It makes me wonder how many aerospace/aerospatial engineers even have class 3 rocketry licenses? How many have built their own rocket motor? (this requires tons of sub-skills as you might imagine)
With the advent of portable CNC machines and fabrication devices that you can fit in your garage, a whole world is now open to many people.
Of course go to school. But also do what you want in the meantime. Spend as little as possible while getting the most out of your education. Myself, I took as many classes as I possibly could (almost 80 credits) at the local community college before transferring. Be lean, mean, and inventive, and someone will want to hire you.
The truth is that if you want to do something like that, you need to not make being a corporate lackey and cubicle-worker as your life's goal. You need to be of the mindset where you want to beat SpaceX and their incredibly top-heavy corporate style where they feel as if they are gods or something and you should be grateful to work for them (despite having few actual successes, as is the norm in this industry) at their own game. If you're not going to aim at making your own company or working with a few friends to make one of your own, then you're really not going to be valuable to any company or actually get into space. It's a bit of a catch-22, really.
Also, the best engineers that go places and do things are the ones that build things and basically, have patents. Schooling is worthless beyond a certain point unless you want to work at, say, a defense contractor or other government type job. What matters is what you can actually do and build. I'd be sure to take some classes in metalworking, welding, and fabrication in any case, as these are real skills that you'll need wherever you go. Also, CAD and similar software is good to know how to use.
Look at job listings and note what skills and certificates and so on that they want. Because skills can get you a job. A degree is optional, really, and only "required" because they want to weed out the rank idiots and those without any skills. note - no job I have had actually cared one iota about my degree or used it as a factor - they wanted skills, pure and simple.
I'd also at the least, build your own home based fabrication machine and start working with basic designs. Also, start building your own electronic and similar designs as you can manage. Say, if you want to get into designing rockets and so on, having built a few designs yourself (how Scaled Composites got started, btw), is a big plus. And who knows, maybe you'll be the one to make some design breakthrough.
I'm not sure... Probably by syncing the clocks (obviously something akin to an atomic clock or similar) beforehand and moving them with the ships or whatever you're using for the test. My theory is that at some distance, there will either be a delay between the shifts, which will still happen, or the entanglement will completely fail at a large enough distance.
It might be light years or similar, though.... No idea, really. From what we can tell, though, it works quite well on Earth.
But... Photons always are a result of something else happening (trying to keep this as simple as possible for the non-science types here) , and as such, aren't actually just sitting around AT rest. Their mass isn't infinite since they never actually stand still. Well, maybe right before the Big Bang they did...
True. I was going to mention the same thing applies to Newton, but I thought that it was kind of obvious.
But it is neat how what we know to be true is being seen at work/in person. That is, that what is considered "the law" is merely once again just a basic step in something else or a more advanced theory. It's like how we went from flat earth and the earth at the center of our solar system to a round earth. Well, mostly rond - it's now *quite* round if you want to get technical. And so on and on it goes... So when I hear someone say something like "nothing can go faster than light" as if it's the World of God, well, it just sounds silly, given how painfully little we know about how the universe actually works.
But it is good for the "basic" stuff, as you put it;) (which is more advanced than 99% of the people, even here, can deal with)
According to very recent tests, it does have mass as well, since photons by definition are never *at* rest, but are moving and interacting with other objects. If it moves, it has mass. If you do a search online for "mass of a photon", you get interesting results. The old adage of "photons have no mass" is apparently as dated as the old adage that used to be considered just as real, which was "neutrinos have no mass".
But nothing gets broken.
If we assume that a photon does have mass, but that we can't (yet) detect it because it's so amazingly tiny, then everything is good. Since light moves at different speeds through different matter, it might be that while its actual "REAL:" maximum speed is many many times greater (possibly as much as ~10^20 times greater), space itself slows it down. Like water does, as an example. To *us*, well, it's as fast as we ever can observe. Apparently what this test at CERN proves is that "a vacuum" is not actually empty as far as a photon is concerned. Because a neutrino, with a *vastly* larger mass can go through it "quicker".
Note - if the actual speed of C that's unencumbered by a vacuum/space is higher, it would also explain quantum entanglement. I suspect that if we someday separate a pair by enough distance, we'll see that it's not exactly "instant", but that there is a microscopic delay. Though, the pair might have to be separated by a crazy distance. (many light-years, possibly)
This is actually the most likely and rational solution, believe it or not. I posted this as well (it's taking time to read down this huge thread). A "vacuum" might actually be full of stuff, and as we have shown, light can be slowed and even stopped/frozen, given the right matter and space to interact with. If C is as fast as light can go in normal space, well, subatomic particles that don't necessarily interact with space the same way (and tend to go through it entirely) very well could travel faster. Exactly like how light travels through water at a specific speed. "Space" might be also be slowing it down.
Given the mass difference between a photon and a neutrino (yes, a photon does have a stupidly tiny mass, though it's calculated - and way beyond any of our detectors currently), the actual speed of light in a real environment where nothing is creating drag on it might very well be thousands of times faster.
No rules get broken. Einstein simply assumed (wrongly) than a vacuum was apparently empty when it's not as far as light is concerned. Note - even his theories are intact, as the "in a vacuum" clause still holds true.
A few people do have an idea of how to make such a "drive" work, but the amount of energy required is downright silly. As in our entire sun might not create enough power. I can't imagine what would happen if such a theoretical drive blew up. "Sir, we have a problem with the engine..." (entire solar system vaporizes in a supernova).
Anyways, none of this violates anything (obviously the universe didn't explode or anything). Einstein was simply wrong. As many, many physicists have suspected now for a long time. Of course the math required to explain all of this new information, well, that might take a very very long time to work out. I suspect that human minds won't ever get such a "unified theory" done. But AI might some day.
Remember that light does have mass, though. A very very very tiny one, but one nonetheless. (note - it can be calculated out to be ~1.8 x 10-42 g), which is generally just calculated out to zero as it makes no difference almost all of the time. But it does have mass. Everything does. Or else it would not exist at all. The problem is that our equipment is woefully crude when tasked with measuring such tiny numbers.
No rules get broken. Einstein just erroneously assumed that a Photon (light) was the smallest particle, and therefore the fastest. ie - it's now not "speed of a photon" but "speed of a neutrino" that is the new constant. Until we find something we can shoot faster, that is. But, "speed of light" is much nicer to say, obviously...
