This is starting to happen more and more with venues. I was at a public music festival in Tempe, AZ recently. It is an all-day, evening outdoor event on public grounds. I was stopped for carrying a pro-grade SLR camera. Apparently the event coordinators had signed away coverage of the event, and ones of the demands was that no one be permitted to take photos or shoot video using anything more than a common digicam or cell phone.
The reason was obviously exclusivity; the licensees didn't want any media footage of the event existing which could compete with the quality of their own product. As a result, security personnel were told to specifically seek out HD cams and pro photographic equipment. Of course, some guys made it in okay, but me with my Voigtlander mounted Nikon and my Canon HD camcorder was considered a no-go.
I regularly shoot at the Barrett-Jackson auto show, full HD even. Speed Channel has never regarded me as a threat. Stupid fools, little do they realize my Flickr and my Twitter, as with my Facebook are a force to be reckoned with.
I've thought about this a lot. I feel Microsoft is trying to say that its returned to the roots of Windows. It's been many years since a Windows release was formally identified by a standard version number. It's very common now for software to have more eye-catching abstractly descriptive version identifiers like Pro, Lite, Special Edition, etc. Standard version numbers for an OS like Windows communicates a sense of a return to old school software efficiency and productivity.
Sounds a little silly maybe, but follow me a sec. "Windows 3.11" was just a piece of software; cold and boring. NT was "new technology". It communicated a sense of industrial strength computing. The Year-based Windows releases were all about being modern. You needed them to be modern. "Me" and "XP" were attempts at being trendy. Multimedia was standard, and Windows XP communicated a new kind of "Xcitement", "Xperience", etc. Vista is the post modern, post multimedia OS, communicating the idea that it's forward looking.
Windows 7 is simple, plain, and in the West, comforting. It's lucky number seven. It sounds like it's a serious operating system that is focused on doing its job, and not blinding me with flashy trends. It sounds like an operating system I can trust. In any case, that's the marketing strategy I got from the name. I have no specific insight into Redmond's actual reason.
The simple point, which you obviously fail to grasp, is that there is currently debate in Phoenix over allowing people to bring firearms *into* a bar where they will be permitted to drink. Drunken bar altercations happen - they can happen anywhere, but when drunken bar altercations are backed by the presence of firearms, things can potentially go very bad. How stupid do you have to be to not get the likelihood of that?
I don't need a clue. You need one. I don't know what the hell you're talking about an arrest being a heat of passion moment, re-read what I wrote and stop acting like such a reactionary dumbass.
I see you point, but as I've heard this discussion on firearms in bars phrased in Arizona, it's been about the right to bring guns into a bar with no other limitation being placed on the carrier regarding drinking. The underlying logic being that people who go to bars generally do so in order to drink liquor, not soft drinks. As it is now, they may have a gun on the property, such as in their cars.
Stalking can be difficult to prove, either as a tort or a crime, but the prima facie element for stalking is that lawful or unlawful behavior is unwanted and constant. Her actual activities can be lawful: taking photos in a public place, sending letters, making seemingly private (though in reality public) information available for others to see. What makes these things unlawful is that they are constant and are unwanted. I don't know to what extent a victim has to show their unwillingness to consent. Did the police ever tell her to please stop?
Her locale might have laws against posting names and addresses of public figures which extends to law enforcement as well. I wonder if that cop she post info on was undercover, and if so, whether there's a law about that in her locale.
It is not a simple-stupid, logical argument. It's just that gun control discussion has been hijacked by the victims' rights crowd. People do stupid things because they frequently lose control over their minds. This is why there is an "excited passion" ("heat of passion") clause in murder in order to reduce a charge.
The concern isn't that people don't want law-abiding citizens to protect themselves. The concern is that a law-abiding citizen may, in the heat of passion, pull a gun and murder a person. The police don't want to go into a situation with a normally law-abiding citizen who is armed. As I said before, people do stupid things. And in Phoenix, people drink heavily and do stupid things often.
Recently there has been a big debate over the push to allow guns in bars. This means, bar patrons would be allowed to bring guns into a bar and then drink. Something to think about if you ever accidentally bump into a drunken bar patron.
The other night, a guy (not even drunk apparently) threatened to beat me up solely because I was critical of his favorite baseball team. He was an obvious rageaholic. What if he had a gun on him and were in a position to use it? Sure, I would have my gun too. But what if I didn't? Ought I be punished for not packing heat 24/7? Don't I pay taxes for law enforcement? If I have to carry my own gun, then I say get rid of the pigs and the corrupt Sheriff. I don't need them eating my donuts and making me uncomfortable while I'm cruising the main drag at night trying to find dinner. I'd rather spend my money on a private police force that will instantly recognize me (a customer) as a good citizen.
