Like any other instrument, you can do some pretty neat things with an autotune, or you can use it as a crutch.
I think the new Kanye West album is a good example of somebody really trying to do something new with it. Intentionally using the jarring, slightly inhuman vocals to create a sense of distance and isolation, something the album was intended to convey. Sort of an "uncanny valley" of voice. IMO, the song "Love Lockdown" is an excellent example of him really trying to make the autotuner into an instrument, and not just a tool. Now, the entire album is far from perfect, but I give him extra artist points for reach extending his grasp.
On the other hand, other pop songs use it horribly, and in such a way that it ruins the song. A good example there is the song "Nine in the Afternoon" by Panic! at the Disco. That song is supposed to have a warmth, and a little bit of a rough feel about it. It seems to have been written for a teenager in their room in a hormonal storm. And yet, the autotune, especially in the chorus, destroys that sense. It pulls you out of that feeling, and reminds you that it's not really the singers voice. Suddenly, he's not singing something you can commiserate with, he's singing words on a page.
You didn't even have to RTFA, just the whole of the post:
"She has requested a pre-motion conference in anticipation of making a summary judgment motion dismissing the complaint and awarding her attorneys fees under the Copyright Act."
Bravo. You're completely correct. As we all know, all children enrolled into catholic schools were consulted before attending said school. Because parents don't make decisions for their children...
Or was the title of your post supposed to be "Their own fault for being born to religious people"?
Wait, you also said "or didn't run from it while you had a chance." That's even better! If you don't want your personal freedoms stepped on, don't try to depend on the courts and the law, instead, you should run away from home!
A sound idea, if it were not the users defining "abuse." Thus, the creation of such watchdog organizations such as the EFF. I think that a small amount of personal paranoia quite nicely offsets the people that really are out to get you. My initial response is, and will always be to be wary. I'm the type of person that checks if someone is watching me type my password, and that looks away when somebody else is typing theirs.
There's nothing wrong with new ways to catch criminals, as long as they're only used for that. The blurry line is when the "people in charge" (must be said ominously, with a deep voice) start redefining "criminal."
Besides, you've read the posts here. How many ways, off the top of their heads, did people come up with to circumvent this? A new way to catch criminals that has the potential for abuse has to be watched closely. An ineffective new way to catch criminals that has the potential for abuse has to be eliminated.
So, I will agree that with a close watch by outside organizations, and a strong penalty and enforcement for improper use, such things become more viable than outright banning. The government and the people they govern have to keep each other in check. Which is why things like the patriot act scare the bejeebus out of me. Who's to say if they're using it properly if you're not even allowed to know if they're using it?
Thanks for the compliment. A reasoned discussion will always be better than a flame war.
The easiest response to that is a very old cliche we've all heard before:
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
I'm sure 99% of public officials want nothing but our best interests (sarcasm tag anyone?), but it's that 1% I'm worried about. Unfortunately, history has proven that the only surefire way to stop a person from abusing such things is by making them unavailable.
Thus the difference between PERSONAL rights and CORPORATE rights.
A person can infringe on your rights in many ways. They can kill you, taking away your right to live, they can steal from you, taking away your right to personal property, they can kidnap you, taking away your right to liberty, or many, many other things. Not even libertarians (of which I'm not one) say that those should be legal.
A corporation can infringe on your rights in totally different ways. They can carefully calculate wages so you never make enough money to leave, taking away your right to liberty (like the mining and logging camps used to do). They can control information, and give it out selectively, or censor the information you give out, taking your right to gain knowledge of the world around you and your right to free speech. They can knowingly create hazardous products that can injure or kill you, or lie to you in an attempt to take your money.
People infringing on your rights are just as regulated as corporations infringing on your rights, they're just very different things, so they require different rules.
Enron lying about their stock to make money at the stockholders and employees expense is just as bad as if Ken Lay robbed you at gunpoint, just different methods.
I wouldn't think I'd have to say this, but you DO know that that quote is what some people label "sarcasm".
Obviously, nobody in their right mind is going to really state it in those words if they really believed it, but many people say pretty much the same thing, just in prettier words. Of course, it's not a valid argument, because of the logical failure that being poor is a choice. Saying it that way brings that logical fallicy to contrast, exposing the argument that poor people "like the way they are" by crassly stating the basic point of such an argument.
