Friday, May 16, 2003
That Thirstype font tryout applet is awesome; do you remember the agfa version, where you could type in anything and have it rendered to a gif? This was done onto a white background.
These guys are a bit more savvy obviously.
I wonder if they priced their fonts like apple priced AAC if they would get more sales? $199 for a family means that they will not be getting many ker'ching for each design.
Thursday, May 15, 2003
****** ***** wrote:
> Hi,
Greets...
>
> I am the drummer/producer in the London based pop/rock/alternative band
drummer: OK
Producer: OK
London based: OK
Pop: uh oh
Rock: Oh no
Alternative: Oh dear
Band: Oh well
> Makara (http://www.makaraUK.com. I have just
> finished mixing a new mp3, and I wondered if you could have a listen and
> tell me what you think.
>Stream: http://www.makarauk.com/mp3/RBTL.m3u
>Download: http://www.makarauk.com/mp3/RBTL_low_res2.mp3
I just listened to it.
>
> Thanks for any advice,
My advice to you is to completely stop what you are doing, and to engage in some deep and detailed research on popular music from the last 40 years.
If, at the time the beatles were playing, they decided to make the music of 30 previously (1930's Jazz, like Fats Waller) we would never have had the beatles as we knew and loved them. The same goes for every group that we have loved, and which have clearly influenced you and your group.
Do not bother to record music if your aim is anything less than to superceed, or at the very least, be separate from, everything you have ever heard. If you only want to repeat the music of the past, then do it honestly, and become a cover band.
You, as a producer, need to listen to the work of the great producers of the last 40 years, from George Martin to Tony Visconti, John Leckie to Lee Perry and Trevor Horn to Martin Rushent. If your aim is not to outdo these great people, then stop what you are doing immediately.
Please be aware; my opinion and advice are worthless. If you really know what you are doing and have a clear direction set out, you should not care what I think, you will get on with what you are doing no matter what anyone says, and you will prevail.
Best of luck to you,
Akin Fernandez
Irdial-Discs
Yes, Alun... Congratulations. Some words from the great gray bard, one who continues to do this country proud amongst the current madness:
Fast Anchor'd Eternal O Love!
Fast-anchor'd eternal O love! O woman I love!
O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!
Then separate, as disembodied or another born,
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,
I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,
O sharer of my roving life.
--W.Whitman
Good luck and love.
Mac software opens path for music pirates
By Jon Healey Los Angeles Times New software from Apple Computer that lets Macintosh users buy songs from an online music store can also be used to share songs via the Internet, raising concerns among record labels and music publishers about a new avenue for piracy. Apple's new iTunes software was designed to allow people to store songs on one Mac and play them on other Macs on the same home network. But users quickly found a way to share songs with a wider group of people over the Net. Since the iTunes software was launched two weeks ago, several Web sites have sprung up to help users find others who are sharing their songs online. Some adept programmers also found a way to let people copy the songs that iTunes users were making available through the Internet. "It sounds as if it is a hole in the security that needs to be closed," said Cary Ramos, an attorney for the National Music Publishers Association. "I don't know what Apple can do to achieve that, but I would certainly hope that they would take steps immediately to address this issue." Notably, the copy-protected songs that Apple sells through its iTunes Music Store apparently cannot be shared through either a home network or the Internet. Only song files that users copy from CDs or download from unauthorized online sources can be shared. [...] Seattle times and we have: http://ileech.sourceforge.net/ What is iLeech? Introduced in iTunes v4.0 is the ability to share your playlist with other iTunes users. This is accomplished locally using Rendezvous/zeroconf/mdns/whatever, or if you know the IP address of a machine you can access it's playlist via daap://
I did not read the article
The argument sounds like pap to me.
??!?
"Ragazzoni's team adapted the theory of the Planck length to predict the amount of distortion they should see. But when they used the Hubble telescope to look at an exploding star about 42 million light years away, and a galaxy more than five billion light years away, they saw no blurring."
and
"The results show the young galaxy is as far as 13 billion light-years from Earth, based on an estimated age for the universe of approximately 14 billion years."
hubblesite
And the image is razor sharp.