Sadly, I don't think this matters. When I think Arpaio, I think of the lone corrupt sheriff who runs a community as his own private fiefdom... and he is very very rich. It takes serious money to own the kind of stuff he has out here. He is the bad guy of the week on every 80's action show to feature an awesome crime-fighting vehicle. Napolitano couldn't do anything to get rid of Arpaio as governor; or even reign him in; I doubt she can do anything more be being in DC. He is a popular figure among people who only see the illegal immigration issue and ignore everything else.
Having lived in cities with huge ethic neighborhoods (Chinatown, Little Odessa, etc), I'll say that legal immigrants tend to balkanize as well; but this seems to depends on culture. Take for example Chicago:
Chinese, Russians, Korean, Ukrainians, Greeks, Serbs, Persians, and Mexicans heavily balkanize. Italian and Polish only slightly do. Germans, Croatians, Romanian, Irish, Indian and non-Mexican hispanic groups tend to not balkanize.
As for illegals not assimilating, how do you know that they don't? I know many Russian and Greek citizens who will give you the evil eye if you try to invade their group with your outsider ways. I know many Mexican (and presumably American) people who integrate very well in my mainstream American culture. In fact, they integrate so well, I don't think to ask myself whether they are indeed citizens or just legal resident aliens.
Maybe you found many illegals who don't assimilate; or maybe you found some that don't along with legals who also don't for one reason or another.
That criminals want to kill him doesn't say a thing about his abilities as Sheriff. The fact is, Phoenix is still a very dangerous city with a high kidnapping rate, numerous rapes, murders, and murders serial killers that operate over long periods without capture. The only people who are afraid of Arpaio are the common citizenry, who barring casual slip-ups and occasional weakness, would not normally be considered part of the criminal element.
It's interesting to point out that the point on which defenders of Arpaio have had any success is Arpaio's pursuit of illegal immigrants. His defenders never have a legitimate retort against the many other allegations.
One of the problems with Arpaio is that he tends to declare everyone who criticizes him publicly corrupt, and then uses his powers as Sheriff to harass them. In Maricopa County, the Sheriff seems to have strong authority of city police. I've never seen elsewhere in the US. He routinely harasses Mesa Police, the mayor of Phoenix, the Phoenix New Times newspaper, and the local residents of Guadalupe, Chandler, and Apache Junction. He makes many arrests; many of which are bad, and have resulted in big lawsuits against the state -- all of which have cost a lot of money. He likes to make regular television appearances. He's really big on being a star. He even has his own TV show akin to "Cops". He employs a posse - non-professional law enforcement, which he uses. He has business ties to foreign law enforcement endeavors with counties like Honduras and China. His police have conducted illegal sting operations. Recently, a man died in his custody. He was in solitary confinement, and yet somehow beat himself to death. There are mysterious deaths associated with Arpaio's people.
Just because he is against illegal immigration, it doesn't make him a honorable man and a fair, honest, or even productive sheriff.
Since Twin Galaxies has been doing its thing there for so long, Ottumwa actually seems like a sensible choice. I am one of those who scratched my head over Cleveland being selected for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite Cleveland's claims to being the location of the first rock concert and the first rock DJ. Ultimately, Cleveland offered the best financial incentives. Maybe Ottumwa was the only city even remotely interested.
Quakecon is somewhat irrelevant in this case. This is Twin Galaxies, and it's legacy with classic gaming sets it apart from the current- and next- gen gaming being done at Quakecon. I am more interested in what's going on at Twin Galaxies than what's going on elsewhere in the Id world. But yeah, even film festivals make an effort not to overlap so much that there's a collision.
I'm not so sure that the technology-literate Chinese are slowing figuring things out. I used to date a Chinese national in her mid-30s. She was very well-educated, and she was fully aware that her government regularly censored information. Her attitude about it all was "So what?" and "It's better this way in order to maintain stability and peace." For every Chinese libertarian there seems to be many more Chinese who, even while in a safe apartment in a major US city, will proudly defend the actions of their government as being for the best. Maybe it's that national pride that ex-pats display whenever people from their host country critiques their country of origin, but what I got from her and her friends was that most Chinese are very pragmatic and don't care about our abstract notions of liberty, providing they can have the economic opportunities that come from capitalism.
