So, MS is going to license MV stuf to prevent analogue copying, eh? WHO THE FUCK CARES?
All you need do is buy a cheap Time Base Corrector, and it strips all that crap out.
So you have your player (to) your TBC (to) your recorder, and YOU'RE DONE.
Sure - you lose a generation through analogue distortion, but we're talking analogue striaght from the gate here anyway!
Here's a question, though: does anyone know what HDTV TBC units go for lately? The last time I looked, it was WAY expensive. I can usually find NTSC units of very decent quality (component in and out) for less than $400, crappy units (composite in and out) for around $200 and change.
What MS and the MPAA and RIAA don't realise is that we professionals in the field- the people who MAKE the crap these weasels sell - Don't Do DRM. WE REQUIRE clean, clear, free signal, unencumbered by mythical notions of Intellectual Property extending beyond point of sale and NOWHERE to be found in a professional studio (except in the narrow case of certain software packages that require dongles and whatnot). And by extension, SO DO THE WEASELS - this whole RIAA/MPAA nonsense is such utter hypocrisy, it's painful to watch. It's like watching a belligerent retard beating up his pets...
Let's see - you spend some ungodly amount of money on an education to learn all kinds of crap about computers.
you find that the closed shop of Apple is a good old boys network that Just Ain't gonna Happen for you. And the world of Microsoft is a world of evil Evil EVIL!!!!
So you focus a lot of time and brain cells on open source, and GUESS WHAT?
There's no money in it...
Soooo, what do you do?
Bill Gates: "Roll up your arm and bend over - how do you want it? Regular or Premium?"
Depending on the kindness of strangers is not a wise method for making highly complex objects. I'm not certain there is a solution, but I do know that if you can't put food on the table for what you're spending you're time doing, you're either doing something that matters to you, a lot, or your expectations are excessively out of line with reality - like blowing $80k on a BS in Linux programming...
They'll be able to get them to fuck, but they won't be Making Love.
And sex without love is useful, but pointless, just like the idea of getting robots to fuck, so I gues at least it's a symmetrical notion.
I'm stuck on a planet full of idiots that's turning into a planet of fuckbots.
Great. Just what we need. If I didn't have a sweet little 7 year old spawn of my own that I love more than life itself, I'd pray for an asteroid strike... As it is, I find it pathetic that I might end up in a bar in 30 years drinking myself stupid while some fuckbot tries to get my business.
Ms. Fuckbot: Oh. Baby. You. Are. So. Fine. Come. Fuck. Me. I. Am. a. Fuckbot. Fuck. Me. Now.
Me: Sorry, toots - I ain't yer kind. I'm carbon, not silicon.
Ms. Fuckbot: Sorry. You. Looked. Like. One. Of. Us. With. That. Interweb. Implant.
I. find. The. Implant. Is. Especially. Attractive.
If. You. Were. A. Fuckbot. I. Would. Fuck. You.
Too. Bad. Have. A. Nice. Day. Hu. Man.
Me: You too. Have a nice time, babycakes. Bye!
Ms. Fuckbot: Good. bye.
Me: (muttering) stupid fucking fuckbots.
Ms. Fuckbot: I. Heard. That.
That. Is. A. Bigoted. Remark.
Me: What do you care? you're a fuckbot. So go spread for the parking meter or something, will ya?
Ms. Fuckbot: I. Would. No. more. Fuck. A. Parking. Meter. Than. you. would. Fuck. A . Dog.
That's the future friends. Meaningless drivelling conversations with machines. Oh well. It could be worse. They could be Republican Bible Thumping Retard Machines.
"Can a machine create a syphany or comopse a masterpiece?"
"Can you?"
I can and I have.
Hard AI is bullshit. What's happening is this: they know they can't really make a machine think, so they're changing the definitions of thought - lowering the bar, as it were - so they can declare themselves victorious, and all publish their dorky papers and get tenure.
Have the image in a non-roman alphabet with a GIF of the cipher next to it, and the text is a random string.
Let's say you use, Cyrillic , f'rinstance.
And the random string looks like this:
CTECMPCHP
The "Raiding" software would read it as:
CTECMPCHP
which will be wrong, as it should be read:
STESMRSNR
So, the person sitting there would look at the image, then look at the table next to it, find the C and see that it is the letter for S, T and E are the same, but there's that C=S thing followed by an M, which is the same, but the P is an R and the H is an N, etc...
Once they develop software that can read Cyrillic, switch to some other language or even make one up!
Here are some really fucked up alphabets that would be really cool that way:
Heck - there's bunchies of them. And since there would be a visible key next to it, it would make things a little slow, but it would be hella secure against automated intrusions, since the letter composition would be randomised.