ABSTRACT
This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:
(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a �posthuman� stage
(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof)
(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation
It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.[...]
Simulation-Agrument.com
That would explain this:
"Conventional thinking is that space and time can be thought of together as a sort of foam. As light travels through the foam, it ought to be disrupted, ever so slightly, such that by the time it crosses much of the universe it would render only blurry pictures when gathered by a precision telescope. Put simple, Hubble ought to see a pixilation effect when photographing distant objects.
It does not. Hubble pictures are crisp and clear, no matter the distance to the object."[...]
Nature
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
A total Lunar eclipse tomorrow (Thursday) night. Viewable in Europe, the Americas and Africa.
National Geographic:
During a total solar eclipse, the new moon passes in front of the sun and momentarily casts day into the darkness of night. But during a total lunar eclipse, the moon remains at least partially lit during the event.
Even though Earth blocks the moon from direct sunlight during an eclipse, some sunlight is refracted, or bent, by the Earth's atmosphere and illuminates the moon. The atmosphere scatters most of short wavelengths of light�blue, green, and yellow�out of the refracted light so that primarily the orange and red rays reach the moon, said Espenak.
"The more dust the atmosphere has, the more scattering takes place and the redder, and darker, the moon appears," he said.
Since there have not been any major volcanic eruptions or extensive forest fires recently, astronomers believe the atmosphere is relatively clear of the type of particles that could cause a deep-red eclipse.
Check your local news to see when it starts in your area...
******** ******** wrote:
> Hi Akin,
Greets ***!
>
> I thought you might be interested in this almanac, this month it is
> on interstellar communication. SETI et al. I know you are opposed to
> USA institutions at the moment, but it is an interesting read.
Thanks for sending it...shall we have fun whilst i read it? it being FIRST EMAIL OF THE MORNING & all!!! :]
>
>
> < Language, Art and Science in Interstellar Communication >
> by Douglas A. Vakoch
>
>
> If some day we humans decide to transmit intentional messages to
> the stars, what should we say, and how should we say it?
This has already been done, both in the form of a probe, and a special treansmission beamed out from Aricebo.
> Since
> the beginning of the scientific Search for Extraterrestrial
> Intelligence (SETI) over 40 years ago, astronomers, physicists
> and engineers have mulled over these questions. Seldom, however,
> have artists or scholars from the humanities seriously considered
> the challenges of interstellar communication. On 23 and 24 March,
> 2003, a score of specialists from a range of disciplines gathered
> in Paris to change that.
But they didnt do their research *first*.
> This meeting, "Encoding Altruism: The Art and Science of
> Interstellar Message Composition," was sponsored by the Leonardo
> Network/OLATS, the SETI Institute, the John Templeton Foundation
> and the International Academy of Astronautics. The charge of the
> participants was to identify fruitful ways that we could convey
> some of humankind's varied notions of altruism in interstellar
> messages. Though SETI groups throughout the world agree that it
> is premature to transmit prior to broad-based international
> discussion, if some day a signal is detected from another
> civilization, surely there would be suggestions from some
> quarters to reply.
My word, I want what he is smoking.
Have you ever watched David Blaine? He is a great performer. On one of his shows, he went to the Amazon, and tracked down one of those groups that rarely see people from anywhere, much less brooklyn NY.
He tried to show them some magic. They were completely flummoxed by everything he did. He tried some card tricks. No reaction. He took a leaf from a tree, rolled it into a cone in his hand, and then drank a substantial amount of water from it. No reaction.
The point of this story is that these people had nothing in common with DB, save that they were both human. His magic could not impress or ever faze them. They didnt even understand that they were watching a magic trick.
Aliens (at least in the way that the SETI fixated understand them) would not be able to understand "Altruism" or "Art" since these are artificial constructs created by western man, over 5000 years of soclial development. They are not universal truths understandable and implimented by all sentient things. And I mean "Things".
> The workshop was intended to promote that
> discussion well before there is a pressing call to begin
> transmitting.
A transmission has already left, 30 years ago; WFT are you talking about?
