You're quite right about most of your points here. However, there _is_ evidence that Best Buy is behaving questionably here, and that is their past history. There are a number of clearly documented and proven cases where they've done exactly this sort of thing in the past, so it's relatively easy to believe that they're doing it again.
Furthermore, let's consider the first option: Buddy buys a hard drive, puts tiles in it, and then takes it back, screaming bloody murder. Alternatively, buddy buys a hard drive, puts tiles in the box, takes it back politely and gets a refund because it 'wasn't compatable with his system.' Then buddy #2 comes along, buys a hard drive, finds the tiles and then takes it back screaming bloody murder.
In case #1, it is up to Best Buy to prove that buddy is the guilty party. In case #2, it's up to them to prove that buddy #2 is the guilty party (which he isn't). Basically, it doesn't matter--unless the company can prove criminal behaviour on the part of the customer, then THEY are the responsible ones, by dint of being the retailer. Theft happens, and likely _has_ happened in this case. Whether it was case #1 or case #2 doesn't matter, unless the company can prove it. Furthermore, crime is generally a cost of doing business. Visa and MasterCard pay BILLIONS of dollars every year due to fraud, but they stay in business because their profits are higher than that. Furthermore, they do what they (cost effectively) can to limit and reduce fraud, and spread the cost across their customer base. What they DON'T do is refuse to accept fraud claims from some customers because of the size of the transaction or the equivalent of the local Napoleonic store manager. They suck it up, do some due diligence, absorb the cost (after ensuring that it's a somewhat reasonable claim), and then see if this is an indication of a larger problem that they can (or need to) fix.
True, the moon is insanely bright. However, even with mediocre skies from the middle of a city of a million people, WITH the nearly full moon, I was able to spot it naked-eye. Find Mirfak, scan across for delta-Persei (about three fingerwidths away with your arm held straight out), and then look up about half as far as the distance between them. If you can't see it, then grab some binoculars and it'll pop out quite vividly.
Probably not. Actually, absolutely not. On the 20th and 21st, the comet was about magnitude 17, which is invisible in anything less than a fair-sized telescope. Also, the comet is in Perseus.
If you're in the northern hemisphere, it was likely Venus. Right now, it's spectacularly high and bright in the morning sky. I can see it until quite some time after sunrise.
Take a look at it with binoculars--you should be able to make out a clear disk shape.
Well, I'd certainly never claim that a dictionary is always definitively correct--there are too many that don't agree with each other for that to be supportable. In this case though (-fold as a suffix), the etymology is quite clear, long, and well-established. The use of "fold" meaning "times " is both historically and etymologically sound. Curiously, it doesn't mention the powers-of-two usage, which is also common and correct--which points to your previous point about dictionaries being noncanonical. I'd like to dig through the OED on this one, just for the fun of it.
Now on the other hand, I could have referenced the American Heritage dictionary, which would have thrown my arguments and also my personal character into complete disrepute.:-)
Just to be clear on something, I never used the word millionfold in my submission. That was kdawson editing my post for his own glory.
Incidentally, the term has been used both ways, and has etymologically distinct roots, so millionfold meaning 'a million times' is valid. I can't link directly to it, at the sixth entry (-fold) at Miriam Webster's.
Nonetheless, it wasn't my word. Neither was the claim that the comet is 'starlike in binoculars.'
I'm slightly appalled. I write up what I consider to be an interesting story for/. readers, check my grammar and links, and then click submit. Lo and behold, it gets accepted. Cool!
Then I read what I supposedly wrote, and find that words have been put in my mouth. Specifically:
"The comet still appears starlike even in binoculars but should grow to several arcminutes across over the next few nights. "
I did NOT write that. I didn't suggest it. The comet does NOT appear starlike in binoculars at all--it's quite a clear extended disk. ONE person quoted in Sky & Telescope believes that it will expand to several arcminutes in size, but that's strictly conjecture.
Furthermore, I didn't use the word "millionfold" in my subject line. That was kdawson again./. editors: If you're going to actually edit submissions (and why start now, after ignoring fundamental grammatical errors and duplicate stories for a decade?) then get it right!
Heh. After I heard about this yesterday, a storm blew in and it started snowing here. It wasn't until 5am (MDT) that the clouds parted just enough to give me a view of it. That's when I posted the story.
