starswirlthebearded

Jim Marshall also passed away this week.

Discord. John DeLancie is awesome.

I have dealt with this in the past, except it was rap music, not club music...

What I did was I splurged on some really good headphones that was able to block out the sound and enjoy my own music without killing my own ears. I left him be, and eventually our neighbors filed a formal complaint, which he received a $100 fine. (this was in a dorm setting, and fines were rarely given out, until he made the mistake of playing it during quiet hours because he was high off his *** with his friends)

You don't need to tolerate it (entirely), just find a way around it. And if you can't you can skip my intermediary step (which was a mistake in hindsight, since now I'm an audiophile spending hundreds on headphones), and skip to just reporting him and having either the police or whatever enforcement system your place of residence has to get him to stop with fines or injunctions.

I never recommend starting things with him. Nothing ever good comes from direct confrontations like that. If you can't discuss it with him calmly and come to a mutual agreement, it is all useless and fighting fire with fire, as SilverSwirl said will only result in hearing loss for the both of you.

Derpy v dash... Who will be triumphant?

Epic pic.

Don't they call Twilight "Twi" sometimes, too? Also Rainbow gets called Rainbow enough for me to notice it, now that you've brought this topic up, dAsh.

You know... You are right, or at least AJ does. At least I think she does...

I think people use what is convenient and what fits.

I have referred to Twilight as Twi and TS, neither of which are used in canon. Pinkie was referred to as Pinks by RD as I recall. Though I've never seen anyone refer to her as that in fandom. Apple Jack is AJ. I think that is the only universally accepted nickname in canon and fandom. And I'm sure if Rarity had a known last name someone would have thought of a nickname for her.

Dash... I always refer to her as RD personally... Though I could see myself calling her Dashie. Also... Gilda was the only one to call her Dash. However I suspect that if we meet any other of her friends from the Junior Speedsters that they may call her the same.

For the older doctors, definitely Tom Baker. And then Matt Smith for the new ones. Fezzes and bowties man, okay?

I kinda see Matt Smith as a new version of Tom Baker, at least IMO.

4th doctor is the best doctor. Tom Baker was brilliant.

Witches are made out of wood, this is why they weigh less then a duck

Pegasus ponies are witches!

Fluttershy turned me into a newt!

Check the impedance on both ends. It may not be the headphone's fault.

as an example. Mp3 players like iPods simply arn't capable of driving larger... drives. That's why those that know about audio will pick up Cowon or another player.

This can be the same with larger players and computer soundcards and speaker/headphone jacks.

There seems to be a fairly recent realisation and trend in this as headphone amplifiers are becoming more popular and cheaper.

I haven't used an iPod in years. My current portable set up is a Cowon J3. When I tested out the xb series it was the Cowon D2.

As for home testing, I have an audiogd nfb-11. Do believe me when I tell you I give headphones every shot I can. And the bass felt from full sized speakers (my friends paradigm speakers set up) was incomparable, and I honestly could not recall feeling those sub bass frequencies in any headphone I have ever tried. Perhaps when I get HE-500s that will change. However, for now they improve the perceivable frequencies, but aren't powerful enough at a comfortable listening level to actually feel the true bass (by comfortable, I mean feeling no pain, I went as loud as I could without having that level). Even when testing for volume distortion at max I couldn't feel it.

perhaps it's because I'm used to feeling it through speakers. But I haven't felt those frequencies though headphones, or if I did I did not recognize it due to knowing how it feels through speakers. I don't really know.

You won't hear the frequencies, but you _feel_ them. Feeling is part of hearing when listening.

The lower frequencies also help to shape other frequencies. Admittedly, some do better than others, but there is a purpose to having whale-call freqs and canine whistles. :">

Headphones, in my experience don't have the power to effectively feel those sub bass frequencies. That said, I agree, if the ability to go that low is there, it usually improves the other frequencies.

In a moderate price range, I cannot recommend the Sony MDR-V6 enough. They don't have as much bass or go as low iirc as the xb series, but the overall sound is top class in its price range. And there is a reason why the MDR-V6 was a standard studio (as in a large amount of studios used the V6) headphone until it was replaced with the MDR-7506.

I've actually compared numerous pairs, and skull candies are more suited for what I use them for.

Please tell me what pairs you tried, because I cannot believe that skullcandy out performed anything for any purpose, unless you are talking about the aviators or the mix master Mike headphones. Seriously, besides those two, I cannot think of a single redeeming feature for any skullcandy headphone I have ever tried. Ever.

