1) Put a picture of a naked chick in the background of all your photos. 2) Put photos on the internet.
In a few days, your photos will be archived on and available on digital and print media throughout the globe, and will never disappear until mankind goes the way of the dodo.
The old ethnomusicologist in me is tempted to dismiss this as a poorly designed study -- jazz and classical music alone does not make for a representative sample, and people in different parts of the world like all kinds of music that other people find unpalatable. Furthermore, you can't apply his method directly to West African drumming, which is a very popular and exciting music, but you could to the cultural crime that is Britney Spears.;-)
But looking over the linked study, it's actually quite an elegant look at European and American music. It's neat that the frequency of frequencies (har har) in song parallels the frequency of words in novels. That doesn't mean that "Zipf music" inherently speaks to its listeners, just that people are attracted to this kind of basic math in the world. It's like finding a Golden Ratio -- pretty frickin' cool.
I wish I could see which notes were which on the diagrams. My suspicion is that the relative uses of each note corresponds to the mathematical relationship of the frequency to the tonic. So if x is the tonic, 2x /.5x would come next (octaves), followed by 3x/2 (the dominant) and 4x / 3 (subdominant)... until you get to that nasty tritone.
Atonal music intentionally avoids emphasizing the mathematically strong relationships, liberating the composer from maintaining that pesky context to a tonic. So it makes sense that Zipf's law won't apply. But before we conclude that people dislike atonal music because it deviates from Zipf, we must answer whether we might also dislike it because we have been indoctrinated into tonality at an early age. And that's where cross-cultural studies are most valuable.
Why did I leave academia to work on websites? This stuff is fun!
Clarke asked the FBI to investigate the people on the list. After they gave the go-ahead, he gave the order his rubber seal. But to quote the article,
What Clarke could not testify to was the thoroughness with which the FBI questioned the departing Saudis. Last year, National Review reported that the FBI conducted brief, day-of-departure interviews with the Saudis -- in the words of an FBI spokesman, "at the airport, as they were about to leave." Experts interviewed by National Review called the FBI's actions "highly unusual" given the fact that those departing were actually members of Osama bin Laden's family. "They [the FBI] could not have done a thorough and complete interview," said John L. Martin, the former head of internal security at the Justice Department.
And more harrowingly,
Vanity Fair quotes Nail al-Jubeir, the Saudi director of information, as saying that the Saudi flights were approved "at the highest level of the U.S. government" -- just as Clarke said. So far, however, those highest levels are saying very little. The FBI's account remains the same -- "We didn't clear them to leave the country, we don't have that power," a spokesman tells National Review.
In other words, Clarke followed procedure and talked to the FBI. Somebody at the FBI who didn't have authority talked to ____?____ (I don't know, apparently nobody does) and passed that information back to Clarke. Clarke and the Saudi minister of Information say the person was in the top levels of our government. Moore uses this as more evidence that something is rotten in Denmark. Sounds right on to me.
Finally, the planes WERE flying when others were not. The flights commenced on 9/13, which is when airspace was opened, but as has been mentioned frequently, nobody was actually flying on that day. Except Saudis.
Your argument that spin happens on both sides of the opinion divide is pleasant, but doesn't take into account the crux of Moore's unanswered question: Why was it so important for these people to leave the country so quickly, when common sense dictates that they should have been kept here for an investigation?
Clearly strings were pulled to have them flying so soon, on chartered flights no less. Don't forget to read the lines before you go looking between them!
In a NYTimes opinion piece in March, David Brooks made an astute comment about what success in life is all about:
"Once you reach adulthood, the key to success will not be demonstrating teacher-pleasing competence across fields; it will be finding a few things you love, and then committing yourself passionately to them."
It really is true. No matter what you decide to do, do them with aplomb, whether it's music, cooking, computers, whatever. But most of all, don't force yourself to fit into the boxes the world makes for you. There's money in every field; follow your passions first, stick with them, and be open to opportunities, and you'll find the money.
You may enjoy the article as well while you're en route to college. I found a copy here (old Times content is only available for $)
People have been expecting these interactive movie worlds to tell us non-linear stories for at least a decade. There are several problems with this line of thinking: it's far more expensive to tell a non-linear story than a linear one, moviemakers are much better at telling stories than audiences, and people LIKE linear stories.
Alternate endings to movies on DVD's and open-ended worlds in games like GTA are good examples of the kinds of things we'll be doing for a while. But a story told from a million angles? Forget it. Even with technology to create those worlds, you still need to think about, well, everything, and all the consequences of every action. It's not gonna happen.
