I agree with your statement that people have phenomenal power in groups, but the article we are commenting upon makes the argument that this very power that you speak of is weakening due to systemic changes (Gerrymandering, House rules) in the House of Representitives. If the political claims that the author has made are correct, the power you speak of is being denied to millions.
The most obvious question that I need to ask:
"Why aren't they moving the orbiters to safety?" I remember seeing them piggyback on 747s when I was a kid. While this does nothing to protect the launch facilities, how different are the facilities from others such as Vandenberg Air Force Base in California?
Also, "why are the launch facilities in Florida in the first place?" I always thought the weather was more volatile there than in the Mojave of California, where the shuttle lands when Florida is unruly.
It was amazing to once hear the shuttle roar above my house bound for the Mojave during its re-entry.
While I think that Van Allen's concerns come from an important introspection brewing in the space community regarding mission safety and purpose -- and hence have an important short-term merit -- I think that history ultimately will reveal such a prohibitory stance toward direct human participation in spaceflight to be anachronistic. Unless as a civilization we choose to shirk the undeniable energy and material resources that avail us in space, and we also choose to stem the population growth of humanity, we will find great purpose by settling the solar system.
While it is interesting to muse the possibilities of optimizing rendering with multiple graphics cards, I think that the possibilities for 3D and multi-plane projection are much more interesting. Imagine a PC with 8 independent graphics cards and 8 small footprint DLP projectors. You could have a private, 4 plane 3D CAVE virtual reality environment.
For a 4 plane Cave which projects in 3d, you would need 8 video outputs -- not just two. Also, it is useful to have a monitor video output as well to control the video rendering host -- but of course it is possible on many platforms to do this remotely.
It is actually an excellent idea to allow for multiple AGP busses in PCs, as there are many applications that require the use of more than one or two displays (3D projection-based displays, Virtual Reality spaces -- Caves etc). Currently, networked multi-processed machines are utilized for such applications.
The following judgments are based upon my listening, and my viewing of the result sound of "Goodbye Irene" in spectral form. The following three images are spectrograms of the result "Goodbye Irene". Each image has a different peak threshold, whereas all the images share the same minimum threshold of -120dB.
Each of these spectrograms was computed using 1024 point Discrete Fourier Transforms with a factor of 8 overlap. The dimensions of the images are unlabeled, but provide a frequency range of 0Hz - 22050Hz along the vertical axis, and approximately 344 horizontal pixels represent one second of time. Darkness represents the magnitude of the signal at a particular measured frequency.
With significant interest, I can perhaps label these axes for easier reading. Simply keep in mind that the top of the vertical dimension represents 22050 Hz.
Given the sound quality of the result sound provided, utilizing 16-bit quantization with a sampling rate of 44.1Khz is more than adequate. But while the result is promising, it is hardly archival quality in my opinion, due to the obvious digital artifacts.
The dynamic range of this particular music is confined by musical convention and the microphone technology available for the recording. The theoretical 96dB of dynamic range availed by 16-bit quantization is more than sufficient to represent the dynamic range of this particular music (and many others) recorded with similarly early microphony and disc-cutting technology.
The frequency range of the music does not appear (in this result mind you) to have significant musical information above an approximate (but conservative) 11000 Hz. The frequency range availed by a sampling frequency of 44.1 KHz is more than adequate to quite faithfully represent this music. To significantly reduce the broadband pops and crackles in the recording, high frequency information is lost. Further, the recording technology available at the time probably could not accurately transduce such frequencies from the original performance either.
The spectrogram reveals that the undulating noise in the result sound occurs at a nearly precise 5Hz. It also reveals that this "noise" is obviously an artifact of the restoration process; it really isn't noise, but the result of a time-varying filter which cuts gaussian lobes into the spectrum of the music from approximately 4000Hz to 9200Hz in a manner somewhat a kin to a wah wah pedal. The lobes can be seen clearly in all of the spectrograms I provided, but they appear more stark as the peak threshold of the spectral plots decrease. Their duration is quite close to.05 seconds.