Hmm. I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me.:-)
I'd say games are too complicated in that they're more complicated than they have to be--I think that's partly your point. The plot doesn't affect the gameplay or outcome, and is therefore superfluous. No argument there. I believe the OP was saying that games are too complicated, in that there's too much stuff to remember or keep track of--similar complaint, but not identical.
What I was suggesting was that there were some games, and they seem to be a few years old now, where plot and gameplay were fundamentally integrated, at least as much as they are in any game (electronic or not). Without the plot (quite simple in some cases), there would be no gameplay for them. Civilization is an excellent example of this. Black and White was as well. In terms of action games, I'd say that Homeworld was more successful than most.
I guess the question is: Can you take away the plot elements and still have an entertaining game? If the answer is, "There AREN'T any plot elements" then it's irrelevant, and the gameplay stands on its own. If the answer is no, then the game is successfully integrated with the plot (or alternatively, the gameplay sucks). If the answer is yes, then the plot is unnecessary, to a greater or lesser extent.
In the Bioshock example, The issue boils down to asking how much difference is there between hitting that switch to get to the next skill level, vs. hitting that elevator button and getting to the next level of infestation. (Actually, I've not played Bioshock yet, but I'm just replaying System Shock 2 these days, so it's a comparable example from all I've heard.) Does the plot matter? Not from the perspective of gameplay, which means there's a disconnect between the two.
What you say is true for albums. Not a movie/album/game. "Gold record" (and platinum) in your context is a term specific to the audio recording industry. In the context of games, this is correct.
Wow, that's remarkable! With one statement, you have instantly dismissed all other operating systems out-of-hand. If someone says, "but (something) OS is FAR better at backwards compatability," you can easily reply with, "Well then, it's not a major OS."
Unfortunately, you're completely wrong. Solaris only recently dropped support for the Sun4m architecture, which was discontinued in 1995. Apple has made one OS shift and two hardware architecture shifts since the introduction of the first Mac. Even Linux, which is notorious for breaking compatability, has been more stable (from a compatability point of view) than Windows since the introduction of the 2.6 kernel. Then there's HPUX and AIX, which have more in common with Solaris than anything else. HPUX even runs the SAME CODE on PA-RISC and Itanic systems directly.
Microsofr Windows is the least backwards-compatable commercial OS out there, bar none.
"the games these days are just a little bit too complicated"
Too COMPLICATED?! Run, shoot, duck, shoot, shoot, shoot. Yeah, tons of weapons and tons of strategies, but that sums up most modern games.
The height of complexity in games was probably 'round about Civ II or Black & White, or some other resource allocation games. Warcraft is another possibility. These games were all as complex as they were, because that level of complexity was required to make the game work in a self-consistent manner. Most of the complexity in modern games is added on to make things more difficult.
Some need serial, some need parallel. Some need analog video, most need analog audio of some form (OK, essentially all of them).
You can have a system without the legacy cruft if you like, but I don't really feel like replacing $5000 worth of equipment in my basement because of your design. I certainly don't imagine that the labs out there want to replace millions of dollars of serial-connected research equipment because of your plans, though.
Greenpeace has been a disreputable bunch of radicals and vandals who act in the name of environmentalism, and damage the efforts being made by real environmentalists--people who are working for positive change in the world. Their goals may be laudable, but their actions are unconscionable and often dangerous.
Unfortunately, mention the word "environment" in the wrong circles, and you're likely to hear a response of "Yer one a' them damned greenpeace hippie freaks, ain'tcha?"
Oh, wait--there's no "but." You're right. One could argue that the lack of closed protocols is the key difference, but fundamentally I have to ask, "so what?"
"just a big waste of time and energy that all goes to pay a few people mega salaries and a bunch of other people mediocre salaries."
Yep. Exactly.
"It also accomplishes nothing for the greater good, it's worse than a sitcom or American Idol."
Well now, it provides as much entertainment as those 'fine' venues for humiliation. As such, I'd say that Google is no more evil than American Idol. Pretty low standards of them, unfortunately.
Shut up! Your stupid little rant doesn't make you appear clever. Nor does it add any value or insight to the post. All it does is remind the readers that behind one of the more influential and long-lived websites in the tech sphere is a whiny little nerd who still hasn't grown up.
