Recent Posts

851

Living Room / Re: good Videos [short films] here :)

« Last post by 40hz on December 11, 2014, 08:01 PM »

An interesting video that went viral awhile ago entitled Our Drone Future.

 

852

Living Room / Re: We Are the Idiots

« Last post by 40hz on December 11, 2014, 07:01 PM »

@SJ - can't say my personal experience with Fords, Buicks, Toyotas, and Nissans over the years syncs with what you're saying. My GF's job puts at least 50k miles on a car each year, and we're both shocked if we don't get at least 250k miles out of whatever we buy before we decide to retire it. But I'm not a mechanic. So if you're correct in your analysis, I guess we've just been far luckier than most car owners.

And if so - Yay!

853

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by 40hz on December 11, 2014, 04:34 PM »

 

854

Living Room / Re: We Are the Idiots

« Last post by 40hz on December 11, 2014, 04:26 PM »

Not to mention the fact that "lean burn" burns up your system by running at high temperatures instead of just tuning the fuel mixture.

-MilesAhead (December 11, 2014, 04:11 PM)

If that's the case, why do modern engines perform more reliably and last longer on average than those classic engines? And with far less major repairs? 

855

Living Room / Re: How many germs are living on your keyboard?

« Last post by 40hz on December 11, 2014, 01:05 PM »

I'd be less concerned with "how many" than I'd be with which?

856

Living Room / Re: We Are the Idiots

« Last post by 40hz on December 11, 2014, 01:00 PM »

But there's no reason a points plugs and condenser ignition can't operate a clean running car.

-MilesAhead (December 11, 2014, 12:29 PM)

No reason they couldn't. But they usually didn't really. They were manual systems engineered to "good enough" standards. Usually as little as the law would allow. And they either had had no - or no reliable - feedback mechanisms or fault self-correcting capabilities.

Whenever you have a system that needs time and/or money to maintain optimal performance, said maintenance doesn't get done.

Prior to the advent of fuel injection, it was amazing what many people would put up with (stall-outs, backfiring, etc.) as long as their car still started up and stayed running. The fact it required some voodoo starting procedure or idled rough, and always had this weird foul smelling cloud following it around town, made no difference. It wasn't against the law back then. And it was sure better than surrendering your car for a day or two to your local garage mechanic. And then gritting your teeth while waiting for that always larger than expected bill you'd need to pay to get it back. No wonder people put off maintenance as long as possible. And the gravity well of "good enough" is inescapable if people have to actively do something (or pay additional money) to get something better.

Enter fuel injection. The chip and firmware handles everything. Add that to modern materials and engineering and now you average far better mileage, reliability, and engine life than you did with an old car. The fact cars routinely hit a 250K+ mile useful service life would have been inconceivable in the 60s and 70s. Hitting 70K was a milestone. Rolling the odometer over at 100K was a major life event. The big difference today is that while cars generally need to be fixed far less often than they used to, they're significantly more expensive to fix when they do.

It's a trade-off. But I think we can all mostly agree today's cars are far better and more reliable than the classic models used to be.

Not all change is bad.

857

Living Room / Re: The Pirate Bay and EZTV down

« Last post by 40hz on December 11, 2014, 12:31 PM »

As has been said by many others, the issue isn't that it was taken down. What's far more important for proof of concept is IF (and how quickly) PB reappears. Pirate Bay has declared itself to be the undefeatable hydra of the Internet.

Now it has been handed a golden opportunity to prove it.

"This is not a setback. It's an opportunity to excel."

858

Developer's Corner / Re: Experimenting with Other Programming Languages

« Last post by 40hz on December 11, 2014, 09:44 AM »

Why not LISP?

-Tuxman (November 13, 2014, 04:30 AM)

I've started working my way through Clojure for the Brave and True.  Pretty nice so far.

-ewemoa (December 02, 2014, 09:54 PM)

That one looks very interesting. I think I'm going to give it a whirl.

859

Living Room / Re: We Are the Idiots

« Last post by 40hz on December 11, 2014, 09:17 AM »

The book Silent Spring (1962) merely suggested that DDT and other pesticides may cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds.
It offered no scientific proof - which is why the UK and USAID continued to use the stuff until 1984 and later, and until it became politically incorrect to continue to use it - i.e., not scientifically incorrect.

-IainB (May 26, 2013, 09:23 PM)

I'd chalk at least some of that up to the relative innocence of most civilians in America at the time. There was a good deal more trust in the FDA and other government agencies to safeguard the general public without regard to financial inducements or political interference back then. It was also coupled to the firm belief that should such interference be discovered, it would also be firmly and swiftly be dealt with - and corrected.

