"Waveforms" are merely a convention we teach children
You've never seen an oscilloscope? There is indeed a marked audible difference between a sine wave and a sawtooth wave and a square wave. This is exactly what a guitar "fuzzbox" does, turns the guitar's (imperfect) sine wave into a square or sawtooth wave. Mine has a switch that lets you use square or sawtooth (not labeled as such but that's what it does) and a foot switch that turns it off (passthrough) or on.
Fourier analysis machine that doesn't even detect phase.
Yet a phase shifter (sold at music stores everywhere) gives a very marked difference to the sound.
There are no square or sawtooth hair cells.
You don't understand what sound is at all! The cells detect pressure and nothing more. There is no "square pressure". Rather, a sine wave crest is a gradual increase in pressure, tapering off, then gradually dropping. A square wave crest is a sudden all at once full force which is held steady for a marked period of time (depending on its frequency, or rather vice versa) then dropping instantly to zero.
An oscilloscope graphs this pressure. The squiggly lines on an oscilloscope show pressure; the higher above the zero mark the line reaches the greater the pressure (and volume), and the lower below the zero mark the same, only in the opposite direction.
Hmm... maybe I remember wrong, but it seems to me that with the old IBM PC that had no hard drive my employer had you could have subdirectories on its floppies. What version of DOS introduced directories? And why did they use the Unix directory separator for options (as it still is)?
I have no idea. I use Wiundows and Mandriva. KDE does use the double click, but if I weren't so lazy (and busy drinking and chasing women in this incredibly disfunctional city) I could rewrite the damned thing to do away with them. Couldn't do that on a mac, of course, unless I installed Linux on it.
Actually I've had thoughts of using KDE's code as a base for the desktop of my dreams. It would be a mix of graphical and command line, completely blank (with the option to use wallpaper and/or color of your choice), with perhaps a cursor at the bottom left corner. A click qould bring up a circular menu (why have we not seen these yet in any open source, let alone commercial software yet?) that would act pretty much the same as clicking "start" in windows. Menu items would have a right-click option to add an icon to the desktop.
If you clicked one of these icons it would highlight, and a second click would execute.
Unless there was a text box open, whenever you were at the desktop you could type commands. LS would do a DOS DIR like you were at a command prompt, etc.
I wouldn't call it "nonsense", I'd call it "gross stupidity". The nonsense is that someone would wind up on a wanted poster for a speeding ticket. They should reserve the posters for violent criminals, it's not that there is any lack of them.
Actually I stopped listening to internet radio before the royalty thing, as there's a station in town that plays indie music, WQNA. It's a 200 watt teaching station and they play literally everything from local bands to classical to jazz to blues to country to RIAA pop. I once heard a Tennessee Ernie Ford tune followed by a Dead Kennedys song followed by Johnny Cash! And I have so many MP3s that internet radio is pretty much unnecessary at home.
Actually come to think of it since WQNA is on the internet, like most statioins these days, I guess I really am listening to internet radio too, albeit over the air.
Thx for the heads up. Is Shoutcast still in operation? Can I still broadcast legally like I used to do?
Odd mix of bit rates (some are about 224 kbit VBR, others are 256 kbit fixed rate), but no complaints with the music.
That's fine if all you're listening to is an MP3 player and cheesy earbuds, but I have two JBL threee-way enclosures with 12 inch woofers in my living room, and a six speaker premium stereo in my car.
So I can certainly hear the difference between the compressed files and CD quality files, even with my old ears.
Plus, there's no way for me to play compressed files in the car unless I've burned them to a CD in redbook format. I've made "mix tapes" for play in the car, and some of them have tunes that have been burned from MP3 "originals" sampled at a high variable bitrate. When you hear a CD quality tune followed by one from a compressed file the difference in quality is unmistakable to anyone.
That's not to say I don't listen to compressed files; if I had a 500 CD changer maybe I wouldn't, but generally I have the computer (which is plugged into the stereo's amp) playing random MP3s.
Often a visitor will comment on how good my stereo sounds, so at that point I usually put a CD in. I don't get any argument about CD vs MP3 quality from anyone who's listened to MP3s and CDs through good speakers. Everybody else thinks I'm crazy. Well, they might be right but not about that.