Many of us _did_ go to verify it, when it hit the more current news sites the other day. We read it, investigated it, found it was (likely) fake, and moved on. Then it hit/. with the hopeful believers, and suddenly it becomes a "classic slashdot dispute."
Sorry to say it, but the world is bigger than/. and often less credulous.
20%? Seems high, but when you consider the three biggest parts of their "security" budget," antivirus software, firewalls, and proxy servers" it falls into place--especially since most survey-answerers would lump antivirus measures in with antispam.
Real security--IDS, systems and network monitoring, incident response, still gets short shrift--mostly a bit of lip service whenever Sarbanes-Oxley gets tossed around but no real support. It's hard to get a budget though, when security geeks aren't geared up for a proper risk-cost-analysis.
Most of your points are well made, but a few are wrong, or at least emphasised inappropriately.
"For most people, a long speaker run is better than a long analog preamp run."
No no no. This is simply wrong. Unless you have horrendously BAD equipment, it's generally easier to deal with capacitive loading effects in interconnects than with resistive loading in speaker wire. If you have a long run, put the power amps close to the speakers, simple as that. (For confirmation, see the references at the bottom of this post.)
Your example of 110dB at 4m is pretty much the practical limit of volume in the house, but let's take it as given. "A fat enough cable has lots of inductance. Guess what that does to your sharp drum strike" It blurs it--inaudibly. The amount of inductance-related degradation is inaudible unless (again) you have a messed up system. It Just Isn't Important.
"Now, 12 feet of 12 ga. cable has a resistance of about 0.23 ohm" Ummm...what material are you using for your cables? 12 feet of 12AWG copper will have about 0.019ohm--less than your (quite good) amp! That now leads to a damping factor of 4/.04, or 100. MUCH better.
"So, lamp cord does make a decent speaker cable, at short distances, but it is hardly the cable of choice for a modest distance to a decent speaker. While spending $7000 for a pair of speaker cables is outragous, spending $100 or so isn't, though most of that money will be purchasing good connectors and well-made cable."
Despite the earlier complaints, this isn't too far from the truth. My speaker cables were about $50, and I made them myself. (For the record, 8x18AWG loosely braided, rather like Kimber Cable--not because they're audibly better, but because it's pretty!). You could do well at half that much, but you'd have to put a bit of work into it.
REFS: 1. Making The Connection: A Closer Look At The Role Of Interconnect Cables, J.H. Hayward, Audio Ideas Guide, Summer/Fall 1994 2. Making The Connection, Part Deux: A Closer Look At The Role Of Loudspeaker Cables, J.H. Hayward, Audio Ideas Guide, Winter/Spring 1995
Folks, you have to understand the audiophile mentality to realise why these things are out there. There are a lot of things going on in the signal chain from source to brain, and a lot of places where the signal could get degraded. Unfortunately, that leads to a lot of potential for snake oil, something that seems to be worse in high end audio than any other field of which I'm aware.
First of all, there's the science. Cables can be engineered to push all of their flaws several orders of magnitude beyond the limits of human hearing, fairly trivially. Both speaker cables and interconnects have their own challenges, but can be overcome. With decent cables, any audible degradation is the result of bad equipment design. It is, for instance, possible to design gear so badly that cables make a difference--this is not a desirable goal, unless you're in the snake oil business. How can you prove the audibility (or not) of cables? There are essentially four ways: 1) Rigorous double-blind ABX testing. 2) Measuring signal loss/distortion across the cable. 3) Subtract the post-cable signal from pre-cable signal and study the residual signal. 4) Listen to a system and make arbitrary comments about the cables.
One of these is not a valid proof, but is the one that gets promoted aggressively over the other three. Can you guess what it is?
In my mind, there are essentially two schools of audiophile: There are the 'absolute signal purity' geeks who want a perfect reproduction of the signal from source to speaker, and are willing to buy overengineered equipment to do it. These are the folks who buy Rotel, Bryston, Krell, and the like. Then there are the 'absolute musical purity' folks, who don't care about the signal per se, so much as the music in it. They're the ones who buy 3-watt triode amps (like the insane but gorgeous Moth S2A3) and the (new) Magnum-Dynalab tube tuners, and shun CDs. This group tends to fall into the audiophile 'tweaker' mentality more readily, but both groups have their extremes. The one thing about the extremists from either school is an absolute refusal to consider things rationally. It is the love of the irrational that keeps them happily tweaking, and keeps the snake oil salesmen in business.
