gardano

In 13th century music, the major 3rd actually comes across as a dissonance, and also to mention that music during that period was taught as a species of mathematics.

Music theory is as easy (and as difficult) as trig. Learn the language. Learn the axioms. Understand the assumptions, please.

And also understand that those assumptions can change at any time, depending on the musical period you're looking at!

Given that in the first few pages of this article, the author never mentioned temperament (tuning) systems, I had a heck of a time parsing the argument.

Well-Tempered? Equal Tempered? Mean Tone? Pythagoric?

I had a hard time even concentrating on the argument when the basic assumption regarding horizontal (melodic) vs vertical (harmonic) had some badly unstated assumptions.

Should I have kept reading?

You read my mind. I'd love to see this feature, too.

My point was less about what they are like, but more alluding to the fact that they are their own nations.

and do native american countries/territories count too?

That was my first thought too.

Would it be even possible in today's world to have a country that is purposefully underdeveloped/feudal, but without an oppressive regime?

To me, the vote was actually non-binary.

There were the Remain votes, the Leave votes, but then there the Protest votes -- which from my perspective were votes that said "I want to Remain, but dammit I don't like how things are going right now".

I've found the other way around to be my reality on Monday Mornings cough bittorrenting when my network is somehow constrained.

Tumblr refuses to load the `next page`, and I don't want to hit the refresh keystroke combination because I really really don't want to go back to the top of the "page". I simply want the "next page" to load correctly.

That was my first thought too. A return to nation-states a la ancient Greece.

I have nothing but respect for the gentlemen running the above websites, and cast no blame on those that prefer podcasts (indeed, it would be strange if marco in particular didn't have a podcast). None of the aforementioned sites are filled with advertising.

Perhaps I am a too-small demographic nowadays such that I prefer to read my commentary rather than listen to it.

Naive question: Are our ad-blocked web sessions killing the small guys?

My morning routine starts with:

• loopisight.com

• daringfireball.com

• marco.org

• verynicewebsite.net

• inessential.com

and with some exceptions, posts these days are just links to podcasts (which I don't have a desire to listen to). I've been told that it is because podcasts are an actual source of income, whereas blog posts are not so much a way of earning a living.

Makes me wonder if it is that podcasts are more lucrative, or that blog posts are no longer lucrative.

Edit: And did ad-blocked loss of advertising play a role in MacNN's demise?

Back in the late 80s, my brother (baroque cello), a friend and I (Baroque Violins) started busking in Harvard Square for fun.

One of our favourites was the Mozart Organ Sonatas. We generally made enough money to buy beers at the end of the evening.

I guess my biggest memory was the time we started playing in front of Au Bon Pain when we just started out. I thought we were doing OK until some guy, with a grim fierce smile, took out a fistful of pennies and chucked them, one at a time, into the violin case. Apparently we had taken over the spot where a much-loved group regularly played. He made it more than obvious that we were not welcome there. We had no idea there was politics involved!

We moved on quickly, with our tails between our legs.

One of the nicest things we got was a sketch by a local artist. It's still got pride of place in my violin case.

I immediately thought of Sam Vimes too. Well done!

In an ideal world, what you say is probably correct.

In the real world, the Streisand Effect comes into play.

I really want to know this too. Anybody?

It's funny because it's true.

I wanted to mention the radio series as well! When I (re)read the books, I always hear the radio series in my head -- which is just and right, I might add.

I enjoyed that built-in ambiguity in your comment. I know which 2 I enjoy!

Dammit, now I've gone down a Terry Pratchett black hole again. Thanks, cujanovic.

While I disagree with the tone of your comment, I would have to agree that Apple has made it a good and responsible action to oppose such open-ended Federal requests.

Agreed, that C# doesn't inherently turn you into an architect. It's more like C#/Java has a culture of 'architect'.

Objective-C is seriously in MVC-Land (or maybe MVVM-land too), and pretty much discourages the more convoluted design patterns that I saw back in my server dev days.

When my primary platform moved from C#/ASP.NET to Objective-C, it took me a while to realise that one of my biggest reliefs was that I didn't have to deal with "software architects", and just to get on with coding. I began to realise that so much of that coding came down to "justify my existence" (as architect) -- needless complexity to check off a box from the gang of 4.

Mind you, having an architecture in mind is of primary importance, but dealing with such complexity and endless Factories made it impossible to follow the code.

And yes, I know that server-side implementations have an inherent complexity that most client-side apps lack.

I believe you've hit the nail on the head.

I can maybe understand rage-posting once, in a momentary weakness, but man, this guy just can't put it down and go for a coffee or a smoke…

Fascinating. Thanks!

As a rank amateur, I have a question. Is the question of speciation a useful construct anymore? I mean, birds are dinosaurs and (some) dinosaurs were birds.

There is Neanderthal and Denisovian DNA in Homo Sapiens. Is the definition of what is a species tantamount to the legendary medieval argument of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

I'm not trying to be snarky. I'm curious as to the usefulness of the way we're approaching categorisation.

Genuine, but ill-informed, question.

You hit the nail on the head for me. Exactly how I feel.

An article I read way back in the early days of the internet said people were in one of two categories: Searchers and Navigators -- that is, people who were more comfortable getting what they want by searching, and people who were more comfortable getting what they want by navigating a hierarchy.

That really struck me, because I'm of the latter type, and it makes me somewhat uncomfortable to have a search paradigm thrust upon me.

When I was prevented from upgrading Xcode/Swift for a project last year because of podfile dependencies, that cemented in my mind that every time I include a dependency, I'm putting myself at risk.

If I can spend half a day writing the code myself, I will -- because I know it will prevent headaches down the road. Yes, yes, I know any code I write adds the probability of bugs down the road. But at least the roadblock would be of my own doing, and not dependent on if/when the package maintainer upgrades their stuff.

That's something I never understood (and admittedly never researched either). Isn't there something in the constitution about freedom of association?

My first thought was civil disobedience on the part of Apple's developers too… But I couldn't make it work out in my head how that could result in a positive outcome.