Hugh Verdam wrote:

No pun intended--Is the unavailability of the Rumour enough to start a
rumour that Kurzweil is dead?

No idea about the company.

But I thought this article on the man was interesting:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/diet....mmortality.ap/

Personally, I think he's completely and totally deluded. Maybe he
doesn't know enough probability or thermodynamics to know that it's
impossible to achieve immortality by physical means, or maybe his
definition of "immortality" differs from mine. My definition of
"immortality" includes that you will live forever. Which differs
from living a very, very long time.

Anyway, back to audio: is that mixer thing in the foreground really
that wide and short, or is it the camera lense?

- Logan

I just don't have enough money to live forever...
(I've seen the future, I can't afford it)

--
Steven Sena
XS Sound Recording
www.xssound.com

"Logan Shaw" wrote in message
...
Hugh Verdam wrote:

No pun intended--Is the unavailability of the Rumour enough to start a
rumour that Kurzweil is dead?

No idea about the company.

But I thought this article on the man was interesting:


http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/diet....mmortality.ap/

Personally, I think he's completely and totally deluded. Maybe he
doesn't know enough probability or thermodynamics to know that it's
impossible to achieve immortality by physical means, or maybe his
definition of "immortality" differs from mine. My definition of
"immortality" includes that you will live forever. Which differs
from living a very, very long time.

Anyway, back to audio: is that mixer thing in the foreground really
that wide and short, or is it the camera lense?

- Logan

Personally, I think he's completely and totally deluded. Maybe he
doesn't know enough probability or thermodynamics to know that it's
impossible to achieve immortality by physical means, or maybe his
definition of "immortality" differs from mine. My definition of
"immortality" includes that you will live forever. Which differs
from living a very, very long time.



Hmm, wishing for immortality seems to me to require the belief that this
existence is all there is, and there just is no data to support or disprove
this notion. Just another example of the arrogance of humnans perhaps, that
he thinks he knows what the f**k is going on here. I agree with your
delusion theory.

In article writes:

Anyone with inside info?

There was a discussion about this here a month or so ago. Kurzweil is
owned by Young Chang, which apparently is dead. But there's another
company putting things back together.

The Kurzweil products are still apparently being made and shipped, but
I imagine that dealers, uncertain of the future, aren't pushing them.
If you want as close to the inside scoop as you'll get, I'd suggest
that you call Swee****er Sound. They've been a Kurzweil specialist for
year and if anyone knows what's available and what's not, it would be
Swee****er.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"Logan Shaw" wrote in message
...
Hugh Verdam wrote:

No pun intended--Is the unavailability of the Rumour enough to start a
rumour that Kurzweil is dead?

No idea about the company.

But I thought this article on the man was interesting:


http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/diet....mmortality.ap/

"***As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight to
10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea.*** "

"Ray, wanna grab some lunch?"
"No thanks, I just had 83.33 suppliments - I'm stuffed!"

Some of the problems with humans living forever:
1.) in about ten years' worth of nobody dying except from unnatural causes,
the planet would be so overcrowded, that we wouldn't have the capacity to
produce 250 suppliments & 10 cups of green tea for everyone, and as a result
many of us would starve to death.
2.) The IRS would raise the retirement age to 875.
3.) You could NEVER get a good tee time.
4.) No more movies like "Love Story" or "Brian's Song" (OK, wait, that would
be a GOOD thing!!!)

Ya know, that article just reinforces that sometimes there's a very thin
line between genius & wacko.

Neil Henderson

Hugh Verdam wrote:

Here's something weird about Swee****er. (Partly why I'm asking
here). All of my e-mails to my sales guy or otherwise are getting
returned with the message below: (to which you will say, "well, just
CALL them," to which I will reply "my silly life is just planes,
trains, and automobiles right now. I will call when I get a chance,
but I wish they would let me deal with them in the way and time that
is convenient for me. In the meantime, if I see that zzounds or
mercenary or anybody says IN STOCK, I'll just get it on-line there.")

The 550 message isn't very helpful, but it looks to me like you have
probably triggered their spam filter. Oh, well. You can always buy
from the competition.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article writes:

Here's something weird about Swee****er. (Partly why I'm asking
here). All of my e-mails to my sales guy or otherwise are getting
returned with the message below:

They shouldn't make it that hard to contact them, but it's possible
that the addresses you're using really don't exist. Lots of companies
and even private web sites are obscuring their obvious e-mail address
to reduce the amount of spam coming in. If you go to their web site
and click on "contact us" you'll find a fill-in-the-blanks form which
has, among other things, "Information request" as one of the subjects
you can pick from a pull-down menu.