There was also the general belief that American businesses had the best interests of Americans at heart. To do something deliberately harmful to people was almost inconceivable to most people. Sure, there were the bad old days back at the beginning and turn of the century. But didn't those New Deal agencies and legislation put that nonsense to bed once and for all? With the government, the unions, and the "men of goodwill" at the helm of American business - why should we be worried? This was America! Land of the Free! And we were all working together to keep it so.

Ahh...those were the days.

I think Rachel Carson didn't think to independently test her claims because she didn't think she would have to. By sounding the warning she (like most people at the time) likely assumed that the government would step in and quickly get to the bottom of it. Or if not, the manufacturers of DDT would rapidly mend their ways.

Like I said, not so much idiocy in her case. We were all Americans, with a good government and responsible businesses running the show, after all. That was more a case of our innocence I think. Or naivety if you want to be uncharitable.

But what followed after wasn't idiocy either. It was flat out lying and criminal stonewalling and political pressuring until the situation became too difficult to spin and the powers that be were forced to take action. Which they did in a minimalist manner that allowed parties responsible to escape culpability, prosecution, or punishment.

And please remember many were implicated. Uncle Sam himself via the USDA had blessed off on it. Jails routinely sprayed or generously dusted incoming prisoners with DDT as a"delousing" measure. Farmers sometimes dusted fields that were loaded with farm workers. Even schools would quickly send a janitor in to spy insecticide (in a classroom full of kids) the minute any ants or roaches were spotted by the windows or trashbins. Nobody was worried. We kids thought that weird odor that hung in the air for the rest of the day was just something to make jokes about. Those kids who got a headache or felt ill were merely told to "sit quietly by the window for a few minutes." And those unfortunates were bound to be ragged on as "sissy" and "candy ass" for days to follow. The same attitude surrounded all the other harmful aerosols my generation was exposed to growing up. (The 50s and 60s were the golden age for aerosol manufacturers.)

So yes, perhaps idiocy. But mainly in retrospect if you want to be completely fair when tossing "we" around so freely.

   

-----------------------------
re: smell

It was not really much like anything else IIRC. It had a heady perfumey but still noticeably "chemical" odor. It was probably added to make it a little more appealing. Once you got a whiff however, you immediately tagged it as insecticide! forevermore. Which also might have been part of the plan. It was a very persistent odor however. Good for at least an hour or more depending on how heavy-handed the application was.

No worries!

860

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« Last post by 40hz on December 10, 2014, 07:43 PM »

There are few music videos that have made me happier or feel more vindicated about something than this one. Capacitor types are something I have gotten into more pointless arguments over than anything else. The conclusion Joe Gore reaches is the same conclusion that I had reached years ago when it came to the tone capacitor type when used in passive guitar wiring.

Some interesting comments on the video can be found on Joe's webpage here.

861

Living Room / Re: Windows 10 Package Manager vs. Chocolatey

« Last post by 40hz on December 10, 2014, 04:56 PM »

Got a client working with the currently available version for a proof of concept project. If you're maintaining your own private software repository, some of those pro features possibly aren't as important.

It all looks good so far - but the jury is still out.

re: Community vs Pro

My feeling is "however the developer wants to structure it." They did the work - they get to decide how to distribute/sell it. That's only fair. If the community edition is so crippled it doesn't work in a real world setting, or their Kickstarter tries to pull a bait & switch, word gets around fast. If that is the case, the community input (and free QC and bug hunting) soon dries up. It's a self-correcting relationship.

862

Living Room / Re: Decibels, loudness, amplifiers, formulas...complete confusion!

« Last post by 40hz on December 10, 2014, 04:47 PM »

For louder headphone levels there are three basic options:

• a headphone amp that provides more boost - although +24dBm seems to be the standard
• a more efficient, different design, or different freq response and range set of headphones
• better ears

FWIW, most of the better headphones strive for a flat (or relatively flatter) frequency response compared to your average speaker system. Most people are so accustomed to "sweet spot" sound that they they think "odd" or "too soft" when they first start using good headphones. (Unless they're those ear-damaging 'ultrabass' variety.) Same goes for studio mastering monitors. You can make the overall level in a headphone sound significantly louder just by boosting frequency bands in the 2khz and 4khz range. So it's not just the overall level, but the frequency ranges themselves that also contribute to your perception of how loud they sound.