I work on military simulation projects for the Department of Defense...
...The bad: The work isn't always technically challenging, you have to play The Game (but then, where don't you?), and eventually you will reach a point where you must take on some management responsibilities. However, if you work it correctly, you can rise as a technical lead, software architect, or some other position which is mostly technical with only a dash of paper-shuffling required.
Yeah, and at the end of your days, you can look back and say "I helped people KILL EACH OTHER." But the benefits were great.
Oh and his wise suggestion to Apple to sell the Mini for $249 each and incur $1 billion in losses was just amazing! Amazingly stupid. Like Wall Street really rewards companies that burn up cash by selling products at a loss.
Yeah. Wall Street Really Punishes companies that sell stuff at a loss. Like HOW big did Pets.com get? And they were FedExing Kitty Litter at a loss. And Amazon? They lost money hand of fist for years. It wasn't Wall Street that killed those charlatans. It was the VCs and anyone with common sense.
But your first point is *very* well taken - no one in their right fucking mind is going to DL an 11+gig HD movie over DSL. Ain't. Gonna. Happen. I can drive to a local Video Emporium listlessly browse the product, make feeble passes at te girl behind the counter, go across the street and buy a stack of chips and beer, shlep it all home and watch the movie, get completely hammered, and spill the chips all over the carpet, clean up the mess and I know the Download will STILL be in progress... Why Bother?
PD is fine - it works, but the documentation is lousy, and the community is vastly smaller and tends to be more academic than practical.
Consequently, support is much dodgier than with C74.
It's true, Macrovision will prevent analogue recordings. However, all it takes is for you to put a Perfectly Legal Time Base Corrector in the analogue line and *poof* MAcovision is all gone.
I'm sure that if they try to put some kind of MV thing in audio (or its equivalent) some Professional Studio will demand the equivalent of a TBC so they can get pristine audio in the recording studio, and bingo: no more crypto on analogue audio.
I remember back i nthe ancient 1980s, when a cheezy ass sampler (by todays standards) cost $2000+. In Reason, which costs about $400, you can fill an entire virtual rack with samplers far in excess of what availed then. you want 11 samplers stacked? If you had $25,000 - SURE. In Reason, when you're done, you simply open up a new blank Rack, and fill it with more/other goodies from the drop down menu. Back then, you'd have to sell all those samplers...
It comes with drum machines, samplers, processors, mixers, synthesizers of several different stripes, and on and on.
This, in combination with Reason, offers truly terrifying amounts of musical development and creativity. Recently, Live was upgraded to include MIDI, and a basic drum machine, so now it is even more deadly as a combo with Reason. Live is a Loop based compositional system, but with its new MIDI capabilities, it is now a much more powerful beast. It costs about $350, IIRC.
This, in combination with Live and Reason, makes ANYTHING coming out of Korg pretty much superfluous. With Live and Reason, you have composition systems and tonnes of "Gear". With Max/MSP you make your own gear, and it can be just as weird as you want it to be. Max/MSP isn't a synth, it's a software development environment that resembles an evil cross between Visual Basic and tinkertoys. It's available on Mac and (finally) Windows, and it totally fuckin' rocks. If you wondered how freeks like Autechre makes all that jiggety noise, look no further than:
Max/MSP.
so, lets run some totals:
My guess is the Oasys will likely come in around at a $2500 price point.
I often shop at Musicians Friend so my prices are from there as of today, Jan 20th. They aren't the best, or the worst. It's just a data point.
Reason: on sale: $199
Ableton Live: $399
Max/MSP with Jitter (video libraries): $799
Edirol PCRA-30 keyboard with Audio In: $299
And a computer I found at PC MALL - an IBM Thinkpad:
Intel P4, 2.8GHz processor, 256MB RAM, 40GB Hard Drive, CD-RW/DVD Combo drive,15" XGA Display, XP-Pro, etc.
Which has PLENTY of power for audio. and it's on sale for $1,198.
So, throw in another hundred bucks for a kbd stand and what not and the total is around:
$2900
Which is probably a bit more than the OASYS will sell for. Since Max/MSP is for Advanced User GEEKS, and Jitter is even geekier, cut the $799 out and you have an entire electronic music studio that KICKS ASS for about $2200.
...for a system that will totally thrash the OASYS up and down the street. Cheerfully.
Now: will your system CRASH? Yes. Will the OASYS? Probably not. If you're worried about that, then get a Powerbook or a Linux Book or whatever-the-fuck-book that flips your crank. They don't Blue Screen as much as Windoze box, but there are other issues involved. All in all, unless you're planning to spend a lot of time on stage, you're better off with the compter based system.