Note - "mass" at this kind of ridiculously small scale is greatly affected by what's around it. It might be that light may have a smaller "mass", but it might be more reactive and actually be traveling much slower. Kind of how light goes slower in certain mediums - it might actually be slowed a lot already, even in a vacuum(I imagine space actually being a bit "sticky" and creating drag on a photon) Neutrinos just pass through pretty much everything. So while you might not be able to force light to go any faster, but you might be able to get other particles to go faster. With enough energy, that is.
And what's interesting about that date is that it is only a year before the first Internet archives were started.
Apparently people at Apple and many other large companies are now hiring people who are too young to remember anything of the past, so they look it up. And if it didn't exist back in the early 90s, well, it must not have existed at all. So they try to patent crap that has obvious prior art and that was done by another company. (good example I know of is the attempted patent on chat rooms and so on like Facebook. The problem is, that it existed back in the early 80s and was designed by Digital. But since Digital was bought and passed around several times, only someone who used the technology would actually know about it or remember it. Because not one reference to it exists in any "Internet archive", which we all know is the only real source of information. Right? (sic for the impaired)
Why this is interesting is that both patents in question are actually part IBM's giant archive of patents. I think IBM might have something to say about this one.
Part of it is hubris and part of it is stupidity. Jobs is basically spewing smoke and B.S. at this point in an attempt to do anything that he can to hinder any competition. There's a real reason Apple kicked Jobs out the first time and why Wozniak to this day still won't deal with him.
Of course nobody has hard data for it, but the storyline is so well done that you can't wait to see how it ends. And the ending isn't against some super-boss, either, so it's absolutely possible for normal gamers to get through it. There's also zero mid-game grinding or side-quests. I'd be surprised if anyone who started it didn't finish it. There's a reason it's achieved near cult status.
The previews make it look like a bunch of FPS eye candy not a lot of true sneaking, intrigue, or the like. Maybe I'll be amazed. But I doubt if it'll stand out that much.
I've noticed, though, that there are a lot of articles that are made by the gaming "industry" that all are about basically trying to give the developers a way to churn out cheap crap at ever-inflated prices.
There is one game that comes to mind that shows how wrong they all are. Deus Ex. Now, this is an old title, but the main aspect of it that makes it a good game worth finishing (and I can guarantee that it has a nearly 100% finish rate) is that it has a good plot. It's not rocket science to write good dialog and make a game that has a worthwhile plot and some good ethical and situational dilemmas. But it seems as if ZERO developers these days are willing to actually hire a damn writer to develop the characters and story. And, like the crap Hollywood is churning out as well, lately, it's all about the story.
It's always "person in situation X has to fight their way to boss Y"(multiplayer only games aside, of course). They are just lazy asses who want to get people to be OK with cheap and by-the-numbers crap.
Deus Ex stood out because of the immense amount of writing and background bits that made it feel like a real world. Everyone should get a copy from Steam or wherever they like (IIRC, it's all of $5 now, pretty much everyplace) and open your eyes to how to design a proper game. Yes, I know that Ion Storm blew it with the next two in the series, so while it's possible, few developers do it any more. Which is a shame. Because it's NOT that hard to add a hundred pages of filler and background to a story (ie - if you pick up a book, it should have a bit of text in it). The answering machine should have a few messages on it. Simple stuff like that.
Knights of the Old Republic is also largely forgotten or unknown by many younger gamers. It gets everything right and finishing the game becomes something you want to see. Good plot, good characters, and probably the #1 modern example of how to make a proper game. It succeeds because the developers took time to make a game and flesh it out. BioWare gets it - and Mass Effect also is a solid title (though TBH, 1 was much better than 2, which felt more constructed and linear.
Comparing Red Dead Redemption to any of these is almost painful. Tons of eye candy, but honestly, zero replay value, paper-thin plot, and zero wow factor. "Critically acclaimed"? I thought it was terrible. Two years from now, it'll be yet another title that rots in the used bin that nobody cares about or remembers. That Rockstar wants to punk out and go the 12 year old console gamer route is nobody's loss.
Verdict: Doom 3 set in the Old West. I'd rather download almost anything from GoG than waste $40+ on rubbish like this.
Yeah, Bob Carver as a person is a whole truckload of ass, but the subs are acceptable if you're on a budget (I think it's that a sub is simple enough that even he can't screw it up - heh). Of course, you're right, if you have the money, build your own or get a better Velodyne or similar. It's surprisingly easy to actually make a speaker as most of the math and hard work has been figured out years ago and you can even get open-source software to do much of the work for you.
The metal Tripplite ones are good, but, yes, something's gone a bit off lately. I was looking at them for my son's computer a bit over a year ago you could tell that they'd jobbed the thing out to China or somewhere else to cut costs. Poorly formed plastic and pretty much hollow inside (no real weight to it). I suppose it will work, but I miss the days of overbuilding something so it never breaks. Everything is getting so sub-standard and cheap. And don't even get me started on the third-rate overseas rubbish that they call capacitors. (while other problem area lately - you know they are flat out lying and using substandard materials)
One of my uncles works for a defense contractor and half of their job lately involves taking components that they get and either upgrading the sub-standard parts in it or testing them to verify that they actually are built to spec. More than half simply isn't these days and they have to make it themselves or spend more time ordering the exact parts and reassembling the components properly. You have to even go to a specialty store these days to get simple things like well made nuts and bolts, because the junk you get at places like Home Depot and OSH, simply isn't the quality of what you are replacing most of the time. (case in point, I had to replace the exhaust on my truck a while back - the OEM bolt I had to cut off. The other two were replaced at some time in the past by a previous owner and were typical Home Depot stuff. I simply twisted them off with a wrench (exactly like taffy, just with metal (!)) Same specs and symbols on both of them. One was obviously properly treated and designed new steel and the other was recycled steel with a fancy coating to pass inspection.
I unfortunately see four things wrong with that statement. First, Creative. I'm sorry, but they aren't really doing anything much different than the same audio trickery that Bose is famous for. Crappy fiberboard boxes. Paper drivers. Bandpass designs. Fake accentuated bass. Holes in the frequency response that you could drive a truck through. Thin and nasty sound that lacks impact. Altec Lansing is similar. I can get better sound out of a bare 7 inch Kenwood car stereo speaker. One. Sitting in my hand, not even in a cabinet or enclosure. Now, if we were talking about a large NXT flat panel technology or similar (or perhaps some of the newer in-wall speakers that are out now), you might have a point. But the inMotion is a complete joke. I have a pair of little 20 year old Roland practice/feedback monitors that will crush these pieces of junk.