I have tried out hundreds of headphones (I mean that quite literally, I've run the gamut from cheap $5 headphones to top tier $1800 headphones) and at least a dozen home and portable set ups (most expensive set up used was $5000 approximately), and the two worst companies for headphones I found were skullcandy and wesc. Skullcandy only recently redeemed themselves to me with the two aforementioned headphones.

If you want headphone advice I can certainly help there. I will say this though... Sub bass frequencies in headphones is nearly useless. All it means it's that the 20hz frequency might be a bit stronger/cleaner (might is the key word). Humans can't hear below 20hz usually, it can be felt though, but that requires full sized speakers. Headphones might be able to produce those frequencies, but you will not be able to perceive them using the headphones.

Darn. Well, I can't not watch ponies, so it is time... Thanks for the info. I've never used Netflix before, so I'm clueless about it.

yeah, but there is also a rating. The current rating of mlp:fim is 4.5/5. You could easily say that after hearing about it on the internet so much and seeing the oddly high rating on Netflix got you curious, and decided to watch an episode or two.

They were upfroant. They never tried to fool anybody. The business they had may have been sketchy but it wasn't fraud.

Fraud does not need to be deceitful. It does have to result in an unfair advantage of the party doing the defrauding though. They used "sharp practice" to garner an "unfair advantage" in a contest that would gain them a farm, which is profit.

Iron Will is totally Mr Satan from DBZ

Twilight is a lot closer to Sheldon than Rarity is, without the OCDness.

Though really... the mane 6 are character archtypes. They are seen in many shows all over. RD is the tomboyish athlete, AJ is the friendly country gal, fluttershy is the well... shy one...

Form the link

There was no fraud. Flim and Flam were straight up with everything they said. They never tried to deceive and in fact offered an unfair but legitimate business deal. They even stopped selling cider made by the Apple family without legal action having to be taken. The show wanted them to be con artists but failed to make them so

Except that they weren't. Up front would have been meeting the apples in confidence instead of bringing in crowd mentality, forcing the Apples hand in the entire matter. Again, this is one form of con that involved a scheme to steal the Apples farm. It is indeed a con.

and them not selling the cider was a post of their scheme, because it again, brought the crowd into it. They used the crowd as a part of their scheme. That is in no way up front.

Also... Fraud: deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or ,to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.

It just keeps getting deeper!

Perhaps it depends on how much weight the clouds were designed to sustain? They might have reinforced the clouds enough to hold up a table plus a little more for whatever additional weight they expect it to hold. Depending on the workmanship and care, TS might not push the support past the safety factor.

Not to mention twilight is accident prone. Even if it was safe, she'd still probably get injured somehow. I could see pinkie do it in all of her physics defying glory though.

I wonder... Speaking of Equestria as a whole... How many residual fans does Fluttershy have from her brief modeling career...?

Parties are thrown in Ponyville for a relatively low threshold of achievement. Yes, they are well regarded, but they probably don't have status above our favorite elementary school teacher or cake makers.

In town, they are much higher than that. At least I think so... Equestria as a whole, I wouldn't be surprised if only Rarity and Twilight are known. And not even that well. And RD in cloudsdale of course...

Twilight because we don't know what other errands Celestia had her run before Ponyville. She could have ran errands and done tasks for Celestia all over Equestria. She had been her protegee since she was a filly after all.

And rarity because of aforementioned reasons. (fashion, hoity toity, and sapphire shores)

then there's the Gala incident where basically every member of the mane 6 caused a stir, i'm sure somepony would've caught their names durign the whole thing...

I totally forgot about this... Wouldn't that make Sweet and Elite a bit harder to swallow? There is no way Fancy Pants and Fleur were not there and didn't notice one of them. Heck, any of the upper echelon ponies for that matter. I'm sure Twilight who was with the Princess greeting everypony especially would have been taken note of. That is a great honor to stand with the ruler at any event. Even excluding the insanity that they brought (which was apparently Princess Celestia's grand design) each of them were noticed for one reason or another. Rarity was with the prince the entire night, RD was with the Wonderbolts, AJ had a stand (which I'm sure stood out), Twilight was with the princess (hard to miss that), Pinkie was being... well... Pinkie..., and... FS... You don't forget the crazy pony who burst in screaming "YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE ME" with a hoard of animals following.

