Dabbled with Mechwarrior 2 back in the day but it lost favor to Duke Nukem 3D and TIE Fighter. What I most remember from the games was the music, which is currently nestled away in my mp3 folder and Video Game playlist.

Thanks, huge jerk!
>> ^HugeJerk:

Btw, if you want a copy of the song... it's freely available at http://cdnstatic.bethsoft.com/bethblog.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/09/The%20Drunken%20Whaler.mp3

Btw, if you want a copy of the song... it's freely available at http://cdnstatic.bethsoft.com/bethblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/The%20Drunken%20Whaler.mp3

>> ^dag:

Pretty cool technology, but like it or not - paper books are on their way out. Sometimes, you think that an industry is in its twilight - and it's really not. A good example would be movie theatres.
Something about sitting in a big dark room with lots of strangers while munching over-priced popcorn - it's an experience we don't want to lose. Prognosticators have been trumpeting the doom of cinemas since the VCR - but it turns out, it's not going to happen.
Similarly, those same sages are now telling us that the end is nigh for bookstores. In this case, I'd agree. Bookstores and paper books don't offer enough of a distinction or an improvement over buying a Kindle copy. You're buying something to read at home anyway - not to consume in a bookstore, so so much better to just download it with a single click. Verily, I say - bookstore, the bell tones for thee.


Well put but I disagree. Most avid readers I've spoken to still prefer the tactile feel of a paper book to the electronic versions and until there is digital format standardization across marketing platforms, adoption will be slower. Also there is the question of longevity that people quickly ignore with digital formats.

If I buy a book its possible for generations of my family to read it or own it. Like all other digital based technologies, there is no certainty of being able to keep a kindle book or ibook forever. If the format changes, the technology evolves, or formats are just not supported it will be more noticeable with books than it has been with movies and music.

With movies and music new media and formats have meant improved quality and functionality, so people are willing to repurchase for improved experiences. It is unlikely that books will have this added benefit as things progress and so convincing people to repurchase would be hard. This is where format standardization becomes key because you cant have an open standard or solution to longevity in a fractured market.

E-books are where music was when almost all digital music was in Real player format (or smaller competitors), it didn't fully explode until the open ended formats (mp3) became the standard. Once one of the more open e-book formats takes hold and e-readers become accessible to the vast majority of demographics...then maybe you can start to gauge if books will survive.

PS I'm curious if this machine or things like it would be embraced by higher education, for the purpose of printed materials they use now and perhaps to replace the scam that is college text book purchasing.

>> ^vex:

>> ^TheSluiceGate:
OK, 2 things really suspicious about this video:
1) I'm pretty sure I can hear autotune artifacts (I work with audio / vocalists a lot) and a vocal that is consistently too in pitch.
2) Notice at 2:49 the microphone is absolutely miles from her mouth and the vocal is still entirely consistent, no evidence of a change in level or tone that you'd expect a microphone to display (re: proximity effect) - this hints to me at the vocal being pre-recorded. They also cut away at this point which makes me even more suspicious.
Also:
3) The US version of the same show, produced by the same production company, has admitted using autotune: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11056050
This coming from a person who got goosebumps for the amazing TV debut performances of both Alexis Jordan and Bianca Ryan who were both imperfect, but utterly thrilling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcEo5H97CLM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xno4Y7r8Ov8

1. I think you're hearing things. Specifically, some of her high to low runs and a couple rising melodies beginning with low notes at the bottom of her range are slightly off key. The way she leads into notes using the back of her throat creates a slight buzz that makes her voice sound autotuned.
2. The beginning of the word "butterflies" comes out at a lower volume as she brings the microphone to her face.


1) It's the texture of the audio of the vocal and not the pitching that leads me to believe it's auto tune. Autotuning has a sound, and it's not necessarily to do with the pitching of the note. A bit like how tape or MP3s of even a specific type of pre-amp has a specific sound carachteristic.

2) I think that any slight dip in volume is because it's a low note outside of her range, but my point was not to do with volume, but to do with proximity effect. With the exception of omni-directional microphones the frequency response of a microphone changes with distance from the source of the sound- simply put: the further the mic is away from the person's mouth the thinner and less bassy it becomes. Even a change in gain / volume will not mask this.

@Deano - Ah, I was totally misremembering. Actually, you get 5GB for Drive, 1GB for Picasa, and 10GB for Gmail, but if you pay for Drive, your Gmail automatically gets increased to 25GB. Maybe I was thinking of Amazon's service where all your MP3s stored there don't count toward your limit.

The desktop app is very good. If you don't want your docs converted, you can just leave that option disabled. That's what I did.