If Amazon or Apple or anyone else wants to "sell" me downloaded files, they will have to be uncompressed or use lossless compresseion, they're going to have to be comppletely free of any Dumb Restrictions on Music (DRM), and they're going to have to be a hell of a lot cheaper than 99 cents. For ten bucks I can get a CD with fifteen to thirty songs on it with cover art, lyrics, etc. It's ludicrous to think I would pay more to get less, and if I bought 99 cent compressed files I'd certainly be getting much less for way more.
And no, I don't buy "one hit wonders". I stopped being ripped off by albums with one or two good songs when I was a teenager, and started only buying "greatest hits" albums, live albums, albums I'd heard at a friend's house or on KSHE, or albums from bands I knew from experience wouldn't disappoint (e.g., Led Zeppelin). If you have one good song on a sucky album I'll record it off the radio, just like I've been doing for forty years and the RIAA and its paid off governmentbe damned.
But if forced at gunpoint I'd pick the mac. First, I like simple and elegant. Second, Dells all run Microsoft OS and I absolutely hate the way MS writes their software. MS software all seems bass-ackwards to me, starting with the directory seperator ("\ is ass backwards, Bill) to its double click.
If there is one thing that confounds me when I'm trying to show someone how to use a computer it's that godoffal damned fuckwitted doubleclick. I wind up exasperated saying "click on the icon and press 'enter'. It's easier. Its frustrating to new users.
And it's pointless. There's no reason why you should have to have two clicks in a certain time period; one click should highlight, a second should execute. Especially since MS and Linux mice have more than one button!
There are so many things I hate about MS software (not even including bloat, bugs, etc) I'd run out of bits listing them all.
So give me a few new parts and let me install Linux. If I have to buy a whole box it'll be a mac.
I don't know, it seems that as the supply dwindles the price will rise. At some point it will be economically feasable to substitute something else.
I'm old enough to remember "The Population Bomb" (I mentioned it in a journal). It said that by the year 2000, the world population would be six billion and there was no way to feed that many people. It predicted mass starvation, worldwide riots and chaos. But technology among other things made that prediction false; the only thing keeping people hungry today is greed and politics. There is plenty of food.
I'm just as optimistic about the oil supply.
But if we don't curb greenhouse emissions there will undoubtedly be hell to pay.
Hey give me a break, I can at least spell "lose" and don't say "you're mom is ugly". I log in to slashdot and it says "you have sixteen hundred thirty seven messages waiting for you*", which doesn't give me a lot of time for proofreading.
-mcgrew
*ok, that was a slight exagerration, and yes I know that was misspelled but screw it
If a single indie artist has sold a single CD because a single music lover found it with LimeWire, then it isn't a failure. I know a lot of independant musicians, everybody has CDs these days. Most of them get sold at shows, any that get sold elsewhere is just icing on the cake.
You don't need to be a megastar to be sucessful. That's no different from any other profession; if you love your work and it keeps the wolf from the door, you're far more successful than someone who makes a gazillion dollars a year who works sixteen hours a day at a job they hate.
However, as long as this walks hand in hand with rampant piracy, they will always find it a wise move to suppress it
I think it's more like they will always have an EXCUSE to repress it. Piracy sells product. Examples are Photoshop; who can afford that? And about any product Microsoft has ever made. "Piracy" and legal P2P does and can help RIAA artists as well as indiies; there's no magic that makes free samples work for indies but not for RIAA members. It's just that the RIAA labels have radio and don't need other ways to give free samples.
So why yo be lookin up crack when yo can take it, huh? What yo wan' look up Crack for? Look, yo just check out this free blast! You no be redding this piece of shit no morl afta this blast. Yo be coming back for mor' right? A dollar fo' blast, or a bump for $5! Am I right? No shit, man, you get the best high with my crack. Its like no like any other shit on this motherfucking planet! I gonna rip yo off man, ya gonna be on a $200 day habit, that bad you wan' my crack shit!
Adoption of any current DRM models
I am completely and totally against any Dumb Restrictions on Music (DRM). I think the DMCA is backwards; if it has DRM it should lose copyright protection. DRM does absolutely nothing to hamper pirates, especially commercial pirates, but restricts the use of a product you have bought and paid for. I wrote an article at K5 a few years ago, How to rip from vinyl or tape that probably breaks the law (if they want me to respect the law they need to write respectable laws) when it says
Also, the instructions below will allow you to defeat any copy protection. Period. Just substitute "cheap CD walkman" for "stereo." Caution- doing this in the United Statesor other parts of the world may be a felony. Those in less corrupt, more civilized parts of the world need not fear.