863

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: File collection manager

« Last post by 40hz on December 10, 2014, 11:53 AM »

@ Wraith - Thx. I guess I didn't completely understand. But wouldn't some of the more powerful third-party file managers let you do that?

864

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: File collection manager

« Last post by 40hz on December 10, 2014, 11:08 AM »

That looks like it's about 20 different apps mashed together into one - a jack of all trades and master of none.

-garbanzo (December 10, 2014, 06:09 AM)

Am I missing something? To my mind that seems to be pretty much what you're asking for. Except in this case, you want a single jack-of-all-trades app that's master of none. Truth is, with a database, there's no such thing as a "simple" solution. Or a universal one either.

865

Living Room / Re: Decibels, loudness, amplifiers, formulas...complete confusion!

« Last post by 40hz on December 10, 2014, 10:24 AM »

Wouldn't the SPL be a function of the frequency weighting and the transducer as well?

For example, my vintage Acoustic 18" folded horn bass enclosure has a sticker with a warning that it can produce ear damaging levels at even relatively low volume settings. That's because the folded horn increases efficiency by almost behaving like a focusing lens.

When tested with a sound level meter it showed the ability to produce dangerous sound levels with as little as 100 watts pushing it. Since the average stage bass head packs  200 watts and up, it's something you need to be aware of if you're using one.

866

Living Room / Re: Decibels, loudness, amplifiers, formulas...complete confusion!

« Last post by 40hz on December 09, 2014, 07:08 PM »

The big difference with analog is that distortion increasingly creeps in with increased loudness. So the name of the game was to saturate (we're talking tape here) your audio track with the levels just at the threshold where clipping began to occur. That got as much music as possible as far above the noise floor as possible without introducing too much perceived distortion. (Our ears actual seem to like a little grit with our music - so a hint of distortion is not automatically a bad thing.) With digital, we're talking digital "distortion." It's really not the same thing as analog distortion - but it sounds a lot like it. Digital distortion is fixed. IIUC it's a function of the quantization error whenever you attempt to mimic a complex natural sine wave with a calculated staircase wave. So with digital, you want to be as far above the fixed distortion floor as possible because - if you lower the level - the perceived distortion in the track actually seems to increase. Louder in this case better hides the distortion. And unlike analog, softer becomes more distorted sounding. That's a bizarre effect that doesn't occur in nature - so our ears and brain go nuts trying to deal with it. Apparently on some subconscious level we know what we're hearing is just plain wrong when it comes to digital sound.

Or so it was explained to me.

867

Living Room / Re: Decibels, loudness, amplifiers, formulas...complete confusion!

« Last post by 40hz on December 09, 2014, 04:27 PM »

It gets crazy because the human ear doesn't perceive loudness in a linear or strictly physical manner. Check out this article if you want to really start pulling your hair out. As one EE from MIT who was the most knowledgeable sound engineer and circuit designer I ever met told me: It's not just science, It's psychology.  

868

General Software Discussion / Re: Dopus file names are cut

« Last post by 40hz on December 09, 2014, 03:01 PM »

FWIW, the concluding comment in DO's FAQ about it struck me as being rather defensive and somewhat accusatory. But that's probably just me.

-40hz (December 09, 2014, 06:29 AM)

DOpus is one of the most powerful file managers available & I'm a satisfied legal user of v11. Having said that, anytime any questions regarding pricing of their program, paid upgrades, or license checks come up everyone connected to the company gets defensive and their hair bristles.

I've got no problem with what they do & I'm sure you can only remain calm in the face of criticism for so long before you start losing patience. I try not to let it color my experience with, IMHO, is an excellent application.

-Innuendo (December 09, 2014, 01:30 PM)

@Innuendo - Must be good considering they have at least one apologist here. And one I respect to boot.  

So...ok. Fair enough. It must be me then.  

869

Non-Windows Software / Re: NIX: Douane - An application aware personal firewall

« Last post by 40hz on December 09, 2014, 02:40 PM »

UPDATE:

Ok, I installed it on a test machine (Mint 17.1 Cinnamon) and have concluded it's NOT ready for prime-time.

Issues:

1) The installation dependencies have left out g++ as a required package. Not a problem as long as you understand the error message you'll see and know how to install g++. Many new users won't have a clue.