>
> Abstracts of selected papers presented at the 2003 workshop
> follow, along with an overview of the science behind SETI that
"the science behind SETI"; this phrase, loaded with religion, is an example of why this conference was a waste of time. These people were desperate to commune with science, the new god of the last and this century. How pathetic. If they couldnt even do the work to find out that a transmission has already been sent, its no wonder that they dont know that SETI is a lie, and that we have already made contact with Aliens.
> was presented at the 2002 incarnation of the workshop by
> astronomer Dan Werthimer and biologist Mary Kate Morris.
The priest and priestess.
> All
> quotes in these prefatory remarks are taken from the abstracts
> that follow. A more detailed discussion of many of these issues
> can be found in the collection of original essays, *Between
> Worlds: The Art and Science of Interstellar Message Composition,*
> to be published in the Leonardo Book Series by the MIT Press in
> Spring 2004.
>
> As the following abstracts show, many of the workshop
> participants reflected on the origins and nature of language as
> they searched for ways to craft meaningful messages to
> extraterrestrials. Other themes of the workshop, not highlighted
> in this selection of abstracts, included the value of creating
> messages that are interactive and the challenges of encoding the
> many meanings of altruism.
Shockingly stupid. These people have not the slightest understanding of what they are talking about. Hmmm I wonder if they invited a LINGUIST to attend this meeting; certainly it would have been more useful than the priests from SETI
>
> According to computer scientist Colin Johnson, we are going to
> have a difficult time finding a universal language for
> interstellar communication when we do not understand well how
> even a single language evolved here on Earth.
And were it not for the Rosetta Stone, we would not have decoded Ancient Egyptian. The experience of Linear-B would also have been instructional in this meeting.
> And, as his fellow
> workshop speaker, archeologist John B. Campbell shows, the
> problem is not only one of determining the *mechanism* of
> language evolution, but also the *timing.* As Campbell
> summarizes, "Precisely when symbolic communication began in the
> human evolutionary family is a matter for debate."
>
> The problem with clarifying the origins of language, Johnson
> emphasizes, is that we have not been able to compare the origin
> and early evolution of many different examples of language here
> on Earth. The solution he offers is to draw on the discipline of
> artificial life, allowing us to simulate the origin and initial
> development of language many times over.
?????
> By looking for common
> patterns in the thousands of examples, we might get a glimpse
> into possible universals that could help us communicate with
> independently evolved beings on other worlds.
Aparently, they have no problem understanding us. Its our understanding of them that is the problem!
>
> A similar approach is advocated by Mauro Annunziato, an engineer
> who creates art using digital life, and in the process learns
> about the evolution of language.
Ah yes, a willian latham type. No one has created "digital life" these are words bandied about by hippies to sell pictures in galleries. Nothing wrong with that, but it will be shot down every time when you try and apply it to something serious. Fortuneatly this is not serious, so i can save teh bullets!!!!!
> Part of the value of studying
> the emergence of autonomous languages in digital beings,
> according to Annunziato, is that the characteristics of digital
> life may bear similarities to extraterrestrial life, at least
> insofar as digital life requires us to be open to new
> possibilities for defining exactly what life is: "Digital beings
> are different from any well-developed terrestrial organic beings.
> They belong to another world, in which some intellectual
> abilities developed long before certain sensory capabilities.
> Nothing is given, and everything must be created through
> evolution." For Annunziato, biological notions of survival of the
> fittest, which portray nature red in tooth and claw, might be
> replaced by a metaphor emphasizing the importance of language in
> the evolutionary process: "survival of the clearest."
>
> Comparative psychologist and philosopher Dominique Lestel raises
> the question of whether language should be our central starting
> point in creating interstellar messages: "Up to now, it has
> always been through language that humans have evaluated the
> effectiveness of language. One of the main interests of SETI is
> precisely to think more deeply about these issues." Instead,
> Lestel suggests that we might focus on the intentionality of the
> communication: "How could we figure out a message whose main
> content (but is it really a content?) is to proclaim that it is a
> message from intelligent beings? This is a true challenge for
> artists...." In Lestel's view, artists might contribute to
> interstellar message design by creating messages that draw upon
> scientific insights, as illustrated by two "artistic performances
> for interstellar communication" that he suggests: "the first one
> will be to design self-referential temporally fractal messages,
> and the second will be the design of messages based on
> non-Darwinian biological mutations."
