The Old New Thing

May 2011 - Page 3 of 3 - The Old New Thing

Like a chicken talking to a duck

May 3, 2011 May 3, 2011 05/3/11
Raymond Chen
Many years ago, I called the home of my Chinese-speaking nieces. This was before they started learning English and before I started learning their dialect of Chinese. After the call was over, the eldest niece asked, "Who was that on the phone?" "That was Uncle Raymond." "Oh, I want to talk to Uncle Raymond!" Her mother replied, "That'd be ...

That's not a duck

May 3, 2011 May 3, 2011 05/3/11
Raymond Chen
One of the audio features added to Windows 7 goes by the formal name stream attenuation, but it is more commonly known to people in the audio world as ducking. Ducking is the process of lowering the volume of background sounds in order to draw more attention to the foreground sound. For example, when you're watching a big battle scene in...

The Importance of Being Snooki

May 2, 2011 May 2, 2011 05/2/11
Raymond Chen
What if Jersey Shore were actually a play written by Oscar Wilde? Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing from Broadway's current production of The Importance of Being Earnest explore that premise in a five-part series titled "Jersey Shore" Gone Wilde, drawing its dialogue from things actually said on "Jersey Shore". The dialogue and delivery...