Well, as most of you, I tried the Minefield, which is a nightly build of current FF development. I was amazed at the speed of the browser. This was one thing I wanted FF to have compared to Chrome. I really didn't think all that Chrome stuff was of much use except for its speed. Absence of extension interface is not ok with me (been spoiled by FF). Now FF seems to run as fast or faster than Chrome.
But back to my subject. After installing the Minefield (I know it's really FF, but for the sake of this discussion I want to have different names) I noticed that my FF 3.0.3 runs with the speed of Minefield. I have not uninstalled Minefield, just start it, go to the benchmark page mentioned in this thread and get 1.273 / 0.904 / 1.391. Then close Minefield, open FF (make sure it's FF 3.0.3 by displaying version info first) and get the following numbers from the same benchmarks: 1.217 / 0.962 / 1.278
Seems like the FF 3.0.3 is now using the same JavaScript engine. Am I crazy? Is this possible? I will try uninstalling Minefield and seeing if things change, but seems now my FF 3.0.3 much faster with gmail by just seat of pants. I mean it is noticeably faster! I am very happy about it since the only thing about FF that I think is sub-par is speed. Now it's blazing-fast compared to before trying Minefield.
Comments, thoughts...
Well, even better than eeePC, which is not really a laptop, but rather a blackberry with a thyroid problem (I am sure it has its place in the marketplace, but the guy was asking to replace his PC, which undoubtedly has more than 4G mass storage), take a look at Dell Vostro. They start at $399 and come with Windoze XP. Sure the thing has a single core AMD processor and 1GB of memory and 80G hard drive, and no DVD burner (just reader), but if you beef the system up to dual core AMD, 2GB of RAM, 120GB drive and a DVD burner, you are only at $519 with free shipping. In fact now they have a new model that uses intel dual core chip for the same price.
If you still have any faith to lose in this election, you obviously have been absent during the past two presidential elections. The "political process" is a moot point (the actual elections will be decided by Diebold) and is just a dog and pony show. I envy the few that actually still have any faith in the political process at this point. Just look at the field of candidates! We are in a single party system, let's face it. It's called the big business and special interest party. Good luck on the election day.
Understood. One thing, though. If these programs avoid clipping, then a file that has not been compressed and having a wide dynamic range will still sound quieter than a file that has been compressed heavily, so it is really no help, unless these thing compress. It is hard to deal with volume levels of content with various dynamic ranges without, well... compression. This is why it is used almost always in studio production (it is not a new thing. Using entirely too much of it is a new thing).
If everyone compressed the recordings the same way, say according to a certain standard, it would be possible to uncompress. This, I think was the case with radio stations. Some defacto standard was used by them to compress and then the high end radios could uncompress using this defacto standard. On the other hand the recording industry most likely uses non-standard compression techniques that make decompression impossible. If it's a simple log function, yes, you can undo the compression, but I doubt it's that simple. Once the signal is compressed, some information is taken out and without knowing how to reconstruct the missing information undoing the compression is guesswork at best. Very similar to data compression. Also, I am pretty sure that many compression techniques DO involve clipping and smoothing, so there is also that to contend with.
Hey, finally a statement that makes sense. Tom waits is one of my favorite artists of all times, but alas, even he (probably) uses compression on his albums. It is very difficult to produce an album, especially the kind that is meant to be listened to in less than ideal environments (car, public trans, etc.) without some compression of dynamic range. Otherwise you would always be twiddling the volume back and forth and be annoyed that you can not hear the quiet passages and/or get blasted painfully during loud ones. So, just like any other sharp tool, compression is useful, but can be dangerous in the hands of greedy idiots (big business recording industry). My solution? Like you, I do not patronize the kind of music recordings that use compression extensively. That kind of loud featureless music is simply of no interest to me. I also do not watch commercial TV, I have decent home stereo system (not a 5.1, just basic good hi-fi stereo deal) and I go to listen to LIVE MUSIC as much as I can. If more people got off their asses and went to support their local talent and hear music live, there would be no market for over-compressed garbage out there since people would not even recognize it as music, but rather some elevator entertainment to kill a few seconds while being stuck with 15 other people in a tight space.
So, don't buy or even listen to the over-compressed garbage, educate others to do the same and it will disappear from the marketplace because of lack of demand. Remember, in the free market place the crap that is out there is often (not always) an indicator of the dumbed down demand. Record companies do what sells them most copies. Period. People's understanding of what exactly is good sound is getting diluted by all the high tech stuff, that's just the times we live in. If you never heard music live, you have a very poor vantage point from which to judge what good sound is. Most people out there are not very discerning, so loud is one of the few sensations they understand in music. Hence compression wars.
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VFA
This is really silly and unnecessary technology. If you are going to store a hash of person's fingerprint on the RFID chip, then why not use the person's fingerprint to key into a central repository of data to get that person's ID in the first place? RFID chips of the size that get implanted can only hold a handful of bytes of data anyway. It's not like they are little 1GB flash drives. These few bytes of info is used to store some key or ID and that ID is what gets used to obtain info. As one of the comments pointed out, these implantable RFID tags are not much different than bar code with a slightly longer range and not optically readable. The thing is, would you allow government to tattoo an ID bar code on you? Germans did this to the death camp inmates. I have a HUGE problem with that. Also, there is really no need to implant anything into anyone with a fingerprint. The fingerprint is already an ID tag. All that needs to be done is collecting everyone's fingerprints and entering them into a database. No BS RFID technology required.
