slow but is interesting, loop it and play it at 400 beats per minute, and then have the remainder trigger an arpeggiator that then triggers some Big Beat Drum machine sounds or a selection of machine . I seriously doubt anyone would be able to tell whether it was pulled from Celine Dion or Britney Spears or Claude Debussey, because:
Data that is used for pitch is not inherently tied to a pitched tone.
MIDI can functionally resemble a piano roll, but only if a player piano plays it. If you remove the pitched instrument (the player piano) the data of the "piano roll" can be used to trigger other kinds of nonpitched events (a drum, an explosion, a "thwip", a car engine, a generator, or whatever sample you assign to a given key position, etc. etc. etc.) and thusly make a lot of interesting sounds. Also, the piano roll can be played backwards (i.e., MIDI data is easily processed.)
Hence: the relationship between MIDI data and a given stream of MIDI data's copyright is actually rather problematic. Recreating a track by Celine Dion (or any other pointless musical product puked out by the music industry's star system) is an interesting academic exercise in MIDI programming, but it's not terribly creative. It would be much more interesting to mulch her MIDI data and make something interesting out of it.
s part of the decision, the Board of Education also went so far as to redefine science itself, saying that it is 'no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.'"
Nothing like a bunch of ignorant bible thumping freaks redefining a field of human enquiry that has been established and developed by dedicated indepedent thinking minds of remarkable genius and clarity far in excess of their own that are so clouded by superstitious balderdash.
Flamebait? Maybe, but the fact remains: the Kansas Board of Education collectively doesn't have even a fraction of the mental horsepower exhibited by Einstein, Darwin, Popper, Newton, Dawkins, Descartes, etc. etc. etc. They have NO BUSINESS redefining science, any more than I do.
I say FUCK THESE PEOPLE. Stop Them Now. Before it's too late.
IANAP, but I like to read books on science, esp. physics, astronomy, cosmology, evolutionary biology, etc. Some people read cheapie novels, I'll read the latest thing from Kaku, Green, Dawkins, Darling, etc. Not that they are necessarily the best books on any given subject at any given time, but for the most part they are fairly accurate.
It seems that in string theory gravity is solved in higher dimensions, but the instruments to test that are some time off from development, and so, in terms of testability, we're stuck where we've always been - somewhere between Einstein (relativity) and Bohr (quantum theory). And while everything in terms of matter seems to favour Quantum theory, Relativity is still on top of gravity, as we have yet to find a gravity wave or even a graviton.
Therefore, IMHO, we have to come to ask an interesting question:
What If Quantum Theory Simply Doesn't Work With Gravity? String Theory might have an explanation, but we're a long way off from being able to test String Theory's ideas about gravity, and (most importantly) a failure of Quantum Physics on Gravity is not necessarily an indication of String Theory's notions.
So, if it this test fails (like all the other Gravity Wave Detectors has) when will scientists give up and figure out a new understanding of gravity? This test seems like a good one, so what will happen if it fails? And furthermore, given its expense, how can it be repeatable outside of its own instrumentation?
I'm not being a troll - just asking honest questions and trying to get a better conversation in this article beyond a bunch of juvenile carping about spelling errors.
RS
lease. The planet has withstood enormous meteor impacts, global firestorms, earthquakes, enormous floods, and devasting environmental shifts far beyond our ability to cause, like the development of organisms which excrete oxygen as a waste product (You know, "plants").
The *planet* is doing just *fine*. The planet's survival is not at issue.
Yeah- George Carlin noted that and also said "When the world gets tired of humanity, it'll shake us off like fleas..."
Slashdot Mirror
I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened yet - IANAL, but these shitbags are clearly working a racketeering game.
Price fixing? yup.
Stifling competition? yup.
The list is long...
RS
I do not support windows. Not now, not then, not ever. Fuck that ugly piece of shit. The sooner more people agree with me, the sooner we can rid the planet of that bloated abortion of an OS.
RS
RS
Notice this line: The sum of these covers an area of nearly 77,000 km2. In fact, the reserve that is deemed to be technologically retrievable today is estimated at 280-300Gb (billion barrels). This is larger than the Saudi Arabia oil reserves, which are estimated at 240Gb. The total reserves for Alberta, including oil not recoverable using current technology, are estimated at 1,700- 2,500Gb.
At what cost to the environment? Pump that much carbon into the world, and we're fucked. Period.
RS
This bookshelf box stuff is just a waste of space.
RS
It's ridiculous!
My advice to Brit digiDJ's: Just Go For It. It's easier to beg forgiveness than it is to ask permission. Also: they have to CATCH you first, and then they have to jam a pole up their butt so hard that they think you need to be persecuted.