This is all, of course, the "optimum" method of doing things. Blood transfusions in a combat scenario are a completely different story. There's plenty of "what blood type are you? How sure are you of that? Okay, good enough, lemme see your arm"
Could be. I'm not a research scientist, I work on the clinical side of things. I would think that the risk of that is still incredibly low. First, you'd have to have a cow that was infected, but not showing symptoms, then the prions would have to make its way into the milk producing parts (no small feat ), then survive the entire milk production and sterilization process.
All research I've looked at don't say anything about vCJD going through milk though. I'm pretty sure he's safe.
Short answer: No. Not to mention, that stuff is pasteurized.
Of course, we don't know everything about vCJD, so I can't say that with 100% certainty, but it seems pretty certain that it has more to do with the brain than with the milk.
Plus, it's not like this is a common infection amongst cows. Pretty much, just cows that have been fed other cows' brains, just like the human CJV, known as "kuru", is only caught by eating human brains.
There actually is a choice for that. If somebody doesn't want to admit something, or if, say they came in a group and don't want to have to explain why they couldn't donate, we have barcode stickers that we make them choose from. One states they believe their blood is safe for transfusion, one states that for some reason, they don't believe so. We don't even know which ones they choose until we bring the blood back to the lab and scan them. If they say no transfusion, we destroy them, and nobody's the wiser.
And what should we do instead? That's the best way we have, and we make sure we tell them that there is NO way that they can get into trouble for any answer. We even ask them in big blocks so they don't have to saw which question they're answering yes to. Besides, most people are terrible liars, especially to medical people (doctors and medical professionals are amongst the top trusted people in America), and don't think we don't notice when they jump at a certain question. Granted, we can't defer them for THAT, but we can defer for "appearance", meaning because we think there's something they're not telling us.
But, I ask again, do YOU have a better solution? Besides Orwellian monitoring of all people so we can know if they're lying...
We do not reject people that have taken Tylenol, unless they're donating platelets (Tylenol, like asprin, is a blood thinner).
As far as the drugs go, it is on a case by case basis because some drugs change your blood in many ways. As far as the Benadryl goes, the place I worked at would not have deferred you for that, as long as the allergies were chronic, and not possible a cold or flu.
Remember, this blood will go to sick or injured people that aren't in the right shape to have to worry about what drugs or viruses are in their bloodstreams, and how they'll react with what they're already on.
Not to mention military members. The Armed forces has it's own blood donor center, and they've been hit especially hard by this. Now imagine all the people that have served a normal 2 year tour in germany or italy since 1980, remembering that you do not need a passport if you're in that situation, and the numbers suddenly jump.
I've done the test for HIV on hundreds of blood units myself. The current test we have uses PCR, or Polymerase Chain Reaction, to duplicate the viral DNA billions of times before we test. The only way it gets past us is if the person was infected in the previous 3 days or so before donating, which is why we ask all those personal questions to try to rule them out. If you've had a blood transfusion, used a drug by needle (and we check for track marks), even had sex with a man (if male. If female, had sex with a man that has had sex with a man), we ask, and, depending on the length of time, we can defer you, sometimes for the rest of your life.
This, opposed to a disease we have no test for, much less one so accurate. Besides, that attitude caused Hepatitis C to be even more prevalent than HIV, because we used to think it was worth the risk (until we found out that it lies dormant and comes back in 10 or 15 years).
The key to beating diseases like this are to stop them from spreading BEFORE they become an epidemic. We've learned that the hard way.
Speaking as both a previous blood donor center technician and as a medical laboratory tech, which includes transfusion services (not to mention the fact that I'm an American currently living in Europe, and can't donate either), the person that made this article is using older limitations. The current limitations (for vCJD) are: lived in Europe for > 6 months between 1980 and 1995, or lived in Europe for greater than 5 years from 1980 until the current year (these are the limitations for the Armed Services Blood Bank, and it may be different from other blood bank associations).
The reason these limitations exist is because of how little is known about vCJD (Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease). The bit about prions is still debated, although it is the widely accepted theory.
