Joe’s Comments

• Jul 15th, 2010 @ 10:36am

  http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/07/15/166220/Sound-As-the-New-Illegal-Narcotic

  on Oh No! Run And Hide! Kids Getting High With MP3s! Moral Panic! Moral Panic!
  Reposting this from Slashdot because its too good:

  Up until high school, I spent my entire life locked into an ideal Norman Rockwell painting. No cares, no worries and just high on life. Things took a turn for the worse one day when I picked up an 288 tuning fork and a 320 tuning fork. I struck them both against my leg and held one up near either ear.

  It was pure bliss. Like Jesus was just 32 hertz away from me. I wish I could describe the feeling. Like half of all the blades of grass in the universe were hummingbirds and the other half were bumble bees.

  Let's see--I was a freshman at that time. Yeah, things just went downhill from there. I had earrings made with a tuning fork hanging from each one. The left side was A440 and the right side was a custom 444. I could raise my fingers to either lobe and flick it for instant gratification. The other kids called it ear basing. I called it god. And he was just nineteen dollars and eighty cents on Amazon [amazon.com]. By my sophomore year I was already pretty hard into Fourier transforms. Everyone's tympanic membrane had a bifurcation sweet spot that could be exploited with the right theoretical frequencies. Yeah, we would rent middle of nowhere motel rooms to smelt hematite down into custom tuning forks and poor them into clay molds in the bathtub. We paid in cash and by the time the cleaning made hit the room it was slag burns in the carpet and clay all over the place. You probably remember the 20/20 investigations following all the reports.

  Shit got real heavy real quick and one day we found Scrye (nickname for the metallurgist) hemorrhaging blood out of his ears in a coma from strapping two subwoofers to either side of his head with duct tape. I knew I had to get out, but how?

  We gathered up all our text books on math, audio & music theory, physics, chemistry, electronics and metalworking and burned them in the parking lot of the hospital we brought Scrye to. I would never read about science again.

  Parents, heed the images of those children getting 'innocent' highs from sounds and make sure they don't make the same mistake I did. This is just a gateway to bigger and badder things. If you find literature on Fourier Analysis, Electronics or Calculus in your child's bedroom, please get your child to Oklahoma and get them help from the nearest minister. I don't care if you have to lock them up in the basement against their will. Just make sure you save them from the same fate as I ... COMPLETE EAR DESTRUCTION!

  Again, not my work and I take no credit for eldavojohn's story.
• Aug 14th, 2009 @ 5:49pm

  Exactly

  on It Ain't The Link, It's What You Do With The Traffic
  I found this site linked numerous times from other sources, found the articles well written and with a lot of thought. The community discussions are generally intelligent, and eventually became a regular.
  
  The point Mike makes in this post is exactly what the AP, etc. don't seem to grasp. I dare say this is one of the best posts I've read here simply because it so clearly explains the linking culture mentallity.
• Jul 14th, 2009 @ 12:56pm

  (untitled comment) (as Joe K)

  on Pandora: If We're Getting Taxed So Heavily By SoundExchange, Radio Should Be Too
  I see this more as play by Pandora to ultimately get the new rates thrown out or lowered.
  
  If Pandora is successful in convincing the right people that all broadcasters, regardless of method of broadcast should pay the same rate, the traditional broadcasters more powerful lobby would have more luck in negotiating lower rates.
  
  I'm probably way off, but that's how I would like to see it play out.
• Mar 26th, 2009 @ 8:18am

  Re: Re:

  on When Having Somebody Transfer Your Data From An Old Phone To A New One, Delete Your Self-Porn
  From my admittedly modest familiarity with whole disk encryption, they can take the laptop and boot it, but without the passwords are unable to login (except of course if they brute-force their way in). the encyrption will prevent someone from connecting the drive to a different machine and reading it, or using one of the utilities that read Windows passwords and display them on the screen.
  
  Assuming they are using decent encryption.