Stupid fascist fuckers.
If you're some superstar DJ - pay their mizzable tax and shut them up, but if you're just jamming the dancefloor in some flunky club filled with a bunch of lackluster poseurs - fuck 'em.
RS
RS
Nuclear power has promise, though. Especially if we can get IFR reactors going. There is sufficient fuel to power IFR type facilities for many many years. This results because the IFR is a breeder reactor which can utilize uranium 238 and damn near anything else that's densely radioactive. There isn't much of a future for standard fission reactors, and fast breeders are politically insane - but Integral Fast Reactors could really be the ticket for quite some time.
Or, at least until the oil gets so expensive we can't build computers to control the reactors...
RS
1865 - Locomotive Act (amended 1878) - restricted the speed of horse-less vehicles to 4mph in open country and 2 mph in towns. Act required three drivers for each vehicle - 2 to travel in the vehicle and one to walk ahead carrying a red flag... - the Red Flag Act.
1896 - Repeal of 1865 'Red Flag Act' after nearly two decades of strong support from horse interests. Horse-less vehicles now free to travel faster than walking pace! Royal Automobile Club founded. First RAC London to Brighton run held to celebrate the new era of speed. Race was won by Americans who didn't stop for lunch like the rest of the contestants...figures...
RS
That's what I get for doing math in my head...
RS
I've heard that Europeans are skinnier than Americans, but I think that's a bit extreme, don't you?
RS
In which case, the info on my computer will tell the world the following critical data about yours truly:
Name: Ralph Spoilsport
Address: 40105 Rhode Island School of Design Terrace
Ukaipah, CA 90210
Phone Number: 210.867.5309
Drivers License: THX1138
Mother's Maiden Name: Cinderella
That should be Really Useful to the Freaks who run this show.
Secondly: Once these chips are in place how long will it take for some one to hack the sucker and write a program to nullify it?
Thirdly: What if you build your own Damn Computer? It's not like it's that hard anymore...
This idea is yet another example of how many sheep in people suits we have on this planet.
RS
As has been true since the start, iPod owners mostly fill up their players from their own CD collections or swipe tunes from file-sharing sites.
Well, hot DAMN! That was hard to figure out.
Frankly I don't DL tunage from file sharing sites - it's too slow and a pain in the ass. What I do is every few months I go to a LAN party and trade multiple Gigabytes of mp3 files at a go. My friends and I have similar tastes (eclectic, but uncompromising, with some few guilty pleasures...like my friend Ryan who has this bizarre affection for James Taylor, even though lately his collection favours Death Metal and Industrial... I honestly don't get it...) so we all get to throw music at each other (Maaaaan - this record is AWESOME - you GOTTA listen to this... etc.) while we eat excellent food and drink enough likker to stun an ox. And all the files move at an order of magnitude or three faster than DLing them over my crappy DSL line.
I don't own an iPod - I listen to music in my head all the time, or just make up my own stuff, so I have no need for a personal music system.
If I did have an iPod (or similar device) I would simply put my fave tunes on it from my Truly Massive CD collection or use it to audition the tracks that were recommended to me at the LAN party. Tens of thousands of CDs come out every year, and if one out of a thousand is good, that makes for A LOT of music to hear. And if it is challenging and intelligent, it oftens takes several listenings to properly appreciate. Conversely, as a consequence, there isn't enough time to rummage through it all, so I end up deleting more than I keep, and even what I keep from a LAN party usually doesn't get enough rotation and I end up deleting that.
I have a 160 gig drive that has 135 gigs of (mostly) 192 audio, and I have it in continuous random play mode in iTunes. (The size of my collection is another reason I don't have an iPod...) It's the only way I am guaranteed to hear new music....
It is all madness. Madness I tell. Madness.
Oh look - pretty lights...
RS
Why *anyone* would get so worked up over a trivial piece of mediocre entertainment is beyond me.
RS
One could make the same charge against the internet as one might charge the very act of reading. Do you READ EVERY DAY? Do you READ Erotic Stories? Do you READ and WRITE letters to friends and relatives? Do you play video games? Do you READ and act on Advertisements that suggest you piss away a year's wages in Las Vegas? WELL THEN! We can't HAVE THAT! WE MUST BAN READING! Train people to STOP READING, and if they can't medicate them out of the habit. A couple doses of Thorazine mixed with Xanax will probably do the trick!
This whole notion is such utter crap. My work *depends* on the internet - it's how I sell my work and how I (mostly) communicate with others. Why? Because they live all over the freakin' planet, and to call them on the phone would cost a small fortune, and to go visit is out of the question.