Sounds like a private sector market for justice: banks that protect your financial data -- surely credit card providers that do the same and won't report that you buy escort services in addition to DVDs, and don't forget the really fun A-Team/Equalizer type stuff too.
I can see your point, and I'm inclined to agree; but playing Devil's Ad here, perhaps they reasoned that this project which directly affects Microsoft will indirectly affect the rest of the Washington economy, but still more so than another public works project. After all, the Redmond public is by and large, employed by Microsoft. And as I remember the Microsoft "campus" is actually pretty large with many ancillary businesses nearby that feed off Microsoft.
I believe Boeing/MD still has a presence in Washington state; perhaps they're getting a similar project to serve their community.
In 30 years, when the oil's gone and hordes of cannibalistic zombies wander the ruins of Western Civilisation, these young punks will be easy pickins. Deaf as posts, obese, incapable of complex or convoluted thought, lazy, self absorbed, crybabies with a massive bolt of self-entitlement. Yep. They won't be able to feed themselves and will either join the zombie hordes or be eaten by them.
Yes, and on the upside, their zombies will be even slower, with even worse hearing; and they will be easy pickings for analog devotees like myself who have fine-tuned our senses as a result of perceiving through video and audio noise in order to make sense of a recording.
Maybe people are less sensitive to the dynamics in the sounds they can perceive than they are to changes in video. Improvements to video PQ seem much easier to describe. As an audiophile and a musician, I use words like "sterile", "warm", "crisp", "open", and "narrow" to describe sound. With digital video, it's easy enough to say "these colors are more saturated", "I can see fine details in the scene", or "I can see the stubble on the actor's chin". And if I want to quantify video, I can say, "this is 1080i, that is 480i".
Something that always intrigued me was the fact that the PC audio component industry isn't quite where the video component industry is. Video cards get first class treatment. People are content with their onboard audio. They don't mind less than HD quality audio, but demand HD quality video for their games.
But people do have their video preferences. I myself do prefer hand drawn to computer generated. I find digital products to be sterile (there's that word again). I like the dirty quality of hand-drawn. I also prefer the warmth of analog over the coldness of digital and I will take snowy static and ghosting over macro-blocking anytime. I've noticed people are less tolerant to static and ghosting than they are to macro-blocking. People also seem to prefer hyper-saturated images too. My Nikon and my Sony and my Canon cameras all offer a vivid color option which renders scenes in colors so "life like" that they are often inaccurate to my source material (the actual scene). But I do relate this to my preference for tube driven "coloring" in music over solid state digital modelling.
Meh, those first generation CDs sucked. There where no cleaner highs or impossible lows to my ears. Maybe comparatively, considering consumer level turntables, but not really good hi-fi. And those CDs weren't any more durable than my records. I still got scratches and warps. Things have improved much over those initial years, but still... CDs suck.:P
I wasn't the bass freak you were. I did love my treble, but I shared your love of headroom and dislike for headphones.
I was inclined earlier to suggest that the influence of electronica over popular music today creates a sonic landscape that's maybe favorable to MP3. But I'm not entirely sure. After all, it's all analog at some point, even if the origin is a digital sampler. But then again, I recently compared a Korg micro to a Prophesy 5 and a Juno G to a Jupiter 8... big difference.:D
But yes, the kid today are listening to very processed music, whether it's pop, techno, pop-country, or even heavy metal, but there's still rich analog warmth in that mess somewhere. In electronica it's often really hard to fine, but it's there behind a long list of romplers.
The iPod does sound pretty good when you give it the right source material and use the right headphones. I prefer in ear phones with a tube pre-amp to add some much needed warmth. And I prefer using the Apple Lossless Format. Unfortunately, at least on the iPod Touch, there's a problem with skipping on APL files, which has necessitated me using AAC.
Our kids may never really appreciate music as much as they could. Now I sound old. Crap.
I gave a 14 year old my old iPod Touch. I threw some of my music on it just so she could play it out of the box; just some Missing Persons, Lita Ford, Vixen -- a bunch of female rockers in hopes it would encourage her to have some real rock goddess icons. Her reply after listening was she's not really into "oldies".
I'd second that. I think they've been conditioned to liking MP3 as a matter of exposure. I first heard MP3s around '95 I think. Given that MP3s were locked to the personal computer for many years, I would say that these "young people" have had their music listening shaped greatly by personal digital audio: cheap earbuds, small speakers, Sound Blaster clones, and DAPs.
