Sure, I use a digital tuner to tune my guitars, too. But have you ever noticed that when a band or an orchestra is tuning up, they tune to each other, even after using their tuners?
I've played saxophone for 20 years, so yes, I know a bit about tuning. Tuning a guitar and tuning a wind instrument are two very different things. Once you've tuned your guitar, you basically forget about intonation until you need to tune it again. You're not constantly adjusting each note to the slight idiosyncrasies of your instrument. Even the best wind instruments will have some notes that are a bit sharp, and some notes that are a bit flat. Like I said, it's common for wind players to practice playing one long note at a time, all the way across the range of their instrument, while watching a tuner, until they can internalize the adjustments they have to make for each note. Tuning a guitar takes maybe a minute. What I'm talking about takes hours.
the whole hypothesis of one's "vibrato" having all that much to do with whether one is a good singer or not is hogwash. There are many uses of vibrato from virtually none (listen to a good singer perform Handel) to a ton (listen to a different good singer perform Wagner), where the amount of vibrato in a given style changes over the course of a phrase...etc.
Well, you're not really talking about quality there, you're talking about whether it exists at all, and how it's used. Assuming a vocalist is using vibrato, it is certainly possible to evaluate the quality of the vibrato. For instance, a good vibrato should bend the notes both up and down from a given pitch. If a singer is only bending down from the pitch, that could be considered bad vibrato.
OK Mr. Literal. But what they're working towards being able to quantify with a machine, is someone's singing voice.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. The summary says they're using "biofeedback to help singers improve their technique". Based on that, it would seem they're more interested in it as an educational tool rather than a tool for critics. There are a number of other technologies to help musicians improve their technique, so it's not like this is the first. For instance, many wind musicians will practice playing long tones with a digital tuner to improve their overall intonation. There are also systems that schools use that track the notes that you've played, compare them with the notes you were supposed to have played, and tell you what you've done wrong.
how pleasant someone's singing voice is, is a completely subjective thing that can only really be properly judged by other human beings.
They said nothing about the pleasantness of the singing voice. The system judges the quality of the vibrato. Though that seems like it would be fairly easy to assess. Just measure the consistency of frequency range and the consistency of each pulse, and generate a score.
And people wonder why it's so easy for the RIAA to erode fair use...it's simple, when most people don't even understand what fair use is, it's easy to slowly take it away.
I love how saying something that's true and in direct response to an earlier comment will get you moderated down as "Offtopic" by a moderator who doesn't agree with you.
Hippies with money don't care about the poor trying to get by with high heating oil/energy costs.
You know, we've had 7.5 years with a president who is all about oil and couldn't care less about the environment, and tell me, what exactly has happened to oil prices in those 7.5 years? Oh yeah, they've shot through the roof. And when the Hippie with Money (tm) was president in the 90's, what happened to oil prices then? Oh yeah, they were extraordinarily low. When I got my first car about 12 years ago, I was paying less than $1 for a gallon of gas. Now I'm paying $4.20/ga. The Republicans can act like they're good for the economy, but they're full of crap.
so of course the audience for Network programming is skewed towards the older, wiser crowd. Even my 18 year old daughter shakes her head at the crap on MTV, for example.
You know there are more channels on cable that have programming geared towards the "older, wiser crowd", right? MTV isn't the only channel on cable. Channels like The History Channel, Discovery, TLC, The Documentary Channel, and well, CNN, CSPAN, and others provide way more interesting TV than most of the network shows.
You paid more for the hard drives, and my friend's vintage first generation g4 still boots up perfectly on its original hard drive despite being continuously on for its entire life.
I'm reasonably certain that Apple has never manufactured hard drives. If you bought a hard drive from an Apple store, chances are good you could have gotten the exact same hard drive somewhere else. That has always been one great irony of Apple, that users think they're getting better hardware than PC users (and because of discount PC builders, in many cases they are), but dollar for dollar, they're not getting hardware that you can't get on a comparatively priced PC.
Aside from that, however, in normal conversation, when one says "phone company", one does not mean "research laboratory" and vice versa.
Now, yes. And I don't claim to know everything about the history of Bell Labs, but back in the 70s and early 80s, at least, Bell Labs was a part of AT&T. When I was a kid, my dad worked on 4ESS for "AT&T Bell Labs". After the divestiture, it became AT&T, and later Lucent, but back then it was one and the same.
You mean during the heyday of Bell Labs, when they were dumping money into R&D, and inventing things like a little language named C, a little operating system named Unix, the electret microphone, the CO2 LASER, and the first 32-bit microprocessor? Yeah, who would want to work there?
isn't that the way insurance already works? I pay way more for my family's high deductible health plan than I would pay out of pocket each year for medical expenses, but it's good to have in case we have some unforseen major medical crisis down the road. If you're generally healthy, your health insurance is using you to subsidize payments to others who aren't so fortunate. It's similar to gambling, really.
That then leads to what exactly is a "project": a set of tasks with a time-frame and goal of somehow adding value.
Thank god we've gotten that out of the way. I guess now that we've adequately defined work, I can go get some work done. See ya'll at the next meeting.
