If you're talking about Bananen then I'm a happy ignorant. Surely I won't miss them (except for technicalities I may be curious about), my music tastes aren't that simplistic.

Edit: I thought you could enlighten me about the possibility of a modulation effect - phaser, flanger, chorus or derivative - being used as insert or send - cascaded through a carefully crafted EQ or multiband compressor to explain the sound of the falsetto, but I guess that I'll have to accept a better explanation: not all singers have the vocal polyphony capabilities of Demetrio Stratos, but some achieve an unintended result. What a pity, I will remain ignorant about my curiosity and will have to accept Kev's hypothesis as good.

Last edited by Albieg, Wed 30 Jan 2008, 13:42.

Quote from jibber :

Ignorants! :sadbanana

Go on, enlighten us...

Indeed, it doesn't seem to be a return from the headphones nor an effect, it's more like an unintended vocal polyphony (diplophony) when he screams in falsetto. Certainly he hasn't mastered the technique.

I don't know the original track (I'm not exactly a Van Halen fan), but probably the global mix masquerades this polyphony.

Quote from Technique :

.... look what I've started!

You started something good, but unfortunately someone misunderstood the spirit of this thread and decided to turn it into a useless bash festival.

Quote from Polyracer :

And with this test - Scientologists weed out the people who are mentally strong enough to see through them,.... correct?

If you're referring to the MMPI rip-off (no rights paid) test, it is correct.

How do I know? Because I took the test when I was 18 in Padua, during a school trip. Why? Let's just say that someone told us "Do you want to take a test that tells you something about you?" and we said yes, stupidly.

We compiled the test, then we told them we were not from Padua, and the bastards told us we should refer to Scientology in our hometown... Needless to say, we didn't. And if I knew what Scientology was and that they were gathering a psychological profile I would have strongly reacted, but I was pretty naive at the time.

I recognised the questionnaire as a shortened version of MMPI because I took the test 5 times (3 different versions) in my life in different occasions. For instance the army used it (when the service was compulsory) during the preliminary visits to identify problematic persons, specifically individuals showing suicidal tendencies, but the MMPI is a diagnostic instrument that tells a lot more.

I knew about the specific meaning of the test only when I was 25 and became interested in it. I knew about it talking to a psychiatrist - a colonel - who now should work in Rome, redacting psychological profiles of high rank officers. I haven't heard him for years.

That Scientology site was replete with Hubbard's rubbish (read books) and lots of diplomas saying "SUCCESS" as the outcome of the test, but the real meaning of MMPI is not to tell if you're likely to be succesful or not. The real intent and the only usage of the MMPI is as a clinical aid to gather information about your psychological profile. The article on Wikipedia, although very short (not all scales and interpretations are reported) helps a bit to understand.

Edit: interesting link about Scientology and MMPI in another forum.

Last edited by Albieg, Mon 28 Jan 2008, 17:25.

Quote from xaotik :

"all things done under the table which we know for a fact because they're all idiots and we're smarter and can see right through the said table with our X-ray specs - $5.99 btw".

That sort of attitude is immediately visible in the truthnews commentary given all the irritating name calling which qualifies the piece as a total piece of garbage.

I would have preferred a refutation of the ideas or an underlining of the incoherences, leaving personal conclusions to others.

Quote from Mazz4200 :

So, can anyone explain the mystery of where all my socks have gone ? I bought six new pairs last month, and now i can only find two

There's too little data to solve the problem and I don't know what a scientist would do, but a person who doesn't want to look silly would ask himself first if the remaining two pairs are really matched or not. I hope you already know it.

Quote from Polyracer :

Extraordinary weather conditions around the globe breaking records year on year.

Curiously enough, here in Udine we've had the record temperature (from beginning of measurements, of course) for January with a +2.5 celsius compared to previous record. Oh, the previous record was set last year.

Not that I want to assume such evidence in itself could be considered valid to support climate change theories anyway. I thought it was just... curious, and as such well worth investigating.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

"environmentalism" is being wielded/molded/generally misused by forces that don't entirely understand it, and that these forces are corrupting it and generally ruining its credibility among those who won't bother to dig to find its true roots.

This is in my opinion absolutely true, and that's why I wanted to avoid a dangerous confusion between ideals and implementations that seems to plague many persons.

