Soyuz TMA-11 Comes Home, More or Less...

"Scott Hedrick" wrote:


"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...
Finding two secondary sources that contain the same "facts" still isn't as
good as finding an actual primary source. People who do actual research
are looking for as many primary sources as possible.

I was asked to give a eulogy. Not having done one before, I went online. I
checked out the first 27 links. The first 26 contained the same exact
quotes, and the 27th was an Amazon.con listing for the book the other sites
were quoting from.

"No, young man, you did *not* find 27 references. You found *one* reference.
You can learn from this experience and learn how to better filter your
responses or not, but the discussion is over and your grade stands."

Yes - I've pointed out this problem before when it comes to news
reporting. Being 'widely reported' is largely meaningless because
pretty much all [professional] news sources all work from the same
handful of feeds. Look what happens when one of those feeds
accidentally posts an eulogy for a celebrity... All of the sudden,
the 'death' of the celebrity is all over the news.

I came across this item earlier today:
http://publishing2.com/2008/05/04/th...nt-on-the-web/
(http://tinyurl.com/6xrdgz) which has a few interesting things to say
on that issue.

On the other hand, the fact that all of these other sites quoted the same
source lends some strength to that source.

Certainly - but one can still be fooled.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Jeff Findley" wrote:


"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
Andre Lieven wrote:
Ergo the new types of record turntables with direct to computer
connections so that one can play an LP right into one's hard drives.

Yep. Despite the above, much of my New Wave vinyl collection isn't
available, legally or otherwise, in a digital format. I need to get
one of those turntables soon.

I'm not sure how good those turntables really are for archival purposes, but
they certainly are convenient. They essentially contain a turntable, a
turntable preamp (the one with the RIAA equalizer), and a USB sound card.
You can set one of these up right next to your PC, so it's very convenient.

A friend of mine, who is an absolute nut for the quality of his
digital music collection, considers them more than good enough. Good
enough for me, but as always YMMV.

My setup has a lot more pieces. It's an old turntable hooked into an old
receiver, which feeds into an old Minidisc recorder (it's got a good analog
to digital converter), which feeds its optical digital output into the
optical digital input on my PC sound card. This works well for me since my
audio equipment is sitting right next to my PC equipment.

Well, many geeks are Rube Goldberg at heart!

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
They are, in fact, just awful. I reviewed a couple of them for an audio
magazine and I was pretty horrified. None of them had cartridges that
tracked as well as the lowest-common-denominator Stanton 500, and none of
them met RIAA specs. They all had audible cogging. I would not recommend
any of them. Stay away from _anything_ direct-drive for archival work.

I'm glad I still have a working belt drive turntable. It's a cheap 1980's
(Kenwood?) model that still works. I've found that it's "good enough" for
transferring really old vinyl to the PC, but that's hooked into my receiver,
minidisc recorder, then the sound card on the PC.

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Jeff Findley" wrote:
I'm not sure how good those turntables really are for archival purposes,
but
they certainly are convenient. They essentially contain a turntable, a
turntable preamp (the one with the RIAA equalizer), and a USB sound card.
You can set one of these up right next to your PC, so it's very
convenient.

A friend of mine, who is an absolute nut for the quality of his
digital music collection, considers them more than good enough. Good
enough for me, but as always YMMV.

If he's a real nut about the quality of his digial collection, he must be
using some sort of lossless compression.

I never got into that since I have three Sony CD changers that each hold 200
CD's. I picked two of them up used (broken) hoping to use the case for
another project. But the silly things ended up needing just a bit of work
and they were fine! My brother gave me one that he had sitting in storage,
which got me up to three of the beasts. ;-)

Here's story I wrote up on the first one I fixed:

http://home.cinci.rr.com/jnfspage/

No audio compression necessary, just a lot of shelf space.

My setup has a lot more pieces. It's an old turntable hooked into an old
receiver, which feeds into an old Minidisc recorder (it's got a good
analog
to digital converter), which feeds its optical digital output into the
optical digital input on my PC sound card. This works well for me since
my
audio equipment is sitting right next to my PC equipment.

Well, many geeks are Rube Goldberg at heart!