I'm 33, and I grew up on serious hi-fi: belt-driven turntables, huge wooden speakers, tube pre-amps, and big audio names like Pioneer, Nakamichi, and Marantz, Quiet Riot posters hanging on the bedroom wall and stacks of Judas Priest records. My Nak cassette players bested every CD player on the market until around the late '90s. To me, MP3s on cheap ear buds or through PC speakers usually amount to a tiny compressed sound trying its hardest (and loudest) to escape a tinier sound stage.
I'm a guitarist. Of the many guitar amps I've owned, there have been a few solid state digitals. To me, these amps sound lifeless and sonically small. Yet there are many young guitarists who are perfectly happy with the sound coming off their Line 6 Spider combos. Me, I neeeeeed the fullness and warmth of tubes. I think this was to be expected. I'm a couple of generations apart from kids today, and my sonic experiences are very different.
We should also consider that recording engineers optimize music for particular formats. Consider the work that Tom Scholz did getting absolutely every bit of quality out of tape he could in order to make the Boston albums. I don't listen to much modern music, but I'm betting people are optimizing their tone to take advantage of digital processes.
I bet though, as exposure to consumer grade PC and DAP components which approach the original quality of the hi-fi I grew up with (HD Audio for example), we can redo this study and find that some subsequent generation prefers a lossless format.
Being married can be significantly different depending on the spouse's circumstances. Consider young military wives. Many girls who live in military communities go on to marry just out of high school and become mothers at 18 or 19. And it's not necessarily the case that they're marrying E1-E3 ranking service members. Enlisted military personnel don't make a lot, but in certain communities, it's enough to get by. In most though, it's not; however even E1 enlisted personnel have better immediate access to medical and dental care than most middle class families. So, there is a difference between the 17-18 year old teen mother married to a soldier and the stereotypical teen mother.
People get confused on the order of arguments to a command all the time. There's nothing toolish about that. Off the top of my head, I can't remember if when archiving files with zip, I should add the archive filename before or after my list of files. It happens.
Even easier than a Mac because you don't have to go on the web? Will every Linux program always and forever be available via apt-get? Will you always want the most recent version of an app? What's so difficult about going to a software site, polling a category, and choosing an app you want, download it, and then install it?
Christ, you desktop Linux users need to be handheld through everything don't you?;-)
Search the web for a Windows app? You realize that there have long been web repositories for Windows apps. You just go to a site, select category of software or search by keyword, then find a listing of Windows apps, then maybe observe whether the app is freeware/shareware/demo/etc., and then download.
As for silly install locations, it's not Windows fault. Windows doesn't tell the software author where to install apps beyond providing a "Program Files" folder. It's up to the app developer to decide how to do an install. Granted, a lot of people use installers like InstallShield, but there's no reason why an author couldn't create his own.
All those other things (systray icons, desktop icons, updates, spyware, etc) are once again in the domain of the app's author. If you don't like the practices of a particular developer, don't use their software. It's Windows, every application has an alternative.
Re:Same reason blogs lost?
on
Why TV Lost
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The Internet calls television inane and tripe.:D
Call me a luddite, I really want to keep computing divorced from television viewing. TV is passive spectator sport. I shouldn't be encouraged to click around. I rue the day when popup interstitials during the actual show aren't the most annoying thing in my TV viewing, but on-screen hyperlinks, encouraging me to press a button on my remote to immediately pause the show and launch a browser window so that I can instantly buy an item worn by my show's protagonist.
I'm still hoping that the convergence of the Internet, computing, and television will lead to a scenario where I can finally virtualize and aggregate television markets. Like many people in this generation, I live in multiple TV markets. I care about local news and local perspectives in Chicago and in Los Angeles and in Phoenix. I want local news from all three markets, as well as local programming. Traditional broadcast laws prevent me from being able to have the ABC affiliate broadcast through my TV while I'm in Phoenix (it creates competition with the Phoenix affiliate). And streaming "clips" online just doesn't cut it for me.
It convergence eventually does favor the consumer, I should be able to watch WGN Chicago, and not WGN Superstation when I'm not there; not to mention PBS Chicago. PBS Phoenix doesn't interest me.
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This is starting to happen more and more with venues. I was at a public music festival in Tempe, AZ recently. It is an all-day, evening outdoor event on public grounds. I was stopped for carrying a pro-grade SLR camera. Apparently the event coordinators had signed away coverage of the event, and ones of the demands was that no one be permitted to take photos or shoot video using anything more than a common digicam or cell phone.
