Byron Dickens

Yep. That's for sure. My wife, upon hitting a certain magic age, started getting ads for frumpy clothes and wrinkle creams. Even more disconcerting, articles started popping up about what not to wear (or what too wear) after 50, what to do (or not do) with your hair after 50, etc. Never mind she never searched for anything like that. Never mind that she's much closer to, say, Halle Berry or Demi Moore at 50 than to your grandma at 50. How do these ad companies know she hit that magic number? She certainly didn't tell them. Google and Facebook told them, that's how. I also started getting ads for, um, certain "male enhancement" products. Never searched for such things. Don't need 'em. (See aforementioned description of wife.)

Now that we've totally gone off track because someone wanted to get all butthurt for some reason over an offhand comment about Big Tech and data mining.... There's lots of reasons software might be "free." Most of them are not sinister. Cakewalk, for instance, seems to be subsidized by the parent companies' other ventures. Other software follows this model. DaVinci Resolve, for instance. The free version is subsidized by Blackmagic Design's cameras, I/O devices, etc. A lot of other software is free for personal use and costs $$ for business use. Some is what's called "freemium:" basic version is no charge and you can pay for more features. Some is supported by a foundation. Firefox, for example, is supported by the Mozilla Foundation. Some of it is "loss leader." Isotope, for the cost of your email address and some basic information, gives away stuff like Vinyl and Vocal Doubler in the hopes that you'll drop serious money on RX7 or Ozone.

Aww, ain't that cute. And for those of you following at home, Starship Trooper or whatever his name is must have failed logic class. He might be able to parrot the words, but he has no idea how to use them. See, you don't get to just throw out big words, some even in Latin, and automatically win the debate. No, you have to demonstrate how the argument is fallacious. Mere accusations don't cut it. But, mr. Starship here doesn't even address any of my points. Instead, he tries to discredit me through the use of belittlement and ridicule. And that, my friends, is called the Argumentum ad Hominem. (See, I can use Latin too.) Well it looks like you say it even when nobody has said that. But don't let it slow you down. Continue to attempt to provoke only fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and offer no solutions. You may have a future in television news. And if Starship Trooper was half as bright as he wants you to believe, he would have noticed that I was quoting someone from the article cited. Or maybe that's what he thinks "appeal to authority" is. Well, you're the biggest ***** in this thread, that's for sure. And here, folks, we have the fallacy of false analogy. We all know who Safeway is and what they do. They are pretty upfront about what they are getting from you & what they are doing with it. They are probably going to hold on to my information a whole lot tighter than Facebook, that's for sure. But who the hell are cookiebot.com, fastly.net, nucdn.net, onesignal.com, optimizely.com, permutive.com and servenobid.com? What do they do with my info? I don't remember signing up for anything with them. But here they are trying to trying to put tracking cookies on my device. Except my ad and cookie blockers stopped them. If mr. Starship was as swift as he thinks he is, he would surely be familiar with such. Talk about Reductio ad Absurdum and strawman! 'Cause that's them right there.