I thought this Wired quote about why the water sublimates on Mars is interesting:
"Just like dry ice does here on Earth, water ice goes from solid to gas when the pressure is below 6.1 millibars and it gets heated (like it does in the Martian sun). It can also go straight from solid to gas above 6.1 millibars when the vapor pressure (amount of water vapor in the air) is low enough. This is because the molecules of water in solid form and gas form are not at equilibrium."
ARgh! Firefox 3 STILL requires you to occasionally delete all cookies, cache, forms, etc. for gmail to load proper.
What are you talking about? I've been using Gmail with Firefox for years without ever having a problem that sounds even remotely like what you're describing...
I don't think most companies announce their reasons for firing someone. They're generally too afraid of defamation suits from former employees. So how exactly would it ruin your entire career? Unless you got jailtime...
You'll probably need references to get another job. They might not announce their reason for firing you publicly, but they could easily pass the information along to the next company. And if you get charged / convicted with a crime, you'll obviously have a public criminal record. It just seems to me like the sort of thing that anybody with half a brain would avoid doing for any number of reasons.
At work or anywhere else I simply asume some admin will read my email on a bored day and I simply asume he will browse through my files the other day.
It's probably a good assumption, but I have to admit I'm surprised the number is as high as 1 in 3, considering that getting fired for snooping on others' email or files is something that could probably cost you your entire career. Who would hire somebody as a sysop who had been caught snooping?
It's only illegal if someone (or an entity) gets caught, you're able to prove it court, are able to get a ruling in your favor in court, and are able thereafter to enforce remedial action.
Good luck with all that.
Well, it's still illegal. Just because the powers that be think they can ignore laws, and have the power to keep from getting prosecuted doesn't change the legality. Maybe someday they'll be brought to justice. Doubt it, though.
Most of the land line suggestions in that article don't seem to bother with taking care of the noticeable voltage drop caused by adding an extra phone to a call. You can tell when somebody else in your house picks up the phone while you're on it because the person on the other end gets quieter. The same thing would happen if you plugged a phone into the line outside your house. I thought professional surveillance systems did something to make up for this, so there's no noticeable change in volume when the wiretapper starts listening.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I certainly won't be completing any more German surveys...
Sure, I use a digital tuner to tune my guitars, too. But have you ever noticed that when a band or an orchestra is tuning up, they tune to each other, even after using their tuners?
I've played saxophone for 20 years, so yes, I know a bit about tuning. Tuning a guitar and tuning a wind instrument are two very different things. Once you've tuned your guitar, you basically forget about intonation until you need to tune it again. You're not constantly adjusting each note to the slight idiosyncrasies of your instrument. Even the best wind instruments will have some notes that are a bit sharp, and some notes that are a bit flat. Like I said, it's common for wind players to practice playing one long note at a time, all the way across the range of their instrument, while watching a tuner, until they can internalize the adjustments they have to make for each note. Tuning a guitar takes maybe a minute. What I'm talking about takes hours.
the whole hypothesis of one's "vibrato" having all that much to do with whether one is a good singer or not is hogwash. There are many uses of vibrato from virtually none (listen to a good singer perform Handel) to a ton (listen to a different good singer perform Wagner), where the amount of vibrato in a given style changes over the course of a phrase...etc.
Well, you're not really talking about quality there, you're talking about whether it exists at all, and how it's used. Assuming a vocalist is using vibrato, it is certainly possible to evaluate the quality of the vibrato. For instance, a good vibrato should bend the notes both up and down from a given pitch. If a singer is only bending down from the pitch, that could be considered bad vibrato.
OK Mr. Literal. But what they're working towards being able to quantify with a machine, is someone's singing voice.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. The summary says they're using "biofeedback to help singers improve their technique". Based on that, it would seem they're more interested in it as an educational tool rather than a tool for critics. There are a number of other technologies to help musicians improve their technique, so it's not like this is the first. For instance, many wind musicians will practice playing long tones with a digital tuner to improve their overall intonation. There are also systems that schools use that track the notes that you've played, compare them with the notes you were supposed to have played, and tell you what you've done wrong.
how pleasant someone's singing voice is, is a completely subjective thing that can only really be properly judged by other human beings.
They said nothing about the pleasantness of the singing voice. The system judges the quality of the vibrato. Though that seems like it would be fairly easy to assess. Just measure the consistency of frequency range and the consistency of each pulse, and generate a score.
Heck, if that's all I've said, the call is going rather well, comparatively.
And people wonder why it's so easy for the RIAA to erode fair use...it's simple, when most people don't even understand what fair use is, it's easy to slowly take it away.
I love how saying something that's true and in direct response to an earlier comment will get you moderated down as "Offtopic" by a moderator who doesn't agree with you.
Hippies with money don't care about the poor trying to get by with high heating oil/energy costs.
You know, we've had 7.5 years with a president who is all about oil and couldn't care less about the environment, and tell me, what exactly has happened to oil prices in those 7.5 years? Oh yeah, they've shot through the roof. And when the Hippie with Money (tm) was president in the 90's, what happened to oil prices then? Oh yeah, they were extraordinarily low. When I got my first car about 12 years ago, I was paying less than $1 for a gallon of gas. Now I'm paying $4.20/ga. The Republicans can act like they're good for the economy, but they're full of crap.
so of course the audience for Network programming is skewed towards the older, wiser crowd. Even my 18 year old daughter shakes her head at the crap on MTV, for example.