In a few years you will have run through most of what the OASYS does. In a few years... I *shudder* to think what Reason and Live will be like...
Basically Hardware Synth manufactueres are doomed. The only ones who will survive are the ones making the uber-geek analogue gear, and they will basically be little more than boutique operations for purists.
Now that Terry Gross is on the case, I'm sure the proper questions will get asked, and I can't wait to hear it on NPR shile I guzzle my coffee in the morning.
I think it's so cool that radio personalities are able to have careers in the legal profession - I doubt she's getting rich from her NPR gig.
What? Sure it's the same person! Just gotta be! Right?
It explains evidence, and makes predictions. The predictions have been bourne out in the laboratory countless times.
Gravity is a Theory as well, and it explains certain evidence (things fall). And those creationist retards who think that something is a theory is less true, can just engage in some defenestration and prove to us all how The Theory Of Gravity Isn't True, because it's a THEORY.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will collect on your dead pool.
Fundie religious people make me ill. They really are the bottom of the barrel of humanity- right there with militarists, rapists, and the TSA.
Oddly, enough, I have a "spiritual" side to me, but it's smart enough to know that Science answers the question HOW, while Religion and Art answer the question WHY. And it is high time people made the distinction.
But then, an indication of how completely lost the USA is, is to simply look at who's president - and I immediately experience diminished trust or hope that such a real enlightenment is possible with the present and dominant demographic and the dullwitted political inclinations it exhibits.
This is NOT a Troll, or Flamebait - it's simple facts. Ooops. I'm sorry - Theory.
RS
Re:Iceland is the Saudi Arabia of the 21st Century
on
Hydrogen Buses In Iceland
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· Score: 3, Informative
Sabinm completely missed the point in writing:
I don't understand: WHAT exactly will Iceland be exporting that will make all of them billionaires?
Saudi Arabia is rich not because it USES oil, but because it EXPORTS oil. Exporting hydrogen is stupid. exporting electricity is impractical. What they can export (for a limited time) is technical expertise and technology. That will only last until the quickest reverse engineer takes and improves on the process.
The United states, Canada, Russia, and other countries of that size will NEVER run out of available energy: they have a magnitude of the same resources that Iceland has.
Ummmm, no.
They can export Hydrogen. Why? Because Iceland is mostly a rocky desolate volcano witha cold surface, and it is surrounded by a few thousand miles of the North Atlantic Ocean. The Volcano they call "home" provides the entire country with free electricity i nthe form of Geothermal energy. They are barely tapping the energy of the place. All they need do is exploit the geothermal energy to crack te water and make hydrogen, and then sell it to the Americans.
Bingo. Instant Billionaires.
The USA does have extensive geothermal sites - Yellowstone park is a perfect example. but if you turned that into a water cracking plant, every Greenie would come out of the woodwork and decry the loss of Yogi's wilderness. There are some other sites that have decent geothermal: Hawaii, Parts of CA and NV. But NV has no water, and where CA has geothermal is nowhere near the water.
Iceland has both. In spades.
It's really pretty simple math, really. Also: Iceland has a BIG incentive: their present main industry is fishing. As the fish stocks dwindle, they will need a new industry to pick up the slack. Cracking water will do nicely.
Your notes re: the regs and patents is valuable, but beside the point. An even greater point beyond all that is the fact that there are too many god damn people and if we reduced population, none of this would be a problem. But that is also besides the point of the discussion.
Thanks to Iceland being basically one Giant Volcano, they've lots of Free Geothermal energy to make electricity and (bonus bell rings) it's surrounded by water. Put the two together and bingo: hydrogen.
It's going to be funny to see the Icelanders, who are already an incredibly literate and well educated people, will do with all the loot.
Personally, I look forward to our new Viking Overlords.
He was probably remembering the old IBM PowerPC roadmap from 2001 which clearly discusses the G3, the G4, the G5, the G6, and makes fuzzies about the G7.
He was probably talking about THAT G6. The one that was due in 2003 (DOH!).
The entire floating ice pack in the arctic could melt and it wouldn't effect the water level one bit. Why? BECAUSE IT'S FLOATING ALREADY.
Here's a little experiment:
- fill a glass with ice and put some water in it. Come back in a few hours and see if the glass has overflowed water all over the table.
It won't. It's a thing called displacement.
Melting the arctic ice pack is of little consequence to sea level. Note: melting the northern ice pack would certainly have MASSIVE ecological consequences, but raising the sea level isn't one of them.
