I never said he had no right to be upset. And I said that the PR guy is clearly the worst of the lot.
But Da(n)ve throws a tantrum when insulted, when he has a viable course of action (cancel his order). Why give your money to the roid-raging PR guy at that point? Why write a novel and a half on someone who is clearly a waste of time? Why would you ever non-ironically type the words "Welcome to the internet, bitch"? The reason is that he sounds broken in his own, not as bad but still douchey, way.
Welcome to the internet, bitch. That’s how I roll.
No amount of righteous anger makes that anything less than laughably douchey. Especially when it was preceded by a 5 paragraph tirade about how he didn't get his toy in time for Christmas.
Then there's the PA dude who feels the need to mention not once but twice that he's famous.
Does anyone involved in there come across as anything but a douchebag? Certainly the PR guy is the worst but the whole thing is a pasty nerd slapfight of the worst degree.
If 100% of the digital signal gets transported over the cable, it doesn't matter if it is a $10 or a $1000 cable.
If 100% of the signal gets transported, but the cable introduces jitter then it will result in errors during decoding. It's not just a matter of 100% of the signal arriving, it's also a matter of arriving at the right time.
This is a common viewpoint here, that based on your poor understanding of the science involved it's not possible. Meanwhile, the audiophiles, based on their poor understanding of the science involved, assume it is.
HDMI has no error correction, and is prone to jitter. So yes, changing an HDMI cable can theoretically affect the quality of the audio and video output by the device.
I'm not saying the price is justified, because that's pretty absurd. But making a blanket statement about what isn't possible without any understanding or experience is just as ignorant as doing the opposite.
I like how those who can hear the difference (a difference that, again, is provable and measurable) are suffering from the placebo affect, but when you can't hear the difference it's because the difference doesn't exist.
Sometimes the emperor really is stark fucking naked.
Sometimes you can't tell if the emperor is naked or not because your monocle is crappy and smudged. If your system isn't good, you're not going to be able to hear the difference.
Today's music, however, is so compressed (as in audio-compression, not data-compression) in the quest to "make it louder" that it doesn't even get close to reaching the possible dynamic range of 16-bit, which effectively makes an upgrade to 24-bit completely worthless.
Google "Loudness Wars" if you want more information on that.
Sure that's true of major labels, but the gp's quote here is about Linn records, an audiophile record label that *does* care about quality and *does not* brick wall their recordings.
I don't even want to get started on "audiophiles". They're institutionalized hatred of the sound of live music sickens me...they claim to want the best quality possible, but won't suffer through anything that hasn't been run through an unintentional distortion or dynamic range limiting filter.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to here, but audio is a subjective experience. There's a lot of bs and snakeoil in that industry, don't get me wrong, but I think the biggest thing lost in the discussion between "audiophiles" and their critics is that music is an aesthetic experience. While I think "good" sound is highly correlated to accuracy, ultimately our brains are not oscilloscopes, and our ears are not high quality microphones.
Not to mention the fact that most "live" music as we know it and listen to it (unless you only listen to classical and jazz) is amplified through a speaker and resonating around a giant room.
If you can't tell the difference between a 24-bit lossless file and 128kbps mp4 file you literally haven't tried.
The backlash against "audiophiles" has gotten so ridiculous that there's an almost religious belief by their critics that there's no such thing as better sounding audio, even when it's measurable and provable.
My guess is that Thompson wants their format to be able to sold for lossless downloads, as the formats move that way.
This would be a way for, say, Amazon, to sell lossless downloads and maintain 100% compatibility. Those who care could buy them and then transcode to whatever superior lossless format they wanted to.
The Iowa votes still counted towards the popular vote.
The entire thing renders the electoral vote into a formality - it really doesn't matter where the 270 electoral votes come from. Only the popular vote now, matters, and a vote from Iowa still counts towards that popular vote.
People whose votes have been overvalued in the past due to a bad system will not.
Effectively weighting a rural vote higher than an urban vote strikes me as inherently undemocratic.
no one seems to mind that the Senate is composed of 100 senators, evenly distributed among states as diverse in size and population as California and Rhode Island.
That's because the system is balanced out by the House. There's nothing balancing this out - a less popular president can win because rural voters are being counted more than urban voters.
The Iowa votes still count because they count towards the popular vote, which in turn determines the distribution of a majority of the electoral votes.
How is this hard to understand???? It's getting rid of the electoral college by tying it to the popular vote; the popular candidate wins, no shenanigans. The law only goes into effect if enough states pass the same law, thus insuring that a majority of electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote.
Everyone wins in this circumstance. No reasonable human being could possibly object to it, unless you share our forefathers' opinions that the country needs to be protected from the voters.