The problem that leads to the endless search for audio nirvana is partly that audio is a perception issue, and one that is chronologically linear. You can't listen to two sounds simultaneously and decide which is better, or whether they're the same. (ABX testing is the closest you can get, but most hardcore audiophiles won't participate.) Worse, you can get into endless discussions about what constitutes hearing. If you put something in the chain that makes no change to the signal, but you believe that it sounds different, are you hearing something different or not?
As a final note, I highly recommend finding a copy of two articles in Audio Ideas Guide (an audiophile tweak-happy publication) by James Hayward, a retired engineer from Canada's National Research Council. In them, he discusses the actual physics behind audio cables, and points out what actually CAN lead to audible degradation by cables. (Hint: It isn't easy, but there are some on the market which qualify.)
1. Making The Connection: A Closer Look At The Role Of Interconnect Cables, J.H. Hayward, Audio Ideas Guide, Summer/Fall 1994 2. Making The Connection, Part Deux: A Closer Look At The Role Of Loudspeaker Cables, J.H. Hayward, Audio Ideas Guide, Winter/Spring 1995
You can read a short summary of the articles on Bryston's website.
That little piece of the story is a lead in--a bit of filler to get to the important part, which you apparently missed completely.
Bloggers are hiding in fear for the lives in Burma, afraid of joining the (rumoured) thousands of slaughtered monks and civilian protesters, one of the most violent dictatorships in the world is on the march, and you're worried about defending your reputation as a COOL geek.
How about if I came up and shot your five closest friends and/or family members, cut off all internet access, and then beat you senseless before throwing you in an anonymous cell. How important would it be to protect your cred?
Congratulations. That was the most illiterate post of/. in 2007.
However, that doesn't help matters. Military Junta comes in, slaughters the cafe's manager and then starts asking his widow what the guys looked like. Even if she didn't see them, she'll make up something to reduce her chance of being murdered in the next three minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
You're quite right about most of your points here. However, there _is_ evidence that Best Buy is behaving questionably here, and that is their past history. There are a number of clearly documented and proven cases where they've done exactly this sort of thing in the past, so it's relatively easy to believe that they're doing it again.
Furthermore, let's consider the first option: Buddy buys a hard drive, puts tiles in it, and then takes it back, screaming bloody murder. Alternatively, buddy buys a hard drive, puts tiles in the box, takes it back politely and gets a refund because it 'wasn't compatable with his system.' Then buddy #2 comes along, buys a hard drive, finds the tiles and then takes it back screaming bloody murder.
In case #1, it is up to Best Buy to prove that buddy is the guilty party. In case #2, it's up to them to prove that buddy #2 is the guilty party (which he isn't). Basically, it doesn't matter--unless the company can prove criminal behaviour on the part of the customer, then THEY are the responsible ones, by dint of being the retailer. Theft happens, and likely _has_ happened in this case. Whether it was case #1 or case #2 doesn't matter, unless the company can prove it. Furthermore, crime is generally a cost of doing business. Visa and MasterCard pay BILLIONS of dollars every year due to fraud, but they stay in business because their profits are higher than that. Furthermore, they do what they (cost effectively) can to limit and reduce fraud, and spread the cost across their customer base. What they DON'T do is refuse to accept fraud claims from some customers because of the size of the transaction or the equivalent of the local Napoleonic store manager. They suck it up, do some due diligence, absorb the cost (after ensuring that it's a somewhat reasonable claim), and then see if this is an indication of a larger problem that they can (or need to) fix.
True, the moon is insanely bright. However, even with mediocre skies from the middle of a city of a million people, WITH the nearly full moon, I was able to spot it naked-eye. Find Mirfak, scan across for delta-Persei (about three fingerwidths away with your arm held straight out), and then look up about half as far as the distance between them. If you can't see it, then grab some binoculars and it'll pop out quite vividly.
Probably not. Actually, absolutely not. On the 20th and 21st, the comet was about magnitude 17, which is invisible in anything less than a fair-sized telescope. Also, the comet is in Perseus.
If you're in the northern hemisphere, it was likely Venus. Right now, it's spectacularly high and bright in the morning sky. I can see it until quite some time after sunrise.
Take a look at it with binoculars--you should be able to make out a clear disk shape.