HOWEVER
Melting the Antarctic glaciers WILL affect sea level. A lot. They're not displacing much of anything - most of it is on top of rock - and if it melts it will contribute to a rising sea level.
RS
CES rocks this year: there's a pr0n convention too
on
CES Tidbits
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm not being a troll or anything - my former boss just emailed me - she is now at CES and said that there's some kind of pr0n convention going on at the same time down the road in some other center.
Woo Hoo - I say it's time for some Silicon and Silicone!
Can anyone else confirm this news? If they could co-ordinate the two events they would get Even More Attendees...
What I've done on several occassions is take a tape and stick it in a Food Dryer - the kind you make jerky or dried fruit with. Then set it to a low temperature (like 105 F) and let it "bake" for several hours.
Then (and this is the most crucial part) :
you set up and TEST a digital recording system attached to the playback deck, and get the levels as close to perfect as you can, but let it peak around -3dB. Make sure you record it at some insane sampling rate and bit depth. 192kHz at 24bit is pretty good. Why? The bit depth is really important - this way when you process the audio through your restoration software, you have the bit depth to handle stuff like reverb tailings and other audio nuances.
If you chicken out and don't record at -3dB (which is fairly hot for recording analogue material, frankly) and record it at -12dB, but record it at 16 bit, and a quiet passage is at -24dB, you'll be lucky to be pulling an 8 bit recording out of it, and it will sound kind of gritty. IF you record at 24bit and chicken out, then the quiet passage described will be in 12 bit - not optimal, but one heck of a lot better sounding than 8 bit. If you record at 24bit and get a -3dB recording, then you'll still have boodles of headroom.
In anycase, you set up your recording system, carefully set the tape in the player, press record on your digital recorder, press play and the deck, and PRAY. Keep a mini vac nearby to suck up the oxide -as it goes through the capstan, it will shred and shed all over the carpet and the interior of the deck. Use the vac to suck up the oxide as it peels off the acetate backing. Also, keep a can of compreszed air nearby to blow components clean. After you record one song, stop the deck, blow the oxide off the components, vacuum the heads, and resume your recording...
It's a major PAIN IN THE ASS when done right, and that's why it's so freakin' expensive to get done. It's very labour intensive. And also very high risk: You Only Get One Playback after a bake. Once, I got two, but the second was pretty degraded - nothing over 8kHz came through.
The WORST is video tape. FUCK that sucks. If you get some distortion in audio, that's one thing, a little hiss is something you can accompodate in your listening - but dropped or stuck frames or getting vast fields of snow and frame roll makes for a ***really unsatisfying viewing experience***. Sticky shed video is a true horror. And it's the future. Despair now, and get it over with.
With tape you could use whatever you wanted to record a record, it all got put to the same tape and in most cases the tape lasted a very long time, 50 years plus.
This is true only in an optimal sense. In a very real and practical sense, it's not true at all. Many tapes are stored in only moderately optimal facilities, and a lot are stored in attics, sheds, and basements. A major scourge is the "Sticky shed" syndrome as described here, for example. while the old Ampex tapes were major culprits, in my own personal experience I have seen a large number and variety of tapes suffer similar fates.
Several months ago I had to resurrect a number of video tapes that had a similar problem. In short: tape is not as archival as vinyl. The question of archival quality audio reproduction is a hot topic being debated in library science. AFAIK, there have been no real concrete conclusions to the problem. From what I can gather, it seems very likely that the 21st century will simply disappear from history.
I hope that's not true, but there are an awful lot of extremely obvious and seemingly implacable problems facing archival audio and video storage.
While it is funny, it is also rather insightful - there are so many posts here going on about the "superiority of the command line" it's almost laughable.
the command line isn't "better" or more "pure" computing. It's one particular way of dealing with data. As time goes on, and the machines change, the command line will disappear. As will computers as we know them. Just like switches and punch cards and buggy whips and cuneiform and everything else.
Yeah - You're probably right. And there's another great idea, though : run substantial amounts of the planet's energy needs from geothermally active places like supervolcanos.
I'd rather close all the nuke / coal / gas plants and turn Yellowstone into one big electrical generator. A loss of Yellowstone - yeah - but we'd gain so much in return.
I know geothermal isn't new. And I know that it has some environmental consequences.
BUT: I'm talking Iceland. It doesn't have the same delicate pristine ecosystem as the NZ site. Heck: they chopped all of its trees down centuries ago, and otherwise, it's a bit of a frozen wasteland sitting on top of a volcano. Using it's natural heat for energy is something they've been doing for many years, and all I'm suggesting is that they amplify their efforts and become a driving force in the development of hydrogen.