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VFA
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Well, as most of you, I tried the Minefield, which is a nightly build of current FF development. I was amazed at the speed of the browser. This was one thing I wanted FF to have compared to Chrome. I really didn't think all that Chrome stuff was of much use except for its speed. Absence of extension interface is not ok with me (been spoiled by FF). Now FF seems to run as fast or faster than Chrome. But back to my subject. After installing the Minefield (I know it's really FF, but for the sake of this discussion I want to have different names) I noticed that my FF 3.0.3 runs with the speed of Minefield. I have not uninstalled Minefield, just start it, go to the benchmark page mentioned in this thread and get 1.273 / 0.904 / 1.391. Then close Minefield, open FF (make sure it's FF 3.0.3 by displaying version info first) and get the following numbers from the same benchmarks: 1.217 / 0.962 / 1.278 Seems like the FF 3.0.3 is now using the same JavaScript engine. Am I crazy? Is this possible? I will try uninstalling Minefield and seeing if things change, but seems now my FF 3.0.3 much faster with gmail by just seat of pants. I mean it is noticeably faster! I am very happy about it since the only thing about FF that I think is sub-par is speed. Now it's blazing-fast compared to before trying Minefield. Comments, thoughts...
They mean YOUR grandmother :)
Well, even better than eeePC, which is not really a laptop, but rather a blackberry with a thyroid problem (I am sure it has its place in the marketplace, but the guy was asking to replace his PC, which undoubtedly has more than 4G mass storage), take a look at Dell Vostro. They start at $399 and come with Windoze XP. Sure the thing has a single core AMD processor and 1GB of memory and 80G hard drive, and no DVD burner (just reader), but if you beef the system up to dual core AMD, 2GB of RAM, 120GB drive and a DVD burner, you are only at $519 with free shipping. In fact now they have a new model that uses intel dual core chip for the same price.
If you still have any faith to lose in this election, you obviously have been absent during the past two presidential elections. The "political process" is a moot point (the actual elections will be decided by Diebold) and is just a dog and pony show. I envy the few that actually still have any faith in the political process at this point. Just look at the field of candidates! We are in a single party system, let's face it. It's called the big business and special interest party. Good luck on the election day.
Understood. One thing, though. If these programs avoid clipping, then a file that has not been compressed and having a wide dynamic range will still sound quieter than a file that has been compressed heavily, so it is really no help, unless these thing compress. It is hard to deal with volume levels of content with various dynamic ranges without, well... compression. This is why it is used almost always in studio production (it is not a new thing. Using entirely too much of it is a new thing).
If everyone compressed the recordings the same way, say according to a certain standard, it would be possible to uncompress. This, I think was the case with radio stations. Some defacto standard was used by them to compress and then the high end radios could uncompress using this defacto standard. On the other hand the recording industry most likely uses non-standard compression techniques that make decompression impossible. If it's a simple log function, yes, you can undo the compression, but I doubt it's that simple. Once the signal is compressed, some information is taken out and without knowing how to reconstruct the missing information undoing the compression is guesswork at best. Very similar to data compression. Also, I am pretty sure that many compression techniques DO involve clipping and smoothing, so there is also that to contend with.
If you have Pink Floyd and Green Day in the system, well... You make your bed, you speep in it.
Normalization is very different from dynamic range compression. Not sure what the algorithms you mention do. Is there a better explanation? -- VFA
Hey, finally a statement that makes sense. Tom waits is one of my favorite artists of all times, but alas, even he (probably) uses compression on his albums. It is very difficult to produce an album, especially the kind that is meant to be listened to in less than ideal environments (car, public trans, etc.) without some compression of dynamic range. Otherwise you would always be twiddling the volume back and forth and be annoyed that you can not hear the quiet passages and/or get blasted painfully during loud ones. So, just like any other sharp tool, compression is useful, but can be dangerous in the hands of greedy idiots (big business recording industry). My solution? Like you, I do not patronize the kind of music recordings that use compression extensively. That kind of loud featureless music is simply of no interest to me. I also do not watch commercial TV, I have decent home stereo system (not a 5.1, just basic good hi-fi stereo deal) and I go to listen to LIVE MUSIC as much as I can. If more people got off their asses and went to support their local talent and hear music live, there would be no market for over-compressed garbage out there since people would not even recognize it as music, but rather some elevator entertainment to kill a few seconds while being stuck with 15 other people in a tight space. So, don't buy or even listen to the over-compressed garbage, educate others to do the same and it will disappear from the marketplace because of lack of demand. Remember, in the free market place the crap that is out there is often (not always) an indicator of the dumbed down demand. Record companies do what sells them most copies. Period. People's understanding of what exactly is good sound is getting diluted by all the high tech stuff, that's just the times we live in. If you never heard music live, you have a very poor vantage point from which to judge what good sound is. Most people out there are not very discerning, so loud is one of the few sensations they understand in music. Hence compression wars. -- VFA
This is really silly and unnecessary technology. If you are going to store a hash of person's fingerprint on the RFID chip, then why not use the person's fingerprint to key into a central repository of data to get that person's ID in the first place? RFID chips of the size that get implanted can only hold a handful of bytes of data anyway. It's not like they are little 1GB flash drives. These few bytes of info is used to store some key or ID and that ID is what gets used to obtain info. As one of the comments pointed out, these implantable RFID tags are not much different than bar code with a slightly longer range and not optically readable. The thing is, would you allow government to tattoo an ID bar code on you? Germans did this to the death camp inmates. I have a HUGE problem with that. Also, there is really no need to implant anything into anyone with a fingerprint. The fingerprint is already an ID tag. All that needs to be done is collecting everyone's fingerprints and entering them into a database. No BS RFID technology required. -- VFA