Well, I'd certainly never claim that a dictionary is always definitively correct--there are too many that don't agree with each other for that to be supportable. In this case though (-fold as a suffix), the etymology is quite clear, long, and well-established. The use of "fold" meaning "times " is both historically and etymologically sound. Curiously, it doesn't mention the powers-of-two usage, which is also common and correct--which points to your previous point about dictionaries being noncanonical. I'd like to dig through the OED on this one, just for the fun of it.
:-)
Now on the other hand, I could have referenced the American Heritage dictionary, which would have thrown my arguments and also my personal character into complete disrepute.
Just to be clear on something, I never used the word millionfold in my submission. That was kdawson editing my post for his own glory.
Incidentally, the term has been used both ways, and has etymologically distinct roots, so millionfold meaning 'a million times' is valid.
I can't link directly to it, at the sixth entry (-fold) at Miriam Webster's.
Nonetheless, it wasn't my word. Neither was the claim that the comet is 'starlike in binoculars.'
I'm slightly appalled. /. readers, check my grammar and links, and then click submit. Lo and behold, it gets accepted. Cool!
/. editors: If you're going to actually edit submissions (and why start now, after ignoring fundamental grammatical errors and duplicate stories for a decade?) then get it right!
I write up what I consider to be an interesting story for
Then I read what I supposedly wrote, and find that words have been put in my mouth. Specifically:
"The comet still appears starlike even in binoculars but should grow to several arcminutes across over the next few nights. "
I did NOT write that. I didn't suggest it. The comet does NOT appear starlike in binoculars at all--it's quite a clear extended disk. ONE person quoted in Sky & Telescope believes that it will expand to several arcminutes in size, but that's strictly conjecture.
Furthermore, I didn't use the word "millionfold" in my subject line. That was kdawson again.
Heh. After I heard about this yesterday, a storm blew in and it started snowing here. It wasn't until 5am (MDT) that the clouds parted just enough to give me a view of it. That's when I posted the story.
Hmm. I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. :-)
I'd say games are too complicated in that they're more complicated than they have to be--I think that's partly your point. The plot doesn't affect the gameplay or outcome, and is therefore superfluous. No argument there. I believe the OP was saying that games are too complicated, in that there's too much stuff to remember or keep track of--similar complaint, but not identical.
What I was suggesting was that there were some games, and they seem to be a few years old now, where plot and gameplay were fundamentally integrated, at least as much as they are in any game (electronic or not). Without the plot (quite simple in some cases), there would be no gameplay for them. Civilization is an excellent example of this. Black and White was as well. In terms of action games, I'd say that Homeworld was more successful than most.
I guess the question is: Can you take away the plot elements and still have an entertaining game? If the answer is, "There AREN'T any plot elements" then it's irrelevant, and the gameplay stands on its own. If the answer is no, then the game is successfully integrated with the plot (or alternatively, the gameplay sucks). If the answer is yes, then the plot is unnecessary, to a greater or lesser extent.
In the Bioshock example, The issue boils down to asking how much difference is there between hitting that switch to get to the next skill level, vs. hitting that elevator button and getting to the next level of infestation. (Actually, I've not played Bioshock yet, but I'm just replaying System Shock 2 these days, so it's a comparable example from all I've heard.) Does the plot matter? Not from the perspective of gameplay, which means there's a disconnect between the two.
What you say is true for albums. Not a movie/album/game. "Gold record" (and platinum) in your context is a term specific to the audio recording industry. In the context of games, this is correct.
Wow, that's remarkable! With one statement, you have instantly dismissed all other operating systems out-of-hand. If someone says, "but (something) OS is FAR better at backwards compatability," you can easily reply with, "Well then, it's not a major OS."
Unfortunately, you're completely wrong. Solaris only recently dropped support for the Sun4m architecture, which was discontinued in 1995. Apple has made one OS shift and two hardware architecture shifts since the introduction of the first Mac. Even Linux, which is notorious for breaking compatability, has been more stable (from a compatability point of view) than Windows since the introduction of the 2.6 kernel. Then there's HPUX and AIX, which have more in common with Solaris than anything else. HPUX even runs the SAME CODE on PA-RISC and Itanic systems directly.
Microsofr Windows is the least backwards-compatable commercial OS out there, bar none.
"the games these days are just a little bit too complicated"
Too COMPLICATED?! Run, shoot, duck, shoot, shoot, shoot. Yeah, tons of weapons and tons of strategies, but that sums up most modern games.