However... wouldn't most of that make the mane 6 more infamous than famous? At least with the Canterlot upper echelon. Naturally it would have been changed regardless when Fancy Pants stepped in at the end of S&E, because he is a boss.

As for Fluttershy in Ponyville... I think she is well known as well. Anyone who has a pet probably either got it from her or went to her at some point in time. I bet even the vet goes to Fluttershy for some... difficult... animals. She is pretty much the keeper of wildlife in Ponyville, and is apparently the pet groomer of Ponyville. She just doesn't like to be in the limelight, but that doesn't mean she isn't well known. It's like JD Salinger... He was world famous, won awards, and he wanted to be left well alone.

And as for what Weesh said, I'd have agreed if AJ didn't have basically two celebrations for her, one for saving the town and one for the send off. Seems like a lot for just a run of the mill pony. I really think the mane 6 is well regarded in Ponyville, but not made a big deal of because of the close knit community. Twilight has done some crazy things though, and it wouldn't surprise me if ponies went to her to help them with their problems. The town changed when she arrived, when one pony changes everything... you take note more than others. In fact, I think the mane 6 would be better regarded because they ARE friends with Twilight, the protegee of Princess Celestia and all around super powerful unicorn. Though, I'm pretty certain she is also seen as eccentric. I'm pretty sure she is seen as eccentric everywhere. I mean, even in Canterlot the guards weren't surprised to see her sneaking around like that, neither was Celestia. She seems to have garnered a certain reputation, though is still well regarded (so long as she isn't having a breakdown or meltdown).

I understand the intent was for them to be con men, but there was a disconnect with what actually happened in the episode. The most connish thing they did was goad Granny Smith into agreeing with the contest Apple Bloom agreed to. There is no con in having an effective advertising campaign with alot of showmanship. Part of a con is that there has to be some sort of deception. Flim and Flam were pretty straightforward. The machine worked as they said it would and there were no hidden conditions to their offer.

A better direction for the episode if they wanted to show off the con would be Flim and Flam offering to sell the machine for cheap, only to not mention that their magic is needed to run it, and they charge alot to run the machine. Even claiming to have cider that is just as good when it is actually very poor quality would be more of a con. Instead it started out with them acting like con artists, went a weird John Henry direction, and then Flim and Flam left town so everything could wrap up happily.

My theory is this episode went through a few rewrites and not everything meshed out right. Flim and Flam conning the Apples and then the man vs machine contest don't line up real naturally. I'm guessing originally there were two ideas of how this episode would go, they started with the con, switched to the contest, and lacked the time to rewrite the beginning. If you also notice originally the contest was for who would be allowed to sell cider but afterwards they act like the farm was the prize even though losing one revenue of money would not mean the farm would immediately be lost nor would it mean Flim and Flam would own it. It again feels like there was more then one draft with different things at stake and they got mixed together

http://en.wikipedia....onfidence_trick

From the above article

Vulnerability to confidence tricks

Confidence tricks exploit typical human characteristics such as greed, dishonesty, vanity, honesty, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, desperation and naïveté. As such, there is no consistent profile of a confidence trick victim, the common factor is simply that the victim relies on the good faith of the con artist. Victims of investment scams tend to show an incautious level of greed and gullibility, and many con artists target the elderly, but even alert and educated people may be taken in by other forms of confidence trick.^[2]

Shills, also known as accomplices, help manipulate the mark into accepting the con man's plan. In a traditional confidence trick, the mark is led to believe that he will be able to win money or some other prize by doing some task. The accomplices may pretend to be strangers who have benefited from performing the task in the past.

A greedy or dishonest mark may attempt to out-cheat the con artist, only to discover that he or she has been manipulated into losing from the very beginning.

Yup, tricked into accepting the con man's plan. Seems like what happened here. Though there wasn't anything to gain, except more cider and the town's confidence. Which honestly, to the Apples is worth its weight in gold, as they were hell bent on demonstrating their ability as cider makers as well as INTEGRITY. They had more to lose though, but that is the point of a con, to bring the mark into a disadvantageous deal.

Rarity would probably do salvation army out any other organization that brings clothes to the needy.

Twilight anything to do with education or reading.

Fluttershy world wild life conservation.

The rest I'm not so sure...

