Hey numbnuts (it's funny because your name is plasticsquirrel), I wasn't flaming tube amps. I have a tube amp. What I was trying to convey is that if you want a clean sound from guitar to ear, you would use a solid-state amp with no effects.
In the context of this article, we're assuming that signal artifacts are "lower quality" (as the parent of my original post implied).
The point of my post is that as guitarists, we like the artifacts that effects and tube amps introduce, and we have specific intentions when we use them. Which is completely different from MP3 listeners who prefer the artifacts introduced by MP3 compression. Hence, a counter-argument to the parent post.
That's a little different. With guitars, THE ARTISTS add effects because the basic sound can be unexciting. Distortion/overdrive doesn't produce a high-quality, clean tone... but we don't want a clean tone. Likewise, we don't want the clean tone of a solid-state amp. We know what we're doing.
With MP3s, it's THE LISTENERS that don't want the sound that the artist intended. Because they're dumb motherfuckers!
I still buy CDs since they're usually the highest quality source I can get my hands on, but I'm not going to pretend like they're amazing. We can still do better.
People just moved to MP3s because they're more convenient. When storage and bandwidth become cheaper, I fully expect lossless, 96kHz, surround-mixed audio to become prevalent. Maybe. Someday.:)
We're too concerned with our international reputation. And they know it, too, which only makes things worse.
If we went in with a scorched earth policy and a "to hell with appearances" we'd probably end up better off in the international press, ironically. That probably wouldn't be fair to a lot of innocent people, though.
I don't think it's that people purposely choose lazy over not-lazy. I think it's that there's no fear of failure anymore.
It started when all the WW2 veterans came home and decided they wanted their children to never face anything difficult in their lives. Their children turned out decent, but then their grandchildren were twice removed from hardship.
It used to be that children feared authority, feared failure in school, etc. But nowadays, everyone's accommodated for. Suck at math? Well, you can join the class for the slow kids. Act up in class? The only way to discipline you is by calling the Police because your parents aren't going to give a shit (and will actually want the teacher disciplined).
And I guess there are good things and bad things about these cultural changes. Less children are growing up being abused by authority figures; less children are growing up with emotional scars of not living up to impossible standards. Then there's the flip-side: they don't have ingrained goals/ideals, respect for authority, they don't know how to deal with hardship, etc.
Today, I do own a TV (which I bought a a few months ago at the behest of the girlfriend) - but no cable. We use it to watch DVDs and play videogames, and that's about it.
I hear ya. Cable is banned in my house. I don't ever want us to get into the habit of, "Well there's nothing to do, so let's watch TV. (later) We can't do X now because we're busy watching TV." I may use the computer or video game system instead, but at least that is engaging and not a total brain fart. You can much more easily put those things down than if there's a TV show being broadcast live. Now, if they'd just release seasons on disc immediately instead of airing one by one... I wouldn't have to download them.
You know, the small ads on Hulu aren't really that bad. I don't mind them. I think the TV content delivery chain (cable providers, content providers) just got too greedy for its own good.
How is this insightful? With analog broadcasts, the picture turned to crap (flickering, colors, static). With digital broadcasts, I only notice an occasional compression "blocking" artifact. AND it's a better picture. With digital compression, broadcasts have only gotten better.
Not to mention, we can't really see planets smaller than gas giants from outside our solar system. So there's really no debate there (like there is about kuiper objects).
Well, you know products are relatively safe if they have a label right now, right? What's the difference with having "UL certified" symbol?
Like I said, with the dissemination of information and litigious nature of our society, it is pretty unlikely that widespread complications would happen under such a proposal. At least no more than the current system.
I don't necessarily see why government=safe and non-government=unsafe. Plenty of things have gotten past the FDA. There are plenty of reasons why a privatized FDA would be just as effective - the least of which that if you kill your customers then you have no customers.
I have a reasonable expectation of safety from plenty of products in my life without a government seal of approval. I can see why people are a bit touchy about food and drugs, but let's be a little open minded about it, shall we?
Allow me to clarify. Under my plan, things would be no different, except that doctors may be able to prescribe better drugs/remedies that are not necessarily 'approved'. Think about herbal remedies that nobody wants to invest in to get through the 'FDA' approval process, and experimental drugs that are years and many clinical studies away from market.
Whether in this proposed system or in the current system, if you or a loved one is prescribed medications, you have a responsibility to perform minimal research into the effects of the prescribed drug. There are plenty of dangerous drugs being prescribed to people who cannot take them, due to conflicting prescriptions, allergies, or lifestyle conflicts.