There is no case of vCJD that has been caught from a blood transfusion, although there have been cases from cornea or dura mater transplants or the administration of human-derived pituitary growth hormones (this from WHO).
There is also some question about the possibility of transmission from people who have had beef insulin (from before we could grow human insulin in sterile conditions).
Any of these items automatically mean an indefinite deferral until there is a test available for vCJD that can be performed easily (i.e. not in a big research lab by post-doctorates), like the EIA or PCR tests that exist for HIV, Hepatitis C virus, or Cytomegalovirus.
The blood donation community as a whole got really burnt, first when HIV came out, then when Hepatitis C virus was discovered (a close family member of mine caught HCV from a blood transfusion years ago). So, the FDA, which governs blood donations, (blood, since it is transfused, is considered to be a drug by the FDA, and is held to all the same standards as any pharmaceutical company) is incredibly jumpy about any disease which exists or can exist in the blood getting transfused, and contributing to an epidemic amongst people that are already unhealthy (you don't get blood transfused unless something's wrong, right?).
You should have seen how quickly they clamped down on SARS. We had to start asking all potential donors if they had SARS or SARS-like symptoms, and if in the last 14 days, they had travelled to any SARS endemic countries, and we still do.
Europeans are donating blood, just not in America. Those countries make their own laws, and, since it's considered endemic, as well as very rare, they ask certain questions to find risky history, but do not defer for vCJD based on location to the best of my knowledge. The FDA has chosen to do so to prevent the spread from Europe to America.
As far as the risks, vCJD is a fatal disease with no cure, no matter how you slice it, just like HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis C. To ask the question like that is to ask if it's worth the risk to have Chronic Hepatitis C in 10 years in exchange for a blood transfusion when you need it. Some people that have caught it from a transfusion say it was worth having their life saved, and some say they would rather have bled to death. Personally, I'd rather err on the side of caution, and use what blood we have, instead of making that decision for another person.
Of course not! The wonderful federal workers for this great country would never stoop so low as to do such a thing. Besides, everybody knows that federal employees are paid too much to need money. Corrupt workers indeed...
Sarcasm aside, good point. The card will work exactly on those it doesn't need to work on, while leaving large avenues for exploitation
True, although I seem to remember the constitution saying something about anything not expressedly in the constitution being a state's responsibility. Although, there are plenty of lines in the constitution that could be construed that way, (see article 1, section 8)
Since this would be attached to a driver's license, you can add driving to that as well. Not to mention that since the drivers license is a widely accepted form of ID, good luck getting a bank account, or a credit card, purchasing tobacco, alcohol, or a gun, getting a job, etc once a nationally recognized ID is underway. Most businesses will probably not accept anything else (don't believe me? Try using something other than a drivers license to buy beer. Many places will accept only drivers licenses/state IDs, or military IDs. Or even better, see that list of IDs you need to provide to prove citizenship to take a job.) So, "fair bit of hardship" has become as long as you keep your money in a mattress, don't get any (legal) jobs, don't drive, don't rent or purchase a home or apartment, and live off of the land, you can go without it (but no hunting! You'll need the ID to get a hunting license too)
Very true. So why should we give them a way to learn even more than from our taxes?
Only as long as the thief doesn't:
Create a fake realID (incredibly difficult, but nothing's impossible)
Or more likely...
Use easier to forge documents to gain a realID, then use that as a basis.
Usage of the realID to prevent identity theft is spotty at best, and really, putting all of our trust into a single ID sounds to me like inviting identity thieves.
In the article, apparently he won't have to. His cloth like uniform will automatically harden to absorb the kinetic energy upon impact. Of course, if they get a contract with microsoft, and some DLL is missing or something, it brings a whole new meaning to "Blue Screen Of Death"
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I think the new Kanye West album is a good example of somebody really trying to do something new with it. Intentionally using the jarring, slightly inhuman vocals to create a sense of distance and isolation, something the album was intended to convey. Sort of an "uncanny valley" of voice. IMO, the song "Love Lockdown" is an excellent example of him really trying to make the autotuner into an instrument, and not just a tool. Now, the entire album is far from perfect, but I give him extra artist points for reach extending his grasp.
