"An audience member unhappy with the sound in their part of the auditorium can change seats, but we [concert pianists] cannot," Byron Janis says. "Therefore the position of the piano on stage is of utmost importance—moving it only a foot in either direction can make an enormous difference in the sound and therefore in the performance."
Not necessarily the firstest with the mostest.
Using the acoustics of gunfire to calculate the location of snipers. It doesn't work the way you might imagine.
Guitarist Barry Finnerty remembers his bandmate, friend, and rehab mentor.
"The United States Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) spectrum chart, dated October 2003, depicts the radio frequency spectrum allocations to radio services operated within the United States. This chart graphically partitions the radio frequency spectrum, extending from 9kHz to 300GHz, into over 450 frequency bands, and uses distinct colors to distinguish the allocations for the thirty different radio services."
So string theory <I>is</I> good for something?
Tony, a mechanic friend of mine, once ran down for me his "national characteristics" theory of automobile engineering. Germans, he said, love precision engineering but don't take repair into account, so their engines are always placed in wells so perfectly proportioned that skinned knuckles are inevitable. British cars, he said, are marketed to a nation of tinkerers, hence the existence of dual carburetors. And Italian cars? "Well, let's just say they all resemble espresso makers." <I>He</I> said it—and he <I>was</I> the proverbial Fiat mechanic named Tony.
Out of all the audiophile phrases, none stirs the hearts of music lovers like "true to the master tape"—not even "the absolute sound" of the original instruments, which even audio idealists realize is simply too much to demand. But true to the sound of the recorded master tape, now surely that's a goal within reach.
Okay, now things are getting confusing. Hot on the heels of his <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/010107hacked/">announcement</A> that he had hacked HD DVD's Advanced Access Content System (AACS) digital rights management (DRM), muslix64 claimed to have done the same to Blu-Ray's implementation, with the help of anti-DRM crusader Janvitos. You can read the whole saga at the <A HREF="http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120869">Doom9 forum</A> but we'll just give you the juicy bits: "In less than 24 hours, without any Blu-ray equipment, but with the help of Janvitos, I managed to decrypt and play a Blu-ray media file using my known-plaintext attack."
Huckleberry is one smug kitty.