As someone (wish I could attribute it) once said, "it is as easy to keep bits from being uncopyable is it is to keep water from being wet". DRM doesn't work. DRM is counterproductive. DRM gives the illegal product have more value than the legitimate product. DRM is only used by the technologically ignorant. "DRM driven software SHOULD BE incompatible with indie music. DRM driven software, like DRM itself, needs to die and die a horrible death.
A means to keep the servers and bandwidth flowing without requiring a standard business model
Sounds like P2P to me.
As I said, you have some excellent ideas there. Perhaps some of the P2P guys will impliment some of them. I especially like the venue and ratings ideas.
It's not that there aren't reasons to run a home server, it's just that before you go running ANY server you should have some sort of a clue what a server is, how it works, and have at least a rudimentary knowledgs of security.
I mean, look how bad the virus problem is, and those are just computers that are supposed to be client machines (even though they get turned into servers by the malware that infects them).
The way to avoid computer viruses is the same as avoiding viruses when banging a hooker - put a condom on the end of your ethernet cable before plugging it in. Like sex it does detract fom the experience though...
So in other words, 36.4% of computers used by people dumb enough to let an unknown entity scan their hard drives have LimeWire installed.
Funny how I'm not too surprised or shocked. That one in thee computers PERIOD have LimeWire is ludicrous; even Firefox doesn't have that kind of penetration.
I used to like reading the paper magazines (like when I was waiting to see the doctor or something) but the paper versions didn't subject you to two ads before you ever saw the magazine's cover, then make you wait thirty seconds between paragraphs.
The way they write their web sites is like a magazine with "continued on page n" after every paragraph, with a zillion ads on each page. Ads that blink and move and distract from your reading. It's bad enough in the paper version when the writer says something incredibly ignorant, but it's worse when you're already being commercially stalked and assaulted.
Call me a geezer but hey, web pages don't HAVE to be like that. Mine aren't.
Slashdot Mirror
When I'm at work I'm forced to use IE. I hate the internet at work (did my employer use IE for this purpose? Hmmm, I'd better get back to work)
"Waveforms" are merely a convention we teach children
You've never seen an oscilloscope? There is indeed a marked audible difference between a sine wave and a sawtooth wave and a square wave. This is exactly what a guitar "fuzzbox" does, turns the guitar's (imperfect) sine wave into a square or sawtooth wave. Mine has a switch that lets you use square or sawtooth (not labeled as such but that's what it does) and a foot switch that turns it off (passthrough) or on.
Fourier analysis machine that doesn't even detect phase.
Yet a phase shifter (sold at music stores everywhere) gives a very marked difference to the sound.
There are no square or sawtooth hair cells.
You don't understand what sound is at all! The cells detect pressure and nothing more. There is no "square pressure". Rather, a sine wave crest is a gradual increase in pressure, tapering off, then gradually dropping. A square wave crest is a sudden all at once full force which is held steady for a marked period of time (depending on its frequency, or rather vice versa) then dropping instantly to zero.
An oscilloscope graphs this pressure. The squiggly lines on an oscilloscope show pressure; the higher above the zero mark the line reaches the greater the pressure (and volume), and the lower below the zero mark the same, only in the opposite direction.
I would guess that anyone who has ever sent a text message from a cell phone has had a computer for quite osme time already.
Those new to computers are never going to see "administrative tools", they're going to call their grandson to do it for them.
What's sad is that, as well as other features, is one thing I would look for in a P2P client.
Before DOS had directories "/" was for options
Hmm... maybe I remember wrong, but it seems to me that with the old IBM PC that had no hard drive my employer had you could have subdirectories on its floppies. What version of DOS introduced directories? And why did they use the Unix directory separator for options (as it still is)?
I have no idea. I use Wiundows and Mandriva. KDE does use the double click, but if I weren't so lazy (and busy drinking and chasing women in this incredibly disfunctional city) I could rewrite the damned thing to do away with them. Couldn't do that on a mac, of course, unless I installed Linux on it.
Actually I've had thoughts of using KDE's code as a base for the desktop of my dreams. It would be a mix of graphical and command line, completely blank (with the option to use wallpaper and/or color of your choice), with perhaps a cursor at the bottom left corner. A click qould bring up a circular menu (why have we not seen these yet in any open source, let alone commercial software yet?) that would act pretty much the same as clicking "start" in windows. Menu items would have a right-click option to add an icon to the desktop.
If you clicked one of these icons it would highlight, and a second click would execute.