On the other hand, other pop songs use it horribly, and in such a way that it ruins the song. A good example there is the song "Nine in the Afternoon" by Panic! at the Disco. That song is supposed to have a warmth, and a little bit of a rough feel about it. It seems to have been written for a teenager in their room in a hormonal storm. And yet, the autotune, especially in the chorus, destroys that sense. It pulls you out of that feeling, and reminds you that it's not really the singers voice. Suddenly, he's not singing something you can commiserate with, he's singing words on a page.
You didn't even have to RTFA, just the whole of the post: "She has requested a pre-motion conference in anticipation of making a summary judgment motion dismissing the complaint and awarding her attorneys fees under the Copyright Act."
I'm surprised to see that your opinion is worth $0.2, when most others only get to add their $0.02. I guess inflation really is rising quickly...
Or was the title of your post supposed to be "Their own fault for being born to religious people"?
Wait, you also said "or didn't run from it while you had a chance." That's even better! If you don't want your personal freedoms stepped on, don't try to depend on the courts and the law, instead, you should run away from home!
My initial response is, and will always be to be wary. I'm the type of person that checks if someone is watching me type my password, and that looks away when somebody else is typing theirs.
There's nothing wrong with new ways to catch criminals, as long as they're only used for that. The blurry line is when the "people in charge" (must be said ominously, with a deep voice) start redefining "criminal."
Besides, you've read the posts here. How many ways, off the top of their heads, did people come up with to circumvent this? A new way to catch criminals that has the potential for abuse has to be watched closely. An ineffective new way to catch criminals that has the potential for abuse has to be eliminated.
So, I will agree that with a close watch by outside organizations, and a strong penalty and enforcement for improper use, such things become more viable than outright banning. The government and the people they govern have to keep each other in check. Which is why things like the patriot act scare the bejeebus out of me. Who's to say if they're using it properly if you're not even allowed to know if they're using it? Thanks for the compliment. A reasoned discussion will always be better than a flame war.
"What's this? This ransom note was printed in 1455 on printer number 1! Okay men, I think we need to have a little chat with Mr. Gutenberg"
The easiest response to that is a very old cliche we've all heard before: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." I'm sure 99% of public officials want nothing but our best interests (sarcasm tag anyone?), but it's that 1% I'm worried about. Unfortunately, history has proven that the only surefire way to stop a person from abusing such things is by making them unavailable.
You can tell by the way I walk, that I'm the proper owner, got time to talk...
A person can infringe on your rights in many ways. They can kill you, taking away your right to live, they can steal from you, taking away your right to personal property, they can kidnap you, taking away your right to liberty, or many, many other things. Not even libertarians (of which I'm not one) say that those should be legal.
A corporation can infringe on your rights in totally different ways. They can carefully calculate wages so you never make enough money to leave, taking away your right to liberty (like the mining and logging camps used to do). They can control information, and give it out selectively, or censor the information you give out, taking your right to gain knowledge of the world around you and your right to free speech. They can knowingly create hazardous products that can injure or kill you, or lie to you in an attempt to take your money.
People infringing on your rights are just as regulated as corporations infringing on your rights, they're just very different things, so they require different rules.
Enron lying about their stock to make money at the stockholders and employees expense is just as bad as if Ken Lay robbed you at gunpoint, just different methods.
Obviously, nobody in their right mind is going to really state it in those words if they really believed it, but many people say pretty much the same thing, just in prettier words. Of course, it's not a valid argument, because of the logical failure that being poor is a choice. Saying it that way brings that logical fallicy to contrast, exposing the argument that poor people "like the way they are" by crassly stating the basic point of such an argument.
It seems satire is lost on some people.
This is all, of course, the "optimum" method of doing things. Blood transfusions in a combat scenario are a completely different story. There's plenty of "what blood type are you? How sure are you of that? Okay, good enough, lemme see your arm"
All research I've looked at don't say anything about vCJD going through milk though. I'm pretty sure he's safe.
Of course, we don't know everything about vCJD, so I can't say that with 100% certainty, but it seems pretty certain that it has more to do with the brain than with the milk.