Second, MP3. Most MP3s are compressed to the point where while it might be fine to listen to in your car due to the background noise pretty much killing your ability to really hear high quality audio, but they are terrible compared to a good CD. Mostly because the typical person who does the encoding doesn't know how to properly set it up and what program (as well as codecs and similar) to use. With the right settings, you can recreate CD quality with MP3s, but the file size is 30-50% the size of the original. (or you can use a lossless compression format as well). The 128bit encoded crap foisted off on us by Itunes and other stores for years was a tragedy. Now that they've upped it to a somewhat usable (if barely) 256bit, you still have to re-download most of your songs to weed out the old junk. At that point, you might as well just go out and buy used the CDs. I've played old records of the same songs and my son as commented how he didn't even know that that part existed. (and vinyl isn't a great format, either) Simply put, MP3s are the modern equivalent of cassette tapes for your walkman. And just as underwhelming when it comes to serious listening.
Thirdly, Bluetooth. It might work fine for you, but putting a compressed audio file through a further compressed and prone to losses wireless link is asking for trouble. At that point, you might as well be listening to FM radio. I feel a bit sorry that you've either lacked real audio experience so far in your life or have been led to believe over all these years to honestly think that settling for one of these little pieces of junk actually qualifies as a good use of your money. Or even as acceptable audio.
And, lastly, I don't know about you, but my old stereo(s) still work fine and can shake the room I'm in if I ever feel the need to do so. "Sounds better" is highly debatable. Maybe better than a boombox from 30 years ago, but that little piece of junk in no way meets the standards set of any reasonable setup. Even one that's 30 years old.
True, but you do need to properly calculate the gauge of the wire into the equation.
Cat 5 as an example, is 8 strands of 24 gauge wire. Resistance per strand at 10ft: 0.25670 Ohms. 0.25670 / 24 (3 pieces of cat-5) =.01695 ohms. Slightly better than 12 gauge wire. But 6 cables (stereo, of course) is a lot of wire, and unless you have a big crawl space and a box of the stuff lying around for free, you're always better off with standard electrical wire.
Computer cable, OTOH, is junk. It takes an absolutely insane number of the strands to equal a simple wire. They do make flat wire for the purpose of going under carpets and it works far better.
Nice. I got a real laugh out of that one. As I stated, it's a combination of cheap parts being so readily available *and* cost cutting idiots who don't understand why sometimes you really do need to spend the extra 20 cents on a component.
If I was hiring an engineer, I'd be more interested that they know how to solder than what their GPA was.
Heh. There are proper isolators, but they aren't cheap, either. Most people, even audio "experts" have no clue where to buy them as they are basically big ugly bricks that are designed for hospital use and similar industrial applications. Usually you have to go to a major electronics or electrical supplier to even find them. Of course, you should wire any system up correctly. But *sometimes* you have issues with your condo or apartment that you can't get around since you don't have the ability to fix the wiring/don't technically own the structure. Thankfully, everything in audio reproduction and electrical power has a solution. It just requires differing amounts of money. Of course, I won't get into how many McHomes (tract developments) are designed with wrong wiring and grounding... (my dad was an electrician, so the stories I'd hear... )
Oh, and don't be a dimwit and fail to put a surge protector on the system. You spent likely 3K+ on the amp, TV, and other bits and pieces. Unfortunately (for the few people still reading this - heh), the junk at Radio Shack isn't really adequate. I'd consider Tripplite to be about a minimum acceptable standard. Most people can afford $60-$120 for one of these and they do work as a proper surge protector. (just like how if you need a switch or hub, especially to use as a repeater on a long run, buy a Unicom and don't screw around with consumer grade junk)
A subwoofer should be heavier built than a typical speaker, naturally,(most use dual coils working together) as it's job is to only produce sound from about 30hz to about 60hz. Assuming you have a decent setup - you your surrounds only go down to 120hz, well, you're in trouble as that's plainly directional in any moderate sized room. IME, most (but not all) small subs lack the punch necessary for home theater. I recommended Sunfire as they make fairly affordable small subs and are a good compromise for the first time audio system DIYer. B&W also makes a nice subs, though they are considerably more expensive.
The doubling of taxes includes projected future interest and the massive amounts of tax-dodging by corporations through outright lying, money laundering, creative financing, or loopholes. Doubling taxes would generate about 3.5 trillion actually collected.(payroll tax won't go up much if we double corporate and income taxes, and may actually go down a bit due to lost jobs)
I included government pensions as that's also of the same type of spending problem, is listed on that site, and also is pretty much set in stone. That's the real issue, though. That we have four untouchable programs in the U.S. that alone are enough to cripple us. Also, we do agree that the military should be closer to 50 billion a year. That's plenty for research and to defend ourselves. Nobody is going to actually invade us, after all.
That we are spending at least 600 billion a year on our two wars and other idiocy, and that also isn't helping. The combination of it all just its too much. Something has to change, but absolutely nobody in Congress wants to change it. So the only choices are either for the states to take back their own destiny or a total collapse.
Cost cutting yes, op amps not necessarily. With a correctly chosen op amp in a correctly designed circuit, sound as good as or better than discrete designs is possible. Unfortunately, too many designers assume that a TL071 or an NE5534 in a garden variety topology is sufficient. It isn't. ***** Oh, man, don't get me started. I know a guitar technician/luthier who is constantly replacing these cheap pieces of junk in people's rather expensive guitars. Usually because the doofus put the battery in backwards and the designers didn't see fit to include a diode/protection circuit to keep the current from frying the thing. Or they left it on for a few days or ran it to hard and it simply overheated.
We could double taxes at this point and still be in the red.
And, yes, I left out the military to make a point as these four are retirement and support services-related, and of course interest on the debt, which isn't going away. We have four single items out of thousands that are enough to cripple us. If we count the military, we'd have to raise taxes by almost 30% to just cover those five items. And none of that includes welfare or unemployment programs and the like. If we dropped the entire defense budget to $0, it still would not be enough If we paid $0 for any government aid or farm subsidies or welfare programs, it still wouldn't make a dent in the problem.
We're broke and nobody wants to address the three big items that are causing us to bleed out. It's like complaining about a paper cut when you have a 3 inch hole in your leg that's caused by a flesh-eating virus. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and still everyone just comes up with idiocy that amounts to little band-aids and minor changes. Everything you listed sounds nice, but it's simply impossible to make any of it work at this point. We have to amputate at this point to save the patient's life.
Or when we go bankrupt and it all comes crashing down, it will be gotten rid of anyways. Just, the chances that our republic survives intact are mighty slim if it actually gets to that point. I personally would rather live without medicare, social security, or pensions rather than have to go through what Argentina did.
