In order: nope, nope, YEP, nope, nope, nope, nope and nope.
Bad mortgages by irresponsible people who buy more than they can afford don't affect me. I bought a house I can afford. I've lived my entire life (with the exception of 4 years abroad) living under the weight of government debt. I'm so used to it that I wonder how life could be any better without it? I'd have double more money than I need...woo hoo!
Since I'm a veteran of this current war and make my living (very lucrative one at that) because of this war, I would say, YES, it does affect me...positively. I make 5x the wage I made as a Soldier and probably 2x what I'm actually worth. Creating new enemies? Here's a hint for you: we didn't attack them first. Here's hint #2: they already hate us and everything we stand for. Bonus hint: these are barbarians living 2 centuries behind the rest of the world. Leave them alone or turn the other cheek (the Democrat way) and all you'll get is a Nuke up the Sears Tower next time.
And for the love of all things....every civilization EVER has had weak, sick, homeless, uneducated, evil, (you name it) people in it. STOP BLAMING THE US FOR BEING A NORMAL SOCIETY. And stop blaming Bush for somehow magically transforming the US in a mere 7 years. If you look at the figures, this nation is at the same projected level of economic growth that it has been on for the past 25 years, and no single president or party will ever change that.
No I don't live in Canada, but I bet you are a college student.
I'm a Civil Servant and it is illegal for me to unionize. What unions are you talking about? As a mid-level Civil Servant, I am required to deflect all questions from the press to my superior. The retaliation I would face by not following this directive (or any directive) would be that I would get fired. How exactly does Civil Service shine in this matter?
Haha. Too bad my life goes on in spite of the politicians around me. The only politics that have any remote effect on my life is local government. If you want to continue living your life THINKING you are just a pawn of the Federal Government, then yes, you need to keep posting 5-10 times a day about how evil the government is and how awful life is because of Republicans. Or, you could just, ya know, keep trodding along like the 299,999,999 other Americans. Fight the good fight!
Cute, but not really. I guess slashdot is just the meeting place for the most cynical people on the planet; as if the Bush adminsitration, in a mere 7 years, has overturned everything this country stands for and just sweep up every person on the planet who works with explosives or, gasp, actually reads literature. Come on people, you aren't as smart as you think you are jumping on the BUSH-HAS-STOLEN-ALL-OUR-CIVIL-LIBERTIES bandwagon.
...which has nothing to do with the conversation at hand. We are talking about studio music quality, not DVDs and not surround sound. Invoking surround-sound into the discussion only discredits the authority of an otherwise decent post.
Great link but one problem: YouTube has such horribly compressed file formats, the sound quality does no justice for the demonstration.
To answer the question why is it necessary to record loud music, well, it doesn't sound better, nor does it cut corners in mixing, so I have no idea why.
Uh, good music stereos don't care about being "non-surround". Actually good music systems DON'T have surround, because surround is digitally altering the signal and is NOT used to make music sound better.
I think what the term you are looking for is a good sound stage with a proper "stereo image", which is achieved with good equipment, good recording, and good listening environment with proper speaker placement.
I would like someone to give a specific example of the loudness war, because I don't think I listen to the type of music that this is affecting most. I do listen to a lot of hard rock, but by nature, that isn't the most dynamic music on the planet anyway. I guess I could say Def Tones have a pretty great dynamic range on most of their recordings, but maybe this loudness war is more about hip/hop/(c)rap/Country/Pop-Punk?
Wow, I think you missed the entire point of this discussion. It isn't about "volume", it is about the lack of range within the recording. You can't fix the lack of recording range by turning your stereo up or down. By doing so, you'll only have loud or quiet lack of ranged music, and it will still suck from a recording stand-point.
It isn't the overcompression/undercompression/wall of sound/low quality mp3 that is making music suffer these days; it's the quality of the input and the quality of consumer demand. Consumers want shit and they are buying up all the shit they can get.
So to handle the shit demand from the shit consumer, we get this time honored recording principle: Shit in = shit out
The recording industry is one of the only businesses that CAN actually polish a turd, but you have to start with a nice big fat turd so that there is something left after all the polishing. In the case of something like Britney Spears, however, we are getting straight diarrhea, with no body to work with.
Every era has bad pop music as well and yes, the current era has a particularly large influx of it, but don't blame the recording studios. It is their job to sell music (pref. shitty music). Consumers are stupid (always have been, always will be, because they are people) so shitty music with shitty sound quality will prevail.