In my opinion, archives should preserve physical recording media as long as possible to allow transduction techniques to mature. I find the 5Hz filtering artifact present in this result to make the current state of this particular optical transduction process unacceptable for archiving. It would be a shame to replace physical media with music colored with such avoidable artifacts. I am sure that such artifacts can be alleviated and that optical scanning of phonograph records (discs and cylinders) has great promise as a transduction technique.
Very interesting results! Obvious musical features masked by pops and crackles in the original "Goodbye Irene" are revealed in this result.
But I am curious -- there is a 4-5Hz broadband undulation in the result signal which does not, but I could be mistaken, sound like motor noise from the original disc recording. The undulating noise sounds like a digital artfact. Perhaps this noise relates to the digital filters used to process the images?
I have to heartily agree with Michelle, that the Cocoa object-oriented user interface environment is a marvel that should inspire the open source masses. But I must point out that some are inspired: there is the GNUstep project. But you fashion object oriented user interface libraries until you are blue in the face, but it will be very difficult to escape the limitations of the X11 window server model. Sadly, it seems there is no way out -- X11 is here to stay and its byzantine layers of complexity will stay to muck up these environments.
It isn't fair to criticize programmers who "develop for the self". Yes, it is possible for programmers to develop myopically, but often this is done intentionally -- people have widely varying opinions of the utility of a software tool and the efficacy of its interface. A tool which is inappropriate for one person's intentions may be ideally suited for another. Programming has a broad ecology of intentions; it is silly to paint open source development with a singular brush when it is a broad, rich complex of software tools fashioned for an incredibly diverse range of purposes and contexts. Further, software applications also take considerable time resources to develop -- the current state of an open source software project may be far from its conceived ideal. While there may be agreement about the user-friendliness of a particular application, for another application friendliness may be a hotly contested issue.
Plain TeX is powerful and useful for you, but LaTeX meets many people's needs. There are many contexts in which LaTeX formatted articles are welcomed heartily -- conference proceedings for example -- and I have encountered many useful texts where it was obvious that LaTeX was used to construct them.
Slashdot Mirror
The most obvious question that I need to ask: "Why aren't they moving the orbiters to safety?" I remember seeing them piggyback on 747s when I was a kid. While this does nothing to protect the launch facilities, how different are the facilities from others such as Vandenberg Air Force Base in California? Also, "why are the launch facilities in Florida in the first place?" I always thought the weather was more volatile there than in the Mojave of California, where the shuttle lands when Florida is unruly. It was amazing to once hear the shuttle roar above my house bound for the Mojave during its re-entry.
Anyone have a URL to a PCM sample of the signal? It would be most interesting to evaluate. NewScientist.com is quite inundated at the moment.
Was this thread penned by a long-time MacOS 9 user?
While I think that Van Allen's concerns come from an important introspection brewing in the space community regarding mission safety and purpose -- and hence have an important short-term merit -- I think that history ultimately will reveal such a prohibitory stance toward direct human participation in spaceflight to be anachronistic. Unless as a civilization we choose to shirk the undeniable energy and material resources that avail us in space, and we also choose to stem the population growth of humanity, we will find great purpose by settling the solar system.
An overview of CAVE virtual reality systems>
Multiple video outputs is definitely a step in the right direction for a lot of exciting developments is visualization. Gamers rejoice.
For a 4 plane Cave which projects in 3d, you would need 8 video outputs -- not just two. Also, it is useful to have a monitor video output as well to control the video rendering host -- but of course it is possible on many platforms to do this remotely.
It is actually an excellent idea to allow for multiple AGP busses in PCs, as there are many applications that require the use of more than one or two displays (3D projection-based displays, Virtual Reality spaces -- Caves etc). Currently, networked multi-processed machines are utilized for such applications.
"Result sound viewed with -76dB threshold"
All of the numbers shown in these links refer to audio decibel values.