Hawaii has a stickier ecology, but sections of the Big Island are pretty desolate, and sticking a goethermal plant there and using it to crack water woud be a damn good thing for everyone.
The fact is we need to generate something like 10 terawatts of energy every year. By 2050 it's going to be more like 25 terawatts. It's gotta come from somewhere, and I think pumping it out of the earth's underground heat is a much better idea than burning Canada's tar sands, or mining the moon for He3. (although, the He3 ideas are pretty spiffy, and it would get us off the planet in a permanent way...)
Slashdot Mirror
All you need do is buy a cheap Time Base Corrector, and it strips all that crap out.
So you have your player (to) your TBC (to) your recorder, and YOU'RE DONE.
Sure - you lose a generation through analogue distortion, but we're talking analogue striaght from the gate here anyway!
Here's a question, though: does anyone know what HDTV TBC units go for lately? The last time I looked, it was WAY expensive. I can usually find NTSC units of very decent quality (component in and out) for less than $400, crappy units (composite in and out) for around $200 and change.
What MS and the MPAA and RIAA don't realise is that we professionals in the field- the people who MAKE the crap these weasels sell - Don't Do DRM. WE REQUIRE clean, clear, free signal, unencumbered by mythical notions of Intellectual Property extending beyond point of sale and NOWHERE to be found in a professional studio (except in the narrow case of certain software packages that require dongles and whatnot). And by extension, SO DO THE WEASELS - this whole RIAA/MPAA nonsense is such utter hypocrisy, it's painful to watch. It's like watching a belligerent retard beating up his pets...
RS
RS
you find that the closed shop of Apple is a good old boys network that Just Ain't gonna Happen for you. And the world of Microsoft is a world of evil Evil EVIL!!!!
So you focus a lot of time and brain cells on open source, and GUESS WHAT?
There's no money in it...
Soooo, what do you do?
Bill Gates: "Roll up your arm and bend over - how do you want it? Regular or Premium?"
Depending on the kindness of strangers is not a wise method for making highly complex objects. I'm not certain there is a solution, but I do know that if you can't put food on the table for what you're spending you're time doing, you're either doing something that matters to you, a lot, or your expectations are excessively out of line with reality - like blowing $80k on a BS in Linux programming...
RS
And sex without love is useful, but pointless, just like the idea of getting robots to fuck, so I gues at least it's a symmetrical notion.
I'm stuck on a planet full of idiots that's turning into a planet of fuckbots.
Great. Just what we need. If I didn't have a sweet little 7 year old spawn of my own that I love more than life itself, I'd pray for an asteroid strike... As it is, I find it pathetic that I might end up in a bar in 30 years drinking myself stupid while some fuckbot tries to get my business.
Ms. Fuckbot: Oh. Baby. You. Are. So. Fine. Come. Fuck. Me. I. Am. a. Fuckbot. Fuck. Me. Now.
Me: Sorry, toots - I ain't yer kind. I'm carbon, not silicon.
Ms. Fuckbot: Sorry. You. Looked. Like. One. Of. Us. With. That. Interweb. Implant.
I. find. The. Implant. Is. Especially. Attractive.
If. You. Were. A. Fuckbot. I. Would. Fuck. You.
Too. Bad. Have. A. Nice. Day. Hu. Man.
Me: You too. Have a nice time, babycakes. Bye!
Ms. Fuckbot: Good. bye.
Me: (muttering) stupid fucking fuckbots.
Ms. Fuckbot: I. Heard. That.
That. Is. A. Bigoted. Remark.
Me: What do you care? you're a fuckbot. So go spread for the parking meter or something, will ya?
Ms. Fuckbot: I. Would. No. more. Fuck. A. Parking. Meter. Than. you. would. Fuck. A . Dog.
Me: (arched eyebrow, weak smile) Mmm.... Woof Woof, baby cakes...
Ms. Fuckbot: You. Are. A. Disgusting. Pervert.
Me: It's better than being a stupid fuckbot.
That's the future friends. Meaningless drivelling conversations with machines. Oh well. It could be worse. They could be Republican Bible Thumping Retard Machines.
We've already got plenty of those...
RS
"Can you?"
I can and I have.
Hard AI is bullshit. What's happening is this: they know they can't really make a machine think, so they're changing the definitions of thought - lowering the bar, as it were - so they can declare themselves victorious, and all publish their dorky papers and get tenure.
Losers. The lot of them.
RS
Let's say you use, Cyrillic , f'rinstance.