I thought Rush, and Neil Peart in particular, took great pride in their recording artistry? I thought they sweated every little detail for the perfect sound, but you are making it sound like they have sold out to the producer man to sell more albums. Well, in that case, they've failed, because they haven't made a good sounding album since 1984 and they don't sell nearly as many albums now as they did from 1978-1986.
It might have worked for tv, but the main reason sites like YouTube are successful is because of the LACK of advertising. If suddenly I have to sit through 15-second clips of "and now, a word from our sponsors", I'm simply moving on to the next site that offers commercial free, low quality, dubious content time wasting.
If someone could stand up against the juggernaut that is cable television and offer all shows without advertising at either a high fee or a pay-per-view, I'd gladly sign up. Something like the commercial-free movie channels, but for ALL television content. Hell, I can't remember the last time I saw an ad and thought, "man, I gotta go out and buy that". Advertising is running the risk of becoming obsolete, because they are stuck in the 50-year-old paradigm that is no longer working in the Internet age.
Bomb making and Marxist literature are not illegal (in the US). I have lots of Marx books, because I have a degree in German. I was in the Army too, so maybe I have some explosives manuals around somewhere too. Ruin my life? Hardly.
....the key phrase being "hook up". There is a big difference between making an illegal PHYSICAL connection and soaking in ubiquitous unsecured EM signals that are invading our airspace. With the physical connection, there is obvious intent to circumvent any fees associated with service, which can be seen as theft. With wireless, there is no way to know if the leach is knowingly leaching or not. It is still the responsibility of the prosecution to prove this. I'm sick of the other side of the argument of "ignorance is no defense" when it most absolutely is in this case, given that nearly all wirelessly capable devices automatically detect and connect to unsecured networks with little to no user interaction. They are pruposely designed this way as a FEATURE that consumers like.
This was an awesome post. I truly feel for those disadvantaged neighbors of mine who may not be able to afford bandwidth, so I wouldn't mind them using mine. Bandwidth is a new social phenomena that is the new main contributor to the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer" phenomena. Bandwidth SHOULD be ubiquitous, and societies should be forking it out throughout their cities for free. My city (San Antonio) and others (like Austin) are setting up city provided wi-fi throughout disadvantaged neighborhoods to help fight this new sociological issue. I'm all for it!
According to everyone here on slashdot, you and your entire family are idiots and criminals. Gawsh, I mean how could you be SO ignorant that you don't even know HOW you connect to the net? (I can hear it now...must be a Mac user).
Seriously though, there is nothing wrong with your post because the overwhelming majority of people in the world are not slashdot nerds, so don't let it get to you.
The person who leaves their access point unsecured and who does not take reasonable steps to secure it is guilty of aiding the illegal activity through negligence.
I call BS. Can you provide a legal precedent with citations? You are saying a consumer who can't even install a driver is going to be held liable for not conducting advanced network security functions on a computer? I have NO IDEA how my wireless router works, nor do I care, nor is it my responsibility to give one damn. I know it has some completely random password assigned by my cable provider and that it was put in at the time of install. Other than that, I don't know or care. I wish I could unpassword it, as 10mbs is far more than I'm used to back in the UK (1 mbs), so I'd like to share with my poor, starving, college student neighbors.
This is such a tired story. This "crime" happens so often in every metropolitan area of the US, that it practically impossible to police. It isn't the customer or the person borrowing the signal's responsibility to secure the signal. If the cable companies don't want to lose customers because everybody is borrowing everyone else's wireless, then the CABLE COMPANY needs to secure the damn signal. I recently had Time Warner install a wireless router in my apartment and the doofuses that came to my house brought an ethernet cable (when I told them I only wanted wireless) a wireless PC card and a USB wireless receiver. I didn't need any of this crap. And these are the same people that I expect to secure my wireless signal?
So when I drive around town and use the map feature on my iPhone, I'm a criminal if the iPhone automatically chooses a wi-fi spot over the Edge network? Or..does the "Do you want to join the wireless network suffice as adequate warning that I'm about to break the law (potentially)?"
Absolutely unfounded... There are entirely too many checks and balances in place for the VP (or any politician for that matter) to create his own classification scheme.