Unless there was a text box open, whenever you were at the desktop you could type commands. LS would do a DOS DIR like you were at a command prompt, etc.
One of these days.
At work I am. On Windows. I hate the internet at work.
Me thinks someone over at pcpitstop or the RIAA need to be sent to rehab after the bender that let them believe this is true.
I don't believe that they believe it.
I wouldn't call it "nonsense", I'd call it "gross stupidity". The nonsense is that someone would wind up on a wanted poster for a speeding ticket. They should reserve the posters for violent criminals, it's not that there is any lack of them.
I believe the NRA has a catchy slogan that could be modified to fit these circumstances.
Would that be "when idiocy is outlawed, only criminals will be idiots" or "They can have my MP3s when they litigate them from my cold dead computer?"
Actually I stopped listening to internet radio before the royalty thing, as there's a station in town that plays indie music, WQNA. It's a 200 watt teaching station and they play literally everything from local bands to classical to jazz to blues to country to RIAA pop. I once heard a Tennessee Ernie Ford tune followed by a Dead Kennedys song followed by Johnny Cash! And I have so many MP3s that internet radio is pretty much unnecessary at home.
Actually come to think of it since WQNA is on the internet, like most statioins these days, I guess I really am listening to internet radio too, albeit over the air.
Thx for the heads up. Is Shoutcast still in operation? Can I still broadcast legally like I used to do?
Odd mix of bit rates (some are about 224 kbit VBR, others are 256 kbit fixed rate), but no complaints with the music.
That's fine if all you're listening to is an MP3 player and cheesy earbuds, but I have two JBL threee-way enclosures with 12 inch woofers in my living room, and a six speaker premium stereo in my car.
So I can certainly hear the difference between the compressed files and CD quality files, even with my old ears.
Plus, there's no way for me to play compressed files in the car unless I've burned them to a CD in redbook format. I've made "mix tapes" for play in the car, and some of them have tunes that have been burned from MP3 "originals" sampled at a high variable bitrate. When you hear a CD quality tune followed by one from a compressed file the difference in quality is unmistakable to anyone.
That's not to say I don't listen to compressed files; if I had a 500 CD changer maybe I wouldn't, but generally I have the computer (which is plugged into the stereo's amp) playing random MP3s.
Often a visitor will comment on how good my stereo sounds, so at that point I usually put a CD in. I don't get any argument about CD vs MP3 quality from anyone who's listened to MP3s and CDs through good speakers. Everybody else thinks I'm crazy. Well, they might be right but not about that.
If Amazon or Apple or anyone else wants to "sell" me downloaded files, they will have to be uncompressed or use lossless compresseion, they're going to have to be comppletely free of any Dumb Restrictions on Music (DRM), and they're going to have to be a hell of a lot cheaper than 99 cents. For ten bucks I can get a CD with fifteen to thirty songs on it with cover art, lyrics, etc. It's ludicrous to think I would pay more to get less, and if I bought 99 cent compressed files I'd certainly be getting much less for way more.
And no, I don't buy "one hit wonders". I stopped being ripped off by albums with one or two good songs when I was a teenager, and started only buying "greatest hits" albums, live albums, albums I'd heard at a friend's house or on KSHE, or albums from bands I knew from experience wouldn't disappoint (e.g., Led Zeppelin). If you have one good song on a sucky album I'll record it off the radio, just like I've been doing for forty years and the RIAA and its paid off governmentbe damned.
-mcgrew
Birth of a label-sanctioned pirate radio station
But if forced at gunpoint I'd pick the mac. First, I like simple and elegant. Second, Dells all run Microsoft OS and I absolutely hate the way MS writes their software. MS software all seems bass-ackwards to me, starting with the directory seperator ("\ is ass backwards, Bill) to its double click.
If there is one thing that confounds me when I'm trying to show someone how to use a computer it's that godoffal damned fuckwitted doubleclick. I wind up exasperated saying "click on the icon and press 'enter'. It's easier. Its frustrating to new users.
And it's pointless. There's no reason why you should have to have two clicks in a certain time period; one click should highlight, a second should execute. Especially since MS and Linux mice have more than one button!
There are so many things I hate about MS software (not even including bloat, bugs, etc) I'd run out of bits listing them all.
So give me a few new parts and let me install Linux. If I have to buy a whole box it'll be a mac.
-mcgrew
I don't know, it seems that as the supply dwindles the price will rise. At some point it will be economically feasable to substitute something else.