...while I was temping for a company in Chicago, I was asked to deliver a box of candy to a client in the Sears Tower. While entering, I went though the giant, heightened security setup - x-rays and all - and got held up because I had a box cutter in my backback.
They held it up triumphantly and shouted at me, "Just what do you expect to do with this?!"
I wanted to ask them them the same question back. Just what did they expect I'd do with that? In a building that had security guards with guns? Was I going to hijack the building and crash it into a plane?
More than anything I question the conclusions you've reached. Assume the anecdote is true - what does it really tell you? Does it tell you that Monster is bad wire? Or does it tell you that coat hangers make for good wire? Or does it tell you that the poster has poor hearing? You've assumed it's option A, judging by how you framed the article ("For more proof that Monster has nothing special...") and while I don't believe in Monster's virtues any more than those of coathangers, I'm not sure that's a safe conclusion to jump to. It certainly doesn't qualify as "proof" of anything, in any sense of the word.
Another thing to note is that the post in question is describing a single-blind test. If you listen to Slashdot's chorus of anti-audiophile / skeptical crowd, anything short of a double-blind test is meaningless.
Though I think their merits of double blind testing are debatable for when it comes to audio, it just backs up my notion that the burden of proof is different depending on whether or not the information supports your claim.
The Consumerist did no such comparison. Rather, a reader sent them a 4 year old post from a random dude on another forum, which the Consumerist quoted and posted, turning it into a popular Slashdot meme.
Groupthink at work, gotta love it. The burden of proof is always non-existent when it backs up your pre-existing notions of truth.
No, the Consumerist did no such thing. If you read the article, all the Consumerist did, in fact, was quote a 4 year old post by a random dude on an internet forum.
That's hardly what I would call a reliable source of information, and yet people continue to perpetuate the mean as truth because it appeals to their pre-existing notions.
Why on earth would you spend 3x as much on power conditioning than you do on speakers? They made some very odd decisions; 1/3rd this much money will get you a home theater that trumps it in terms of quality (though not features).
Slashdot Mirror
I never said he had no right to be upset. And I said that the PR guy is clearly the worst of the lot.
But Da(n)ve throws a tantrum when insulted, when he has a viable course of action (cancel his order). Why give your money to the roid-raging PR guy at that point? Why write a novel and a half on someone who is clearly a waste of time? Why would you ever non-ironically type the words "Welcome to the internet, bitch"? The reason is that he sounds broken in his own, not as bad but still douchey, way.
He typed these words and hit send:
Welcome to the internet, bitch. That’s how I roll.
No amount of righteous anger makes that anything less than laughably douchey. Especially when it was preceded by a 5 paragraph tirade about how he didn't get his toy in time for Christmas.
Then there's the PA dude who feels the need to mention not once but twice that he's famous.
Does anyone involved in there come across as anything but a douchebag? Certainly the PR guy is the worst but the whole thing is a pasty nerd slapfight of the worst degree.
If 100% of the digital signal gets transported over the cable, it doesn't matter if it is a $10 or a $1000 cable.
If 100% of the signal gets transported, but the cable introduces jitter then it will result in errors during decoding. It's not just a matter of 100% of the signal arriving, it's also a matter of arriving at the right time.
This is a common viewpoint here, that based on your poor understanding of the science involved it's not possible. Meanwhile, the audiophiles, based on their poor understanding of the science involved, assume it is.
HDMI has no error correction, and is prone to jitter. So yes, changing an HDMI cable can theoretically affect the quality of the audio and video output by the device.
I'm not saying the price is justified, because that's pretty absurd. But making a blanket statement about what isn't possible without any understanding or experience is just as ignorant as doing the opposite.
I like how those who can hear the difference (a difference that, again, is provable and measurable) are suffering from the placebo affect, but when you can't hear the difference it's because the difference doesn't exist.
Sometimes the emperor really is stark fucking naked.
Sometimes you can't tell if the emperor is naked or not because your monocle is crappy and smudged. If your system isn't good, you're not going to be able to hear the difference.
Today's music, however, is so compressed (as in audio-compression, not data-compression) in the quest to "make it louder" that it doesn't even get close to reaching the possible dynamic range of 16-bit, which effectively makes an upgrade to 24-bit completely worthless.
Google "Loudness Wars" if you want more information on that.
Sure that's true of major labels, but the gp's quote here is about Linn records, an audiophile record label that *does* care about quality and *does not* brick wall their recordings.
I don't even want to get started on "audiophiles". They're institutionalized hatred of the sound of live music sickens me...they claim to want the best quality possible, but won't suffer through anything that hasn't been run through an unintentional distortion or dynamic range limiting filter.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to here, but audio is a subjective experience. There's a lot of bs and snakeoil in that industry, don't get me wrong, but I think the biggest thing lost in the discussion between "audiophiles" and their critics is that music is an aesthetic experience. While I think "good" sound is highly correlated to accuracy, ultimately our brains are not oscilloscopes, and our ears are not high quality microphones.