What we like about linear stories is their flow from conflict to resolution. And we see movies because the people that make them are good at what they do. The original storytellers around a fire could have sat there waiting for their "users" to interact with them ("storyteller, put the mail on the duffel bag":-), but instead they were valued for their imagination and timing.
Nielsen's prediction that there will be a backlash against cellphone usage unless the manufacturers make the phones less obtrusive to bystanders is merely an advertisement for his services. While cellphones are annoying in other people's hands, they are becoming indispensible in our own. I doubt anybody in the industry is worried about the noise pollution of their customers.
Can somebody explain to me why a national park needs to be economically self-sufficient? It can't possibly cost taxpayers more than a few pennies a year to run the thing. I always thought people willingly paid for the upkeep of national parks.
As a lonely Jew on Christmas, I've chosen to exchange today for future vacations. It's nice to be at a place where I can work the Christian holidays and take off Rosh Hashanah instead. The office is empty, so I can listen to all the classical south indian music I want without offending my coworkers. Now if only there were a few more open restaurants in the area I'd be all set. - rouftop And working alone, you know, is nice for, umm, catching up on slashdot... (Steve, if you read this, I really am working!)
I don't know how long they're going to remain in business, but check out Fusion One. They have an online program meant to keep different mobile devices synchronized.
Oops, in my haste, I thought I'd make my miniature code sample stand out with initial caps -- which somebody will surely call me on. Try "make install"...
As another Windows user trying to learn more about the un*x world, I have found FreeBSD to be far more straightforward than the Linux distros I've dealt with.
Really, a new user has very few initial tasks, which freebsd handles quite nicely.
1) Install the bugger.
2) See things with pretty windows.
3) Install some new software.
4) Browse the WWW.
The freebsd installation is very straightforward. It even allows for FTP installation, so for those of us too lazy to pick up a CD, but with a fast connection, we can install in an hour online.
Then, the ports are incredibly straightforward, and you can build almost all of them from the installer. Getting X + KDE up just takes knowledge of your video card and monitor, and willingness to guess a couple of times.
Installing additional software again is handled through the install, which you can always access from the command line -- which it nicely tells you how to do! Or, just find the port in the Ports collection, and type Make Install -- any dependencies are downloaded and built for you, automagically. I haven't yet had to deal with a dependency issue on my new box.
Finally, if you've made it this far with an FTP install, your network connection is already set up, so there's nothing more to do to browse the web. Just fire up Konqueror, and you're there!
I've tried Caldera, Corel, Red Hat in the past, and always managed to get hung up on one of those steps. Now, I have a working FreeBSD box, it's been up for two weeks, and I have a stable platform to start working on my advanced goals. This book looks like just the ticket.
I don't really see how, to an ISP, this is any different a beast from splicing cables. They're both taking a single resource with the expectation of one person using it, and turning it into a shared pool.
Did you read the date on this story? We're talking 1993. At the time, NeXT had just gone under, and its cubes were already less-than-desired compared to its competitors.
I definitely agree that preserving the boxes is a great idea, but in the here and now, not eight years ago!
---
You know, that argument of yours sounds good on a piece of paper...
... however, if you read the article, you'll see that for a variety of applications, the difference in speed is negligable. Furthermore, faster clock speeds usually mean a decrease in reliability -- heat sinks, anyone? Finally, "robustness" doesn't really apply in this case; we're talking multiples of an existing architecture.
In short, the point is well taken -- don't bother with the extra 70 MHz, it only speeds the flow of cash from your wallet.
Do you really think that the people being taken advantage of are the ones that install TopText and aren't computer savvy?
The people who are affected are the PRODUCERS of sites, not the CONSUMERS. Your site may suddenly have links to your competitor's site. That affects you -- especially if the user doesn't know what's going on.
The analogy makes no sense.
I just happened to be going through my "where are they now" file and checked out BlowTheDotOutYourAss.com. Their last update, dated 10 months ago, had these great photos:
Contrary to others' fast opinions, I think it can be done.
There's a store in NYC, in the East Village, on St. Marks between 2nd and 3rd ave. I've been eyeing the 2600 paddle controllers in the window for the last few weeks now!
If you haven't been waiting for things to happen on your current system, then you clearly haven't been downloading the right things. There's ample time for fowers and birdsong when you're trying to grab a service pack for NT...:)
Isn't it funny how we continue to ooh and ahh about fast systems? In a year, this speed will be pretty fast; in two, it will be mediocre; in three, you won't be able to sell it for $200.
How many of you have been through this same experience: you buy the fastest thing on the market, and two weeks later there's something faster and cheaper?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just in it for the chicks.