The reason was obviously exclusivity; the licensees didn't want any media footage of the event existing which could compete with the quality of their own product. As a result, security personnel were told to specifically seek out HD cams and pro photographic equipment. Of course, some guys made it in okay, but me with my Voigtlander mounted Nikon and my Canon HD camcorder was considered a no-go.
I regularly shoot at the Barrett-Jackson auto show, full HD even. Speed Channel has never regarded me as a threat. Stupid fools, little do they realize my Flickr and my Twitter, as with my Facebook are a force to be reckoned with.
A little of both, but I gotta believe it's mostly marketing combined with the maturity of Vista-focused third-party software development.
I've thought about this a lot. I feel Microsoft is trying to say that its returned to the roots of Windows. It's been many years since a Windows release was formally identified by a standard version number. It's very common now for software to have more eye-catching abstractly descriptive version identifiers like Pro, Lite, Special Edition, etc. Standard version numbers for an OS like Windows communicates a sense of a return to old school software efficiency and productivity.
Sounds a little silly maybe, but follow me a sec. "Windows 3.11" was just a piece of software; cold and boring. NT was "new technology". It communicated a sense of industrial strength computing. The Year-based Windows releases were all about being modern. You needed them to be modern. "Me" and "XP" were attempts at being trendy. Multimedia was standard, and Windows XP communicated a new kind of "Xcitement", "Xperience", etc. Vista is the post modern, post multimedia OS, communicating the idea that it's forward looking.
Windows 7 is simple, plain, and in the West, comforting. It's lucky number seven. It sounds like it's a serious operating system that is focused on doing its job, and not blinding me with flashy trends. It sounds like an operating system I can trust. In any case, that's the marketing strategy I got from the name. I have no specific insight into Redmond's actual reason.
Troll much?
The simple point, which you obviously fail to grasp, is that there is currently debate in Phoenix over allowing people to bring firearms *into* a bar where they will be permitted to drink. Drunken bar altercations happen - they can happen anywhere, but when drunken bar altercations are backed by the presence of firearms, things can potentially go very bad. How stupid do you have to be to not get the likelihood of that?
I don't need a clue. You need one. I don't know what the hell you're talking about an arrest being a heat of passion moment, re-read what I wrote and stop acting like such a reactionary dumbass.
I see you point, but as I've heard this discussion on firearms in bars phrased in Arizona, it's been about the right to bring guns into a bar with no other limitation being placed on the carrier regarding drinking. The underlying logic being that people who go to bars generally do so in order to drink liquor, not soft drinks. As it is now, they may have a gun on the property, such as in their cars.
Stalking can be difficult to prove, either as a tort or a crime, but the prima facie element for stalking is that lawful or unlawful behavior is unwanted and constant. Her actual activities can be lawful: taking photos in a public place, sending letters, making seemingly private (though in reality public) information available for others to see. What makes these things unlawful is that they are constant and are unwanted. I don't know to what extent a victim has to show their unwillingness to consent. Did the police ever tell her to please stop?
Her locale might have laws against posting names and addresses of public figures which extends to law enforcement as well. I wonder if that cop she post info on was undercover, and if so, whether there's a law about that in her locale.
It is not a simple-stupid, logical argument. It's just that gun control discussion has been hijacked by the victims' rights crowd. People do stupid things because they frequently lose control over their minds. This is why there is an "excited passion" ("heat of passion") clause in murder in order to reduce a charge.
The concern isn't that people don't want law-abiding citizens to protect themselves. The concern is that a law-abiding citizen may, in the heat of passion, pull a gun and murder a person. The police don't want to go into a situation with a normally law-abiding citizen who is armed. As I said before, people do stupid things. And in Phoenix, people drink heavily and do stupid things often.
Recently there has been a big debate over the push to allow guns in bars. This means, bar patrons would be allowed to bring guns into a bar and then drink. Something to think about if you ever accidentally bump into a drunken bar patron.
The other night, a guy (not even drunk apparently) threatened to beat me up solely because I was critical of his favorite baseball team. He was an obvious rageaholic. What if he had a gun on him and were in a position to use it? Sure, I would have my gun too. But what if I didn't? Ought I be punished for not packing heat 24/7? Don't I pay taxes for law enforcement? If I have to carry my own gun, then I say get rid of the pigs and the corrupt Sheriff. I don't need them eating my donuts and making me uncomfortable while I'm cruising the main drag at night trying to find dinner. I'd rather spend my money on a private police force that will instantly recognize me (a customer) as a good citizen.
