Interesting thread from Hydrogenaudio responding to this NYT article covering the merit (or otherwise) of audiophile equipment & compressed music. The discussion includes this stellar quote from Gordon Hold, founder of Stereophile:

Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me.

Disagree? I have some cables to sell you.

Local noise merchants selected by Lou Reed for the Vivid Festival Noise Night - sounds deafening.

Kotaku:

When I started Mass Effect 2, I had Shepard wear a helmet. I wanted the statistical advantages that came with any one of them. That’s a choice of math over aesthetics, of course, my standard priorities while playing a game. That’s a sound strategy for success in a virtual world: Be better at something; don’t care how you look doing it.

But not seeing Shepard’s face bothered me more with each muffled conversation. I realized that I valued emotional expression in Mass Effect 2 over a 5% health bonus.

Reminds me of the travesty that was Sly Stallone’s Judge Dredd, where he spent lost of the movie helmetless despite one of the key JD themes being he never never never removed his helm.

Ryan Tate (from Gawker’s Valleywag) fired off an incensed email to Sir Steve after watching an iPad TV advert proclaiming it was a revolution:

If Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company?

Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with “revolution”?

Revolutions are about freedom.

Jobs:

Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin', and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.

And it goes on. Even if you can’t stand the guy, it’s fascinating to see such an influential figure responding to Joe Public emails.

Cédric Delsaux via The Guardian

I didn’t understand Square when it first launched. Why would I want to use a credit card to sell a couch to my friend via my iPhone? Cash will do, or an IOU. And I don’t sell stuff to strangers enough to make it seem worthwhile.

Maybe they got the same feedback, because their new video makes more sense - it’s not a technology for the consumer, it’s for the small business sellers. I started to get it. 

And today at the local community markets I finally got it. The markets are full of micro businesses brewing artisan cider, hand crafting irresistible sweets, and growing organic veg. And you have to pay them all in cash, which is kind of ok, but I overhear a lot of “anyone know where an ATM is” and “I only have $10” comments.

If those vendors had an iPhone/Android with Square, all those problems go away. Plus they have an audit trail, the customer has a receipt, there’s less worry handling cash, etc.

They’re trying to muscle in on the small sellers who can’t afford the fees or complexity of the Big Credit Providers. Good luck to them - pity it’s another “US Only” invention.

Anyone want to buy a used couch?

Douglas Adams on the Internet, in 1999:

A couple of years or so ago I was a guest on Start The Week, and I was authoritatively informed by a very distinguished journalist that the whole Internet thing was just a silly fad like ham radio in the fifties, and that if I thought any different I was really a bit naïve. It is a very British trait - natural, perhaps, for a country which has lost an empire and found Mr Blobby - to be so suspicious of change.

But the change is real. I don’t think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn’t becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it’s very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people ‘over the Internet.’ They don’t bother to mention when criminals use the telephone or the M4, or discuss their dastardly plans ‘over a cup of tea,’ though each of these was new and controversial in their day.

10+ years later his article is still spot on.

Beautifully done:

The library has no external dependencies, and all the glyphs, scores, beams, ties, etc. are positioned and rendered entirely in JavaScript

The Guardian:

Few other artists had taken the pop concert into quite such daring territory; its only serious precedent was David Bowie’s 1974 Diamond Dogs tour. There were 13 people on stage, 17 costume changes and 24 songs - primarily from her first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart - scattered over three distinctly theatrical acts. Her brother John declaimed poetry, Simon Drake performed illusions and magic tricks, and at the centre was a barefoot Bush, still only 20 years old.

Out today. Go buy it. Now.