True. In my case, I was trying to avoid the, really bad, analog to digital
converter built into my PC's motherboard, which led me to use the old Sony
Minidisc recorder as a dedicated analog to digital converter. In other
words, I was too cheap to buy an "audiophile" PC sound card and a new phono
preamp. ;-)

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

Andre Lieven wrote:
That also means that that definition of " facts " would include all of
the
sites about the 9/11 Jewish Conspiracy, and the Moon Landing Hoax...


Books on those subjects also.

Posting web sites has as much editorial and peer review credibility as
does self publishing by a vanity press. It MAY be better than that,
but
theres no standard by which to discern such a difference.


Which gives the readers of the web the golden ability to actually make
up their own minds about what they believe, rather than trusting one
version of it that's spoon-fed to them via large media outlets, thereby
letting them develop their ability for critical thinking when they are
young.


Doing that by books would be very time-consuming, but on the Internet
it's easy.


No, its really not. Derek's distinction between facts and knowledge
was
spot on. There are a lot of facts on the Web, some of them even true,
but
for real knowledge in depth, books are still the place to go to.


In most cases with a book, you are getting the author's viewpoint of
knowledge, not knowledge itself.
The author has studied facts in depth...hopefully...and is asking you to
trust their interpretation of them.
Given a different author...particularly if that author comes from a
different cultural background, or political point of view, and their
interpretation of the same things is bound to vary from the first
author's in regard to interpretation of the same data.
Using the B-17 as a example, the viewpoint of a German author whose city
was on the receiving end of its bombs is bound to vary greatly from the
former AAC member who flew them and is writing about them.


This proposition also presupposes that books are without error in
regards to information, which certainly is not the case.


Well, as no one suggested that straw donkey, then that neither adds
nor
distracts from the relative credibility of each source. But, for the
most credible
knowledge,

To figure this out, you'd have to define what exactly what "knowledge"
is; once you go past the bare facts of a subject, any commentary on it
become a matter of interpretation and viewpoint.
We know that on 9/11, three hijacked airliners ran into buildings,
appalling America.
As to the meaning and of that event, and what led to it occurring, you
will find a lot of different views around the world.
So "knowledge" of it is lacking in a lot of ways, unless by knowledge
you mean a majority interpretation of a event held in one country or
culture.
On the day it occurred, Palestinians were dancing in Gaza City for the
strike against America - the ally of Israel that Osama had wrought...at
the same time, that van of Israeli tourists that were picked up in NYC
while videotaping it were also happy, as now America could see what
Israel had to put up with from the Palestinians.
So right there, you could have three different interpretations of one
event... so much for consistent "knowledge" about it.
In much the same way, the works of Aristotle became the unquestionable
backbone of philosophic knowledge in the middle ages, despite the fact
that most of Aristotle's fact were dead wrong, including such things as
the sun going around the Earth. So much for the knowledge of the middle
ages, where books tell you that particular stars pull on particular
types of plants and cause them to grow, or the old Einstein story about
giving his students the exact same physics test two years running, on
the grounds that the answers were different the second time around. :-D

books remain the gold standard. And, they come without
every
use fees...


Not for the trees, they don't.
I've probably have the makings of a 300 to 400 pound tree sitting on my
bookshelves, and when sitting on the stool, get to examine the writing
on sheets of paper made from a tree, while flushing other sheets of
paper made from a tree down the toilet.

Jeff Findley wrote:
Maybe.

At least with today's cheap digital projectors we've done away with
transparencies. Now you can project your PowerPoint documents on the wall
and even play them with audio! Cool right? Wrong! Even my kids spend more
time tweaking colors, fonts, and etc in their PowerPoint's than they do
putting in acual *content*.


There was criticism of NASA's PowerPoints after the debris impact on
Columbia making it look like this wasn't a problem, and causing people
not to be concerned about it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...082901444.html

Pat

Jeff Findley wrote:
I'd be leery of using other Internet sites as cross checks,
unless you actually find a site with primary sources (i.e. actual pictures
or scans of original documents).

Sometimes I wonder if kids these days know what a primary source is.

http://www.lib.washington.edu/Subject/History/RUSA/


The problem with primary sources is that if one is in error, and many
researchers are using it, then the error propagates into all the works
that it was referenced for; case in point - The Neanderthal Fraud:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...ce.sciencenews
A few years before that, there was The Himalayas Fraud:
http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web.../28150934.html
Finding two secondary sources that contain the same "facts" still isn't as
good as finding an actual primary source. People who do actual research are
looking for as many primary sources as possible.