Try that. Or just keep their toll-free phone number in your pocket and
give them a call from an airport while waiting for your next plane.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Scott Dorsey wrote:

The 550 message isn't very helpful, but it looks to me like you have
probably triggered their spam filter. Oh, well. You can always buy
from the competition.

Maybe their mommy filter found the same "****" in their name that
Fletcher's did.

How ****in' funny _is_ that? g (And here I thought he'd cleaned up his
act...) vbg

--
ha

If you look at elephants, who live a substantial time for a wild animal,
they don't even start having babies until maybe 40, so the whole life cycle
should slow down if humans were to "naturally" achieve a greater life span.
The problem now is that we're getting a greater life span, but for most
people it's not a life span with additional quality of life, so to many it's
just that many more days, weeks, months or years in their own personal hell.

But if the whole life cycle were to naturally be extended, then the terms of
our lives would do so accordingly. Child rearing years would start much
later, be less fruitful, and last for a longer period of time (just the last
100 years or so shows a marked difference in when people start families and
how much later they can have children and how many children they have).
People would be able to learn and appreciate numerous different disciplines
in multiple lifespans, thus keeping themselves involved with more than just
sitting around for 30 years waiting to die.

Sure, it might be harder to get a Tee time, but then if you're young for the
first 400 years, most golf courses would have basketball courts and swimming
pools for your enjoyment while you wait! g And new movies about death
would be the next big conspiracy theory!

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio
http://blogs.salon.com/0004478/

"Neil Henderson" wrote in message
om...

"Logan Shaw" wrote in message
...
Hugh Verdam wrote:

No pun intended--Is the unavailability of the Rumour enough to start a
rumour that Kurzweil is dead?

No idea about the company.

But I thought this article on the man was interesting:



http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/diet....mmortality.ap/

"***As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight
to
10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea.*** "

"Ray, wanna grab some lunch?"
"No thanks, I just had 83.33 suppliments - I'm stuffed!"

Some of the problems with humans living forever:
1.) in about ten years' worth of nobody dying except from unnatural
causes,
the planet would be so overcrowded, that we wouldn't have the capacity to
produce 250 suppliments & 10 cups of green tea for everyone, and as a
result
many of us would starve to death.
2.) The IRS would raise the retirement age to 875.
3.) You could NEVER get a good tee time.
4.) No more movies like "Love Story" or "Brian's Song" (OK, wait, that
would
be a GOOD thing!!!)

Ya know, that article just reinforces that sometimes there's a very thin
line between genius & wacko.

Neil Henderson

My wife's work has a language filter. I've made some offhanded remarks in a
couple of emails to her (not about her) that were kicked back for
inappropriate language.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio
http://blogs.salon.com/0004478/

"hank alrich" wrote in message
...
Scott Dorsey wrote:

The 550 message isn't very helpful, but it looks to me like you have
probably triggered their spam filter. Oh, well. You can always buy
from the competition.

Maybe their mommy filter found the same "****" in their name that
Fletcher's did.

How ****in' funny _is_ that? g (And here I thought he'd cleaned up his
act...) vbg

--
ha

Ah, but what happens if you just get tired of life, or you just cannot or
do not want to understand or associate with all the new people on the
planet? How well would a Victorian or a Founding Father be faring today for
example? If suicide isn't an option you just have to wait for your
miserable prolonged existence to end. Grim.

Ben Franklin would be happy! g

Besides, I was just referring to long lived individuals, not immortality. I
make the wild hair assumption that immortality would make any individual
insane. Think "Groundhog Day" for eternity.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio
http://blogs.salon.com/0004478/

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message
...
Ah, but what happens if you just get tired of life, or you just cannot or
do not want to understand or associate with all the new people on the
planet? How well would a Victorian or a Founding Father be faring today
for
example? If suicide isn't an option you just have to wait for your
miserable prolonged existence to end. Grim.

"Roger W. Norman" wrote in message
...
Ben Franklin would be happy! g

Besides, I was just referring to long lived individuals, not immortality.
I
make the wild hair assumption that immortality would make any individual
insane. Think "Groundhog Day" for eternity.


