> The use of mathematics to produce sounds resembling real instruments quickly became obsolete once we could just go out and sample the real thing. Sampling is a boring, brute-force approach to sound synthesis, but it’s a relatively straightforward one, now we have the computing power and memory.
I guess this is true, but the next thing to come along that made me leave the DX7 at home was an Ensoniq EPS-16+.
There is an obvious sounds to pianoteq which is basic the best place ano modeler out there. We are closed to the real thing but so far at the same time.
The article mentions Sydney harbours 18 foot racing skiffs. These are very light 3 man racing vessels with far more sail than boat. They are very fast and require all 3 crew to be suspended on trapeze wires far from the hull, just to stay upright.
They are fun to watch because they flip and capsize a lot.
> A lot of prescience is just paying enough attention
Terry Gilliam said much the same thing when talking about making Brazil in the 1980s.
"People think I am a prophet and that Brazil described the world we’re living in now a few years ago. But we were living in that world then; people just weren’t paying attention the way they do now."
> draft obituaries ready for all living celebrities, which have to be constantly updated
I was responsible for doing this for a news radio network 30 years ago.
Mostly I was able to stay on top of things, but Princess Diana really ruined my weekend. No-one was ready for that one.
I'm very curious to know if you had an obituary written up for Princess Diana already, or did you only have them written up for celebrities that were "at risk"?
Was there any kind of cutoff in terms of age? Were there obituaries maintained for child actors and singers? So many questions but it's a very interesting topic!
My understanding is that pagers are typically radio Rx-only, and that it is not possible to track their location like a cellular device -- which is likely why Hezbollah chose to use them.
Though it would be possible to add this ability when the hardware was intercepted, a transmitting device is also easy to detect.
The AR924's in question are POCSAG pagers; broadcast from base stations and receive only at the pager end. Two way pagers are a thing but use an entirely different protocol for communications.
I'm not sure that Infinite Fun Space is used to simulate the real. I got the impression that IFS is where Minds go to unwind and play in synthetic universes with rules of their own imagining. And that humans cannot really even properly conceive them.
The Culture is also very cautious about running high fidelity simulations for ethical reasons. Useful simulations approach the real in fidelity which makes them problematic to delete -- But they still do it.
I guess this is true, but the next thing to come along that made me leave the DX7 at home was an Ensoniq EPS-16+.
https://www.vintagesynth.com/ensoniq/eps-16