2) If you follow the installation steps exactly, at a certain point about half way through you are instructed to start the douane-daemon to verify it installed properly. If you do that you won't be able to complete the installation, because it will be running before the configuration utility and the GUI are installed - and it will be blocking everything. So you'll need to stop the daemon (i.e. sudo service douane stop) to get web access in order to complete installing everything else. Not a problem for a moderately experienced user. But a newbie will find their machine is now unable to get any internet access until they stop the service or (hopefully) reboot their machine. That's pretty scary situation for a new Linux user to find themselves in. Fortunately, the installation process doesn't configure the daemon to autostart on boot or it would be a total nightmare for the unsuspecting.

3)The script for installing the Ubuntu launcher for the Configurator does not work with Cinnamon. You'll need to do it manually.

Item 2 above is pretty serious IMO. But the real showstopper is Douane does not recognize Firefox. It caught Thunderbird and Dropbox just fine. But FF (v33.x) and it's cousin PaleMoon (25.1.0 x64) were ignored. No popup asking what to do. So if the douane-daemon is running you won't be able to use either browser unless you turn it off.

That was it for me.



Recommendation: skip this one for now. Or better yet, wait until it's stable enough to find it in your distro's repository.

870

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« Last post by 40hz on December 09, 2014, 12:56 PM »

Personally, I think we butchered it every time . Partly it was how bad I thought my oversimplified bassline sounded, and partly it was just the fact it's just hard to pull off with a 3 piece. It always went over well, though, which is ultimately the only thing that really matters.

-Vurbal (December 09, 2014, 09:36 AM)

Absolutely! That is the attitude of a professional performance musician regardless of the level of musicianship displayed. It's not just about us and what we think. What the audience expects (and gets) is the other part of the equation.

 

871

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« Last post by 40hz on December 09, 2014, 12:36 PM »

Wow.  It's nice to know that my inability to sing and play at the same time isn't an anomaly!  

-theGleep (December 09, 2014, 09:33 AM)

Hope not. I can't really - and I am the last person in the world you'd consider unique!

(Actually, I find that *SOMETIMES* I can sing while I'm playing...but it's often that it's just a couple of vocal lines, then I have to go back to just playing)

I sorta can. Just not very well. Certainly not what I'd consider performance worthy. But that never stopped Paul McCartney. Listen to an isolated Beatles bass line and you'll hear him muffing the time and hitting technically wrong notes all over the place. But it didn't matter. What he played worked within the context of the song. And he had that unique voice which never screwed up anything on the vocal tracks. Ever.

There's a lesson there I think.  

In my case it's a little more extreme than usual. I have almost no capacity for task switching, which essentially means I have to learn the vocals and bassline for a song as one single part, where some people can learn to simply (note that I call it simple rather than easy) switch from one to the other.

Ironically, if I could do that it would solve my problem of being able to be a front man. It's amazing the distance simply playing an instrument puts between me and the audience.

-Vurbal (December 09, 2014, 09:36 AM)

Even without the challenge you have I still can't very well. I can do harmonies just fine. And since I enjoy adding an occasional harmony part, as well as being able to come up with counter-melodies in my sleep, not being able to "take lead" doesn't bother me in the least. I have never once wanted to be the frontman in a group. Not my thing, although I have also never felt distanced from the audience. There's always one attractive woman in the crowd who is really into the bassline. I'll briefly make eye contact to say "hello," then spend the rest of the set playing for her. It's an approach to bass playing that has stood me in good stead over the years. Two guesses how much my guitarist GF is into the bassline...  

I think my two biggest problems with playing bass and singing lead come down to (a) my early musical training; and, (b) a certain hangup I have...

When I was first taught an instrument, my instructor (an old school jazz man) had me sing everything I was going to play. His feeling was you needed to hear and feel in your innermost soul what you wanted to play on a bass. Once you could sing it, playing it became a "simple" matter of linking your hand to the voice you heard in your head. He described the process as "Linking your soul and heart and ears and hands with the mind of God." (He came out of a Gospel background so he used a good deal of religious imagery and metaphors when he taught.) When he was in a less divinely inspired frame of mind he'd say: "You gotta learn to sing through your instrument, kid. Everything else is just showin' or jerkin' off."

Whatever and however - it worked for me. If I hear it and I can sing or hum it - even just in my head - I can almost immediately play it. At least in most cases. Or with a try or two. But now the problem is, whenever I vocalize something (especially with lyrics), my hands immediately try to follow it. And there's few times when anything sounds more bozo than the bass suddenly playing the main melody in a song. Same goes for playing in parallel with the melody line (even for a bar or two) except (maybe) for emphasis. Or to create a special effect.