Edit: of course I also agree on your edit, but given my individualistic/heterodoxical stance on political matters I think that you could already have guessed it

Last edited by Albieg, Sun 27 Jan 2008, 19:38.

Quote from MR_B :

I say put a voting system on these forums so I can give negative votes for some of these truly abysmal comments!!

There has been once a voting system here which focused on agreement rather than on disagreement and I thought it could be a good idea. It has been ditched quickly and prematurely (for me), but anyway agreement means nothing more than numeric consensus, and numeric consensus isn't exactly a measurement of reliability.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Or we can debate whatever view your friend had, provided you accept the possibility that he might have been wrong.
so what did this Mr Barbossa guy believe about environmentalism?

I accept the possibility of Mr Barbina being wrong and the possibility of me being wrong. Debates and observations are the essence of knowledge and, as Dante said in a verse I quote and like very much, "Consider the seed from which ye sprang: you were not made to live like unto brutes, but for pursuit of virtue and knowledge".

Environmentalism is a rather new philosophical current, being born in the seventies: the kind of environmentalism we're used to now is rather opportunistic and distant from the deep environmentalism that was concerned with animal rights (which I won't debate here, it would be rather long).

Mr Barbina had no explicit position about it, he only noted he distanced himself from the post-marxist geographists who were - still in the nineties - preponderant in the community, avoiding to take a precise stance on environmentalism. It should be noted that scholars distance themselves from personal positions whenever they are able to if they value their work as something more than an opinion.

We're now used to the climate change debate which is a very little subset of what environmentalism - deep or shallow - is about. His assistants believed that mankind can have an influence on microclimates and not on the macroclimate, and I recognise this is a debatable issue with no certain scientific outcome. But then again, the discussion about climate change has come under the spotlight only recently, and only recently significant data about the possibility of a deep human impact have become available, although worries for the excessive population of Earth (and its consequences) date back to the sixties, and theories about human impact date back to the 19th century.

Politically Mr Barbina was for conservativism, thus distancing himself from radical deep environmentalist positions which retain a spiritual content, which is still not enough to define deep environmentalism as a religion. It should be noted that at a practical level shallow environmentalism is the winning philosophy these days since the major concern of environmentalists isn't about animal rights, but rather on presenting dangers for the conditions of the ecosystem and its consequences on human life. The untimely death of Mr Barbina has prevented him to be more explicit about issues which weren't so popular back in the nineties.

I'm sorry if I refer to concepts you may not be familiar with, I hope you realise that I have to be synthetic about it because if I wasn't I would end up writing a hundred pages in a topic that is more concerned with Scientology and with religion, so my rationale for being synthetic is just to refute a personal belief of yours to which you are perfectly entitled, as I am entitled to consider misleading tying environmentalism to a religion in a Scientology debate.

Last edited by Albieg, Sun 27 Jan 2008, 11:37.

Quote from Becky Rose :

well its kinda hard to avoid a debate Albieg, when you throw out arguments I raised by talking about something else.

My argument is perfectly related to your claim that environmentalism is some sort of new religion and this is a forum, not a private conversation. Get used to it.

Edit: about Mr Barbina, he wasn't exactly a chap of mine. I had strong disagreements with his political opinions (which were far from being inspired from National Socialist beliefs, although he was a right wing man) and I didn't like some of his methods for the evaluation of students. I happened to be the only student who voluntarily exited from the examination room without a vote. I wasn't prepared the first time I took the human geography exam, so I started saying something bestial. He interrupted me abruptly, intimidating me.

From then on I totally screwed up, then I closed myself in mutism. I glanced at his assistant, she was showing the little book which contained the votes of my other exams at the University to Mr Barbina. They were remarkably high and Mr Barbina didn't want to send me out. He said: "Say something, talk about what you want". He wanted me to get out with a vote that was consistent with the other ones and he was willing to give it to me even if I didn't deserve it. I stood up and said "I'll come back for the next examination session. There's no dignity in obtaining a vote this way", and I walked away.

I did the exam a few months later and it went well, perfectly in line with my other votes, and I didn't have to steal it. But at the end it doesn't matter what I thought about some of his personal methods and political positions, I respected his knowledge.

