Inner Workings

of a regular guy

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FBI quietly forms secretive Net-surveillance unit

infoneer-pulse:

The FBI has recently formed a secretive surveillance unit with an ambitious goal: to invent technology that will let police more readily eavesdrop on Internet and wireless communications.

The establishment of the Quantico, Va.-based unit, which is also staffed by agents from the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency, is a response to technological developments that FBI officials believe outpace law enforcement’s ability to listen in on private communications.

While the FBI has been tight-lipped about the creation of its Domestic Communications Assistance Center, or DCAC — it declined to respond to requests made two days ago about who’s running it, for instance — CNET has pieced together information about its operations through interviews and a review of internal government documents.

» via CNET

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The very notion of what a brand is is being radically stretched,” O’Connor told me. “We’re in an age where we’re all told that we have to create our personal brand… so we have to begin to question what that very word ‘brand’ means. It meant something large and rather expansive, and I think we’re moving away from that.
Rory O’Connor: Traditional media companies cling to their brands at their peril » Nieman Journalism Lab (via infoneer-pulse)

(via infoneer-pulse)

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I want to get into carpentry…

or sculpture when I’m older. Music is cool and all but there’s a bunch of other stuff I wanna do too. And even within music, I hardly wanna be in the spotlight. I’d rather be writing or mixing the tracks down. I’m waaaay too shy to perform in front of people unless I’m just playing an instrument or something. I’m trying to get back into drawing soon. I’ve always been a doodler. You’d be hard pressed to find a piece of paper in any my notebooks that I hadn’t scribbled something on. I used to think I had like…a problem or something lol. Maybe I’ll paint? So yea I wanna diversify a little bit in terms of my hobbies. Maybe take up writing. Who knows…but I have time. 

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I think Maschine

is more fitting for a sample-based workflow. So when people swear by it as a standalone production center I kind of take it with a grain of salt because you have to keep in mind the kind of music being produced. To use the Maschine’s software component for producing tracks that may implement more than just sound samples that are to be sliced, chopped, rearranged, etc. is kind of a roundabout way of doing things. At best, it could be used as a vst for sampling. 

But the thing is people exalt the Maschine when being compared to the Spark, the argument is usually something along the lines of: “The spark is just a drum machine; and a hybrid at that. Maschine is a full production workstation AND a drum machine.” But the mashcine has no sound generation capability unlike the spark; it’s all sample-based. the spark implements drum synthesis and so you can make your own toms, kicks, snares, etc. But you also have the option to sample if that’s what you’re accustomed to. I don’t think either controller should be used outside the context of a DAW, though. To use either one as a standalone to produce a whole track is somewhat of a stretch to me if there are a good few bits in the production that are original material…