1) Put a picture of a naked chick in the background of all your photos.
2) Put photos on the internet.
In a few days, your photos will be archived on and available on digital and print media throughout the globe, and will never disappear until mankind goes the way of the dodo.
- rouftop
The old ethnomusicologist in me is tempted to dismiss this as a poorly designed study -- jazz and classical music alone does not make for a representative sample, and people in different parts of the world like all kinds of music that other people find unpalatable. Furthermore, you can't apply his method directly to West African drumming, which is a very popular and exciting music, but you could to the cultural crime that is Britney Spears. ;-)
.5x would come next (octaves), followed by 3x/2 (the dominant) and 4x / 3 (subdominant)... until you get to that nasty tritone.
But looking over the linked study, it's actually quite an elegant look at European and American music. It's neat that the frequency of frequencies (har har) in song parallels the frequency of words in novels. That doesn't mean that "Zipf music" inherently speaks to its listeners, just that people are attracted to this kind of basic math in the world. It's like finding a Golden Ratio -- pretty frickin' cool.
I wish I could see which notes were which on the diagrams. My suspicion is that the relative uses of each note corresponds to the mathematical relationship of the frequency to the tonic. So if x is the tonic, 2x /
Atonal music intentionally avoids emphasizing the mathematically strong relationships, liberating the composer from maintaining that pesky context to a tonic. So it makes sense that Zipf's law won't apply. But before we conclude that people dislike atonal music because it deviates from Zipf, we must answer whether we might also dislike it because we have been indoctrinated into tonality at an early age. And that's where cross-cultural studies are most valuable.
Why did I leave academia to work on websites? This stuff is fun!
rouftop
Clarke asked the FBI to investigate the people on the list. After they gave the go-ahead, he gave the order his rubber seal. But to quote the article,
And more harrowingly,
In other words, Clarke followed procedure and talked to the FBI. Somebody at the FBI who didn't have authority talked to ____?____ (I don't know, apparently nobody does) and passed that information back to Clarke. Clarke and the Saudi minister of Information say the person was in the top levels of our government. Moore uses this as more evidence that something is rotten in Denmark. Sounds right on to me.
Finally, the planes WERE flying when others were not. The flights commenced on 9/13, which is when airspace was opened, but as has been mentioned frequently, nobody was actually flying on that day. Except Saudis.
See Moore's site (OK, a google cache, the original is 404'ing... )
and the St. Petersburg Times for reference.
Your argument that spin happens on both sides of the opinion divide is pleasant, but doesn't take into account the crux of Moore's unanswered question: Why was it so important for these people to leave the country so quickly, when common sense dictates that they should have been kept here for an investigation?
Clearly strings were pulled to have them flying so soon, on chartered flights no less. Don't forget to read the lines before you go looking between them!
So how long until the Discovery channel does a special on how they hoaxed it?
In a NYTimes opinion piece in March, David Brooks made an astute comment about what success in life is all about:
. html
"Once you reach adulthood, the key to success will not be demonstrating teacher-pleasing competence across fields; it will be finding a few things you love, and then committing yourself passionately to them."
It really is true. No matter what you decide to do, do them with aplomb, whether it's music, cooking, computers, whatever. But most of all, don't force yourself to fit into the boxes the world makes for you. There's money in every field; follow your passions first, stick with them, and be open to opportunities, and you'll find the money.
You may enjoy the article as well while you're en route to college. I found a copy here (old Times content is only available for $)
http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~rtan/articles/success
People have been expecting these interactive movie worlds to tell us non-linear stories for at least a decade. There are several problems with this line of thinking: it's far more expensive to tell a non-linear story than a linear one, moviemakers are much better at telling stories than audiences, and people LIKE linear stories.
:-), but instead they were valued for their imagination and timing.
Alternate endings to movies on DVD's and open-ended worlds in games like GTA are good examples of the kinds of things we'll be doing for a while. But a story told from a million angles? Forget it. Even with technology to create those worlds, you still need to think about, well, everything, and all the consequences of every action. It's not gonna happen.
What we like about linear stories is their flow from conflict to resolution. And we see movies because the people that make them are good at what they do. The original storytellers around a fire could have sat there waiting for their "users" to interact with them ("storyteller, put the mail on the duffel bag"
rouftop
Nielsen's prediction that there will be a backlash against cellphone usage unless the manufacturers make the phones less obtrusive to bystanders is merely an advertisement for his services. While cellphones are annoying in other people's hands, they are becoming indispensible in our own. I doubt anybody in the industry is worried about the noise pollution of their customers.