My previously mentioned hangup is I'm into tone. Almost to the point of mania. If I'm singing a lead line I want to primarily concentrate on vocal tone and expression. And the words. I myself can't do that while playing bass. Not enough brainpower or rapid task switching capabilities I guess. And when playing bass - as the bassist - I want to primarily concentrate on the bass tone. Doing a vocal harmony doesn't interfere (too much) with that. But I don't have to sing every song. Or sing all the way through it like the frontman or lead vocalist does. So I can put my hands on autopilot and do a harmony line for four or so bars without getting too antsy about it. But I never offer to sing. And I'll only do it when it's truly needed for the song. Or I'm not playing bass.

But that's me. I have my own take on the role and function of the bassist in a group. (Don't even get me started on my theory of "strut & glide"when it comes to creating a bass part! We'll never get out of here.)

Take all this with many grains of salt. A nice Margaritas in fact.

872

Non-Windows Software / Re: NIX: Douane - An application aware personal firewall

« Last post by 40hz on December 09, 2014, 08:37 AM »

@40hz and @Shades: Ah, thanks for putting me straight on that. My ignorance - I had not appreciated that firewalls were so uniquely different/difficult to Windows in other OSes (and I thought the Windows one was bad enough anyway...).

-IainB (December 09, 2014, 08:20 AM)

You wouldn't believe!

Actually IPtables and NetFilter (which forms the core of most Linux firewall solutions) isn't difficult to set up from the CLI per se. You just need to know a fair bit about how things work when it comes to IP traffic to do it right. Because a misconfigured or badly configured FW can be worse than no FW at all. That's an awful lot of "how" and "why" you need to know, whereas the average beginner only knows "what" at best. Douane seems to bring it down to: "This is what's happening. What do you want to do about it?" Sounds like beginner's heaven to me,

Take a look at this page for Firewall Builder. It's one of the better known tools to make configuring a FW "easier." Imagine turning a new user loose with that.

873

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« Last post by 40hz on December 09, 2014, 08:07 AM »

It also makes it difficult, depending on the music even impossible, for me to sing and play at the same time.

-Vurbal (December 09, 2014, 07:39 AM)

FWIW that is a very common situation with many, if not most, bass players. Bass players that can simultaneously sing acceptably while holding down a bassline seem to be the exception rather than the rule. Possibly too many brain centers engaged for most people (or at least bassists)  to handle at the same time.

Don't know if you've run into this as often as I have - but one of the first questions I usually got asked when auditioning as a bass player was: "Do you sing?" And if I answered in the affirmative, the very next question was: "At the same time?" Which I think nicely illustrates (a) playing bass while singing is not all that common; and (b) you can never have enough vocal talent in your band.

I do remember seeing (long time ago) an early draft study about something like "split roles" in musical performance that was trying to find what (if any) neurological basis there was for some musicians being able to handle multiple roles (instrumentalist/vocalist) in a musical context. I don't know if it was ever completed. Or if it was, and came to no conclusion. I tried a search but I can't seem to find anything. Maybe I just half remembered it from a conversation I had with one of my GF's cohorts when she was getting her Masters in experimental congnitive psych...

874

General Software Discussion / Re: Dopus file names are cut

« Last post by 40hz on December 09, 2014, 06:29 AM »

@Ennovy - By "license checks" (as in plural) do you mean DO is one of those products that periodically or regularly "phones home" for a license verification even after initial installation?

-40hz (December 09, 2014, 01:29 AM)

Already been discussed from about this point here.

-4wd (December 09, 2014, 04:03 AM)

Ok...my apologies for asking about it again. Not being a DO user, the previous answer (back in March in a different thread) went in one synapse, got relayed to the client who had asked me about it, and then went straight out the other. Having forgotten, I asked about it a second time.

FWIW, the concluding comment in DO's FAQ about it struck me as being rather defensive and somewhat accusatory. But that's probably just me.

The times that Opus attempts Internet access are:
.
.
.

• When verifying the integrity of the program.

This last item involves the various methods Opus uses to protect against viruses and illegal use of the software (DRM). You can block these using a firewall if you wish - Opus does not attempt to "evade" or "get around" your firewall in any way. Legitimate users have no reason to be concerned by this activity, and none of your personal information is ever transmitted in this way.

875

General Software Discussion / Re: Dopus file names are cut

« Last post by 40hz on December 09, 2014, 01:29 AM »

@Ennovy - By "license checks" (as in plural) do you mean DO is one of those products that periodically or regularly "phones home" for a license verification even after initial installation?