It really doesn't matter. I used to discuss this over a decade ago on Usenet and nothing has changed aside from the smoke an mirrors getting a bit more pretty looking. But I am glad to impart some basic information if it will help someone decide upon a good home audio system.
In case anyone else is reading this, basic guidelines for an amplifier today are: 1 - at least 20lbs weight. 2 - Able to drive 6 ohm speakers. The speakers optimally will be front-ported or sealed. (bouncing the bass off of the corner behind the speaker and back at you is very inefficient). The speakers should have no smaller than 6 inch woofers( 5 if it's a very good or special design). 8 for the mains is nice as it makes a sub somewhat optional. This is exactly like car audio in that 4 inchers generally sound like crap. 3 - your speakers for your surround system should cost the same as the rest of the system, at a minimum. This does not include the subwoofer. Typical pricing for good speakers is about $100-$300 per speaker. Cheaper than that and quality suffers greatly. You don't need to spend more than that, though, to get good sound. Stay away from Best Buy and big box type retailers unless you know what you are doing. B&W, Tannoy, and Paradigm are good examples of moderately priced speakers that perform very well. Even their lowest-cost lines will more than suffice for most people's needs and completely crush any "home theater" set for sale at a major retailer/outlet. 4 - the sub should be a proper dual-coil design and be at least 10 inches in diameter. It should, of course, have its own amplifier so as to not overwork the main unit. Be sure to plug it into the same circuit as the amp or use an isolator to keep ground-loop hum out of the equation. I personally like Sunfire, though YMMV.
And that's exactly the problem. The bass drivers are relegated to one bass driver stuffed into a cheap box, but the frequencies that it operates at are still directional in most rooms. A real subwoofer is a totally different animal and acts as solely bottom-end reinforcement for things like deep bass, organ music, so on.
A proper sound system should have a 6-8 inch woofer in it, and some surround systems do.
This is perhaps the biggest load of B.S. foisted on consumers in the last 50 years. That cables make a difference.
Fact: All copper comes from the same foundries and is smelted and refined to 99.99% pure ingots that are shipped out to all industries. Copper is copper. Some 99.999% copper is made, but it's really designed for specialized electrical work, and plating and so on.
Fact: While you can measure differences on a computer, the effects at audio frequencies are non-existent. So while fancy cables might make a difference for a microphone or a video feed, for audio, it's no different than feeding cheap apples or expensive ones to a horse when it comes to audio. It simply doesn't care, so save your money.
Fact: While some exotic cables can make a difference at extremely long lengths and stupidly high loads, humans cannot hear the difference as it's typically less than 0.2db different.(microscopic difference in signal loss, but not quality) This is easily solved, though, by going up to a larger gauge wire. Any plain vanilla 14 gauge electrical wire will beat the fanciest 16 gauge wire hands-down. Poofy insulation or plastic means nothing. All that matters is the mass and that the connectors at the ends are properly made.
How to make perfect boutique cabling for pennies a foot: 1: Get a 100ft roll of 12 gauge stranded electrical wire ($13, same as they use to wire houses). Paint one a different color at the end and use two lengths of the same wire together.. Note - $40-$50 for a 500ft roll is common at Home Depot and similar. 2: Get a 100ft roll of heat-shrink tubing.($10) Preferably close to or similar to the wires in color. 3: Slide the tubing over the wires. 4:Place the wires in a vise and the other end in a drill motor. Slowly wind the wires together until they have about one turn every 4-6 inches. This helps with EM noise if you run it near lights or electrical wires. It helps to get a friend to hold everything for you as you'll be way out of your garage and on the driveway, most likely. 5: Heat up the tubing to lock the wires in place. Do the ends first, of course. Hold the wires under tension to keep the windings in place. 6: Put on ends with a proper crimping tool. 50 cents each each X4. Optional in some cases, depending upon the terminal configuration. $25 total for 50 ft of professional grade speaker wire.
note: A 500ft roll of heat shrink tubing is ~$40. Total cost for 500ft of speaker wire is ~100-120 depending upon the number of terminals and speakers you need to wire up.. At ~20 cents a foot, that's cheaper than Radio Shack.
You can also get 100ft rolls of 12 gauge wire from most any auto sound shop for about $20. The cheap clear insulation isn't as robust as the electrical wire and heat shrink tubing combo, though. This homemade wire is good for under-house, use in conduits, and exterior use as well. You also can't hide the clear stuff as easily as you can with a color-matched to your decor setup if you DIY. (the tubing and wires come in about a dozen colors)
Impedance is highly variable for most speakers and while the average impedance is listed at 4phms, it will often dip down to 2 or 3 ohms near the lower end.
There is no substitute for mass. (this is a favorite saying of mine)
Q: Why does your Dad's stereo sound better? A: Op-Aps and cost-cutting.
You can't tow a boat with a Prius, and you can't expect a bunch of ICs and cheap 50 cent components to properly amplify anything for any reasonable amount of time or at a decent volume. If your amplifier doesn't weigh on the order of your dad's old one, you're not going to get the same sound out of it. Everything about amplification and electronic theory was known and done as of about thirty years ago. There is no magic. Only trickery and marketing.
The biggest lie of them all is wattage. 95%+ of the time, they state wattage as maximum through one speaker. So that 200W 7 channel amplifier is actually only putting out about 29W to each speaker, maximum. But distortion and heat will limit you to about half of that continuously, or about 15W per channel. Given that typical speakers are about 87-89db efficient, that means that you net a pathetic 90db or so that's actually usable. While this is still quite loud, it's far below what you really need for good home theater. Most people try to compensate for this by turning up the volume, but all that really does is bombard them with more and more high frequency sound since the bass long ago disappeared. This, naturally, leads to listening fatigue and hearing damage. The older amplifiers were rated as typically 100W per channel or more, and could deliver about 80% of their maximum rated volume without any problems. They did not get weak under heavy loads or strong bass, either.
This also applies to the most critical aspect of the system, the speakers. You simply cannot convey a full sound through miserable little 5 or 6 inch speakers. And a single subwoofer is a poor way to fill in for a weak mid-range and missing low-end. You don't play your guitar or bass through a 6 inch cabinet, but somehow people forgot to use common sense. So often you have a decent amplifier hooked up to junk speakers. You "father's system", I bet, has 8 or even 12 inch woofers in the main speakers, as this was common back in the 70s and 80s. In order to produce a convincing sound, you need to move air and create enough sound pressure. Or else it sounds like your neighbor's stereo does from down the street - tinny and distant.
But all of this is truly ancient news. People were discussing this twenty years ago or more online.