I'm old enough to remember "The Population Bomb" (I mentioned it in a journal). It said that by the year 2000, the world population would be six billion and there was no way to feed that many people. It predicted mass starvation, worldwide riots and chaos. But technology among other things made that prediction false; the only thing keeping people hungry today is greed and politics. There is plenty of food.
I'm just as optimistic about the oil supply.
But if we don't curb greenhouse emissions there will undoubtedly be hell to pay.
why
Hey give me a break, I can at least spell "lose" and don't say "you're mom is ugly". I log in to slashdot and it says "you have sixteen hundred thirty seven messages waiting for you*", which doesn't give me a lot of time for proofreading.
-mcgrew
*ok, that was a slight exagerration, and yes I know that was misspelled but screw it
If a single indie artist has sold a single CD because a single music lover found it with LimeWire, then it isn't a failure. I know a lot of independant musicians, everybody has CDs these days. Most of them get sold at shows, any that get sold elsewhere is just icing on the cake.
You don't need to be a megastar to be sucessful. That's no different from any other profession; if you love your work and it keeps the wolf from the door, you're far more successful than someone who makes a gazillion dollars a year who works sixteen hours a day at a job they hate.
Not yet. But I'm expecting to get my nerd license suspended again tonight...
However, as long as this walks hand in hand with rampant piracy, they will always find it a wise move to suppress it
I think it's more like they will always have an EXCUSE to repress it. Piracy sells product. Examples are Photoshop; who can afford that? And about any product Microsoft has ever made. "Piracy" and legal P2P does and can help RIAA artists as well as indiies; there's no magic that makes free samples work for indies but not for RIAA members. It's just that the RIAA labels have radio and don't need other ways to give free samples.
From the hilarious Uncyclopedia article about crack cocaine: Adoption of any current DRM models
I am completely and totally against any Dumb Restrictions on Music (DRM). I think the DMCA is backwards; if it has DRM it should lose copyright protection. DRM does absolutely nothing to hamper pirates, especially commercial pirates, but restricts the use of a product you have bought and paid for. I wrote an article at K5 a few years ago, How to rip from vinyl or tape that probably breaks the law (if they want me to respect the law they need to write respectable laws) when it saysAs someone (wish I could attribute it) once said, "it is as easy to keep bits from being uncopyable is it is to keep water from being wet". DRM doesn't work. DRM is counterproductive. DRM gives the illegal product have more value than the legitimate product. DRM is only used by the technologically ignorant. "DRM driven software SHOULD BE incompatible with indie music. DRM driven software, like DRM itself, needs to die and die a horrible death.
A means to keep the servers and bandwidth flowing without requiring a standard business model
Sounds like P2P to me.
As I said, you have some excellent ideas there. Perhaps some of the P2P guys will impliment some of them. I especially like the venue and ratings ideas.
but it cannot go after a transmission protocol
It sure has been trying damned hard!
It's not that there aren't reasons to run a home server, it's just that before you go running ANY server you should have some sort of a clue what a server is, how it works, and have at least a rudimentary knowledgs of security.
I mean, look how bad the virus problem is, and those are just computers that are supposed to be client machines (even though they get turned into servers by the malware that infects them).
The way to avoid computer viruses is the same as avoiding viruses when banging a hooker - put a condom on the end of your ethernet cable before plugging it in. Like sex it does detract fom the experience though...
So in other words, 36.4% of computers used by people dumb enough to let an unknown entity scan their hard drives have LimeWire installed.
Funny how I'm not too surprised or shocked. That one in thee computers PERIOD have LimeWire is ludicrous; even Firefox doesn't have that kind of penetration.
Yes, they can and do. But having your FANS distribute your music adds value to it for the fans themselves.
Thanks for adding those links though, I'm sure a lot of slashdotters don't even know there IS free, legal music.
RTFM? Ewe muss bee knew hear!
I used to like reading the paper magazines (like when I was waiting to see the doctor or something) but the paper versions didn't subject you to two ads before you ever saw the magazine's cover, then make you wait thirty seconds between paragraphs.
The way they write their web sites is like a magazine with "continued on page n" after every paragraph, with a zillion ads on each page. Ads that blink and move and distract from your reading. It's bad enough in the paper version when the writer says something incredibly ignorant, but it's worse when you're already being commercially stalked and assaulted.
Call me a geezer but hey, web pages don't HAVE to be like that. Mine aren't.