... this idea smacks of a tool that's trying to be *too* helpful, and ends up getting in the way. Kinda like the old microsoft paperclip. I went and turned off this function in google accounts when I realized that my search results were being shaped based on my history, since that partially defeats my expectations of how a search engine behaves, and degrades the utility, insofar as the utility (to me the user) is based on receiving an unbiased sampling of the matches.
I'm also troubled by this trend in the way that google delivers their news offerings, it seems that the logical progression of this is that we will mostly only be exposed to material that fit our highly individualized pre-existing reality bubbles.
I'm very curious how the G1 (HTC Dream) would have compared. The CPU, memory and screen specs are looking a little dated, but from my (albiet limited) observation, the physical keyboard still seem to be a top notch contender. Particularly because of the innate tactile feedback, due to fairly clicky keys, and the perhaps somewhat overlooked factor of the keys being laid out in the standard diagonal orientation, which I've definitely found to be quite advantageous.
I'm not the worlds fastest typist, but I can touch type, and when I began using that phone, the ability to do so seamlessly transferred to that hardware. Which was interesting since completely different digits are involved. (thumbs vs fingers).
Am convinced that the speed bottleneck involved in on-screen keyboards is more due to do placing the users visual system inside the control feedback loop, which is inherently slower and consumes more resources.
No kidding, MIDI implemted on this thing *could* be really amazing, the Neuros II (which i own and am very happy with) has provisions for a DJ mode which allows basic sample freq. shifted over a reasonable range for beat matching, not terribly usefull if you've only got a single track output at a time but kinda neat, esp, if used alongside some decks. Now theres a bunch of DJ style MIDI controllers out there that are intended to interface with your PC and appropriate software to allow DJing MP3 tracks in tractor or some such. If the Neuros III could edge in on that market i think that it might get the attn. of many more people. But why stop there. with an open OS and MIDI softsynths (not just sample based stuff that hogs lots of RAM) but true in-your-pocket synthesis that can be succintly implemented using surprisingly little (in todays terms) computational resources. (Check out MIT Press: Foundations Of Compter Music a la' soft-synths circa 1985 to see what i'm talking about).
Then again there's talk of ethernet on board, so for the really cutting edge shizznit why not go with...
http://www.missinglynxsystems.com/kaboodle.html
Seriously, there are huge differences between what passes for decent audio today and what is possible using available tech.
I recently did some A/B testing between some mp3's that i had which i also had on vinyl. Played back through a relativley crappy early eighties home stereo component setup. The mp3 versions were remarkably different. Although in a subtle way. Here's my subjective results:
-The upper harmonics of bass sounds (in a DnB/Electro track) are totally absent in the mp3 version. This amounts to a certain sense of blurring of the details in the sound.
-The dynamic range between the softest sounds anf the loudest is diminished. resulting in a more static rendition of the recording, not much different form regular analog compression but certainely altering what the original recording artist and engineers had intended.
these factors seem to me to combine to create recordings which lack much of the subtle detail that exists in the vinyl or well mastered (digital) recordings. the net result for me are tracks which do closely resemble the originals but are somehow less detailed and hence less interesting. As a result the mp3 versions don't stand as well the test of time ie. repeated listening. I think that the popular lack of ability to distinguish high quality recordings from those that download in seconds is largely due to a widespread popular lack of education as well as non-standardization in scientific or technical quantification of the subjective qualities of sound. People are familar with the differences in graphical resolution, probably largley due to video games. But sound is one of those hazy realms where popular understanding and buzzwords indicating quality are not in common parlance. It seems that sound as opposed to graphics is still a largley uncharted territory in the study of the spectrum and variations of human perception.
recently i had the oppurtunity to play with some samples that where made at 24 bits 96kHz, the differences were really amazing, mostly in how well the frequencies held up when scaled to different pitches. theres no reason to think that most humans can percieve past 20kHz (less for most, myself included having been exposed to probably more than my share of loud amplified concerts in my role as a sound tech), that being as it may be, the difference between a 48kHz sample and 96kHz sample standing alone was apparent to these less than golden ears. Is there something more to digitaly sampled audio than that which have been hearing all these these years?
As an Oakland resident who commutes daily around the Bay Area, I'd like to point out the existence of a very advanced technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle It uses gears to commute energies that are intrinsicaly present wherever the user is (provide they're metabollically prepared) to propel them forward at great speeds. Given the combined utilty of this elegant technology and the Bays' extensive public transport system a car can be easily viewed as more of a liability in terms of cost and convienence when the factors of parking and gas prices ( ~ US $3.00 'round here) are factored. In my group of friends and aquaintances a good half, if not more, do not own cars. The brute force approach to transportaion (ie. internal combustion) seems to me a poor method for general use when the energies spent are overwhelmingly directed at transporting the system itself rather than it's passengers and payload. I was in Berlin last year where it is very common to see people using large hand carts to move heavy loads about. That is also a large cosmopolitan city where cars can be extremely inconvienent for everyday use. I'm no luddite, but the perception that combustion engines are a technical advancement over alternatives like sails on boats or gears on feet always seemed strange to me.
-Pretty much proves the true Luciferian identity of that Satanic Fangfish.
(No offense to the memory of Nicholas Roerich, an amazing painter, noted explorer and preservationist of the worlds cultural treasures from the destruction of war. Methinks that his ideas reagrding the triune importance and beauty of art/science/religon would be a scarier threat to these so called fundamentalists smug ignorance than some Imax flick.)