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It makes me wonder how many aerospace/aerospatial engineers even have class 3 rocketry licenses? How many have built their own rocket motor? (this requires tons of sub-skills as you might imagine)
With the advent of portable CNC machines and fabrication devices that you can fit in your garage, a whole world is now open to many people.
Of course go to school. But also do what you want in the meantime. Spend as little as possible while getting the most out of your education. Myself, I took as many classes as I possibly could (almost 80 credits) at the local community college before transferring. Be lean, mean, and inventive, and someone will want to hire you.
The truth is that if you want to do something like that, you need to not make being a corporate lackey and cubicle-worker as your life's goal. You need to be of the mindset where you want to beat SpaceX and their incredibly top-heavy corporate style where they feel as if they are gods or something and you should be grateful to work for them (despite having few actual successes, as is the norm in this industry) at their own game. If you're not going to aim at making your own company or working with a few friends to make one of your own, then you're really not going to be valuable to any company or actually get into space. It's a bit of a catch-22, really.
Also, the best engineers that go places and do things are the ones that build things and basically, have patents. Schooling is worthless beyond a certain point unless you want to work at, say, a defense contractor or other government type job. What matters is what you can actually do and build. I'd be sure to take some classes in metalworking, welding, and fabrication in any case, as these are real skills that you'll need wherever you go. Also, CAD and similar software is good to know how to use.
Look at job listings and note what skills and certificates and so on that they want. Because skills can get you a job. A degree is optional, really, and only "required" because they want to weed out the rank idiots and those without any skills.
note - no job I have had actually cared one iota about my degree or used it as a factor - they wanted skills, pure and simple.
I'd also at the least, build your own home based fabrication machine and start working with basic designs. Also, start building your own electronic and similar designs as you can manage. Say, if you want to get into designing rockets and so on, having built a few designs yourself (how Scaled Composites got started, btw), is a big plus. And who knows, maybe you'll be the one to make some design breakthrough.
I'm not sure... Probably by syncing the clocks (obviously something akin to an atomic clock or similar) beforehand and moving them with the ships or whatever you're using for the test. My theory is that at some distance, there will either be a delay between the shifts, which will still happen, or the entanglement will completely fail at a large enough distance.
It might be light years or similar, though.... No idea, really. From what we can tell, though, it works quite well on Earth.
But... Photons always are a result of something else happening (trying to keep this as simple as possible for the non-science types here) , and as such, aren't actually just sitting around AT rest. Their mass isn't infinite since they never actually stand still. Well, maybe right before the Big Bang they did...
True. I was going to mention the same thing applies to Newton, but I thought that it was kind of obvious.
But it is neat how what we know to be true is being seen at work/in person. That is, that what is considered "the law" is merely once again just a basic step in something else or a more advanced theory. It's like how we went from flat earth and the earth at the center of our solar system to a round earth. Well, mostly rond - it's now *quite* round if you want to get technical. And so on and on it goes... So when I hear someone say something like "nothing can go faster than light" as if it's the World of God, well, it just sounds silly, given how painfully little we know about how the universe actually works.
But it is good for the "basic" stuff, as you put it ;) (which is more advanced than 99% of the people, even here, can deal with)
According to very recent tests, it does have mass as well, since photons by definition are never *at* rest, but are moving and interacting with other objects. If it moves, it has mass. If you do a search online for "mass of a photon", you get interesting results. The old adage of "photons have no mass" is apparently as dated as the old adage that used to be considered just as real, which was "neutrinos have no mass".
But nothing gets broken.
If we assume that a photon does have mass, but that we can't (yet) detect it because it's so amazingly tiny, then everything is good. Since light moves at different speeds through different matter, it might be that while its actual "REAL:" maximum speed is many many times greater (possibly as much as ~10^20 times greater), space itself slows it down. Like water does, as an example. To *us*, well, it's as fast as we ever can observe. Apparently what this test at CERN proves is that "a vacuum" is not actually empty as far as a photon is concerned. Because a neutrino, with a *vastly* larger mass can go through it "quicker".
Note - if the actual speed of C that's unencumbered by a vacuum/space is higher, it would also explain quantum entanglement. I suspect that if we someday separate a pair by enough distance, we'll see that it's not exactly "instant", but that there is a microscopic delay. Though, the pair might have to be separated by a crazy distance. (many light-years, possibly)
This is actually the most likely and rational solution, believe it or not. I posted this as well (it's taking time to read down this huge thread). A "vacuum" might actually be full of stuff, and as we have shown, light can be slowed and even stopped/frozen, given the right matter and space to interact with. If C is as fast as light can go in normal space, well, subatomic particles that don't necessarily interact with space the same way (and tend to go through it entirely) very well could travel faster. Exactly like how light travels through water at a specific speed. "Space" might be also be slowing it down.
Given the mass difference between a photon and a neutrino (yes, a photon does have a stupidly tiny mass, though it's calculated - and way beyond any of our detectors currently), the actual speed of light in a real environment where nothing is creating drag on it might very well be thousands of times faster.
No rules get broken. Einstein simply assumed (wrongly) than a vacuum was apparently empty when it's not as far as light is concerned. Note - even his theories are intact, as the "in a vacuum" clause still holds true.
A few people do have an idea of how to make such a "drive" work, but the amount of energy required is downright silly. As in our entire sun might not create enough power. I can't imagine what would happen if such a theoretical drive blew up. "Sir, we have a problem with the engine..." (entire solar system vaporizes in a supernova).
Anyways, none of this violates anything (obviously the universe didn't explode or anything). Einstein was simply wrong. As many, many physicists have suspected now for a long time. Of course the math required to explain all of this new information, well, that might take a very very long time to work out. I suspect that human minds won't ever get such a "unified theory" done. But AI might some day.
Remember that light does have mass, though. A very very very tiny one, but one nonetheless. (note - it can be calculated out to be ~1.8 x 10-42 g), which is generally just calculated out to zero as it makes no difference almost all of the time. But it does have mass. Everything does. Or else it would not exist at all. The problem is that our equipment is woefully crude when tasked with measuring such tiny numbers.
No rules get broken. Einstein just erroneously assumed that a Photon (light) was the smallest particle, and therefore the fastest. ie - it's now not "speed of a photon" but "speed of a neutrino" that is the new constant. Until we find something we can shoot faster, that is. But, "speed of light" is much nicer to say, obviously...