If you're in a nursing home, they know everything about you already, so complications are less probable. If you're in the ER, they stick to safe medications until they have information about your medical history. Not to mention, anything you're given in the ER is short-term and thus has less potential for long-term adverse effects.
Mortgages aren't even a close comparison to personal health. When the government has been essentially subsidizing the money business, this was kind of expected.
And no, I didn't kill your niece and nephew. They or their parents killed them for feeding them peanuts.
Anyhow, I think safety nets are fine, government or otherwise, as long as personal freedom is provided for. Victor down the street should be able to make drugs, peanut butter sandwiches, or drug-laden peanut butter sandwiches, if he wants to, and I should be able to buy them, without fear of Big Brother stepping in.
And please don't tell me that the FDA is perfect and not corrupt. At least if a private firm screwed up, they would be held accountable and put out of business, whereas the FDA gets, what, a slap on the wrist?
There IS an argument for stopping people from hurting themselves IF we have a socialized health care system, but you can't make everything that's dangerous illegal.
That was before our litigious society and the internet. Society has changed a lot since those days. I like to think that a self-regulating body would come about if we abolished the FDA. Much like the ESRB came about because they didn't want government interference - and they now are arguably stricter than the gov would have been with their ratings.
Don't get me wrong, I think plenty of people would try to circumvent the private 'FDA' association and buy non-label products... but I think they would be hard to find with such high chance of litigation. Stores wouldn't carry them. People should have the freedom to use unsafe products if they really want to. I wouldn't deny people a proven safe channel, either, though.
Additionally, with so much information at one's fingertips nowadays, there's no reason why people shouldn't be researching drugs they put into themselves. Doctors often don't know what they're talking about - they just care about getting you out of their office. It's really the pharmacists who know their shit, and even then I wouldn't trust them 100%.
Actually, all this NULL-reference crap is mostly a symptom of the "throw *Exception" programming pattern.
Functions that could fail in returning a value should work more like this: bool Function(ref Object value) { }
If you don't define your function like that, then yes, you have to check for NULL or catch an exception. How do you know what the function's going to do? Well, you don't unless you wrote it. So you do both or you do neither and thus begins a whole chain of problems.
But then we get the whole whining about having long if-trees instead of try/catch blocks.
(Alternatively, use a discrete integer return value for specific errors if you don't like the boolean.)
Apparently you've been living under a Happy Ignorant Rock. The Linux kernel (and 'other' OSes) on the PS3 is required to run under a hypervisor.
They hypervisor disallows access to various pieces of hardware. RSX (the graphics chip) is one of them. I think Blu-ray may be one of them, too, so that movies can't be copied. Some people had found a buffer overflow attack to gain access to the RSX chip, but then Sony released a system update which closed the hole.
But congratulations on being so utterly clueless and out of the loop.
Believe me when I say that the Xbox360 support will just drop like a stone when the next Xbox comes out, just like the Xbox1 when the 360 came out, while the PS3 will just like the PS2 be supported for many years.
Actually, that's one of the reasons I decided to get a PS3. I had an Xbox 1 and a PS2 (acquired during the late end of their lives), and the PS2 definitely outlasted the Xbox in fun and duration.
However, I did end up getting a 360, and I've probably played it more than the PS3 by now for two reasons: 1. it has the exclusives I want, 2. I can get games free. Having seen the insides of both machines, I must say the PS3 is more impressive in design and engineering. That doesn't really help the fun factor, though.
I'm hoping the PS3 goes somewhere soon, but with Sony laying people off and removing features like backward compatibility it could be that the PS3 never takes off before the Xbox 720 is released. I think console lifetimes are getting shorter, and Sony probably did not adjust for that. Also, they made such a perfectly locked down machine that you can't pirate games or run 3D in Linux (which would be great for open source emulators of other 3D consoles). Even with pirated games, there's money to be made off downloadable content.
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Games? Here's a dollar, kid. Go buy yourself a nice candy bar while the adults talk.
Hey numbnuts (it's funny because your name is plasticsquirrel), I wasn't flaming tube amps. I have a tube amp. What I was trying to convey is that if you want a clean sound from guitar to ear, you would use a solid-state amp with no effects.
In the context of this article, we're assuming that signal artifacts are "lower quality" (as the parent of my original post implied).
The point of my post is that as guitarists, we like the artifacts that effects and tube amps introduce, and we have specific intentions when we use them. Which is completely different from MP3 listeners who prefer the artifacts introduced by MP3 compression. Hence, a counter-argument to the parent post.