It'd be interesting to see how different people reacted to 'immortality' oe
even an incredibly long lifespan. If I were to become immortal with my
current mindset, I'd likely become crazy. Hell, the world already seems like
Wal-mart at 3 A.M. sometimes. I'd surely degenerate and quite possibly do
evil as I became more and more cynical. I suspect that's true of a lot of
people.

But on the other hand, a funny thing happens to people as they get very old
in that many seem to become more experiential, I suppose having been through
so much they tend to take things in stride and have a very different idea of
'what really matters' than do the middle aged.

It could be that a person could attain this 'wisdom' while maintaining
youthful vigor and presence of mind, and manage to do and think things that
we don't have an inkling of. This is assuming that the behavior of the aged
isn't just part of a biological cycle, which it very well could be.

One interesting caveat of very long lifespans is the whole business of
memory. Is there limited 'storage space' in the brain? Would one's basic
identity, the memory of who one is and where one is from, be 'overwritten'
in time with more recent engrams? It's possible a person that lived for a
thousand years or so would have many distinct identiites over that span of
time, each having limited, if any, knowledge of the others.

jb

Steven Sena wrote:
I just don't have enough money to live forever...
(I've seen the future, I can't afford it)

tell you the truth sir, someone just bought it.

I saw kurzweil at AES 2003; he made some pretty profound claims
regarding the advancement of technology in general and nanotech in
particular. I assume the immortality claims are related to nanotech.

I'd like nanotech robots which could trace cables and clean/fix bad
contacts, personally.

--
Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." |
The United States is the one true country. The US is just. The US
is fair. The US respects its citizens. The US loves you. We have
always been at war against terrorism.

One interesting caveat of very long lifespans is the whole business of
memory. Is there limited 'storage space' in the brain? Would one's basic
identity, the memory of who one is and where one is from, be 'overwritten'
in time with more recent engrams? It's possible a person that lived for a
thousand years or so would have many distinct identiites over that span of
time, each having limited, if any, knowledge of the others.

jb


This is actually not a million miles away from re-incarnation. If either
were happening, how would we know?

Gareth Magennis wrote:

This is actually not a million miles away from re-incarnation. If either
were happening, how would we know?

Taxes.

--
ha

"hank alrich" wrote in message
...
Gareth Magennis wrote:

This is actually not a million miles away from re-incarnation. If either
were happening, how would we know?

Taxes.

ROFL! Good one.

Neil Henderson

"hank alrich" wrote in message
...
Gareth Magennis wrote:

This is actually not a million miles away from re-incarnation. If
either
were happening, how would we know?

Taxes.

--
ha

Yeah, you could be sure that even if you didn't know who you were, somebody
would, and they'd want money.

jb

Based on what we know of the brain today, things repeated tend to strengthen
synaptic bonds, whilst new experiences make new bonds. There really doesn't
seem to be any limit to the number of new synaptic pathways that can be
created. However, as one grows older it's a natural element of losing bonds
from disuse, so people's names slip one's mind, etc., as time goes on an you
don't think of them. Faces would be the first to go because that takes
bonds throughout the brain, numbers would go pretty quickly too, just from
the disuse, like an old telephone number. But most things that had some
serious part in your life seem to hold at least a basic if tenuous link and
can be brought back with work. Things that were key to your early life seem
never to leave even if you can't usually put your mental finger on things.
Mostly it can be seen in people with alzheimers who somehow remember things
from their childhood with great clarity but can't remember their spouse's
name.

So I don't think anything would necessarily get over-written, per se, it's
just that more room would be available for newer bonds than maintaining
older unused ones. But since our identity is molded in our youth, I doubt
we'd ever lose that.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio
http://blogs.salon.com/0004478/

"reddred" wrote in message
...

"Roger W. Norman" wrote in message
...
Ben Franklin would be happy! g

Besides, I was just referring to long lived individuals, not
immortality.
I
make the wild hair assumption that immortality would make any individual
insane. Think "Groundhog Day" for eternity.


It'd be interesting to see how different people reacted to 'immortality'
oe
even an incredibly long lifespan. If I were to become immortal with my
current mindset, I'd likely become crazy. Hell, the world already seems
like
Wal-mart at 3 A.M. sometimes. I'd surely degenerate and quite possibly do
evil as I became more and more cynical. I suspect that's true of a lot of
people.