????! the message that was already sent was beautiful, and worked because anyone who has built a radio capable of recieving the signal could understand it. They sent prime numbers and other stuff that any one with simple math can understand:
http://microURL.com/shrinky1vGL
Read it, like they didnt.
> we live." Would extraterrestrial intelligence, living on worlds
> that differ from ours physically, biologically and culturally,
> even share a common language of mathematics with humans?
if they can build a radio antenna, then yes. Math doesnt change; it is cross cultural and identical all over the (this) universe. That is why they sent the original message the way that they did.
>
> We might, of course, not rely on languages per se for
> interstellar communication. Most proposals for interstellar
> messages over the past 40 years have, indeed, not focused on
> specifically linguistic messages and many alternatives were
> suggested at the recent workshop, including messages based on
> images, music, logic and computer algorithms. But regardless of
> the *form* that a message might take, what should be its
> *content?*
in math, the content is the message. if you send prime numbers, then someone will know:
A you know your math
B you can build transmitters
C you sent a message
that would be enough to get ANYONE exited. There doesnt need to be anything else. Unless you want to -=colonize=- them with your ideas.
>
> Suppose we could succeed in communicating notions of altruism,
> the central subject matter of the workshop. Wouldn't such a
> portrayal border on deception?
it would be colonialism. And what about another culture imposing thier ideas on us? Just as Altruism is specific only to humans, there must be millions of other concepts, just as artificial and culture specific waiting to rain down on us. This is part of the purported reason that the big secret has been kept here for over 50 years; cultural contamination and disruption, by even the official admission of contact with Aliens, much less a "donation" of Alien ideas of morality (if they even have that idea) and God knows what else. What is for sure, these aliens must be organized in some way. This organization, however it is done, can be described in english. Once we read this desctiption, and start to borrow from it and adopt it means that we have been colonized. Think aobut the Ford production line, and how that idea spread througout the world. That idea of how to organize workers changed life for hundreds of millions, brought unprecedented wealth to many and flodded the world with cars, gave us our dependence on oil, the gulf wars, and OBL. All from one mans idea. Imagine an idea, (or even worse, a whole book of ideas) as powerful and revolutionary as the production line, but from an alien culture. Everything would be turned upside down. This is far more interesting than artists trying to get a ride on a transmitter to send their art into space.
> As novelist Diana Slattery
> cautions, "Convincing an ETI, truly an 'outsider' of our
> altruistic potential as a species, might be a hard sell if
> they've had access to our history books, news services, or
> entertainment channels." Indeed, in the recording attached to two
> Voyager spacecraft, the 100-plus pictures of Earth lacked any
> images of poverty, pestilence or war.
Ahhh someone who can google!
>
> "If some day signals are sent to follow Voyager," Slattery
> suggests, "the trust displayed in this effort - that we are
> communicating at all - may be the surest sign of our own
> potential for altruism.
Read my lips: there is no such thing as "Altruism"!!!!!!!!
> Whatever we decide to communicate," she
> adds, "we are saying in the act 'Here we are; please get in
> touch.'" But are images of altruism really representative of our
> day-to-day actions? Slattery suggests that it may be appropriate
> to start a conversation that could last for generations by
> putting our best foot forward.
>
> Though for now SETI focuses its energies on listening for signs
> of intelligence in the universe and not on transmitting,
> Slattery's recommendation for how we might some day portray
> ourselves in interstellar messages is worth pondering now. "That
> we are concerned about how we are perceived," she observes, "that
> we are considering how to foreground one of our best aspects -
> the altruistic - seems a prudent way to whisper into the void."
>
> Douglas A. Vakoch
> Director of Interstellar Message Composition, SETI Institute
> Chair, Encoding Altruism: The Art and Science of Interstellar
> Message Composition
> vakoch@seti.org
Boy, can you imagine these guys "get signal" saying "we got your message" and they reply "What message??!!"
Good morning!!!
Akin
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