I hope I'm not infringing on any copyrights by posting this... but here's a collection of wilhelm screams. Quicktime, huge, long live Streamload!
b .mov
http://www.streamload.com/admin_roufa/wilhelm_27m
Can somebody explain to me why a national park needs to be economically self-sufficient? It can't possibly cost taxpayers more than a few pennies a year to run the thing. I always thought people willingly paid for the upkeep of national parks.
make that "recursive." Doh!
What's THE?
:-)
THE Humane Environment!
But what's THE?
- rouftop
As a lonely Jew on Christmas, I've chosen to exchange today for future vacations. It's nice to be at a place where I can work the Christian holidays and take off Rosh Hashanah instead. The office is empty, so I can listen to all the classical south indian music I want without offending my coworkers. Now if only there were a few more open restaurants in the area I'd be all set.
- rouftop
And working alone, you know, is nice for, umm, catching up on slashdot... (Steve, if you read this, I really am working!)
I don't know how long they're going to remain in business, but check out Fusion One. They have an online program meant to keep different mobile devices synchronized.
Good luck!
Oops, in my haste, I thought I'd make my miniature code sample stand out with initial caps -- which somebody will surely call me on. Try "make install"...
As another Windows user trying to learn more about the un*x world, I have found FreeBSD to be far more straightforward than the Linux distros I've dealt with.
Really, a new user has very few initial tasks, which freebsd handles quite nicely.
1) Install the bugger.
2) See things with pretty windows.
3) Install some new software.
4) Browse the WWW.
The freebsd installation is very straightforward. It even allows for FTP installation, so for those of us too lazy to pick up a CD, but with a fast connection, we can install in an hour online.
Then, the ports are incredibly straightforward, and you can build almost all of them from the installer. Getting X + KDE up just takes knowledge of your video card and monitor, and willingness to guess a couple of times.
Installing additional software again is handled through the install, which you can always access from the command line -- which it nicely tells you how to do! Or, just find the port in the Ports collection, and type Make Install -- any dependencies are downloaded and built for you, automagically. I haven't yet had to deal with a dependency issue on my new box.
Finally, if you've made it this far with an FTP install, your network connection is already set up, so there's nothing more to do to browse the web. Just fire up Konqueror, and you're there!
I've tried Caldera, Corel, Red Hat in the past, and always managed to get hung up on one of those steps. Now, I have a working FreeBSD box, it's been up for two weeks, and I have a stable platform to start working on my advanced goals. This book looks like just the ticket.
I don't really see how, to an ISP, this is any different a beast from splicing cables. They're both taking a single resource with the expectation of one person using it, and turning it into a shared pool.
Did you read the date on this story? We're talking 1993. At the time, NeXT had just gone under, and its cubes were already less-than-desired compared to its competitors.
I definitely agree that preserving the boxes is a great idea, but in the here and now, not eight years ago!
---
You know, that argument of yours sounds good on a piece of paper...
... however, if you read the article, you'll see that for a variety of applications, the difference in speed is negligable. Furthermore, faster clock speeds usually mean a decrease in reliability -- heat sinks, anyone? Finally, "robustness" doesn't really apply in this case; we're talking multiples of an existing architecture.
In short, the point is well taken -- don't bother with the extra 70 MHz, it only speeds the flow of cash from your wallet.
Do you really think that the people being taken advantage of are the ones that install TopText and aren't computer savvy? The people who are affected are the PRODUCERS of sites, not the CONSUMERS. Your site may suddenly have links to your competitor's site. That affects you -- especially if the user doesn't know what's going on. The analogy makes no sense.
I just happened to be going through my "where are they now" file and checked out BlowTheDotOutYourAss.com. Their last update, dated 10 months ago, had these great photos:
http://www.blowthedotoutyourass.com/mission_01/afr ica/africa_01.html
(the numbers at the top will help you navigate through the images...)
Contrary to others' fast opinions, I think it can be done. There's a store in NYC, in the East Village, on St. Marks between 2nd and 3rd ave. I've been eyeing the 2600 paddle controllers in the window for the last few weeks now!
If you haven't been waiting for things to happen on your current system, then you clearly haven't been downloading the right things. There's ample time for fowers and birdsong when you're trying to grab a service pack for NT... :)
Isn't it funny how we continue to ooh and ahh about fast systems? In a year, this speed will be pretty fast; in two, it will be mediocre; in three, you won't be able to sell it for $200.
How many of you have been through this same experience: you buy the fastest thing on the market, and two weeks later there's something faster and cheaper?