"Over the last 16 months, as I've debated this issue around the world, every single time somebody has said to me, 'I don't really worry about invasions of privacy because I don't have anything to hide,' I always say the same thing to them. I get out a pen. I write down my email address. I say, 'Here's my email address. What I want you to do when you get home is email me the passwords to all of your email accounts, not just the nice, respectable work one in your name, but all of them, because I want to be able to just troll through what it is you're doing online, read what I want to read and publish whatever I find interesting. After all, if you're not a bad person, if you're doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide.' Not a single person has taken me up on that offer. I check that email account religiously all the time. It's a very desolate place." Glenn Greenwald https://www.zdnet.com/article/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-heres-where-to-send-your-passwords/ "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged" Cardinal de Richelieu https://www.consumernotice.org/data-protection/mining/ https://www.consumernotice.org/data-protection/breaches/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/21/google-chrome-has-become-surveillance-software-its-time-switch/ https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-report-exposes-explains-big-techs-personal-data-trackers-lurk-social-media But the real issues isn't government surveillance. It's much less worrisome for the .gov to have your information b/c they are going to keep it secured. It isn't even Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. having it so much as their advertising partners. Not to mention that those companies have proven themselves to be very poor stewards of the information you entrust to them. I see you saying "ooh, advertising. Whoop de do." But these ads aren't just simple little tv commercials or magazine ads. They mine personal data about you. Some of them deliver malware. They build a very personal, very intimate picture of you. And who has access to it? You just don't know. No one does. You're not concerned with your email getting pwned? What is in there? Personal information. Some of which I'll bet you would not want to be made public. What did the hackers get between the time they got in and you (finally) got the notice and changed your password? You think your information isn't valuable? How do you think Google got to be a multi billion dollar corporation? Why do you think the information from these data breaches gets sold on the dark web? And why the hell do you think a "free" flashlight app wants access to your contacts? Look at the links. This isn't woo woo David Icke/ Alex Jones stuff. This comes from mainstream journalists and actual cyber security people.

None of those mentioned are free. You pay dearly for them in the form of having your privacy invaded and your personal data mined and sold.

Start with your orchestration and arrangement. If you have too many parts, the ear can't make out what's going on. If you have instruments occupying the same frequency ranges, they mask each other. Even in a massive Late Romantic symphony with a 100+ piece orchestra, you usually have at most four parts - or voices - going. (think 4-part harmony. ) Parts are doubled with different instruments and across octaves. Sometimes a line is harmonized, but there are still really only four distinct, unique parts. Also, instruments come in and out; no one plays constantly except the strings. After that, you need to use what's called complementary EQ. The gist of it is that if you have two instruments occupying the same frequency, you use EQ to carve out a space for each one. Kick drum and bass are a common example. You might boost 100Hz on the kick & then cut it on the bass while boosting 80Hz on the bass and cutting that frequency on the kick. That's just a rough example to give you the idea.

Shredder or not, the best guitarists are the ones who have their own unique voice on the instrument.

I wouldn't know, since I don't have any truly crappy guitars.? Seriously, though, you ain't gonna want to hear this but the best solution to your timing (or any other skill) issues is practice. Build your skills and they're YOURS. Forever. True, you have to maintain them, or they diminish. But once you've had them, they're much easier to get back. Oh, but that's so much WORK! And takes so much time! Yeah, but so is dicking around fixing stuff when it could have just been played right to begin with. Tone? Two words: Dimebag Darrell. His tone sucked, IMO, but his playing was Phenomenal.

Or, you could get a drummer who can play in time....

Ain't none.

So, then, you're cool with using the deaths of young men & women to shamelessly promote the worship of the Almighty Dollar?

Ah, Memorial Day. When we pause to remember all the service members who fought and died so you could get a great deal on a mattress.

Censorship is a function of government, not private companies

https://sonicscoop.com/2016/11/10/diy-studio-design-part-2-build-cost-effective-bass-traps/ Fixing your room will do more for you than all the sample libraries and reverb in the world.

Didn't realize that interface was discontinued

5 years into it, I would be very surprised if there were NOT any W10 drivers yet.

I'm pretty sure that Halion loads soundfonts as well.

15W tube amp is still PLENTY loud. A 5 or even 1 watter will be enough. Not very much cheaper, though.

Fact check: Table 3. Deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and pneumonia reported to NCHS by jurisdiction of occurrence, United States. Week ending 2/1/2020 to 4/4/2020.* Data as of April 8, 2020 New Jersey: 43 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm

Don't really like Corona all that much. Holding out for the Warsteiner virus instead:

I think it's been remarkably civil and hasn't been driven off the deep end. Everything a spirited discussion/ debate should be but, alas, seldom is these days.

That's really not fair to let just 99.99% of the politicians give the rest a bad name.

Quite frankly, I am much more concerned about the panic and stupidity than I am about the virus itself.