That is interesting. I don't use any filtering system (knowingly) and am at zero spam for four weeks straight. I'm sorry to hear your woes, but just looking around at friends and family, I would guess spam email is more like 10-25 per cent. There is no way that 90% is the norm.
Oh yeah, I didn't think of that. They are always out to screw us, I tell ya. But I think this sort of business mentality is dying out. For as much bad-mouthing AT&T gets, at least they bought off on the visual voice mail for the iPhone. When a company sees an untapped "feature" like this, perhaps it is better for them to get more people to use their product because of the feature, instead of bilking their current users with outdated billing policies. In otherwords, kudos to AT&T for giving in to Steve Jobs' demands and seeing the benefit. It sold me on a $60/month plan.
Why would anyone spend less than $100 on something that is used to display the highest possible video quality (for the moment)? If these players get below $100, they will be of such dubious workmanship that they most likely would not offer any quality advantage, which is the whole point in the first place.
I can't think of a single gadget I've ever been happy with that has cost less than $100. Quality costs because people will pay more. Don't expect HD video (either format) to go into the sub $100 range until a new format makes it near-obsolete.
Slashdot Mirror
apple doesn't care. They've already made the sale. If anything, this will only bring more customers.
Bad mortgages by irresponsible people who buy more than they can afford don't affect me. I bought a house I can afford. I've lived my entire life (with the exception of 4 years abroad) living under the weight of government debt. I'm so used to it that I wonder how life could be any better without it? I'd have double more money than I need...woo hoo!
Since I'm a veteran of this current war and make my living (very lucrative one at that) because of this war, I would say, YES, it does affect me...positively. I make 5x the wage I made as a Soldier and probably 2x what I'm actually worth. Creating new enemies? Here's a hint for you: we didn't attack them first. Here's hint #2: they already hate us and everything we stand for. Bonus hint: these are barbarians living 2 centuries behind the rest of the world. Leave them alone or turn the other cheek (the Democrat way) and all you'll get is a Nuke up the Sears Tower next time.
And for the love of all things....every civilization EVER has had weak, sick, homeless, uneducated, evil, (you name it) people in it. STOP BLAMING THE US FOR BEING A NORMAL SOCIETY. And stop blaming Bush for somehow magically transforming the US in a mere 7 years. If you look at the figures, this nation is at the same projected level of economic growth that it has been on for the past 25 years, and no single president or party will ever change that.
No I don't live in Canada, but I bet you are a college student.
I'm a Civil Servant and it is illegal for me to unionize. What unions are you talking about? As a mid-level Civil Servant, I am required to deflect all questions from the press to my superior. The retaliation I would face by not following this directive (or any directive) would be that I would get fired. How exactly does Civil Service shine in this matter?
Haha. Too bad my life goes on in spite of the politicians around me. The only politics that have any remote effect on my life is local government. If you want to continue living your life THINKING you are just a pawn of the Federal Government, then yes, you need to keep posting 5-10 times a day about how evil the government is and how awful life is because of Republicans. Or, you could just, ya know, keep trodding along like the 299,999,999 other Americans. Fight the good fight!
Cute, but not really. I guess slashdot is just the meeting place for the most cynical people on the planet; as if the Bush adminsitration, in a mere 7 years, has overturned everything this country stands for and just sweep up every person on the planet who works with explosives or, gasp, actually reads literature. Come on people, you aren't as smart as you think you are jumping on the BUSH-HAS-STOLEN-ALL-OUR-CIVIL-LIBERTIES bandwagon.
...which has nothing to do with the conversation at hand. We are talking about studio music quality, not DVDs and not surround sound. Invoking surround-sound into the discussion only discredits the authority of an otherwise decent post.
Achey Breaky came before Macarena, but otherwise, well stated.
To answer the question why is it necessary to record loud music, well, it doesn't sound better, nor does it cut corners in mixing, so I have no idea why.
I think what the term you are looking for is a good sound stage with a proper "stereo image", which is achieved with good equipment, good recording, and good listening environment with proper speaker placement.
I would like someone to give a specific example of the loudness war, because I don't think I listen to the type of music that this is affecting most. I do listen to a lot of hard rock, but by nature, that isn't the most dynamic music on the planet anyway. I guess I could say Def Tones have a pretty great dynamic range on most of their recordings, but maybe this loudness war is more about hip/hop/(c)rap/Country/Pop-Punk?
