This is one of the most informative and insightful comments I've ever read on slashdot. thanks!

I love his Geraldine character.

You're not the only one who had that thought.

I wish every native English speaker could communicate as well in English as you do. There's no need to apologize.... ... unless, of course, one of your first two languages is Klingon.

You do realize the code that generated the "hockey stick" graph won the the IOCCC back in 1999.

1. It brings all the music up to the same levels. In this way, it's a bit more 'democratic' with the music, all the parts will be equally hear-able.

Yes, because it all sounds like white noise.

2. they falsely associate 'aggressive' music with loudness wars

But the loudness wars were real.

3. Related to my second point, the real hear-able issues due to the loudness wars are incredibly minor, psychologically.

You may think so, but a lot of us don't. The heavy compression (and this is audio compression, not digital compression, which is a completely different thing) destroys the quality of the sound. This is an objective truth. Perhaps that kind of crushed sound might be desirable by some artists as a style or effect, but when old music is being remastered to have no dynamic range and to clip, it is severely damaging to the quality of the sound and the ability for a listener to hear everything in it. That definitely has nothing to do with changing tastes, because we're talking about the same music.

Rock 'n' roll isn't dead. You just can't hear it on the radio or other mass media any more. But it hasn't gone anywhere.

Thanks, AC, but everything you've said about me is simply wrong. You might find it more rewarding to listen to what people say rather than pigeonhole them into your preconceived stereotypes. The people you talk to certainly will.

Try reading what I write next time.

I never said I know they are terrible today. I said I stopped listening to them because I no longer liked what they were doing. The worst criticism I made was that they seemed to be "phoning it in".

I also said, "They were a talented bunch of guys who were never above reinventing themselves every couple albums, like a lot of good, creative groups."

Apparently you can't read. Perhaps /. would appear better to you if you could.

The early 90s was when I stopped listening to the radio. The current trends were not interesting to me and the "classic rock" format was painful to listen to because the repertoire was so ridiculously limited. There's plenty of "classic" rock music I like, but you can only listen to the same few dozen songs so many times before you just get sick of them, no matter how much you like them.

Radio seriously self-destructed in the 90s and was no longer a medium to experience anything even remotely new or challenging. (I suppose there were still small college stations, etc., but that's about it.) The last time I heard something cool and new on the radio was when the local classical station played that great and memorable battle song from "The Phantom Menace" by John Williams. The last music I bought after hearing it on the radio was probably Matthew Sweet or Echo and the Bunnymen around 1990 or so.

From everything I hear (which isn't much), pop music is simply horrible right now. The autotune epidemic is insane, and every singer sounds like crap because of it. I've heard autotune put to creative uses... back in the 70s vocoders were used in much the same way, but vocoders weren't used as a replacement for actual singing, just as a gimmick or hook for effect. Nowadays, everything sounds like a PDP-1 singing "Bicycle Built For Two" except without the interesting melody.

It wasn't always like this. There literally was much more variety in decades past.

"Natural" means "tested by hundreds of thousands of your ancestors who lived to reproduce", provided this is actually true for whatever you're eating.

"Artificial" means "some lab tech trying to feed his/her family on 50k/year synthesized it and then it passed FDA testing without killing anyone or making them sick right away"

I was going to say the same thing. It's total rubbish in it's claims. Being just yet-another-linear combination of MiMo modes it provides no additional channel capacity. But there is the possibility that the demodulation/modulation methodology is easier to implement than other fast modulation schemes.

LOL! I don't think any amount of sex changing would turn some of these ...folks... into "real men" :D

You were Tom? [goes off, roots around] Well, you do sound different now... more relaxed. -- Long ago I had a TG friend whom I knew before, during, and after, and there was a personality transition.... to be expected, I think, under changing hormonal conditions. Ordinary biology. She had a sort of emotional crisis shortly after and I told her stop worrying, you're just going through puberty again. The light bulb went on and she was like "oh! then that's fine!"

But I'm glad you found yourself, that's what counts.

Not bothering to look at the alleged study, but I wonder if a combination of high estrogen and low cholesterol is the root of the issue; turns out high cholesterol in the elderly is protective against dementia.

We are in a War on Faith, because Faith justifies anything and ISIS takes it to extremes. But in the end they are just a bigger version of Christian-dominated school boards that mess with the teaching of Evolution, or Mormon sponsors of anti-gay-marriage measures, or my Hebrew school teacher, an adult who slapped me as a 12-year-old for some unremembered offense against his faith.

Hm. The covenant of Noah is about two paragraphs before this part (King James Version) which is used for various justifications of slavery and discrimination against all sorts of people because they are said to bear the Curse of Ham. If folks wanted to use the Bible to justify anything ISIS says is justified by God's words in the Koran, they could easily do so.

18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.
19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.
20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.
24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.