Slashdot Mirror
... this idea smacks of a tool that's trying to be *too* helpful, and ends up getting in the way. Kinda like the old microsoft paperclip. I went and turned off this function in google accounts when I realized that my search results were being shaped based on my history, since that partially defeats my expectations of how a search engine behaves, and degrades the utility, insofar as the utility (to me the user) is based on receiving an unbiased sampling of the matches. I'm also troubled by this trend in the way that google delivers their news offerings, it seems that the logical progression of this is that we will mostly only be exposed to material that fit our highly individualized pre-existing reality bubbles.
I'm very curious how the G1 (HTC Dream) would have compared. The CPU, memory and screen specs are looking a little dated, but from my (albiet limited) observation, the physical keyboard still seem to be a top notch contender. Particularly because of the innate tactile feedback, due to fairly clicky keys, and the perhaps somewhat overlooked factor of the keys being laid out in the standard diagonal orientation, which I've definitely found to be quite advantageous.
I'm not the worlds fastest typist, but I can touch type, and when I began using that phone, the ability to do so seamlessly transferred to that hardware. Which was interesting since completely different digits are involved. (thumbs vs fingers).
Am convinced that the speed bottleneck involved in on-screen keyboards is more due to do placing the users visual system inside the control feedback loop, which is inherently slower and consumes more resources.
No kidding, MIDI implemted on this thing *could* be really amazing, the Neuros II (which i own and am very happy with) has provisions for a DJ mode which allows basic sample freq. shifted over a reasonable range for beat matching, not terribly usefull if you've only got a single track output at a time but kinda neat, esp, if used alongside some decks. Now theres a bunch of DJ style MIDI controllers out there that are intended to interface with your PC and appropriate software to allow DJing MP3 tracks in tractor or some such. If the Neuros III could edge in on that market i think that it might get the attn. of many more people. But why stop there. with an open OS and MIDI softsynths (not just sample based stuff that hogs lots of RAM) but true in-your-pocket synthesis that can be succintly implemented using surprisingly little (in todays terms) computational resources. (Check out MIT Press: Foundations Of Compter Music a la' soft-synths circa 1985 to see what i'm talking about). Then again there's talk of ethernet on board, so for the really cutting edge shizznit why not go with... http://www.missinglynxsystems.com/kaboodle.html
Seriously, there are huge differences between what passes for decent audio today and what is possible using available tech. I recently did some A/B testing between some mp3's that i had which i also had on vinyl. Played back through a relativley crappy early eighties home stereo component setup. The mp3 versions were remarkably different. Although in a subtle way. Here's my subjective results: -The upper harmonics of bass sounds (in a DnB/Electro track) are totally absent in the mp3 version. This amounts to a certain sense of blurring of the details in the sound. -The dynamic range between the softest sounds anf the loudest is diminished. resulting in a more static rendition of the recording, not much different form regular analog compression but certainely altering what the original recording artist and engineers had intended. these factors seem to me to combine to create recordings which lack much of the subtle detail that exists in the vinyl or well mastered (digital) recordings. the net result for me are tracks which do closely resemble the originals but are somehow less detailed and hence less interesting. As a result the mp3 versions don't stand as well the test of time ie. repeated listening. I think that the popular lack of ability to distinguish high quality recordings from those that download in seconds is largely due to a widespread popular lack of education as well as non-standardization in scientific or technical quantification of the subjective qualities of sound. People are familar with the differences in graphical resolution, probably largley due to video games. But sound is one of those hazy realms where popular understanding and buzzwords indicating quality are not in common parlance. It seems that sound as opposed to graphics is still a largley uncharted territory in the study of the spectrum and variations of human perception. recently i had the oppurtunity to play with some samples that where made at 24 bits 96kHz, the differences were really amazing, mostly in how well the frequencies held up when scaled to different pitches. theres no reason to think that most humans can percieve past 20kHz (less for most, myself included having been exposed to probably more than my share of loud amplified concerts in my role as a sound tech), that being as it may be, the difference between a 48kHz sample and 96kHz sample standing alone was apparent to these less than golden ears. Is there something more to digitaly sampled audio than that which have been hearing all these these years?
As an Oakland resident who commutes daily around the Bay Area, I'd like to point out the existence of a very advanced technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle
It uses gears to commute energies that are intrinsicaly present wherever the user is (provide they're metabollically prepared) to propel them forward at great speeds.
Given the combined utilty of this elegant technology and the Bays' extensive public transport system a car can be easily viewed as more of a liability in terms of cost and convienence when the factors of parking and gas prices ( ~ US $3.00 'round here) are factored. In my group of friends and aquaintances a good half, if not more, do not own cars. The brute force approach to transportaion (ie. internal combustion) seems to me a poor method for general use when the energies spent are overwhelmingly directed at transporting the system itself rather than it's passengers and payload. I was in Berlin last year where it is very common to see people using large hand carts to move heavy loads about. That is also a large cosmopolitan city where cars can be extremely inconvienent for everyday use. I'm no luddite, but the perception that combustion engines are a technical advancement over alternatives like sails on boats or gears on feet always seemed strange to me.
Well, I think the evidence here:3 .jpg
http://www.roerich.org/images/paintings/703320_04
-Pretty much proves the true Luciferian identity of that Satanic Fangfish.
(No offense to the memory of Nicholas Roerich, an amazing painter, noted explorer and preservationist of the worlds cultural treasures from the destruction of war. Methinks that his ideas reagrding the triune importance and beauty of art/science/religon would be a scarier threat to these so called fundamentalists smug ignorance than some Imax flick.)