And the random string looks like this:
CTECMPCHP
The "Raiding" software would read it as:
CTECMPCHP
which will be wrong, as it should be read:
STESMRSNR
So, the person sitting there would look at the image, then look at the table next to it, find the C and see that it is the letter for S, T and E are the same, but there's that C=S thing followed by an M, which is the same, but the P is an R and the H is an N, etc...
Once they develop software that can read Cyrillic, switch to some other language or even make one up!
Here are some really fucked up alphabets that would be really cool that way:
Glagolithic
Enochian
Cherokee
Malayam
Heck - there's bunchies of them. And since there would be a visible key next to it, it would make things a little slow, but it would be hella secure against automated intrusions, since the letter composition would be randomised.
also: It would look | Comments?
RS
Fucking Troll.
RS
Yeah, and at the end of your days, you can look back and say "I helped people KILL EACH OTHER." But the benefits were great.
RS
Yeah. Wall Street Really Punishes companies that sell stuff at a loss. Like HOW big did Pets.com get? And they were FedExing Kitty Litter at a loss. And Amazon? They lost money hand of fist for years. It wasn't Wall Street that killed those charlatans. It was the VCs and anyone with common sense.
But your first point is *very* well taken - no one in their right fucking mind is going to DL an 11+gig HD movie over DSL. Ain't. Gonna. Happen. I can drive to a local Video Emporium listlessly browse the product, make feeble passes at te girl behind the counter, go across the street and buy a stack of chips and beer, shlep it all home and watch the movie, get completely hammered, and spill the chips all over the carpet, clean up the mess and I know the Download will STILL be in progress... Why Bother?
HW
RS
I'm sure that if they try to put some kind of MV thing in audio (or its equivalent) some Professional Studio will demand the equivalent of a TBC so they can get pristine audio in the recording studio, and bingo: no more crypto on analogue audio.
RS
Basically, the Keyboard People are fucked.
Strike that. They are FUCKED.
Why? As one poster noted above: Software.
Software synthesis already outstrips most anything you can do in a keyboard, and at a much lower cost.
Exhibit A:
REASON
I remember back i nthe ancient 1980s, when a cheezy ass sampler (by todays standards) cost $2000+. In Reason, which costs about $400, you can fill an entire virtual rack with samplers far in excess of what availed then. you want 11 samplers stacked? If you had $25,000 - SURE. In Reason, when you're done, you simply open up a new blank Rack, and fill it with more/other goodies from the drop down menu. Back then, you'd have to sell all those samplers...
It comes with drum machines, samplers, processors, mixers, synthesizers of several different stripes, and on and on.
Second Exhibit: ABLETON LIVE
This, in combination with Reason, offers truly terrifying amounts of musical development and creativity. Recently, Live was upgraded to include MIDI, and a basic drum machine, so now it is even more deadly as a combo with Reason. Live is a Loop based compositional system, but with its new MIDI capabilities, it is now a much more powerful beast. It costs about $350, IIRC.
Exhibit Three: Max/MSP
This, in combination with Live and Reason, makes ANYTHING coming out of Korg pretty much superfluous. With Live and Reason, you have composition systems and tonnes of "Gear". With Max/MSP you make your own gear, and it can be just as weird as you want it to be. Max/MSP isn't a synth, it's a software development environment that resembles an evil cross between Visual Basic and tinkertoys. It's available on Mac and (finally) Windows, and it totally fuckin' rocks. If you wondered how freeks like Autechre makes all that jiggety noise, look no further than:
Max/MSP.
so, lets run some totals:
My guess is the Oasys will likely come in around at a $2500 price point.
I often shop at Musicians Friend so my prices are from there as of today, Jan 20th. They aren't the best, or the worst. It's just a data point.
Reason: on sale: $199
Ableton Live: $399
Max/MSP with Jitter (video libraries): $799
Edirol PCRA-30 keyboard with Audio In: $299
And a computer I found at PC MALL - an IBM Thinkpad:
Intel P4, 2.8GHz processor, 256MB RAM, 40GB Hard Drive, CD-RW/DVD Combo drive,15" XGA Display, XP-Pro, etc.
Which has PLENTY of power for audio. and it's on sale for $1,198.
So, throw in another hundred bucks for a kbd stand and what not and the total is around:
$2900
Which is probably a bit more than the OASYS will sell for. Since Max/MSP is for Advanced User GEEKS, and Jitter is even geekier, cut the $799 out and you have an entire electronic music studio that KICKS ASS for about $2200.
Now: will your system CRASH? Yes. Will the OASYS? Probably not. If you're worried about that, then get a Powerbook or a Linux Book or whatever-the-fuck-book that flips your crank. They don't Blue Screen as much as Windoze box, but there are other issues involved. All in all, unless you're planning to spend a lot of time on stage, you're better off with the compter based system.