The height of complexity in games was probably 'round about Civ II or Black & White, or some other resource allocation games. Warcraft is another possibility. These games were all as complex as they were, because that level of complexity was required to make the game work in a self-consistent manner. Most of the complexity in modern games is added on to make things more difficult.
Nice idea--for SOME systems.
Some need serial, some need parallel. Some need analog video, most need analog audio of some form (OK, essentially all of them).
You can have a system without the legacy cruft if you like, but I don't really feel like replacing $5000 worth of equipment in my basement because of your design. I certainly don't imagine that the labs out there want to replace millions of dollars of serial-connected research equipment because of your plans, though.
Care to explain what the hell you mean by retcon?! I honestly have no idea, and the rest of your post is quite logical.
Damned fucking straight!
Greenpeace has been a disreputable bunch of radicals and vandals who act in the name of environmentalism, and damage the efforts being made by real environmentalists--people who are working for positive change in the world. Their goals may be laudable, but their actions are unconscionable and often dangerous.
Unfortunately, mention the word "environment" in the wrong circles, and you're likely to hear a response of "Yer one a' them damned greenpeace hippie freaks, ain'tcha?"
What you say may be true, but...
Oh, wait--there's no "but." You're right. One could argue that the lack of closed protocols is the key difference, but fundamentally I have to ask, "so what?"
"just a big waste of time and energy that all goes to pay a few people mega salaries and a bunch of other people mediocre salaries."
Yep. Exactly.
"It also accomplishes nothing for the greater good, it's worse than a sitcom or American Idol."
Well now, it provides as much entertainment as those 'fine' venues for humiliation. As such, I'd say that Google is no more evil than American Idol. Pretty low standards of them, unfortunately.
Their business plan.
Shut up!
Your stupid little rant doesn't make you appear clever. Nor does it add any value or insight to the post. All it does is remind the readers that behind one of the more influential and long-lived websites in the tech sphere is a whiny little nerd who still hasn't grown up.
Many of us _did_ go to verify it, when it hit the more current news sites the other day. We read it, investigated it, found it was (likely) fake, and moved on. Then it hit /. with the hopeful believers, and suddenly it becomes a "classic slashdot dispute."
/. and often less credulous.
Sorry to say it, but the world is bigger than
20%? Seems high, but when you consider the three biggest parts of their "security" budget," antivirus software, firewalls, and proxy servers" it falls into place--especially since most survey-answerers would lump antivirus measures in with antispam.
Real security--IDS, systems and network monitoring, incident response, still gets short shrift--mostly a bit of lip service whenever Sarbanes-Oxley gets tossed around but no real support. It's hard to get a budget though, when security geeks aren't geared up for a proper risk-cost-analysis.
Take a step back, one word to be specific, and you add another one: "orginal."
Literacy is a dead art.
Most of your points are well made, but a few are wrong, or at least emphasised inappropriately.
"For most people, a long speaker run is better than a long analog preamp run."
No no no. This is simply wrong. Unless you have horrendously BAD equipment, it's generally easier to deal with capacitive loading effects in interconnects than with resistive loading in speaker wire. If you have a long run, put the power amps close to the speakers, simple as that. (For confirmation, see the references at the bottom of this post.)
Your example of 110dB at 4m is pretty much the practical limit of volume in the house, but let's take it as given.
"A fat enough cable has lots of inductance. Guess what that does to your sharp drum strike"
It blurs it--inaudibly. The amount of inductance-related degradation is inaudible unless (again) you have a messed up system. It Just Isn't Important.
"Now, 12 feet of 12 ga. cable has a resistance of about 0.23 ohm"
Ummm...what material are you using for your cables? 12 feet of 12AWG copper will have about 0.019ohm--less than your (quite good) amp! That now leads to a damping factor of 4/.04, or 100. MUCH better.
"So, lamp cord does make a decent speaker cable, at short distances, but it is hardly the cable of choice for a modest distance to a decent speaker. While spending $7000 for a pair of speaker cables is outragous, spending $100 or so isn't, though most of that money will be purchasing good connectors and well-made cable."
Despite the earlier complaints, this isn't too far from the truth. My speaker cables were about $50, and I made them myself. (For the record, 8x18AWG loosely braided, rather like Kimber Cable--not because they're audibly better, but because it's pretty!). You could do well at half that much, but you'd have to put a bit of work into it.