(arrives in Sydney Australia)
RS: Hi Tom! I'm just wondering, but are you going to be finishing your next DVD this month? If so, I sure would like a copy!
Tom E: Sorry, mate, it won't be finished till February, earliest. Maybe March.
RS: Oh, thanks - gotta go - next plane across the planet leaves in an hour. bye!
There is no such thing as an obsession, unless you view it as such, or said behaviour adversely impacts the lives of others. Example: If you spend every minute online, and all you do is game and DL pr0n and check /. every minute, AND YOU FIND IT IS GETTING IN THE WAY OF THINGS YOU WANT TO DO - then sure: you have a problem. But: imagine if you got paid to do that, or something very like it: suddenly the bahaviour isn't OCD? why is it when money comes into the picture, the diagnosis goes away?
People do all kinds of crazy shit all the time, and I think that's just fine. It adds colour to my life. If someone wants to plop themselves infront of a computer all day and night - and they see no problem with that, then FINE - I don't care. I think they're some kind of a fucking WHACKJOB - but as I said - the world is full of freaks. It's only when these people behaving in a specific way *no longer find it useful* and feel compelled to do it against their will, OR, what they are doing is harming someone else without their consent, THEN I get all itchy.
These "psychologists" are the same bunch of lame boneheads who write scripts for ADHD at the least sign of impatience or Social Anxiety Disorder because of simple shyness or apprehension. Fuck them and fuck Phizer / Glaxo / etc. for wasting money pathlogising the human personality.
RS
Along with most of the bioshpere.
Hrrmmmm.
RS
RS
(2) Arm yourself under the protections of the 2nd amendments. We're allowed guns not just to hunt prey, protect our country from foreign invaders, and ensure our private security, but also to protect ourselves from domestic threats (meaning from within our borders.) If and when our government has become so corrupt that reform through the ballot boxes is impossible, then it is time to turn to the ammo boxes. (I don't believe we are near that point at all. When we are, a whole lot more people will be reaching for their ammo boxes.)
Is bullshit. You can go on and on about protecting yourself from Big Brother, but Big Brother has Apache nightvision gunships that'll take you and your pathetic band of idiots out in a single burst from the cannons.
If these neocon shitbags can convince America's impoverished semiliterate youth to go blast the fuck out of a bunch of Iraqi men, women, and children to protect ExxonMobil's "right" to sell Iraqi oil to the Chinese (which is why the Chinese are funding the whole operation) then they'll certainly be able to get them to fry the ass of some moderately armed and poorly trained "domestic terrorist" squad armed with their 2nd amendment weapons.
Reach for the ammo box - go ahead - just like Baader-Meinhof or James Brown - go for it - see how long you last. 5, maybe 10 minutes before they get a fix on your position and dump a MOAB on your sorry stupid hide, and they will then cheerfully rake your shattered remains with an AC-130.
IF by some bizarre chance you or your buddies somehow survive that onslaught, they'll just round up your relatives and send them off to Gitmo for "interrogation" until you surrender. Meanwhile they'll hunt you all down with helicopters and ground troops. You won't stand a chance, and when you find out your wife or daughter are trussed up naked in Gitmo ready for an "internal examination" - you'll surrender. And then they'll kill the lot of you. "Accidentally" of course.
RS
from her song, Extra Executives: Extra Executives - Jane Siberry blowing kisses off his face like flies --- like little flies blowing like a grouper fish floating through the reefs his card says executive but it mumbles just a salesman he's not sure just who you are but you might be a good connection extra executives with a general desire extra executives with a general desire general desire general desire he took a course in sales he's never been the same a certain way to do things respect for expectations his bank gets a promotion but his brain gets a vacation he's looking over your shoulder at the party for a person who will change his life reward him somehow hey... I'm talking to you extra executives... one time... everything's an exercise for the extra executive he's not sure just who you are but you might be a good connection blowing kisses off his face like flies --- like little flies blowing like a grouper fish floating through the reefs waiting for that special deal in the sky that he never has to trade in the telephone call that never comes the letter's not in the letter box the handshake that will close the deal the telegram that will change his life extra executives with a general desire extra executives with a general desire general desire general desire he took a course in sales he's never been the same
Tell that to Bayes.
RS
MIDI data - at its most basic - records that a note is played (note on) the note location (pitch), the duration of said note, and the volume (often expressed in terms of note velocity) and that the note has stopped playing (note off). However, there are other pieces of data that can be transmitted, such as patch change up, patch change down, pitchbend, and data generated from continuous controllers such as modulation wheels.