That's a little different. With guitars, THE ARTISTS add effects because the basic sound can be unexciting. Distortion/overdrive doesn't produce a high-quality, clean tone... but we don't want a clean tone. Likewise, we don't want the clean tone of a solid-state amp. We know what we're doing.
With MP3s, it's THE LISTENERS that don't want the sound that the artist intended. Because they're dumb motherfuckers!
I still buy CDs since they're usually the highest quality source I can get my hands on, but I'm not going to pretend like they're amazing. We can still do better.
People just moved to MP3s because they're more convenient. When storage and bandwidth become cheaper, I fully expect lossless, 96kHz, surround-mixed audio to become prevalent. Maybe. Someday. :)
All I want is Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Is that heresy for a hardcore Linux user to say? Perhaps.
But as Ballmer would say: developers, developers, developers!
Once you woo the developers, you get the applications you want.
We're too concerned with our international reputation. And they know it, too, which only makes things worse.
If we went in with a scorched earth policy and a "to hell with appearances" we'd probably end up better off in the international press, ironically. That probably wouldn't be fair to a lot of innocent people, though.
I don't think it's that people purposely choose lazy over not-lazy. I think it's that there's no fear of failure anymore.
It started when all the WW2 veterans came home and decided they wanted their children to never face anything difficult in their lives. Their children turned out decent, but then their grandchildren were twice removed from hardship.
It used to be that children feared authority, feared failure in school, etc. But nowadays, everyone's accommodated for. Suck at math? Well, you can join the class for the slow kids. Act up in class? The only way to discipline you is by calling the Police because your parents aren't going to give a shit (and will actually want the teacher disciplined).
And I guess there are good things and bad things about these cultural changes. Less children are growing up being abused by authority figures; less children are growing up with emotional scars of not living up to impossible standards. Then there's the flip-side: they don't have ingrained goals/ideals, respect for authority, they don't know how to deal with hardship, etc.
Today, I do own a TV (which I bought a a few months ago at the behest of the girlfriend) - but no cable. We use it to watch DVDs and play videogames, and that's about it.
I hear ya. Cable is banned in my house. I don't ever want us to get into the habit of, "Well there's nothing to do, so let's watch TV. (later) We can't do X now because we're busy watching TV." I may use the computer or video game system instead, but at least that is engaging and not a total brain fart. You can much more easily put those things down than if there's a TV show being broadcast live. Now, if they'd just release seasons on disc immediately instead of airing one by one... I wouldn't have to download them.
You know, the small ads on Hulu aren't really that bad. I don't mind them. I think the TV content delivery chain (cable providers, content providers) just got too greedy for its own good.
How is this insightful? With analog broadcasts, the picture turned to crap (flickering, colors, static). With digital broadcasts, I only notice an occasional compression "blocking" artifact. AND it's a better picture. With digital compression, broadcasts have only gotten better.
The problem with legalizing marijuana is that there's no reliable test for impairment, like taking a breathalyzer for alcohol.
I disagree. Funny pictures would be a great test... and it would make run-ins with the police fun, too.
There's no contention over earth-like planets being classified, either, so I think the point stands until we find other Plutos. :)
Not to mention, we can't really see planets smaller than gas giants from outside our solar system. So there's really no debate there (like there is about kuiper objects).
I think the point he's making is that he doesn't trust anybody to use his internet connection.
Sharing domestically, he could be charged with kiddie porn.
Sharing internationally, he could be charged with treason/terrorism.
The difference is that Mozilla actually resolves issues with their browser. Those are probably the only known critical vulnerabilities. :P
I have that right click problem with a few things in Linux. Mostly Azureus/Vuze. Never really noticed it in FF though.
I just assumed it was a GTK/library bug.
Well, you know products are relatively safe if they have a label right now, right? What's the difference with having "UL certified" symbol?
Like I said, with the dissemination of information and litigious nature of our society, it is pretty unlikely that widespread complications would happen under such a proposal. At least no more than the current system.
I don't necessarily see why government=safe and non-government=unsafe. Plenty of things have gotten past the FDA. There are plenty of reasons why a privatized FDA would be just as effective - the least of which that if you kill your customers then you have no customers.
I have a reasonable expectation of safety from plenty of products in my life without a government seal of approval. I can see why people are a bit touchy about food and drugs, but let's be a little open minded about it, shall we?
Allow me to clarify. Under my plan, things would be no different, except that doctors may be able to prescribe better drugs/remedies that are not necessarily 'approved'. Think about herbal remedies that nobody wants to invest in to get through the 'FDA' approval process, and experimental drugs that are years and many clinical studies away from market.