Plus, it's not like this is a common infection amongst cows. Pretty much, just cows that have been fed other cows' brains, just like the human CJV, known as "kuru", is only caught by eating human brains.
There actually is a choice for that. If somebody doesn't want to admit something, or if, say they came in a group and don't want to have to explain why they couldn't donate, we have barcode stickers that we make them choose from. One states they believe their blood is safe for transfusion, one states that for some reason, they don't believe so. We don't even know which ones they choose until we bring the blood back to the lab and scan them. If they say no transfusion, we destroy them, and nobody's the wiser.
But, I ask again, do YOU have a better solution? Besides Orwellian monitoring of all people so we can know if they're lying...
Remember, this blood will go to sick or injured people that aren't in the right shape to have to worry about what drugs or viruses are in their bloodstreams, and how they'll react with what they're already on.
Not to mention military members. The Armed forces has it's own blood donor center, and they've been hit especially hard by this. Now imagine all the people that have served a normal 2 year tour in germany or italy since 1980, remembering that you do not need a passport if you're in that situation, and the numbers suddenly jump.
This, opposed to a disease we have no test for, much less one so accurate. Besides, that attitude caused Hepatitis C to be even more prevalent than HIV, because we used to think it was worth the risk (until we found out that it lies dormant and comes back in 10 or 15 years).
The key to beating diseases like this are to stop them from spreading BEFORE they become an epidemic. We've learned that the hard way.
The reason these limitations exist is because of how little is known about vCJD (Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease). The bit about prions is still debated, although it is the widely accepted theory.
There is no case of vCJD that has been caught from a blood transfusion, although there have been cases from cornea or dura mater transplants or the administration of human-derived pituitary growth hormones (this from WHO).
There is also some question about the possibility of transmission from people who have had beef insulin (from before we could grow human insulin in sterile conditions). Any of these items automatically mean an indefinite deferral until there is a test available for vCJD that can be performed easily (i.e. not in a big research lab by post-doctorates), like the EIA or PCR tests that exist for HIV, Hepatitis C virus, or Cytomegalovirus.
The blood donation community as a whole got really burnt, first when HIV came out, then when Hepatitis C virus was discovered (a close family member of mine caught HCV from a blood transfusion years ago). So, the FDA, which governs blood donations, (blood, since it is transfused, is considered to be a drug by the FDA, and is held to all the same standards as any pharmaceutical company) is incredibly jumpy about any disease which exists or can exist in the blood getting transfused, and contributing to an epidemic amongst people that are already unhealthy (you don't get blood transfused unless something's wrong, right?).
You should have seen how quickly they clamped down on SARS. We had to start asking all potential donors if they had SARS or SARS-like symptoms, and if in the last 14 days, they had travelled to any SARS endemic countries, and we still do.
Europeans are donating blood, just not in America. Those countries make their own laws, and, since it's considered endemic, as well as very rare, they ask certain questions to find risky history, but do not defer for vCJD based on location to the best of my knowledge. The FDA has chosen to do so to prevent the spread from Europe to America.
As far as the risks, vCJD is a fatal disease with no cure, no matter how you slice it, just like HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis C. To ask the question like that is to ask if it's worth the risk to have Chronic Hepatitis C in 10 years in exchange for a blood transfusion when you need it. Some people that have caught it from a transfusion say it was worth having their life saved, and some say they would rather have bled to death. Personally, I'd rather err on the side of caution, and use what blood we have, instead of making that decision for another person.
Of course not! The wonderful federal workers for this great country would never stoop so low as to do such a thing. Besides, everybody knows that federal employees are paid too much to need money. Corrupt workers indeed...
Sarcasm aside, good point. The card will work exactly on those it doesn't need to work on, while leaving large avenues for exploitation
- Create a fake realID (incredibly difficult, but nothing's impossible)
- Use easier to forge documents to gain a realID, then use that as a basis.
Usage of the realID to prevent identity theft is spotty at best, and really, putting all of our trust into a single ID sounds to me like inviting identity thieves.Or more likely...
In the article, apparently he won't have to. His cloth like uniform will automatically harden to absorb the kinetic energy upon impact. Of course, if they get a contract with microsoft, and some DLL is missing or something, it brings a whole new meaning to "Blue Screen Of Death"