Note - "mass" at this kind of ridiculously small scale is greatly affected by what's around it. It might be that light may have a smaller "mass", but it might be more reactive and actually be traveling much slower. Kind of how light goes slower in certain mediums - it might actually be slowed a lot already, even in a vacuum(I imagine space actually being a bit "sticky" and creating drag on a photon) Neutrinos just pass through pretty much everything. So while you might not be able to force light to go any faster, but you might be able to get other particles to go faster. With enough energy, that is.
And what's interesting about that date is that it is only a year before the first Internet archives were started.
Apparently people at Apple and many other large companies are now hiring people who are too young to remember anything of the past, so they look it up. And if it didn't exist back in the early 90s, well, it must not have existed at all. So they try to patent crap that has obvious prior art and that was done by another company. (good example I know of is the attempted patent on chat rooms and so on like Facebook. The problem is, that it existed back in the early 80s and was designed by Digital. But since Digital was bought and passed around several times, only someone who used the technology would actually know about it or remember it. Because not one reference to it exists in any "Internet archive", which we all know is the only real source of information. Right? (sic for the impaired)
Why this is interesting is that both patents in question are actually part IBM's giant archive of patents. I think IBM might have something to say about this one.
Part of it is hubris and part of it is stupidity. Jobs is basically spewing smoke and B.S. at this point in an attempt to do anything that he can to hinder any competition. There's a real reason Apple kicked Jobs out the first time and why Wozniak to this day still won't deal with him.
Of course nobody has hard data for it, but the storyline is so well done that you can't wait to see how it ends. And the ending isn't against some super-boss, either, so it's absolutely possible for normal gamers to get through it. There's also zero mid-game grinding or side-quests. I'd be surprised if anyone who started it didn't finish it. There's a reason it's achieved near cult status.
The previews make it look like a bunch of FPS eye candy not a lot of true sneaking, intrigue, or the like. Maybe I'll be amazed. But I doubt if it'll stand out that much.
I've noticed, though, that there are a lot of articles that are made by the gaming "industry" that all are about basically trying to give the developers a way to churn out cheap crap at ever-inflated prices.
There is one game that comes to mind that shows how wrong they all are. Deus Ex. Now, this is an old title, but the main aspect of it that makes it a good game worth finishing (and I can guarantee that it has a nearly 100% finish rate) is that it has a good plot. It's not rocket science to write good dialog and make a game that has a worthwhile plot and some good ethical and situational dilemmas. But it seems as if ZERO developers these days are willing to actually hire a damn writer to develop the characters and story. And, like the crap Hollywood is churning out as well, lately, it's all about the story.
It's always "person in situation X has to fight their way to boss Y"(multiplayer only games aside, of course). They are just lazy asses who want to get people to be OK with cheap and by-the-numbers crap.
Deus Ex stood out because of the immense amount of writing and background bits that made it feel like a real world. Everyone should get a copy from Steam or wherever they like (IIRC, it's all of $5 now, pretty much everyplace) and open your eyes to how to design a proper game. Yes, I know that Ion Storm blew it with the next two in the series, so while it's possible, few developers do it any more. Which is a shame. Because it's NOT that hard to add a hundred pages of filler and background to a story (ie - if you pick up a book, it should have a bit of text in it). The answering machine should have a few messages on it. Simple stuff like that.
Knights of the Old Republic is also largely forgotten or unknown by many younger gamers. It gets everything right and finishing the game becomes something you want to see. Good plot, good characters, and probably the #1 modern example of how to make a proper game. It succeeds because the developers took time to make a game and flesh it out. BioWare gets it - and Mass Effect also is a solid title (though TBH, 1 was much better than 2, which felt more constructed and linear.
Comparing Red Dead Redemption to any of these is almost painful. Tons of eye candy, but honestly, zero replay value, paper-thin plot, and zero wow factor. "Critically acclaimed"? I thought it was terrible. Two years from now, it'll be yet another title that rots in the used bin that nobody cares about or remembers. That Rockstar wants to punk out and go the 12 year old console gamer route is nobody's loss.
Verdict: Doom 3 set in the Old West. I'd rather download almost anything from GoG than waste $40+ on rubbish like this.
Yeah, Bob Carver as a person is a whole truckload of ass, but the subs are acceptable if you're on a budget (I think it's that a sub is simple enough that even he can't screw it up - heh). Of course, you're right, if you have the money, build your own or get a better Velodyne or similar. It's surprisingly easy to actually make a speaker as most of the math and hard work has been figured out years ago and you can even get open-source software to do much of the work for you.
The metal Tripplite ones are good, but, yes, something's gone a bit off lately. I was looking at them for my son's computer a bit over a year ago you could tell that they'd jobbed the thing out to China or somewhere else to cut costs. Poorly formed plastic and pretty much hollow inside (no real weight to it). I suppose it will work, but I miss the days of overbuilding something so it never breaks. Everything is getting so sub-standard and cheap. And don't even get me started on the third-rate overseas rubbish that they call capacitors. (while other problem area lately - you know they are flat out lying and using substandard materials)
One of my uncles works for a defense contractor and half of their job lately involves taking components that they get and either upgrading the sub-standard parts in it or testing them to verify that they actually are built to spec. More than half simply isn't these days and they have to make it themselves or spend more time ordering the exact parts and reassembling the components properly. You have to even go to a specialty store these days to get simple things like well made nuts and bolts, because the junk you get at places like Home Depot and OSH, simply isn't the quality of what you are replacing most of the time. (case in point, I had to replace the exhaust on my truck a while back - the OEM bolt I had to cut off. The other two were replaced at some time in the past by a previous owner and were typical Home Depot stuff. I simply twisted them off with a wrench (exactly like taffy, just with metal (!)) Same specs and symbols on both of them. One was obviously properly treated and designed new steel and the other was recycled steel with a fancy coating to pass inspection.
I unfortunately see four things wrong with that statement. First, Creative. I'm sorry, but they aren't really doing anything much different than the same audio trickery that Bose is famous for. Crappy fiberboard boxes. Paper drivers. Bandpass designs. Fake accentuated bass. Holes in the frequency response that you could drive a truck through. Thin and nasty sound that lacks impact. Altec Lansing is similar. I can get better sound out of a bare 7 inch Kenwood car stereo speaker. One. Sitting in my hand, not even in a cabinet or enclosure. Now, if we were talking about a large NXT flat panel technology or similar (or perhaps some of the newer in-wall speakers that are out now), you might have a point. But the inMotion is a complete joke. I have a pair of little 20 year old Roland practice/feedback monitors that will crush these pieces of junk.