The deal was bad but they aren't con artists. Everything was right out in the open. It could be argued that the deal was fair considering they invented the machine and provided the magic. The Apples only would have to grow the apples and sell the cider. Its also common in business to throw out an offer that is unfair with the expectation for it to be negotiated down. Applejack just never bothered negotiating for some reason.

As for why the brothers are on the road, the obvious answer is the machine needs a steady supply of apples so they could have been traveling to areas with orchards. Personally I think its because the episode wasn't well written. They obviously are suppose to be shucksters, the writer however failed to show them actually doing something shucksterish. At most they just sort of acted like jerks

They are con artists. Their name says it all... Flimflam... Look it up. They rallied the town into supporting them leaving the apples little choice but to enter into a disadvantageous contest. That is a form of a con, but perhaps one you are not familiar with.

If they tried to negotiate down, they likely would have tried leaving which would have created unrest among the ponies. That was their intent. That didn't happen because Apple bloom stepped in and caused negotiations to turn south anyway. They took that opportunity to rile up the apples, which allowed them to get them into the competition that would lose them their farm.

They are the classic con men and we're intended to be that way. Just because there was an actual need, does not mean that there is no possibility for a con. If that were the case than mortgage cons wouldn't be cons, but they are.

Welcome to Canterlot Q... erm... Discord... Qiscord? GAH I don't know... I'll just call you Q since its easier. I'm Star Swirl. Hope you enjoy it here.

Well with hoity-toity, it was outright stated that spike arranged that, and he pulled strings to get the 2nd showing as well, so he might hae pulled strings to get rarity 'featured' (of course even if he did, she still was featured) It amuses me that she may be barely known in ponyville but downright famous in fassion circles 'round equestria lol (of course in canterlot, S+E, nobody knew who she was, so...)

Maybe your thinking of rainbow being head of the weather TEAM for winter-wrap-up (from the episode of the same name)? I dont know if that's been stated in-series, I always assumed she was just an average weatherpony, even if she is likely the fastest and best (when she's not lazing off --- though she seems to do a lot less of that in S2 than S1...) The wonderbolts... they kinda didnt *approach* her so much as she showed up at an oppertune time, saving Soarin's pie, which might have had something to do with it... though they did recognize her from the BYF competition (I didnt think Soarin was at the BYFC...?) so... not sure where I was going with that... and I dont know if others were trying to take the 'bolts away from Dash specifically or if they just were also wanting to talk to them... and MMDW... yeah, I forgot about that (least favorite episode)... with that I'm sure she's well-known (though wheather famous or infamous is up for debate...) Though I still ask if all this is the case, why did she not use her supposed status to get to the front of the cider line then? (it seems there were a couple other incidents like that too, not sure though) Also BYFC must not be worth much since in S+E rarity mentioned dash and nobody knew who she was...

I think both openers' events were kept secret... that was a rather small crowd in canterlot, I think it was just the canterlot elites or even jsut government officials, and the public were told celestia+luna defeated Discord (though this could jsut be my crazy conspiracy theory)

Pulling strings or not, he ended up featuring her and showed actual interest in her designs the second time around. And also, the second time it looked like Twilight's doing not Spike's (or perhaps they worked together). However, the crowd for the fashion show shows that she is at least well known to a degree at least in Ponyville. And naturally in fashion circles. And now in the upper echelon circles thanks to Fancy Pants (who I still want to see make a return appearance).

Sorry, by approached, it looked to me that the Wonderbolts were approached by other ponies, but Dash was the only one they approached, as in initiated a conversation. It was pretty obvious it was the opportune timing, but it wouldn't have happened if the Wonderbolts didn't know who she was and didn't have at least SOME interest in her. Not to mention Soarin seeming familiar with her in this latest episode. I doubt the Wonderbolt captain remembers every Pegasus's name. And I think it was probably on the Hub or Hasbro if it wasn't in series, but I DO remember reading/hearing that he is the leader of the weather pegasus ponies in Ponyville. If not the leader than the main weather mare of Ponyville at least.

As for the celebrations... The first was in Ponyville, and it doesn't look like anyone other than the ponies in Ponyville knew what even happened.

The one in Canterlot was likely public, but usually elite people don't attend awards ceremonies unless they have special reason to. That and I don't think anypony remembered Discord. I think his magic was illusion based, and everypony was hypnotized, and when it broke, nopony remembered anything. You remember heroes when you remember the disaster, if you don't remember the disaster, even if someone tells you that they are a hero, you won't know nor will you care even if they won a prestigious award because of it.