But on the other hand, a funny thing happens to people as they get very
old
in that many seem to become more experiential, I suppose having been
through
so much they tend to take things in stride and have a very different idea
of
'what really matters' than do the middle aged.

It could be that a person could attain this 'wisdom' while maintaining
youthful vigor and presence of mind, and manage to do and think things
that
we don't have an inkling of. This is assuming that the behavior of the
aged
isn't just part of a biological cycle, which it very well could be.

One interesting caveat of very long lifespans is the whole business of
memory. Is there limited 'storage space' in the brain? Would one's basic
identity, the memory of who one is and where one is from, be 'overwritten'
in time with more recent engrams? It's possible a person that lived for a
thousand years or so would have many distinct identiites over that span of
time, each having limited, if any, knowledge of the others.

jb

Nah, they'd just get bored and start using the raw material for some other
fun things! g

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio
http://blogs.salon.com/0004478/

"Aaron J. Grier" wrote in message
...
Steven Sena wrote:
I just don't have enough money to live forever...
(I've seen the future, I can't afford it)

tell you the truth sir, someone just bought it.

I saw kurzweil at AES 2003; he made some pretty profound claims
regarding the advancement of technology in general and nanotech in
particular. I assume the immortality claims are related to nanotech.

I'd like nanotech robots which could trace cables and clean/fix bad
contacts, personally.

--
Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." |
The United States is the one true country. The US is just. The US
is fair. The US respects its citizens. The US loves you. We have
always been at war against terrorism.

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 20:36:51 GMT, (hank alrich)
wrote:

Gareth Magennis wrote:

This is actually not a million miles away from re-incarnation. If either
were happening, how would we know?

Taxes.

This brings up an incentive to live a long, healthy life (for US
citizens), presuming you're not so young that it goes away before you
reti If you live longer you'll get back more of the money you've
put into Social Security.

I've read about Kurzweil's interest in longevity while reading
related things (such as http://transhumanism.org) - he's far from the
only one interested in and promoting these ideas (a seminal book is
Drexler's "Engines of Creation" readable online at
http://www.foresight.org/EOC/) - the Transhumanism movement is fairly
new, but has grown greatly. I'm not as gung-ho about it as Kurzweil
and many others appear to be, but I do find it interesting.
The best current technology for extending lifetime appears to be
Caloric Reduction with Optimal Nutrition (CRON, or just CR), meaning
you eat a lot less food (about 1000 to 1500 calories a day), and eat
combinations of only the most healthy foods to insure you get enough
vitamins and minerals while keeping calories low. The main proponent
has been the late Roy Walford in books such as "The 120 Year Diet."
There's a relevant website at http://www.calorierestriction.org/. I
do believe CR does what it claims, but I so far haven't stuck to the
diet - well, I do eat more vegetables and such than I did before first
reading about it.
Kurzweil appears to be doing something similar (perhaps not CR, but
certainly a healthier diet than the average American) so he can
maintain his good health until the "singularity" and future medical
technologies for further longevity are developed. I feel this (things
such as nanotechnology that will repair/rejuvenate the body) is very
speculative, and may not happen in our lifetimes (even if extended by
CR).

-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley

Ben Bradley wrote:
The best current technology for extending lifetime appears to be
Caloric Reduction with Optimal Nutrition (CRON, or just CR), meaning
you eat a lot less food (about 1000 to 1500 calories a day), and eat
combinations of only the most healthy foods to insure you get enough
vitamins and minerals while keeping calories low. The main proponent
has been the late Roy Walford in books such as "The 120 Year Diet."
There's a relevant website at http://www.calorierestriction.org/. I
do believe CR does what it claims, but I so far haven't stuck to the
diet - well, I do eat more vegetables and such than I did before
first
reading about it.

As far as I know, caloric restriction has not really been shown to
_increase_ life span in test animals. The calorie restricted animals
will live their "normal" life span while the test animals given
unlimited food will die sooner than normal. Also, I recall reading
somewhere that such a deep level of caloric restriction as mentioned
above greatly increases the risk of osteoporosis. Of course, it's
likely that caloric restriction studies have not included one of the
only things that could combat osteoporosis, high intensity exercise.

Roger W. Norman wrote:
Things that were key to your early life seem
never to leave even if you can't usually put your mental finger on things.
Mostly it can be seen in people with alzheimers who somehow remember things
from their childhood with great clarity but can't remember their spouse's
name.