Sadly, I don't think this matters. When I think Arpaio, I think of the lone corrupt sheriff who runs a community as his own private fiefdom... and he is very very rich. It takes serious money to own the kind of stuff he has out here. He is the bad guy of the week on every 80's action show to feature an awesome crime-fighting vehicle. Napolitano couldn't do anything to get rid of Arpaio as governor; or even reign him in; I doubt she can do anything more be being in DC. He is a popular figure among people who only see the illegal immigration issue and ignore everything else.
Having lived in cities with huge ethic neighborhoods (Chinatown, Little Odessa, etc), I'll say that legal immigrants tend to balkanize as well; but this seems to depends on culture. Take for example Chicago:
Chinese, Russians, Korean, Ukrainians, Greeks, Serbs, Persians, and Mexicans heavily balkanize. Italian and Polish only slightly do. Germans, Croatians, Romanian, Irish, Indian and non-Mexican hispanic groups tend to not balkanize.
As for illegals not assimilating, how do you know that they don't? I know many Russian and Greek citizens who will give you the evil eye if you try to invade their group with your outsider ways. I know many Mexican (and presumably American) people who integrate very well in my mainstream American culture. In fact, they integrate so well, I don't think to ask myself whether they are indeed citizens or just legal resident aliens.
Maybe you found many illegals who don't assimilate; or maybe you found some that don't along with legals who also don't for one reason or another.
That criminals want to kill him doesn't say a thing about his abilities as Sheriff. The fact is, Phoenix is still a very dangerous city with a high kidnapping rate, numerous rapes, murders, and murders serial killers that operate over long periods without capture. The only people who are afraid of Arpaio are the common citizenry, who barring casual slip-ups and occasional weakness, would not normally be considered part of the criminal element.
It's interesting to point out that the point on which defenders of Arpaio have had any success is Arpaio's pursuit of illegal immigrants. His defenders never have a legitimate retort against the many other allegations.
One of the problems with Arpaio is that he tends to declare everyone who criticizes him publicly corrupt, and then uses his powers as Sheriff to harass them. In Maricopa County, the Sheriff seems to have strong authority of city police. I've never seen elsewhere in the US. He routinely harasses Mesa Police, the mayor of Phoenix, the Phoenix New Times newspaper, and the local residents of Guadalupe, Chandler, and Apache Junction. He makes many arrests; many of which are bad, and have resulted in big lawsuits against the state -- all of which have cost a lot of money. He likes to make regular television appearances. He's really big on being a star. He even has his own TV show akin to "Cops". He employs a posse - non-professional law enforcement, which he uses. He has business ties to foreign law enforcement endeavors with counties like Honduras and China. His police have conducted illegal sting operations. Recently, a man died in his custody. He was in solitary confinement, and yet somehow beat himself to death. There are mysterious deaths associated with Arpaio's people.
Just because he is against illegal immigration, it doesn't make him a honorable man and a fair, honest, or even productive sheriff.
Since Twin Galaxies has been doing its thing there for so long, Ottumwa actually seems like a sensible choice. I am one of those who scratched my head over Cleveland being selected for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite Cleveland's claims to being the location of the first rock concert and the first rock DJ. Ultimately, Cleveland offered the best financial incentives. Maybe Ottumwa was the only city even remotely interested.
Quakecon is somewhat irrelevant in this case. This is Twin Galaxies, and it's legacy with classic gaming sets it apart from the current- and next- gen gaming being done at Quakecon. I am more interested in what's going on at Twin Galaxies than what's going on elsewhere in the Id world. But yeah, even film festivals make an effort not to overlap so much that there's a collision.
Would the site respond at all in that case? I just get read errors after a while.
But maybe it is for the best as I have it on good authority that His Majesty isn't actually quite "the Great" at all, that most of his $35 billion fortune is in fact Monopoly money, that he molests dead farm animals in the pale moonlight while "Twilight Time" by The Platters plays gently on his Zune, and that the queen is a whore and the prince holds the money. LÃse majesté crimes are fun!
