Comment: Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range (Score 4, Informative) 468
The loudnesswar has killed virtually anything on a digital medium, [...] give us back the -12dB, then complain about our rooms.
Alan Parsons Shares Lessons Learned During Legendary Career (from 4 years ago):
But one of his biggest pieces of advice for students and anyone interested in recording now is not to join the loudness war.
"Record labels want their records to sound louder than everyone else's so they compress the s--t out of them," he says. "It's terribly sad and I hope you will support me in resisting this concept.
"If a song has dynamics and breathes then don't push it. If your record is quieter than someone else's then just turn it up with the volume knob!"
Comment: Applied Cryptography 2nd Edition, pp. xix -- xx (Score 1) 1047
Preface
There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files. This book is about the latter.
[...] The lesson here is that it is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics. Encryption is too important to be left solely to the governments.
This book gives you the tools you need to protect your own privacy; cryptography products may be declared illegal, but the information will never be.
I fear that Bruce Schneier was being too optimistic although in another part of the book he asks in passing what would happen to civil liberties in the US if there was a major terrorist attack in New York City. The 2nd edition was copyrighted in 1996. It is still a great book IMO.
Comment: Pick up the SOPA ... (Score 1) 273
Comment: Re:Of course he could (Score 2) 556
I don't think Pons and Fleischmann were fraudsters. In fact they don't deserve the derision they still suffer today. They saw and reported the results. Part of science is being wrong yet these guys were lynched for it.
I agree they were not knowingly trying to deceive people. OTOH this is not what they were criticised for (link):
On May 1, 1989, the American Physical Society held a session on cold fusion in Baltimore, including many reports of experiments that failed to produce evidence of cold fusion. At the end of the session, eight of the nine leading speakers stated that they considered the initial Fleischmann and Pons claim dead with the ninth, Johann Rafelski, abstaining. Steven E. Koonin of Caltech called the Utah report a result of "the incompetence and delusion of Pons and Fleischmann" which was met with a standing ovation.
When you think about it, science is mainly a set of techniques and methods to avoid self-delusion about your own results. The human tendency towards self-dulusion is vast. A beautiful example of this is Albrecht Durer's attempt to use a geometrical construction to form an ellipse. His own bias bled through the mechanical straight-edge and compass construction so his end result was lopsided and incorrect. This is the type of mistake science tries to weed out. IMO Pons and Fleischmann made a similar mistake. It is often dreadfully hard not to.
Hell, if NASA is looking into it, no matter how down low they try to keep it, unless you feel NASA employees cranks and nuts, then there is evidently enough there to keep them poking and prodding it.
You have to be very careful with this line of reasoning. The potential payoff from commercially viable cold fusion is almost too large to calculate. This huge payoff means it is worthwhile to investigate claims even if the chance of those claims panning out is extremely small. There are some measurements that are hard to explain by any known theory. These measurements are also extremely hard to reproduce. Even if these measurements are eventually explained by some sort of nuclear reaction, it seems unlikely that it can be made into a commercially viable energy source. Experimentalists are usually very good at tracking down and enhancing an effect even before the theorists can explain it. This effect has remained elusive. I'm not saying this means we should stop all research in this area but I am saying that it would be smart to keep your expectations of revolutionary results very low.
Comment: Re:Missionary? (Score 1) 87
Virgin moderator apparently.
Those virgins can be so unruly. They need moderation.
Comment: Re:Linus is right on about microkernels (Score 1) 480
Here is the example Robert Love gave in the thread I linked to:
do A
if (error)
goto out_a;
do B
if (error)
goto out_b;
do C
if (error)
goto out_c;
goto out;
out_c:
undo C
out_b:
undo B:
out_a:
undo A
out:
return ret;
do A
if (error)
goto out_a;
do B
if (error)
goto out_b;
do C
if (error)
goto out_c;
goto out;
out_c:
undo C
out_b:
undo B:
out_a:
undo A
out:
return ret;
Comment: Re:Linus is right on about microkernels (Score 1) 480
As with the passive voice, the rule on GOTO is "avoid," not "never use."
Yes, exactly. Which is why that thread is both amusing and sad.
Comment: Re:Linus is right on about microkernels (Score 4, Interesting) 480
As far as AST's assertion that Linux is "spaghetti" code, no no no, look at the code for yourself. The components in Linux are very well separated. Linux keeps them separated by coding discipline rather than by some technical enforcement (like different address spaces), but this discipline is kept up very well.
Here is a link to a good example of of such discipline. It contains excerpts from a discussion on the lkml over the use of "goto" in Linux kernel code. The kernel devs have found a situation where the judicious use of "goto" makes the code cleaner, clearer, and easier to maintain. The wisdom of this use is challenged by someone who dogmatically believes that all goto statements are evil. It is quite amusing (and a little sad).
Comment: Re:I like gvim, except... (Score 1) 271
alias vi="vim -v -c 'syntax off'"