Wow, I think you missed the entire point of this discussion. It isn't about "volume", it is about the lack of range within the recording. You can't fix the lack of recording range by turning your stereo up or down. By doing so, you'll only have loud or quiet lack of ranged music, and it will still suck from a recording stand-point.
So to handle the shit demand from the shit consumer, we get this time honored recording principle: Shit in = shit out
The recording industry is one of the only businesses that CAN actually polish a turd, but you have to start with a nice big fat turd so that there is something left after all the polishing. In the case of something like Britney Spears, however, we are getting straight diarrhea, with no body to work with.
Every era has bad pop music as well and yes, the current era has a particularly large influx of it, but don't blame the recording studios. It is their job to sell music (pref. shitty music). Consumers are stupid (always have been, always will be, because they are people) so shitty music with shitty sound quality will prevail.
I thought Rush, and Neil Peart in particular, took great pride in their recording artistry? I thought they sweated every little detail for the perfect sound, but you are making it sound like they have sold out to the producer man to sell more albums. Well, in that case, they've failed, because they haven't made a good sounding album since 1984 and they don't sell nearly as many albums now as they did from 1978-1986.
If someone could stand up against the juggernaut that is cable television and offer all shows without advertising at either a high fee or a pay-per-view, I'd gladly sign up. Something like the commercial-free movie channels, but for ALL television content. Hell, I can't remember the last time I saw an ad and thought, "man, I gotta go out and buy that". Advertising is running the risk of becoming obsolete, because they are stuck in the 50-year-old paradigm that is no longer working in the Internet age.
Bomb making and Marxist literature are not illegal (in the US). I have lots of Marx books, because I have a degree in German. I was in the Army too, so maybe I have some explosives manuals around somewhere too. Ruin my life? Hardly.
....the key phrase being "hook up". There is a big difference between making an illegal PHYSICAL connection and soaking in ubiquitous unsecured EM signals that are invading our airspace. With the physical connection, there is obvious intent to circumvent any fees associated with service, which can be seen as theft. With wireless, there is no way to know if the leach is knowingly leaching or not. It is still the responsibility of the prosecution to prove this. I'm sick of the other side of the argument of "ignorance is no defense" when it most absolutely is in this case, given that nearly all wirelessly capable devices automatically detect and connect to unsecured networks with little to no user interaction. They are pruposely designed this way as a FEATURE that consumers like.
Perhaps knowing about network security has NOTHING to do with one's intellect. Stupid post; worst one this month.
This was an awesome post. I truly feel for those disadvantaged neighbors of mine who may not be able to afford bandwidth, so I wouldn't mind them using mine. Bandwidth is a new social phenomena that is the new main contributor to the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer" phenomena. Bandwidth SHOULD be ubiquitous, and societies should be forking it out throughout their cities for free. My city (San Antonio) and others (like Austin) are setting up city provided wi-fi throughout disadvantaged neighborhoods to help fight this new sociological issue. I'm all for it!
Seriously though, there is nothing wrong with your post because the overwhelming majority of people in the world are not slashdot nerds, so don't let it get to you.
Parked outside a home? Hell, I live in apartments and I can see 7 unsecured networks from my living room. Does that make me a creep?
So when I drive around town and use the map feature on my iPhone, I'm a criminal if the iPhone automatically chooses a wi-fi spot over the Edge network? Or..does the "Do you want to join the wireless network suffice as adequate warning that I'm about to break the law (potentially)?"
Absolutely unfounded... There are entirely too many checks and balances in place for the VP (or any politician for that matter) to create his own classification scheme.
That is interesting. I don't use any filtering system (knowingly) and am at zero spam for four weeks straight. I'm sorry to hear your woes, but just looking around at friends and family, I would guess spam email is more like 10-25 per cent. There is no way that 90% is the norm.
Oh yeah, I didn't think of that. They are always out to screw us, I tell ya. But I think this sort of business mentality is dying out. For as much bad-mouthing AT&T gets, at least they bought off on the visual voice mail for the iPhone. When a company sees an untapped "feature" like this, perhaps it is better for them to get more people to use their product because of the feature, instead of bilking their current users with outdated billing policies. In otherwords, kudos to AT&T for giving in to Steve Jobs' demands and seeing the benefit. It sold me on a $60/month plan.
I can't think of a single gadget I've ever been happy with that has cost less than $100. Quality costs because people will pay more. Don't expect HD video (either format) to go into the sub $100 range until a new format makes it near-obsolete.