If you are looking for facts (i.e. wingspan, weight, speed, production
numbers, etc) then those can be discovered via research...but
interpretation of facts is a lot more difficult.
The Japanese attacked Pearl harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941 -
Fact.
Their attack fleet included six aircraft carriers - Fact.
The reason for the attack was to prevent U.S. action against the
Japanese expansion in the Pacific due to Japan's need for natural
resources, particularly oil - Interpretation; that was probably the main
thrust of the attack, but other factors, such as the military
government's overconfidence in its military abilities, underestimation
of the U.S. reaction to such a attack, and a sense of divine destiny
being achieved also played a part, so the reasons are subject to
interpretation by the person writing about them.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
The Japanese attacked Pearl harbor on the morning of December 7,
1941 - Fact.

Well, December 8th in Japan right?-) So, is that an interpretation of
GMT/UTC?-)

rick jones
--
firebug n, the idiot who tosses a lit cigarette out his car window
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...

On May 6, 2:24 am, (Derek Lyons) wrote:
Andre Lieven wrote:
Well, I'm not saying that its all bad, but that systems changes such
as this one do change what is and isn't accessable. Several folks have
already pointed out that a lot of pre CD music is simply unavailable
on any digital format.

Oddly enough - I had a weird encounter with that just a few hours
ago...

Back in 1976 my uncle, who wanted to be a country star, released a
self published album of 'trucker' music to cash in on the CB craze. I
hadn't thought of it in years, until tonite I was looking at a list of
the top songs of 1975 (which includes C.W. McCall's _Convoy_) and was
reminded of Jodie's album..

Here's a novelty album which sold a few thousand copies and vanished
without a trace thirty plus years ago... Yet, when I googled, right
as the top result was a blog entry offering the album for download.
(Even odder? The entry was written just two days ago.)

Well, thats as good a case of synchronicity as I've seen in a while...

Its a case of the Internet being like a box of chocolates in Forrest
Gump: You never know what you're gonna get...

Sidebar on that song Convoy: The act that did that song, C. W. McCall,
my wife tells me, was the commercial side of an outfit that these days
is known as the TransSiberian Orchestra. Also, Paul Brandt from
Alberta,
Canada, recently covered Convoy quite well. Nifty video, too.

Ergo the new types of record turntables with direct to computer
connections so that one can play an LP right into one's hard drives.

Yep. Despite the above, much of my New Wave vinyl collection isn't
available, legally or otherwise, in a digital format. I need to get
one of those turntables soon.

Yeah, I could use one as well. I've got a lot of records that I have
checked
and found that there are no CDs, etc., of them.

Andre

On May 6, 12:42 pm, "Scott Hedrick" wrote:
"Andre Lieven" wrote in message

...

Several folks have already pointed out that a lot of pre CD
music is simply unavailable on any digital format. Ergo
the new types of record turntables with direct to computer connections
so that one can play an LP right into one's hard drives.

I'm considering getting one. I had a tiny collection of LPs but no
turntable. Finally got a used one, and my kids tore out the needle before I
had a chance to use it. I got an "all in one" for Christmas, and I am now
expanding my collection. I still have my H.R. PuffNStuff and Josie and the
Pussycats 45s.

Kewl. A post a little upthread pointed out some problems with at least
some
of them in the area of proper sound reproduction, so be careful about
finding
a good one.

"200" has got to be a classic. I found the last episode to be a bit
emotional. Can't believe Carter blew the chance to squeeze Thor's little
grey butt...

Oh, that episode was brilliant. " Sir, is that you ?... beats... "
No... ".

Oh, yeah! I was thinking it was a shame that Walter had never gotten to go
through the orifice, then comes that episode.

It was brilliant, especially when you consider that SF and comedy are
not
always the easiest of genres to combine.

Compared to when I was a young fan, we live in a multi media world
of plentiful SF, some of it actually good. Compared to a decade where
the TV highlights were The Starlost, Space 1999, and the original BSG,
a decade with ten years of SG-1, with Atlantis, the new BSG, not to
mention all the DC Animated Universe offerings is a good time.

Let's not mention "Stargate: Infinity" again...

Agreed. I note that its about to be offered on DVD. I won't be getting
one...

And, I do have the Space 1999 set and the first season of classic
BSG...

Andre