Whether in this proposed system or in the current system, if you or a loved one is prescribed medications, you have a responsibility to perform minimal research into the effects of the prescribed drug. There are plenty of dangerous drugs being prescribed to people who cannot take them, due to conflicting prescriptions, allergies, or lifestyle conflicts.
If you're in a nursing home, they know everything about you already, so complications are less probable. If you're in the ER, they stick to safe medications until they have information about your medical history. Not to mention, anything you're given in the ER is short-term and thus has less potential for long-term adverse effects.
Mortgages aren't even a close comparison to personal health. When the government has been essentially subsidizing the money business, this was kind of expected.
And no, I didn't kill your niece and nephew. They or their parents killed them for feeding them peanuts.
Anyhow, I think safety nets are fine, government or otherwise, as long as personal freedom is provided for. Victor down the street should be able to make drugs, peanut butter sandwiches, or drug-laden peanut butter sandwiches, if he wants to, and I should be able to buy them, without fear of Big Brother stepping in.
And please don't tell me that the FDA is perfect and not corrupt. At least if a private firm screwed up, they would be held accountable and put out of business, whereas the FDA gets, what, a slap on the wrist?
There IS an argument for stopping people from hurting themselves IF we have a socialized health care system, but you can't make everything that's dangerous illegal.
That was before our litigious society and the internet. Society has changed a lot since those days. I like to think that a self-regulating body would come about if we abolished the FDA. Much like the ESRB came about because they didn't want government interference - and they now are arguably stricter than the gov would have been with their ratings.
Don't get me wrong, I think plenty of people would try to circumvent the private 'FDA' association and buy non-label products... but I think they would be hard to find with such high chance of litigation. Stores wouldn't carry them. People should have the freedom to use unsafe products if they really want to. I wouldn't deny people a proven safe channel, either, though.
Additionally, with so much information at one's fingertips nowadays, there's no reason why people shouldn't be researching drugs they put into themselves. Doctors often don't know what they're talking about - they just care about getting you out of their office. It's really the pharmacists who know their shit, and even then I wouldn't trust them 100%.
Hey, yeah! Let's go back to 1970!
Hey, it's still the best way to make code mostly portable between languages. Lowest common denominator = win!
You can take your silly Prolog and go write... a calculator with it! Meanwhile I'll be writing a 5 page long switch statement for return values.
Actually, all this NULL-reference crap is mostly a symptom of the "throw *Exception" programming pattern.
Functions that could fail in returning a value should work more like this:
bool Function(ref Object value)
{
}
If you don't define your function like that, then yes, you have to check for NULL or catch an exception. How do you know what the function's going to do? Well, you don't unless you wrote it. So you do both or you do neither and thus begins a whole chain of problems.
But then we get the whole whining about having long if-trees instead of try/catch blocks.
(Alternatively, use a discrete integer return value for specific errors if you don't like the boolean.)
That picture looks like what you pull out of a clothes dryer's filter. I assumed it was a joke prop.
Apparently you've been living under a Happy Ignorant Rock. The Linux kernel (and 'other' OSes) on the PS3 is required to run under a hypervisor.
They hypervisor disallows access to various pieces of hardware. RSX (the graphics chip) is one of them. I think Blu-ray may be one of them, too, so that movies can't be copied. Some people had found a buffer overflow attack to gain access to the RSX chip, but then Sony released a system update which closed the hole.
But congratulations on being so utterly clueless and out of the loop.
Believe me when I say that the Xbox360 support will just drop like a stone when the next Xbox comes out, just like the Xbox1 when the 360 came out, while the PS3 will just like the PS2 be supported for many years.
Actually, that's one of the reasons I decided to get a PS3. I had an Xbox 1 and a PS2 (acquired during the late end of their lives), and the PS2 definitely outlasted the Xbox in fun and duration.
However, I did end up getting a 360, and I've probably played it more than the PS3 by now for two reasons: 1. it has the exclusives I want, 2. I can get games free. Having seen the insides of both machines, I must say the PS3 is more impressive in design and engineering. That doesn't really help the fun factor, though.
I'm hoping the PS3 goes somewhere soon, but with Sony laying people off and removing features like backward compatibility it could be that the PS3 never takes off before the Xbox 720 is released. I think console lifetimes are getting shorter, and Sony probably did not adjust for that. Also, they made such a perfectly locked down machine that you can't pirate games or run 3D in Linux (which would be great for open source emulators of other 3D consoles). Even with pirated games, there's money to be made off downloadable content.
When parking your car becomes a central theme in your life, you need to consider living somewhere else.