REFS:
1. Making The Connection: A Closer Look At The Role Of Interconnect Cables, J.H. Hayward, Audio Ideas Guide, Summer/Fall 1994
2. Making The Connection, Part Deux: A Closer Look At The Role Of Loudspeaker Cables, J.H. Hayward, Audio Ideas Guide, Winter/Spring 1995
Folks, you have to understand the audiophile mentality to realise why these things are out there. There are a lot of things going on in the signal chain from source to brain, and a lot of places where the signal could get degraded. Unfortunately, that leads to a lot of potential for snake oil, something that seems to be worse in high end audio than any other field of which I'm aware.
First of all, there's the science. Cables can be engineered to push all of their flaws several orders of magnitude beyond the limits of human hearing, fairly trivially. Both speaker cables and interconnects have their own challenges, but can be overcome. With decent cables, any audible degradation is the result of bad equipment design. It is, for instance, possible to design gear so badly that cables make a difference--this is not a desirable goal, unless you're in the snake oil business.
How can you prove the audibility (or not) of cables? There are essentially four ways:
1) Rigorous double-blind ABX testing.
2) Measuring signal loss/distortion across the cable.
3) Subtract the post-cable signal from pre-cable signal and study the residual signal.
4) Listen to a system and make arbitrary comments about the cables.
One of these is not a valid proof, but is the one that gets promoted aggressively over the other three. Can you guess what it is?
In my mind, there are essentially two schools of audiophile: There are the 'absolute signal purity' geeks who want a perfect reproduction of the signal from source to speaker, and are willing to buy overengineered equipment to do it. These are the folks who buy Rotel, Bryston, Krell, and the like. Then there are the 'absolute musical purity' folks, who don't care about the signal per se, so much as the music in it. They're the ones who buy 3-watt triode amps (like the insane but gorgeous Moth S2A3) and the (new) Magnum-Dynalab tube tuners, and shun CDs. This group tends to fall into the audiophile 'tweaker' mentality more readily, but both groups have their extremes. The one thing about the extremists from either school is an absolute refusal to consider things rationally. It is the love of the irrational that keeps them happily tweaking, and keeps the snake oil salesmen in business.
The problem that leads to the endless search for audio nirvana is partly that audio is a perception issue, and one that is chronologically linear. You can't listen to two sounds simultaneously and decide which is better, or whether they're the same. (ABX testing is the closest you can get, but most hardcore audiophiles won't participate.) Worse, you can get into endless discussions about what constitutes hearing. If you put something in the chain that makes no change to the signal, but you believe that it sounds different, are you hearing something different or not?
As a final note, I highly recommend finding a copy of two articles in Audio Ideas Guide (an audiophile tweak-happy publication) by James Hayward, a retired engineer from Canada's National Research Council. In them, he discusses the actual physics behind audio cables, and points out what actually CAN lead to audible degradation by cables. (Hint: It isn't easy, but there are some on the market which qualify.)
1. Making The Connection: A Closer Look At The Role Of Interconnect Cables, J.H. Hayward, Audio Ideas Guide, Summer/Fall 1994
2. Making The Connection, Part Deux: A Closer Look At The Role Of Loudspeaker Cables, J.H. Hayward, Audio Ideas Guide, Winter/Spring 1995
You can read a short summary of the articles on Bryston's website.
Financial data.
Net income of just over a billion US dollars. Not irrelevant quite yet.
You know what? Nobody fucking cares.
That little piece of the story is a lead in--a bit of filler to get to the important part, which you apparently missed completely.
Bloggers are hiding in fear for the lives in Burma, afraid of joining the (rumoured) thousands of slaughtered monks and civilian protesters, one of the most violent dictatorships in the world is on the march, and you're worried about defending your reputation as a COOL geek.
How about if I came up and shot your five closest friends and/or family members, cut off all internet access, and then beat you senseless before throwing you in an anonymous cell. How important would it be to protect your cred?
Get a fucking piece of perspective.
Congratulations. That was the most illiterate post of /. in 2007.
However, that doesn't help matters. Military Junta comes in, slaughters the cafe's manager and then starts asking his widow what the guys looked like. Even if she didn't see them, she'll make up something to reduce her chance of being murdered in the next three minutes.