My grandmother developed Alzheimer's and went wondering off one day.
Finally, the PD called us to say they had located her. She had walked
for miles and ended up on the doorstep of some very puzzled occupants.
Turned out it was the house she had lived in until she was about seven
years old. At the time, she couldn't even recognize me, her own
grandson, but sixty five years after the fact she had remembered her
childhood home. (Not that anyone cares about my grandmother! - but just
saying thanks for clearing up that little mystery for me.)

-Naren

Hugh Verdam wrote:

Still haven't found out the deal w/Kurzweil but I am having a ball
watching the bizarre turn this thread took. So it all evens out.
Thanks!


I apologize for bringing this thread back on track! :-)

OK, I was the one who started the discussion a month ago about the Rumour.
Anyway, my understanding is that Kurzweil is not dead, but they are in
the process of reorganizing. You can find some more details at the forums
at www.sonikmatter.com. They still have current Kurzweil employees responding
to people there.

Also, I really wanted a Rumour, so I spent a lot of time trying to find
someone who still had one in stock, since Kurzweil doesn't appear to be
supplying any more right now to dealers who are out of stock. I found
one at www.scitscat.com. Don't know if they have another.

I really, really like my Rumour. I'm also the type of techie geek that has
to explore every detail of a new gadget when I get one. I've been playing
with the midi sysex capabilities of this device and have discovered some
additional features that are possible that you can't do from the front
panel. The problem is that to really be able to use them I would need to
write some software (other than the horribly manual command line tools I
quickly write to do experiments).

Some of the possibilities (via midi sysex):

1) saving/restoring individual presets (rather than having to dump whole
banks at a time). This would allow for the possibility of a preset
editor/librarian.

2) The ability to modify the order of parameters presented within a preset,
and which parameters are "basic" and which are "extended". This would be
important if you had an external midi controller which you wanted to use
to control a parameter which is currently only in the "extended" set.

3) Umm, this one is probably not one that Kurzweil is going to be very
happy with (although why they even made the functionality possible in the
first place makes me not sure about this). You can upload new algorithms
from a KSP8 and new presets that use them. The Rumour (and Mangler) are
PAU 3 devices, and are capable of running most PAU 3 and lower algorithms
from the KSP8. There appear to be some other limitations (memory?) that
I haven't determined yet, i.e. not every PAU 3 or lower algorithm works
when uploaded. But it is an intriguing capability. Note algorithms that
are uploaded cannot be made permanent (they are ram objects), so they go
away when you cycle power on the device.

Let me know if you have any technical questions on the Rumour (and by
extension, the Mangler). I've become quite versed in its features.

John

John Marvin wrote:

3) Umm, this one is probably not one that Kurzweil is going to be very
happy with (although why they even made the functionality possible in the
first place makes me not sure about this). You can upload new algorithms
from a KSP8 and new presets that use them. The Rumour (and Mangler) are
PAU 3 devices, and are capable of running most PAU 3 and lower algorithms
from the KSP8. There appear to be some other limitations (memory?) that
I haven't determined yet, i.e. not every PAU 3 or lower algorithm works
when uploaded. But it is an intriguing capability. Note algorithms that
are uploaded cannot be made permanent (they are ram objects), so they go
away when you cycle power on the device.

How long until someone figures out how to hack in more RAM and maybe an EEPROM or some flash to hold those algos?

In article , Kurt Albershardt
wrote:

John Marvin wrote:

3) Umm, this one is probably not one that Kurzweil is going to be very
happy with (although why they even made the functionality possible in the
first place makes me not sure about this). You can upload new algorithms
from a KSP8 and new presets that use them. The Rumour (and Mangler) are
PAU 3 devices, and are capable of running most PAU 3 and lower algorithms
from the KSP8. There appear to be some other limitations (memory?) that
I haven't determined yet, i.e. not every PAU 3 or lower algorithm works
when uploaded. But it is an intriguing capability. Note algorithms that
are uploaded cannot be made permanent (they are ram objects), so they go
away when you cycle power on the device.

How long until someone figures out how to hack in more RAM and maybe an
EEPROM or some flash to hold those algos?

It sounds like Rumor and Mangler are basically the same box with different
software. So eventually you could turn your Rumor into a Rumor+Mangler (&
vice versa) and turn either into a KSP8-lite as well.

--
Jedd Haas - Artist
http://www.gallerytungsten.com
http://www.epsno.com