You know there are more channels on cable that have programming geared towards the "older, wiser crowd", right? MTV isn't the only channel on cable. Channels like The History Channel, Discovery, TLC, The Documentary Channel, and well, CNN, CSPAN, and others provide way more interesting TV than most of the network shows.
is that their algorithm is severly flawed.
I don't know how it could be flawed. It was developed by Colin Powell himself, and is very simple to follow:
switch(presidentialCandidate)
{
default:
return colinPowell;
break;
}
I don't see any bugs, do you?
You paid more for the hard drives, and my friend's vintage first generation g4 still boots up perfectly on its original hard drive despite being continuously on for its entire life.
I'm reasonably certain that Apple has never manufactured hard drives. If you bought a hard drive from an Apple store, chances are good you could have gotten the exact same hard drive somewhere else. That has always been one great irony of Apple, that users think they're getting better hardware than PC users (and because of discount PC builders, in many cases they are), but dollar for dollar, they're not getting hardware that you can't get on a comparatively priced PC.
They kept me on the phone for about 40 minutes (I timed it. Total cost to me, $46.60 via AT&T)
Wow, you have a _horrible_ long distance plan. Who pays $1.17/minute for long distance?
Aside from that, however, in normal conversation, when one says "phone company", one does not mean "research laboratory" and vice versa.
Now, yes. And I don't claim to know everything about the history of Bell Labs, but back in the 70s and early 80s, at least, Bell Labs was a part of AT&T. When I was a kid, my dad worked on 4ESS for "AT&T Bell Labs". After the divestiture, it became AT&T, and later Lucent, but back then it was one and the same.
No, he means the phone company. Why are you bringing up a research laboratory?
Until they were broken up by the federal government in the 80's, the phone company and the research laboratory were the same company.
You mean during the heyday of Bell Labs, when they were dumping money into R&D, and inventing things like a little language named C, a little operating system named Unix, the electret microphone, the CO2 LASER, and the first 32-bit microprocessor? Yeah, who would want to work there?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#1960s
isn't that the way insurance already works? I pay way more for my family's high deductible health plan than I would pay out of pocket each year for medical expenses, but it's good to have in case we have some unforseen major medical crisis down the road. If you're generally healthy, your health insurance is using you to subsidize payments to others who aren't so fortunate. It's similar to gambling, really.
That then leads to what exactly is a "project": a set of tasks with a time-frame and goal of somehow adding value.
Thank god we've gotten that out of the way. I guess now that we've adequately defined work, I can go get some work done. See ya'll at the next meeting.
I thought this Wired quote about why the water sublimates on Mars is interesting:
"Just like dry ice does here on Earth, water ice goes from solid to gas when the pressure is below 6.1 millibars and it gets heated (like it does in the Martian sun). It can also go straight from solid to gas above 6.1 millibars when the vapor pressure (amount of water vapor in the air) is low enough. This is because the molecules of water in solid form and gas form are not at equilibrium."
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/answering-mars.html
ARgh! Firefox 3 STILL requires you to occasionally delete all cookies, cache, forms, etc. for gmail to load proper.
What are you talking about? I've been using Gmail with Firefox for years without ever having a problem that sounds even remotely like what you're describing...
I don't think most companies announce their reasons for firing someone. They're generally too afraid of defamation suits from former employees. So how exactly would it ruin your entire career? Unless you got jailtime...
You'll probably need references to get another job. They might not announce their reason for firing you publicly, but they could easily pass the information along to the next company. And if you get charged / convicted with a crime, you'll obviously have a public criminal record. It just seems to me like the sort of thing that anybody with half a brain would avoid doing for any number of reasons.
At work or anywhere else I simply asume some admin will read my email on a bored day and I simply asume he will browse through my files the other day.
It's probably a good assumption, but I have to admit I'm surprised the number is as high as 1 in 3, considering that getting fired for snooping on others' email or files is something that could probably cost you your entire career. Who would hire somebody as a sysop who had been caught snooping?
It's only illegal if someone (or an entity) gets caught, you're able to prove it court, are able to get a ruling in your favor in court, and are able thereafter to enforce remedial action. Good luck with all that.
Well, it's still illegal. Just because the powers that be think they can ignore laws, and have the power to keep from getting prosecuted doesn't change the legality. Maybe someday they'll be brought to justice. Doubt it, though.
They are legal when they bother to get a judge to sign a warrant. It's only when they don't get a warrant that they're illegal.
Most of the land line suggestions in that article don't seem to bother with taking care of the noticeable voltage drop caused by adding an extra phone to a call. You can tell when somebody else in your house picks up the phone while you're on it because the person on the other end gets quieter. The same thing would happen if you plugged a phone into the line outside your house. I thought professional surveillance systems did something to make up for this, so there's no noticeable change in volume when the wiretapper starts listening.