Result sound viewed with -42 threshold
Result sound viewed with -60 threshold
Result sound viewed with -42 threshold
And the following image is a spectrogram of the original "Goodbye Irene" file:
Original sound viewed with -42 threshold
Each of these spectrograms was computed using 1024 point Discrete Fourier Transforms with a factor of 8 overlap. The dimensions of the images are unlabeled, but provide a frequency range of 0Hz - 22050Hz along the vertical axis, and approximately 344 horizontal pixels represent one second of time. Darkness represents the magnitude of the signal at a particular measured frequency.
With significant interest, I can perhaps label these axes for easier reading. Simply keep in mind that the top of the vertical dimension represents 22050 Hz.
Given the sound quality of the result sound provided, utilizing 16-bit quantization with a sampling rate of 44.1Khz is more than adequate. But while the result is promising, it is hardly archival quality in my opinion, due to the obvious digital artifacts.
The dynamic range of this particular music is confined by musical convention and the microphone technology available for the recording. The theoretical 96dB of dynamic range availed by 16-bit quantization is more than sufficient to represent the dynamic range of this particular music (and many others) recorded with similarly early microphony and disc-cutting technology.
The frequency range of the music does not appear (in this result mind you) to have significant musical information above an approximate (but conservative) 11000 Hz. The frequency range availed by a sampling frequency of 44.1 KHz is more than adequate to quite faithfully represent this music. To significantly reduce the broadband pops and crackles in the recording, high frequency information is lost. Further, the recording technology available at the time probably could not accurately transduce such frequencies from the original performance either.
The spectrogram reveals that the undulating noise in the result sound occurs at a nearly precise 5Hz. It also reveals that this "noise" is obviously an artifact of the restoration process; it really isn't noise, but the result of a time-varying filter which cuts gaussian lobes into the spectrum of the music from approximately 4000Hz to 9200Hz in a manner somewhat a kin to a wah wah pedal. The lobes can be seen clearly in all of the spectrograms I provided, but they appear more stark as the peak threshold of the spectral plots decrease. Their duration is quite close to .05 seconds.
In my opinion, archives should preserve physical recording media as long as possible to allow transduction techniques to mature. I find the 5Hz filtering artifact present in this result to make the current state of this particular optical transduction process unacceptable for archiving. It would be a shame to replace physical media with music colored with such avoidable artifacts. I am sure that such artifacts can be alleviated and that optical scanning of phonograph records (discs and cylinders) has great promise as a transduction technique.
But I am curious -- there is a 4-5Hz broadband undulation in the result signal which does not, but I could be mistaken, sound like motor noise from the original disc recording. The undulating noise sounds like a digital artfact. Perhaps this noise relates to the digital filters used to process the images?
I have to heartily agree with Michelle, that the Cocoa object-oriented user interface environment is a marvel that should inspire the open source masses. But I must point out that some are inspired: there is the GNUstep project. But you fashion object oriented user interface libraries until you are blue in the face, but it will be very difficult to escape the limitations of the X11 window server model. Sadly, it seems there is no way out -- X11 is here to stay and its byzantine layers of complexity will stay to muck up these environments.
It isn't fair to criticize programmers who "develop for the self". Yes, it is possible for programmers to develop myopically, but often this is done intentionally -- people have widely varying opinions of the utility of a software tool and the efficacy of its interface. A tool which is inappropriate for one person's intentions may be ideally suited for another. Programming has a broad ecology of intentions; it is silly to paint open source development with a singular brush when it is a broad, rich complex of software tools fashioned for an incredibly diverse range of purposes and contexts. Further, software applications also take considerable time resources to develop -- the current state of an open source software project may be far from its conceived ideal. While there may be agreement about the user-friendliness of a particular application, for another application friendliness may be a hotly contested issue.
Plain TeX is powerful and useful for you, but LaTeX meets many people's needs. There are many contexts in which LaTeX formatted articles are welcomed heartily -- conference proceedings for example -- and I have encountered many useful texts where it was obvious that LaTeX was used to construct them.