Last edited by Albieg, Sun 27 Jan 2008, 10:52.

Next time take your time to read Becky. Then read again. And again. And just because you never heard someone this doesn't mean it isn't respected or well known. Use google for that, and don't use it if you don't care about environmentalism, but then please have the good taste to avoid attacking someone for something you don't care about but still you're willing to debate on a forum.

Your words keep making no sense, if you don't understand what I mean you can choose to stay silent. Undermining the credibility of someone won't help you in your cause.

Hankstar sums it up pretty well, but I suspect that when he was talking about environmentalism being reduced to climate change in UK he was a bit misleading. My opinion, of course, Hankstar. I understand your reasons, anyway.

Last edited by Albieg, Sun 27 Jan 2008, 09:47.

Quote from Hankstar :

we still need to preserve as much of what's left of our wilderness as possible; we need to give a shit about where our kids are going to live.

Exactly. Environmentalism isn't a matter of the heart, rather it's a scientifical thought that ties human and ecosystem developments. It's not altruistic in its nature and tries to evaluate possible consequences of human actions, always remembering that such consequences have an impact on man too.

Detractors of environmentalism erroneously refer themselves to a subset of environmentalists which sometimes use dubious methods but in reality there's much more than some form of fanatism, and much more at stake than people usually realise.

You're completely losing your head. Dubbing a respected scholar you know nothing about as a Nazi shouldn't be allowed in a forum.
I have a slight feeling that you're trying to associate me with Nazism by dubbing me as a pal of a supposed dead Nazi/post-communist professor (once again showing your abysmal ignorance because post-communism and national socialism have no relationship whatsoever, unless you're able to associate Evola with Deleuze). I'm quite proud of the participation of my family to the Resistance, so don't mention such arguments again out of proper context and out of total ignorance, I'm quite sensible about it.

Edit: For your information, I decided to report your post.

Last edited by Albieg, Sat 26 Jan 2008, 22:13.

Quote from Becky Rose :

your defending environmentalism quit aggressively there Albieg - I think earlier some people argued that's what made Scientology a cult rather than a religion.

Pretty much what I thought about you, your confusion makes you a good candidate for Scientology. In case you still don't understand, my aggressiveness comes from your undeserved bashing of a serious school of thought you seem to ignore totally, persevering in the error of confusing ideals and implementations. It is, in this case, more of an irritation for your imprecise labelling which is rooted in personal beliefs and not on available evidence.

Mr Barbina wasn't exactly an environmentalist, he was politically far from the post-marxist geographists who are believed to be the initiators of that particular school of thought. He was - nonetheless - a scholar who appreciated precision, and I liked that trait of his personality. You would have been of the few students unable to obtain a good vote from him.

I am not defending - as you may wrongfully think - environmentalism as the pseudo-science or religion you think it is, while it is not. Avoiding a similar confusion should be fairly easy. That's why I won't enter a long debate on the merits and demerits of ecologism and refuse your quasi-religious view: because it is wrong, and easily proven so.

Last edited by Albieg, Sat 26 Jan 2008, 19:49.

Quote from sinbad :

Sorry, by "these folk" I was referring to the ones trying to bring down scientology.

Already addressed, see above

Quote from sinbad :

Scientology is just mental but I'm not sure about the tactics in play by these folk. It's a gamble trying to bring something down by drawing such attention to it.

Edit: as it should be clear reading my post below I misinterpreted your sentence, so I talked about Scientology, not about the Anonymous group. My bad. I'll leave the post below as it is, anyway.



The tactics played by those folks are similar to those played by other folks: they mix science and religion generating pseudoscience.
Before you enter Scientology you are required to take a test. This test is a reduced version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a serious psychological test based on more than 500 simple questions. The shortened - and less reliable - version used by Scientology has about 100 questions, still sufficient to assess the level of gullibility of a simple mind. Moreover NLP tactics are constantly applied just as in motivational courses such as those used by Amway and by pathetic business motivators.

A simple example of such tactics in a business environment, which works with persons with no critical attitude, is using sentences like "there are no problems in business, just opportunities". So, when a server crashes due to hardware failure you have the opportunity to replace it selling a new one, and when someone suffers a data loss because of a lack of a backup there's the expensive opportunity of checking all the lost data by reentering them if possible... but if it's not possible, you're screwed. That's why for me a problem is a problem, no matter if I see an eventual opportunity.