In a few years you will have run through most of what the OASYS does. In a few years... I *shudder* to think what Reason and Live will be like...
Basically Hardware Synth manufactueres are doomed. The only ones who will survive are the ones making the uber-geek analogue gear, and they will basically be little more than boutique operations for purists.
RS
I think it's so cool that radio personalities are able to have careers in the legal profession - I doubt she's getting rich from her NPR gig.
What? Sure it's the same person! Just gotta be! Right?
RS
Gravity is a Theory as well, and it explains certain evidence (things fall). And those creationist retards who think that something is a theory is less true, can just engage in some defenestration and prove to us all how The Theory Of Gravity Isn't True, because it's a THEORY.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will collect on your dead pool.
Fundie religious people make me ill. They really are the bottom of the barrel of humanity- right there with militarists, rapists, and the TSA.
Oddly, enough, I have a "spiritual" side to me, but it's smart enough to know that Science answers the question HOW, while Religion and Art answer the question WHY. And it is high time people made the distinction.
But then, an indication of how completely lost the USA is, is to simply look at who's president - and I immediately experience diminished trust or hope that such a real enlightenment is possible with the present and dominant demographic and the dullwitted political inclinations it exhibits.
This is NOT a Troll, or Flamebait - it's simple facts. Ooops. I'm sorry - Theory.
RS
I don't understand: WHAT exactly will Iceland be exporting that will make all of them billionaires? Saudi Arabia is rich not because it USES oil, but because it EXPORTS oil. Exporting hydrogen is stupid. exporting electricity is impractical. What they can export (for a limited time) is technical expertise and technology. That will only last until the quickest reverse engineer takes and improves on the process. The United states, Canada, Russia, and other countries of that size will NEVER run out of available energy: they have a magnitude of the same resources that Iceland has.
Ummmm, no.
They can export Hydrogen. Why? Because Iceland is mostly a rocky desolate volcano witha cold surface, and it is surrounded by a few thousand miles of the North Atlantic Ocean. The Volcano they call "home" provides the entire country with free electricity i nthe form of Geothermal energy. They are barely tapping the energy of the place. All they need do is exploit the geothermal energy to crack te water and make hydrogen, and then sell it to the Americans.
Bingo. Instant Billionaires.
The USA does have extensive geothermal sites - Yellowstone park is a perfect example. but if you turned that into a water cracking plant, every Greenie would come out of the woodwork and decry the loss of Yogi's wilderness. There are some other sites that have decent geothermal: Hawaii, Parts of CA and NV. But NV has no water, and where CA has geothermal is nowhere near the water.
Iceland has both. In spades.
It's really pretty simple math, really. Also: Iceland has a BIG incentive: their present main industry is fishing. As the fish stocks dwindle, they will need a new industry to pick up the slack. Cracking water will do nicely.
Your notes re: the regs and patents is valuable, but beside the point. An even greater point beyond all that is the fact that there are too many god damn people and if we reduced population, none of this would be a problem. But that is also besides the point of the discussion.
Go to DIEOFF.ORG for details.
RS
Thanks to Iceland being basically one Giant Volcano, they've lots of Free Geothermal energy to make electricity and (bonus bell rings) it's surrounded by water. Put the two together and bingo: hydrogen.
It's going to be funny to see the Icelanders, who are already an incredibly literate and well educated people, will do with all the loot.
Personally, I look forward to our new Viking Overlords.
RS
Anyone heard ahything that way?
I've heard anything from tomorrow afternoon to 2 milion years. I've heard it's been getting increasingly variable since 1940.
If it goes supernova (and it's WAY big enough) what would be the results here? Genetic disorders? Extinction? Has anyone done the math on this?
RS
what is he talking about?
He was probably remembering the old IBM PowerPC roadmap from 2001 which clearly discusses the G3, the G4, the G5, the G6, and makes fuzzies about the G7.
He was probably talking about THAT G6. The one that was due in 2003 (DOH!).
cheers,
RS
Here's a little experiment:
- fill a glass with ice and put some water in it. Come back in a few hours and see if the glass has overflowed water all over the table.
It won't. It's a thing called displacement.
Melting the arctic ice pack is of little consequence to sea level. Note: melting the northern ice pack would certainly have MASSIVE ecological consequences, but raising the sea level isn't one of them.
HOWEVER
Melting the Antarctic glaciers WILL affect sea level. A lot. They're not displacing much of anything - most of it is on top of rock - and if it melts it will contribute to a rising sea level.