Second, MP3. Most MP3s are compressed to the point where while it might be fine to listen to in your car due to the background noise pretty much killing your ability to really hear high quality audio, but they are terrible compared to a good CD. Mostly because the typical person who does the encoding doesn't know how to properly set it up and what program (as well as codecs and similar) to use. With the right settings, you can recreate CD quality with MP3s, but the file size is 30-50% the size of the original. (or you can use a lossless compression format as well). The 128bit encoded crap foisted off on us by Itunes and other stores for years was a tragedy. Now that they've upped it to a somewhat usable (if barely) 256bit, you still have to re-download most of your songs to weed out the old junk. At that point, you might as well just go out and buy used the CDs. I've played old records of the same songs and my son as commented how he didn't even know that that part existed. (and vinyl isn't a great format, either) Simply put, MP3s are the modern equivalent of cassette tapes for your walkman. And just as underwhelming when it comes to serious listening.
Thirdly, Bluetooth. It might work fine for you, but putting a compressed audio file through a further compressed and prone to losses wireless link is asking for trouble. At that point, you might as well be listening to FM radio. I feel a bit sorry that you've either lacked real audio experience so far in your life or have been led to believe over all these years to honestly think that settling for one of these little pieces of junk actually qualifies as a good use of your money. Or even as acceptable audio.
And, lastly, I don't know about you, but my old stereo(s) still work fine and can shake the room I'm in if I ever feel the need to do so. "Sounds better" is highly debatable. Maybe better than a boombox from 30 years ago, but that little piece of junk in no way meets the standards set of any reasonable setup. Even one that's 30 years old.
True, but you do need to properly calculate the gauge of the wire into the equation.
Cat 5 as an example, is 8 strands of 24 gauge wire. .01695 ohms. Slightly better than 12 gauge wire. But 6 cables (stereo, of course) is a lot of wire, and unless you have a big crawl space and a box of the stuff lying around for free, you're always better off with standard electrical wire.
Resistance per strand at 10ft: 0.25670 Ohms. 0.25670 / 24 (3 pieces of cat-5) =
Computer cable, OTOH, is junk. It takes an absolutely insane number of the strands to equal a simple wire. They do make flat wire for the purpose of going under carpets and it works far better.
Nice. I got a real laugh out of that one. As I stated, it's a combination of cheap parts being so readily available *and* cost cutting idiots who don't understand why sometimes you really do need to spend the extra 20 cents on a component.
If I was hiring an engineer, I'd be more interested that they know how to solder than what their GPA was.
Heh. There are proper isolators, but they aren't cheap, either. Most people, even audio "experts" have no clue where to buy them as they are basically big ugly bricks that are designed for hospital use and similar industrial applications. Usually you have to go to a major electronics or electrical supplier to even find them. Of course, you should wire any system up correctly. But *sometimes* you have issues with your condo or apartment that you can't get around since you don't have the ability to fix the wiring/don't technically own the structure. Thankfully, everything in audio reproduction and electrical power has a solution. It just requires differing amounts of money. Of course, I won't get into how many McHomes (tract developments) are designed with wrong wiring and grounding...
(my dad was an electrician, so the stories I'd hear... )
Oh, and don't be a dimwit and fail to put a surge protector on the system. You spent likely 3K+ on the amp, TV, and other bits and pieces. Unfortunately (for the few people still reading this - heh), the junk at Radio Shack isn't really adequate. I'd consider Tripplite to be about a minimum acceptable standard. Most people can afford $60-$120 for one of these and they do work as a proper surge protector. (just like how if you need a switch or hub, especially to use as a repeater on a long run, buy a Unicom and don't screw around with consumer grade junk)
A subwoofer should be heavier built than a typical speaker, naturally,(most use dual coils working together) as it's job is to only produce sound from about 30hz to about 60hz. Assuming you have a decent setup - you your surrounds only go down to 120hz, well, you're in trouble as that's plainly directional in any moderate sized room. IME, most (but not all) small subs lack the punch necessary for home theater. I recommended Sunfire as they make fairly affordable small subs and are a good compromise for the first time audio system DIYer. B&W also makes a nice subs, though they are considerably more expensive.
The doubling of taxes includes projected future interest and the massive amounts of tax-dodging by corporations through outright lying, money laundering, creative financing, or loopholes. Doubling taxes would generate about 3.5 trillion actually collected.(payroll tax won't go up much if we double corporate and income taxes, and may actually go down a bit due to lost jobs)
I included government pensions as that's also of the same type of spending problem, is listed on that site, and also is pretty much set in stone.
That's the real issue, though. That we have four untouchable programs in the U.S. that alone are enough to cripple us. Also, we do agree that the military should be closer to 50 billion a year. That's plenty for research and to defend ourselves. Nobody is going to actually invade us, after all.
That we are spending at least 600 billion a year on our two wars and other idiocy, and that also isn't helping. The combination of it all just its too much. Something has to change, but absolutely nobody in Congress wants to change it. So the only choices are either for the states to take back their own destiny or a total collapse.
Cost cutting yes, op amps not necessarily. With a correctly chosen op amp in a correctly designed circuit, sound as good as or better than discrete designs is possible. Unfortunately, too many designers assume that a TL071 or an NE5534 in a garden variety topology is sufficient. It isn't.
*****
Oh, man, don't get me started. I know a guitar technician/luthier who is constantly replacing these cheap pieces of junk in people's rather expensive guitars. Usually because the doofus put the battery in backwards and the designers didn't see fit to include a diode/protection circuit to keep the current from frying the thing. Or they left it on for a few days or ran it to hard and it simply overheated.
We could double taxes at this point and still be in the red.
And, yes, I left out the military to make a point as these four are retirement and support services-related, and of course interest on the debt, which isn't going away. We have four single items out of thousands that are enough to cripple us. If we count the military, we'd have to raise taxes by almost 30% to just cover those five items. And none of that includes welfare or unemployment programs and the like. If we dropped the entire defense budget to $0, it still would not be enough If we paid $0 for any government aid or farm subsidies or welfare programs, it still wouldn't make a dent in the problem.
We're broke and nobody wants to address the three big items that are causing us to bleed out. It's like complaining about a paper cut when you have a 3 inch hole in your leg that's caused by a flesh-eating virus. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and still everyone just comes up with idiocy that amounts to little band-aids and minor changes. Everything you listed sounds nice, but it's simply impossible to make any of it work at this point. We have to amputate at this point to save the patient's life.
Or when we go bankrupt and it all comes crashing down, it will be gotten rid of anyways. Just, the chances that our republic survives intact are mighty slim if it actually gets to that point. I personally would rather live without medicare, social security, or pensions rather than have to go through what Argentina did.