Last edited by Albieg, Sat 26 Jan 2008, 18:32.

Quote from Becky Rose :

environmentalism is scientific fact based on observation? I think you need to use shorter words so you don't confuse yourself

Unfortunately Mr Guido Barbina (who was a respected scholar and a teacher of mine) can't confirm my words since he died in a plane crash years ago, anyway you can find the relevant philosophical discussion in any good academic textbook. So your sarcasm is undeserved and rude.

Edit: by the way, don't twist my words next time. Saying that a school of thought is a scientific fact isn't something that I'd do: I said that environmentalism is a school of thought based on scientific observation. That's quite different from what you have interpreted. Who knows, maybe next time I'll keep my words and sentences shorter as a further aid... newspeak rules, isn't it?

Last edited by Albieg, Sat 26 Jan 2008, 18:04.

Quote from Becky Rose :

oh environmentalism is a religion because it is a new form of control, we Westerners are starting not to believe in the old gods so we need a new faith and they came up with global warming.

Probably you don't understand the philosophical basis of environmentalism, which is perfectly scientific and devoid of axiomatic content requiring blind belief. Environmentalism, long before being a generic word describing the attitude of people concerned about the health of the environment, is an anthropic geography current inspired by positivism and particularly neo-positivism, stripping away the logic that originated national socialism through some manipulations.

Environmentalism, in its philosophical essence, tells us that man determines the environment and that the environment determines man. It's absurd to define such philosophical idea as a religion since its basis is scientific observation.

I got two sound cards dedicated to music production, on each of them I'm able to tell a difference from the integrated chips in terms of noise, hiss, interference from internal computer components, dynamic range and distortion. The M-Audio FastTrack USB Pro I use for field recordings has a very low output power compared to the WaveTerminal 192x (no longer sold) I use on a desktop for editing. Moreover it crackles from time to time during playback (no problem during recording), but I assume it's due to my old laptop; although I'm not enthusiastic generally I'm fine with the sound card considering it's cheap. On top of that the presence of good dedicated ASIO drivers on both cards help me avoid the headaches of going down the route of generic ASIO.

I'm perfectly fine with the WaveTerminal, the quality of its DACs is excellent and latency is really low. There's no EAX support on both cards which cope well with games but certainly they aren't the best choice for the task, but then again I use a third machine for gaming at the moment using the integrated low quality chipset. The moral for me is, if you buy a soundcard for music production and you're half-serious about it get a semi-pro one (read carefully the reviews, such cards can be troublesome!). If you're into gaming and multimedia the integrated chipset may suffice, otherwise get a SoundBlaster.

Last edited by Albieg, Sat 26 Jan 2008, 07:38.

Dunno really, but it could be true since Alfa Romeo drivers are sometimes known in Italy as perfect idiots who think they own the road.

I loved the self-serving motivational questions and answers, though.

- How many people really make some money in Amway?
- 100% of people who don't quit.

Man, I can crack some bad joke too, but not this bad...

Quote from Linsen :

Personally I'd buy Italy, if I wouldn't have to pay twice its price in backhanders on top.

For $100,000,000 probably you'll find someone who's willing to sell you the Colosseum, but not much more.

But of course you won't really own the Colosseum or your dollars after that 'sale'.

Quote from xaotik :

If you want a scary cult I'd say look at Amway

About ten years ago I began writing an essay about Amway, it was titled "You can make it even if you're an idiot".

I quit when my brother realised he had been an idiot who couldn't make it. He's a local coordinator in Berlusconi's party right now. Some people never learn.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

I know that the printer has it's own IP (i.e. 192.168.x.xxx) but that is only for within our network, obviously. Is it possible to print to this printer from outside of our network? Does this printer also get assigned a 'worldwide' IP to which you can connect from anywhere else?

The printer has no public IP address assigned. It would be a bad idea if there's no form of authentication, and even then probably it wouldn't be a good idea.

The best thing would be setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN), but this involves at least some work with a VPN capable router and/or installing software such as OpenVPN on a PC inside the network.