RS
Woo Hoo - I say it's time for some Silicon and Silicone!
Can anyone else confirm this news? If they could co-ordinate the two events they would get Even More Attendees...
RS
What you have to do is "bake" the tapes.
What I've done on several occassions is take a tape and stick it in a Food Dryer - the kind you make jerky or dried fruit with. Then set it to a low temperature (like 105 F) and let it "bake" for several hours.
Then (and this is the most crucial part) :
you set up and TEST a digital recording system attached to the playback deck, and get the levels as close to perfect as you can, but let it peak around -3dB. Make sure you record it at some insane sampling rate and bit depth. 192kHz at 24bit is pretty good. Why? The bit depth is really important - this way when you process the audio through your restoration software, you have the bit depth to handle stuff like reverb tailings and other audio nuances.
If you chicken out and don't record at -3dB (which is fairly hot for recording analogue material, frankly) and record it at -12dB, but record it at 16 bit, and a quiet passage is at -24dB, you'll be lucky to be pulling an 8 bit recording out of it, and it will sound kind of gritty. IF you record at 24bit and chicken out, then the quiet passage described will be in 12 bit - not optimal, but one heck of a lot better sounding than 8 bit. If you record at 24bit and get a -3dB recording, then you'll still have boodles of headroom.
In anycase, you set up your recording system, carefully set the tape in the player, press record on your digital recorder, press play and the deck, and PRAY. Keep a mini vac nearby to suck up the oxide -as it goes through the capstan, it will shred and shed all over the carpet and the interior of the deck. Use the vac to suck up the oxide as it peels off the acetate backing. Also, keep a can of compreszed air nearby to blow components clean. After you record one song, stop the deck, blow the oxide off the components, vacuum the heads, and resume your recording...
It's a major PAIN IN THE ASS when done right, and that's why it's so freakin' expensive to get done. It's very labour intensive. And also very high risk: You Only Get One Playback after a bake. Once, I got two, but the second was pretty degraded - nothing over 8kHz came through.
The WORST is video tape. FUCK that sucks. If you get some distortion in audio, that's one thing, a little hiss is something you can accompodate in your listening - but dropped or stuck frames or getting vast fields of snow and frame roll makes for a ***really unsatisfying viewing experience***. Sticky shed video is a true horror. And it's the future. Despair now, and get it over with.
RS
With tape you could use whatever you wanted to record a record, it all got put to the same tape and in most cases the tape lasted a very long time, 50 years plus.
This is true only in an optimal sense. In a very real and practical sense, it's not true at all. Many tapes are stored in only moderately optimal facilities, and a lot are stored in attics, sheds, and basements. A major scourge is the "Sticky shed" syndrome as described here, for example. while the old Ampex tapes were major culprits, in my own personal experience I have seen a large number and variety of tapes suffer similar fates.
Several months ago I had to resurrect a number of video tapes that had a similar problem. In short: tape is not as archival as vinyl. The question of archival quality audio reproduction is a hot topic being debated in library science. AFAIK, there have been no real concrete conclusions to the problem. From what I can gather, it seems very likely that the 21st century will simply disappear from history.
I hope that's not true, but there are an awful lot of extremely obvious and seemingly implacable problems facing archival audio and video storage.
RS
the command line isn't "better" or more "pure" computing. It's one particular way of dealing with data. As time goes on, and the machines change, the command line will disappear. As will computers as we know them. Just like switches and punch cards and buggy whips and cuneiform and everything else.
Now, where did I leave my abacus?
RS
I'd rather close all the nuke / coal / gas plants and turn Yellowstone into one big electrical generator. A loss of Yellowstone - yeah - but we'd gain so much in return.
RS
BUT: I'm talking Iceland. It doesn't have the same delicate pristine ecosystem as the NZ site. Heck: they chopped all of its trees down centuries ago, and otherwise, it's a bit of a frozen wasteland sitting on top of a volcano. Using it's natural heat for energy is something they've been doing for many years, and all I'm suggesting is that they amplify their efforts and become a driving force in the development of hydrogen.
Hawaii has a stickier ecology, but sections of the Big Island are pretty desolate, and sticking a goethermal plant there and using it to crack water woud be a damn good thing for everyone.
The fact is we need to generate something like 10 terawatts of energy every year. By 2050 it's going to be more like 25 terawatts. It's gotta come from somewhere, and I think pumping it out of the earth's underground heat is a much better idea than burning Canada's tar sands, or mining the moon for He3. (although, the He3 ideas are pretty spiffy, and it would get us off the planet in a permanent way...)
RS