I'm not so sure that the technology-literate Chinese are slowing figuring things out. I used to date a Chinese national in her mid-30s. She was very well-educated, and she was fully aware that her government regularly censored information. Her attitude about it all was "So what?" and "It's better this way in order to maintain stability and peace." For every Chinese libertarian there seems to be many more Chinese who, even while in a safe apartment in a major US city, will proudly defend the actions of their government as being for the best. Maybe it's that national pride that ex-pats display whenever people from their host country critiques their country of origin, but what I got from her and her friends was that most Chinese are very pragmatic and don't care about our abstract notions of liberty, providing they can have the economic opportunities that come from capitalism.
Sounds like a private sector market for justice: banks that protect your financial data -- surely credit card providers that do the same and won't report that you buy escort services in addition to DVDs, and don't forget the really fun A-Team/Equalizer type stuff too.
I can see your point, and I'm inclined to agree; but playing Devil's Ad here, perhaps they reasoned that this project which directly affects Microsoft will indirectly affect the rest of the Washington economy, but still more so than another public works project. After all, the Redmond public is by and large, employed by Microsoft. And as I remember the Microsoft "campus" is actually pretty large with many ancillary businesses nearby that feed off Microsoft.
I believe Boeing/MD still has a presence in Washington state; perhaps they're getting a similar project to serve their community.
In 30 years, when the oil's gone and hordes of cannibalistic zombies wander the ruins of Western Civilisation, these young punks will be easy pickins. Deaf as posts, obese, incapable of complex or convoluted thought, lazy, self absorbed, crybabies with a massive bolt of self-entitlement. Yep. They won't be able to feed themselves and will either join the zombie hordes or be eaten by them.
Yes, and on the upside, their zombies will be even slower, with even worse hearing; and they will be easy pickings for analog devotees like myself who have fine-tuned our senses as a result of perceiving through video and audio noise in order to make sense of a recording.
Maybe people are less sensitive to the dynamics in the sounds they can perceive than they are to changes in video. Improvements to video PQ seem much easier to describe. As an audiophile and a musician, I use words like "sterile", "warm", "crisp", "open", and "narrow" to describe sound. With digital video, it's easy enough to say "these colors are more saturated", "I can see fine details in the scene", or "I can see the stubble on the actor's chin". And if I want to quantify video, I can say, "this is 1080i, that is 480i".
Something that always intrigued me was the fact that the PC audio component industry isn't quite where the video component industry is. Video cards get first class treatment. People are content with their onboard audio. They don't mind less than HD quality audio, but demand HD quality video for their games.
But people do have their video preferences. I myself do prefer hand drawn to computer generated. I find digital products to be sterile (there's that word again). I like the dirty quality of hand-drawn. I also prefer the warmth of analog over the coldness of digital and I will take snowy static and ghosting over macro-blocking anytime. I've noticed people are less tolerant to static and ghosting than they are to macro-blocking. People also seem to prefer hyper-saturated images too. My Nikon and my Sony and my Canon cameras all offer a vivid color option which renders scenes in colors so "life like" that they are often inaccurate to my source material (the actual scene). But I do relate this to my preference for tube driven "coloring" in music over solid state digital modelling.
Meh, those first generation CDs sucked. There where no cleaner highs or impossible lows to my ears. Maybe comparatively, considering consumer level turntables, but not really good hi-fi. And those CDs weren't any more durable than my records. I still got scratches and warps. Things have improved much over those initial years, but still... CDs suck. :P
I wasn't the bass freak you were. I did love my treble, but I shared your love of headroom and dislike for headphones.
I was inclined earlier to suggest that the influence of electronica over popular music today creates a sonic landscape that's maybe favorable to MP3. But I'm not entirely sure. After all, it's all analog at some point, even if the origin is a digital sampler. But then again, I recently compared a Korg micro to a Prophesy 5 and a Juno G to a Jupiter 8... big difference. :D
But yes, the kid today are listening to very processed music, whether it's pop, techno, pop-country, or even heavy metal, but there's still rich analog warmth in that mess somewhere. In electronica it's often really hard to fine, but it's there behind a long list of romplers.
The iPod does sound pretty good when you give it the right source material and use the right headphones. I prefer in ear phones with a tube pre-amp to add some much needed warmth. And I prefer using the Apple Lossless Format. Unfortunately, at least on the iPod Touch, there's a problem with skipping on APL files, which has necessitated me using AAC.
Our kids may never really appreciate music as much as they could. Now I sound old. Crap.
I gave a 14 year old my old iPod Touch. I threw some of my music on it just so she could play it out of the box; just some Missing Persons, Lita Ford, Vixen -- a bunch of female rockers in hopes it would encourage her to have some real rock goddess icons. Her reply after listening was she's not really into "oldies".
