A simple-to-use sound file writer

[Steve Holden]

Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
> * Steve Holden:
>> Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
>>> * Ben Finney:
>>>> "Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps at start.no> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> You did lie, that's established. In addition as I recall in the same
>>>>> post you went on about my motivations for doing the Terrible Deed that
>>>>> you invented.
>>>> None of that matches my (largely disinterested) observations. This is
>>>> pure fantasy, as best I can tell.
>>> It's decidedly not kind of you to try to re-open those issues.
>>>
>>> Anybody can have a bad day and write something that's untrue or actively
>>> misleading, whatever.
>>>
>>> When it's been dealt with, and it has, it should not be reiterated.
>>>
>>>
>>>> I've tried in private to talk you out of this persecution fantasy;
>>>> others have tried in public. It all seems to be in vain.
>>> It's quite normal for people to use ad hominem arguments, especially
>>> when they have chosen an indefensible position; that's why the technique
>>> has a name.
>>>
>>> There's no persecution involved in that.
>>>
>>> And people are not necessarily bad even when they do that from time to
>>> time, as you do here: it's human.
>>>
>>>
>>>> You've now passed my twit threshold, so welcome to my kill file.
>>> Goodbye.
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers & hth.,
>>>
>>> - Alf
>>
>> How you can possibly hope that helps anyone except you I can't possibly
>> imagine. It seems that any request to question your own behavior, any
>> remark about how it might usefully change, is taken to be an ad homime,
>> attack.
>>
>> As my wife (who has a colorful Scottish turn of phrase) might say, if
>> you were chocolate you would eat yourself.
>>
>> Please, get over this obsession with being "right".
> 
> You have (so far) refused to outright admit that you were wrong here,
> going to the extreme half-way measure of using the word "wring" or
> something, perhaps hoping that I'd interpret it one way and most
> everyone else another way.
> 
Pardon me if my feeble attempt at humor annoyed you. I would have
thought anyone reading the post would have seen it as a clear admission
that I was wrong, but if you insist on seeing those words in unequivocal
black and white I have no trouble accommodating you. If I couldn't admit
it when I was wrong I shouldn't be arguing in the first place.

For the record, yes, summing any waveforms that can be represented as
Fourier Series will necessarily result in another Fourier series, since
any linear combination of Fourier series must itself, be a Fourier
series, and therefore the representation of the sum of the summed waveforms.

And, by the way, "wring" was a genuine typo, though I admit I chose at
the proof reading stage to leave it in for (as I thought) humorous
effect. If I'm the only person who saw that as the slightest bit amusing
then again, I am sorry.

> I do respond to articles which are technically wrong, especially
> follow-ups to my own articles, as your (at least initial) POV was in
> this thread: wrong.
> 
Wrong, wrong, wrong.

> That's not an obsession, nor is it a desire to be right, it's the
> *usual* Usenet culture: one is expected to respond and to correct
> technical issues, and to not collect social points at the expense of
> technical correctness.
> 
But not to characterize honest disagreements in such discussions as ad
hominem attacks.

> And since it's you who brings this up again, and since earlier you wrote
> ...
> 
>   "I herebe retract anything I have said about you that you consider
>   innuendo. Feel free to remind me what that was."
> 
> ... I now feel free to remind you about some of it.
> 
> Instead of saying OK or thanks or whatever normal for a simple
> explanation, you pretended that my explanation was some kind of thesis
> from me and "this is merely hand-waving. It looks appealing, but there's
> no rigor there".
> 
I did. You provided an explanation I did not understand, and I
arrogantly assumed I had something to teach you about the subject.  You
have shown me the error of my ways, and I am grateful for it.

> And with our last discussion before this one fresh in mind I told you
> that that was bullshit, using just that single word. But to expand on
> that: the insinuation that the explanation was some kind of thesis from
> me was bullshit, that it was merely "hand-waiving" was bullshit (while
> informal it was an exact algorithm, and later in this thread I posted
> Python code implementing it), and that it had "no rigor" was bullshit
> since it was an exact algorithm; moreover it was a *trivial* algorithm,
> and as demonstrated, it works.
> 
I haven't listened to any resulting wav files yet, but yes, you posted code.

> In short, the insinuation that I was some kind of crank posting a thesis
> that lacked "rigor" and was "hand-waiving" was utter bullshit: it was a
> trivial and exact algorithm, an explanation in response to your own
> question, and it demonstrably works.
> 
> In response to someone else you then posted this:
> 
> 
> <quote>
> Grant Edwards wrote:
>> > On 2010-01-14, Alf P. Steinbach <alfps at start.no> wrote:
> [bogus hand-waving]
>>> >> After all, it's the basis of digital representation of sound!
>> >
>> > Huh?  I've only studied basic DSP, but I've never heard/seen
>> > that as the basis of digital represention of sound.  I've also
>> > never seen that representation used anywhere.  Can you provide
>> > any references?
>> >
> Of course he can't. And it isn't the basis of analog quantization. And I
> suspect Alf has never hear of Shannon's theorem.
> 
> But don't listen to me, apparently I'm full of it.
> 
> regards
>  Steve
> </quote>
> 
> 
> * The "of course he can't [provide a reference]"
> 
> is the same insinuation you made earlier repeated, that what I posted
> was drivel, when it was a trivial and exact algorithm, one that does work.
> 
I suspect there was a glitch in mailing list/newsgroup synchronization
there. When I wrote those remarks you may have *posted* your code, but I
know I had not read it.
> 
> * "Isn't the basis of analog quantization"
> 
> makes the reader believe I'd written that nonsense "basis of analog
> quantization". I did not write such nonsense but readers get the
> impression that I did. The quote above shows what I wrote instead of the
> words you put in my mouth.
> 
> 
> * "And I suspect Alf has never hear of Shannon's theorem."
> 
> is solely about me, an insinuation about my education or competence.
> 
> 
> * "But don't listen to me, apparently I'm full of it."
> 
> gives the reader the impression that I've written earlier that you're
> "full of it".
> 
> I haven't ever written that.
> 
When you call something I write bullshit, since it came out of me, I am
merely exaggerating amount the amount of shit you appear to think I have
in me. The fact that  now see it *was* bullshit, of course, does give
your words a certain force I have not previously allowed them.

> And /nothing/ in that posting was about any technical issue, each and
> every of the four sentences just an ad hominem attack.
> 
> I very seldom do ad hominem (it has happened, yes, I'm human too). But
> this is the second or third time you've responded to me with that last
> sentence, and it implies that I've written that about you, that I'd
> earlier done unto you what you were doing to me. I haven't, although in
> my follow-up, annoyed by all this stuff from you, I then agreed with
> your self-evaluation, for which I apologize.
> 
> Cheers & hth.,
> 
> - Alf

Don't worry about it. Fortunately it isn't the first time I have been
wrong in public, and it probably won't be the last. Sorry for the
offensive tone of some of my remarks.

regards
 Steve
-- 
Steve Holden           +1 571 484 6266   +1 800 494 3119
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