If you take a typical and ordinary piece of MIDI data, it only has detectible relation to a given piece of music if the note data is matched to tones produced by a synthesizer or sampler (or a computer program that functions as such) that permit the possibility of melody and harmony. If the tones are, for instance, Latin Percussion, and their is a different non-pitched tone for each note on the keyboard, one would be extremely hard pressed to detect that the MIDI data making it happen was derived of a particular song.
MIDI note data, in point of fact, has NOTHING to do with the timbres generated by the end device, be it synth, sampler, and computer. Also, MIDI note data is easily dislodged from time, and it can be cut up, pasted, and used to trigger other MIDI generators (such as arpeggiators), and can also be subjected to randomisation and processing schemes.
So, one could easily take some drippy POS tune from the likes of Celine Dion, delete entire ranges of its data, take a section that might be too slow but is interesting, loop it and play it at 400 beats per minute, and then have the remainder trigger an arpeggiator that then triggers some Big Beat Drum machine sounds or a selection of machine . I seriously doubt anyone would be able to tell whether it was pulled from Celine Dion or Britney Spears or Claude Debussey, because:
Data that is used for pitch is not inherently tied to a pitched tone.
MIDI can functionally resemble a piano roll, but only if a player piano plays it. If you remove the pitched instrument (the player piano) the data of the "piano roll" can be used to trigger other kinds of nonpitched events (a drum, an explosion, a "thwip", a car engine, a generator, or whatever sample you assign to a given key position, etc. etc. etc.) and thusly make a lot of interesting sounds. Also, the piano roll can be played backwards (i.e., MIDI data is easily processed.)
Hence: the relationship between MIDI data and a given stream of MIDI data's copyright is actually rather problematic. Recreating a track by Celine Dion (or any other pointless musical product puked out by the music industry's star system) is an interesting academic exercise in MIDI programming, but it's not terribly creative. It would be much more interesting to mulch her MIDI data and make something interesting out of it.
RS
Let's see - Moto strangled the G5, forcing Apple to IBM, and then to finally say "fuck the lot of you" and go over to Intel.
Ooooh- but then again, Apple pulled the plug on the clones, screwing Moto out of millions...
Oooooh, but then again...
Basically, Apple and Moto have been bad for each other for YEARS - this latest notion comes as no surprise.
RS
Nothing like a bunch of ignorant bible thumping freaks redefining a field of human enquiry that has been established and developed by dedicated indepedent thinking minds of remarkable genius and clarity far in excess of their own that are so clouded by superstitious balderdash.
Flamebait? Maybe, but the fact remains: the Kansas Board of Education collectively doesn't have even a fraction of the mental horsepower exhibited by Einstein, Darwin, Popper, Newton, Dawkins, Descartes, etc. etc. etc. They have NO BUSINESS redefining science, any more than I do.
I say FUCK THESE PEOPLE. Stop Them Now. Before it's too late.
RS
IANAP, but I like to read books on science, esp. physics, astronomy, cosmology, evolutionary biology, etc. Some people read cheapie novels, I'll read the latest thing from Kaku, Green, Dawkins, Darling, etc. Not that they are necessarily the best books on any given subject at any given time, but for the most part they are fairly accurate. It seems that in string theory gravity is solved in higher dimensions, but the instruments to test that are some time off from development, and so, in terms of testability, we're stuck where we've always been - somewhere between Einstein (relativity) and Bohr (quantum theory). And while everything in terms of matter seems to favour Quantum theory, Relativity is still on top of gravity, as we have yet to find a gravity wave or even a graviton. Therefore, IMHO, we have to come to ask an interesting question: What If Quantum Theory Simply Doesn't Work With Gravity? String Theory might have an explanation, but we're a long way off from being able to test String Theory's ideas about gravity, and (most importantly) a failure of Quantum Physics on Gravity is not necessarily an indication of String Theory's notions. So, if it this test fails (like all the other Gravity Wave Detectors has) when will scientists give up and figure out a new understanding of gravity? This test seems like a good one, so what will happen if it fails? And furthermore, given its expense, how can it be repeatable outside of its own instrumentation? I'm not being a troll - just asking honest questions and trying to get a better conversation in this article beyond a bunch of juvenile carping about spelling errors. RS
lease. The planet has withstood enormous meteor impacts, global firestorms, earthquakes, enormous floods, and devasting environmental shifts far beyond our ability to cause, like the development of organisms which excrete oxygen as a waste product (You know, "plants").
The *planet* is doing just *fine*. The planet's survival is not at issue.
Yeah- George Carlin noted that and also said "When the world gets tired of humanity, it'll shake us off like fleas..."
RS