It really doesn't matter. I used to discuss this over a decade ago on Usenet and nothing has changed aside from the smoke an mirrors getting a bit more pretty looking. But I am glad to impart some basic information if it will help someone decide upon a good home audio system.
In case anyone else is reading this, basic guidelines for an amplifier today are:
1 - at least 20lbs weight.
2 - Able to drive 6 ohm speakers. The speakers optimally will be front-ported or sealed. (bouncing the bass off of the corner behind the speaker and back at you is very inefficient). The speakers should have no smaller than 6 inch woofers( 5 if it's a very good or special design). 8 for the mains is nice as it makes a sub somewhat optional. This is exactly like car audio in that 4 inchers generally sound like crap.
3 - your speakers for your surround system should cost the same as the rest of the system, at a minimum. This does not include the subwoofer. Typical pricing for good speakers is about $100-$300 per speaker. Cheaper than that and quality suffers greatly. You don't need to spend more than that, though, to get good sound. Stay away from Best Buy and big box type retailers unless you know what you are doing. B&W, Tannoy, and Paradigm are good examples of moderately priced speakers that perform very well. Even their lowest-cost lines will more than suffice for most people's needs and completely crush any "home theater" set for sale at a major retailer/outlet.
4 - the sub should be a proper dual-coil design and be at least 10 inches in diameter. It should, of course, have its own amplifier so as to not overwork the main unit. Be sure to plug it into the same circuit as the amp or use an isolator to keep ground-loop hum out of the equation. I personally like Sunfire, though YMMV.
And that's exactly the problem. The bass drivers are relegated to one bass driver stuffed into a cheap box, but the frequencies that it operates at are still directional in most rooms. A real subwoofer is a totally different animal and acts as solely bottom-end reinforcement for things like deep bass, organ music, so on.
A proper sound system should have a 6-8 inch woofer in it, and some surround systems do.
This is perhaps the biggest load of B.S. foisted on consumers in the last 50 years. That cables make a difference.
Fact: All copper comes from the same foundries and is smelted and refined to 99.99% pure ingots that are shipped out to all industries. Copper is copper. Some 99.999% copper is made, but it's really designed for specialized electrical work, and plating and so on.
Fact: While you can measure differences on a computer, the effects at audio frequencies are non-existent. So while fancy cables might make a difference for a microphone or a video feed, for audio, it's no different than feeding cheap apples or expensive ones to a horse when it comes to audio. It simply doesn't care, so save your money.
Fact: While some exotic cables can make a difference at extremely long lengths and stupidly high loads, humans cannot hear the difference as it's typically less than 0.2db different.(microscopic difference in signal loss, but not quality) This is easily solved, though, by going up to a larger gauge wire. Any plain vanilla 14 gauge electrical wire will beat the fanciest 16 gauge wire hands-down. Poofy insulation or plastic means nothing. All that matters is the mass and that the connectors at the ends are properly made.
How to make perfect boutique cabling for pennies a foot:
1: Get a 100ft roll of 12 gauge stranded electrical wire ($13, same as they use to wire houses). Paint one a different color at the end and use two lengths of the same wire together.. Note - $40-$50 for a 500ft roll is common at Home Depot and similar.
2: Get a 100ft roll of heat-shrink tubing.($10) Preferably close to or similar to the wires in color.
3: Slide the tubing over the wires.
4:Place the wires in a vise and the other end in a drill motor. Slowly wind the wires together until they have about one turn every 4-6 inches. This helps with EM noise if you run it near lights or electrical wires. It helps to get a friend to hold everything for you as you'll be way out of your garage and on the driveway, most likely.
5: Heat up the tubing to lock the wires in place. Do the ends first, of course. Hold the wires under tension to keep the windings in place.
6: Put on ends with a proper crimping tool. 50 cents each each X4. Optional in some cases, depending upon the terminal configuration.
$25 total for 50 ft of professional grade speaker wire.
note: A 500ft roll of heat shrink tubing is ~$40. Total cost for 500ft of speaker wire is ~100-120 depending upon the number of terminals and speakers you need to wire up.. At ~20 cents a foot, that's cheaper than Radio Shack.
You can also get 100ft rolls of 12 gauge wire from most any auto sound shop for about $20. The cheap clear insulation isn't as robust as the electrical wire and heat shrink tubing combo, though. This homemade wire is good for under-house, use in conduits, and exterior use as well. You also can't hide the clear stuff as easily as you can with a color-matched to your decor setup if you DIY. (the tubing and wires come in about a dozen colors)
Impedance is highly variable for most speakers and while the average impedance is listed at 4phms, it will often dip down to 2 or 3 ohms near the lower end.
There is no substitute for mass. (this is a favorite saying of mine)
Q: Why does your Dad's stereo sound better?
A: Op-Aps and cost-cutting.
You can't tow a boat with a Prius, and you can't expect a bunch of ICs and cheap 50 cent components to properly amplify anything for any reasonable amount of time or at a decent volume. If your amplifier doesn't weigh on the order of your dad's old one, you're not going to get the same sound out of it. Everything about amplification and electronic theory was known and done as of about thirty years ago. There is no magic. Only trickery and marketing.
The biggest lie of them all is wattage. 95%+ of the time, they state wattage as maximum through one speaker. So that 200W 7 channel amplifier is actually only putting out about 29W to each speaker, maximum. But distortion and heat will limit you to about half of that continuously, or about 15W per channel. Given that typical speakers are about 87-89db efficient, that means that you net a pathetic 90db or so that's actually usable. While this is still quite loud, it's far below what you really need for good home theater. Most people try to compensate for this by turning up the volume, but all that really does is bombard them with more and more high frequency sound since the bass long ago disappeared. This, naturally, leads to listening fatigue and hearing damage. The older amplifiers were rated as typically 100W per channel or more, and could deliver about 80% of their maximum rated volume without any problems. They did not get weak under heavy loads or strong bass, either.
This also applies to the most critical aspect of the system, the speakers. You simply cannot convey a full sound through miserable little 5 or 6 inch speakers. And a single subwoofer is a poor way to fill in for a weak mid-range and missing low-end. You don't play your guitar or bass through a 6 inch cabinet, but somehow people forgot to use common sense. So often you have a decent amplifier hooked up to junk speakers. You "father's system", I bet, has 8 or even 12 inch woofers in the main speakers, as this was common back in the 70s and 80s. In order to produce a convincing sound, you need to move air and create enough sound pressure. Or else it sounds like your neighbor's stereo does from down the street - tinny and distant.
But all of this is truly ancient news. People were discussing this twenty years ago or more online.