Dammit, now I have to find a way to rip this to MP3, awesome stuff.

>> ^thegrimsleeper:

Three and a half hours?! Jeez. Is the video necessary and if not is it possible to find the audio somewhere online?


You can download an mp3 of the video audio: snipMP3

Or download the video and just play it minimized, so in the event that it sounds like the video is necessary, you can still see what's going on: Keepvid

There's also a Greasemonkey script that adds an audio/video download button to Youtube pages: Youtube Center. Great for stuff like this which I wouldn't trust my browser to not crash right in the middle of.

my rachels song mp3 has some additional talking in it

Dude, it's 2012... no one records straight to vinyl or other analogue medium anymore. It's cheaper and easier to use a digital medium. Besides, in the video you can clearly see the master is cut using a computer which is displaying the waveform -- it's basically a CNC lathe. Audio can't be stored on a computer in analogue form. Unless that's one of those new-fangled analogue computers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer
>> ^Grimm:

Didn't I say I must have missed that part?
Now where is the part where they said the source was digital?>> ^schlub:
9:35 - BAM!
>> ^Grimm:
I must have missed where he said "refuse to buy into the digital revolution". What I heard him say was "some say they sound better then digital CDs and MP3s".>> ^schlub:
People "refuse to buy into the digital revolution" by purchasing an analogue medium produced from a digital source. Yeah, good work.

Didn't I say I must have missed that part?

Now where is the part where they said the source was digital?>> ^schlub:

9:35 - BAM!
>> ^Grimm:
I must have missed where he said "refuse to buy into the digital revolution". What I heard him say was "some say they sound better then digital CDs and MP3s".>> ^schlub:
People "refuse to buy into the digital revolution" by purchasing an analogue medium produced from a digital source. Yeah, good work.

9:35 - BAM!
>> ^Grimm:

I must have missed where he said "refuse to buy into the digital revolution". What I heard him say was "some say they sound better then digital CDs and MP3s".>> ^schlub:
People "refuse to buy into the digital revolution" by purchasing an analogue medium produced from a digital source. Yeah, good work.

I must have missed where he said "refuse to buy into the digital revolution". What I heard him say was "some say they sound better then digital CDs and MP3s".>> ^schlub:

People "refuse to buy into the digital revolution" by purchasing an analogue medium produced from a digital source. Yeah, good work.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/922489/01%20Darkest%20Before%20Dawn.mp3

>> ^shuac:

Very true. And while all technology products are derivative of earlier products to some degree, I think Microsoft does more bandwagon-jumping than most. Let's look at the evidence.
Java, made by Sun. "Reimagined" by Microsoft.
Console gaming, made by Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, et al. Microsoft gives us Xbox.
Online Music, pioneered by Napster, made legitimate by Apple. Microsoft gives us MSN Music.
MP3 player, pioneered by Rio, made super popular by Apple. Microsoft gives us Zune.
Internet search, pioneered by Archie in 1990, made insanely profitable by Google. Microsoft gives us MSN. And Live Search. And Bing.
Far as tablet computing goes, Microsoft actually has a much bigger history than Apple. I remember MS peddling tablets back in 2001 with XP. Trouble is, XP was never designed as a touch interface. Even as recent as 2008, Microsoft tried this strategy with the Origami.
The innovation Apple made is to take its smartphone OS (whose design is based on touch) and pull it up to the tablet rather than take a full-blown desktop OS and push it down. This is the idea Microsoft is copying with Surface and Windows 8.
Other than Kinect, which is an innovative product since it is more than merely a response to the Wii, I'm not sure Microsoft invented anything. Even its flagship Office suite is based on earlier software (WordStar, WordPerfect, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3). In fact, when Microsoft first licensed MS-DOS to IBM for a huge profit back in 1981, it was essentially QDOS, which they purchased outright from some guy for $50,000. Deal of the century.
You may say, "Well Apple didn't invent the MP3 player. Why aren't they guilty of copying too?"
They are. But Microsoft's history is rife with this sort of "me-too" thing in a way no other company's is. Let me distil my point into one sentence: How many companies are copying Microsoft's products?
To sum up: Microsoft is slim on innovation, fat on looking over the shoulders of the smart kids in class...>> ^Sarzy:
>> ^mtadd:
Microsoft never fails to innovate their name on someone else's product.

Yes, because the iPad was, of course, the first tablet ever.



Cool story bro.

No, seriously though, you do raise some interesting arguments. The only point I was trying to make is that it seems a bit reductionist to dismiss the Surface as merely an iPad clone, when it seems like Microsoft is legitimately trying to do some interesting things with it and Windows 8, rather than just jumping on the iPad bandwagon.