I wanted to punch her puppy.
I'd second that. I think they've been conditioned to liking MP3 as a matter of exposure. I first heard MP3s around '95 I think. Given that MP3s were locked to the personal computer for many years, I would say that these "young people" have had their music listening shaped greatly by personal digital audio: cheap earbuds, small speakers, Sound Blaster clones, and DAPs.
I'm 33, and I grew up on serious hi-fi: belt-driven turntables, huge wooden speakers, tube pre-amps, and big audio names like Pioneer, Nakamichi, and Marantz, Quiet Riot posters hanging on the bedroom wall and stacks of Judas Priest records. My Nak cassette players bested every CD player on the market until around the late '90s. To me, MP3s on cheap ear buds or through PC speakers usually amount to a tiny compressed sound trying its hardest (and loudest) to escape a tinier sound stage.
I'm a guitarist. Of the many guitar amps I've owned, there have been a few solid state digitals. To me, these amps sound lifeless and sonically small. Yet there are many young guitarists who are perfectly happy with the sound coming off their Line 6 Spider combos. Me, I neeeeeed the fullness and warmth of tubes. I think this was to be expected. I'm a couple of generations apart from kids today, and my sonic experiences are very different.
We should also consider that recording engineers optimize music for particular formats. Consider the work that Tom Scholz did getting absolutely every bit of quality out of tape he could in order to make the Boston albums. I don't listen to much modern music, but I'm betting people are optimizing their tone to take advantage of digital processes.
I bet though, as exposure to consumer grade PC and DAP components which approach the original quality of the hi-fi I grew up with (HD Audio for example), we can redo this study and find that some subsequent generation prefers a lossless format.
Being married can be significantly different depending on the spouse's circumstances. Consider young military wives. Many girls who live in military communities go on to marry just out of high school and become mothers at 18 or 19. And it's not necessarily the case that they're marrying E1-E3 ranking service members. Enlisted military personnel don't make a lot, but in certain communities, it's enough to get by. In most though, it's not; however even E1 enlisted personnel have better immediate access to medical and dental care than most middle class families. So, there is a difference between the 17-18 year old teen mother married to a soldier and the stereotypical teen mother.
People get confused on the order of arguments to a command all the time. There's nothing toolish about that. Off the top of my head, I can't remember if when archiving files with zip, I should add the archive filename before or after my list of files. It happens.
Even easier than a Mac because you don't have to go on the web? Will every Linux program always and forever be available via apt-get? Will you always want the most recent version of an app? What's so difficult about going to a software site, polling a category, and choosing an app you want, download it, and then install it?
Christ, you desktop Linux users need to be handheld through everything don't you? ;-)
Search the web for a Windows app? You realize that there have long been web repositories for Windows apps. You just go to a site, select category of software or search by keyword, then find a listing of Windows apps, then maybe observe whether the app is freeware/shareware/demo/etc., and then download.
As for silly install locations, it's not Windows fault. Windows doesn't tell the software author where to install apps beyond providing a "Program Files" folder. It's up to the app developer to decide how to do an install. Granted, a lot of people use installers like InstallShield, but there's no reason why an author couldn't create his own.
All those other things (systray icons, desktop icons, updates, spyware, etc) are once again in the domain of the app's author. If you don't like the practices of a particular developer, don't use their software. It's Windows, every application has an alternative.
The Internet calls television inane and tripe. :D
Call me a luddite, I really want to keep computing divorced from television viewing. TV is passive spectator sport. I shouldn't be encouraged to click around. I rue the day when popup interstitials during the actual show aren't the most annoying thing in my TV viewing, but on-screen hyperlinks, encouraging me to press a button on my remote to immediately pause the show and launch a browser window so that I can instantly buy an item worn by my show's protagonist.
I'm still hoping that the convergence of the Internet, computing, and television will lead to a scenario where I can finally virtualize and aggregate television markets. Like many people in this generation, I live in multiple TV markets. I care about local news and local perspectives in Chicago and in Los Angeles and in Phoenix. I want local news from all three markets, as well as local programming. Traditional broadcast laws prevent me from being able to have the ABC affiliate broadcast through my TV while I'm in Phoenix (it creates competition with the Phoenix affiliate). And streaming "clips" online just doesn't cut it for me.
It convergence eventually does favor the consumer, I should be able to watch WGN Chicago, and not WGN Superstation when I'm not there; not to mention PBS Chicago. PBS Phoenix doesn't interest me.