Not to mention the fact that most "live" music as we know it and listen to it (unless you only listen to classical and jazz) is amplified through a speaker and resonating around a giant room.
If you can't tell the difference between a 24-bit lossless file and 128kbps mp4 file you literally haven't tried.
The backlash against "audiophiles" has gotten so ridiculous that there's an almost religious belief by their critics that there's no such thing as better sounding audio, even when it's measurable and provable.
is like watching Hollywood try to do geek stuff.
You guys are to humor what The Net and Swordfish are to computers.
I mean what do you think our government is, a government?
And yes I do realize that's too much to ask from Slashdot readership.
My guess is that Thompson wants their format to be able to sold for lossless downloads, as the formats move that way.
This would be a way for, say, Amazon, to sell lossless downloads and maintain 100% compatibility. Those who care could buy them and then transcode to whatever superior lossless format they wanted to.
Why should a citizen of Alabama's vote count more than a citizen in New York city?
That just seems fundamentally undemocratic.
The Iowa votes still counted towards the popular vote.
The entire thing renders the electoral vote into a formality - it really doesn't matter where the 270 electoral votes come from. Only the popular vote now, matters, and a vote from Iowa still counts towards that popular vote.
People in the majority would benefit from this.
People whose votes have been overvalued in the past due to a bad system will not.
Effectively weighting a rural vote higher than an urban vote strikes me as inherently undemocratic.
That's because the system is balanced out by the House. There's nothing balancing this out - a less popular president can win because rural voters are being counted more than urban voters.
The Iowa votes still count because they count towards the popular vote, which in turn determines the distribution of a majority of the electoral votes.
How is this hard to understand???? It's getting rid of the electoral college by tying it to the popular vote; the popular candidate wins, no shenanigans. The law only goes into effect if enough states pass the same law, thus insuring that a majority of electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote.
Everyone wins in this circumstance. No reasonable human being could possibly object to it, unless you share our forefathers' opinions that the country needs to be protected from the voters.
Iowa isn't going to award all 7 of its votes to the winner of the election in Iowa. That would be "winner take all" as you're complaining.
Instead Iowa will give its 7 electoral votes to the candidate with the most votes *nationwide*. But ONLY if enough states adopt the measure.
That would mean that the candidate with the most votes nationally would always win the electoral vote.
So it's "winner takes all" in the sense that the winner wins, instead of sometimes losing like in recent history.
The vast majority of the music on the Zune store is 320kbps MP3's. I believe 80% was the last number I saw.
What on earth would make you expect Aronofsky to do a good job on a film like this?
...while I was temping for a company in Chicago, I was asked to deliver a box of candy to a client in the Sears Tower. While entering, I went though the giant, heightened security setup - x-rays and all - and got held up because I had a box cutter in my backback.
They held it up triumphantly and shouted at me, "Just what do you expect to do with this?!"
I wanted to ask them them the same question back. Just what did they expect I'd do with that? In a building that had security guards with guns? Was I going to hijack the building and crash it into a plane?
More than anything I question the conclusions you've reached. Assume the anecdote is true - what does it really tell you? Does it tell you that Monster is bad wire? Or does it tell you that coat hangers make for good wire? Or does it tell you that the poster has poor hearing? You've assumed it's option A, judging by how you framed the article ("For more proof that Monster has nothing special...") and while I don't believe in Monster's virtues any more than those of coathangers, I'm not sure that's a safe conclusion to jump to. It certainly doesn't qualify as "proof" of anything, in any sense of the word.
Another thing to note is that the post in question is describing a single-blind test. If you listen to Slashdot's chorus of anti-audiophile / skeptical crowd, anything short of a double-blind test is meaningless.
Though I think their merits of double blind testing are debatable for when it comes to audio, it just backs up my notion that the burden of proof is different depending on whether or not the information supports your claim.
Did you in fact read the article you're posting?
The Consumerist did no such comparison. Rather, a reader sent them a 4 year old post from a random dude on another forum, which the Consumerist quoted and posted, turning it into a popular Slashdot meme.
Groupthink at work, gotta love it. The burden of proof is always non-existent when it backs up your pre-existing notions of truth.
No, the Consumerist did no such thing. If you read the article, all the Consumerist did, in fact, was quote a 4 year old post by a random dude on an internet forum.
That's hardly what I would call a reliable source of information, and yet people continue to perpetuate the mean as truth because it appeals to their pre-existing notions.
Why on earth would you spend 3x as much on power conditioning than you do on speakers? They made some very odd decisions; 1/3rd this much money will get you a home theater that trumps it in terms of quality (though not features).