The problem with Microsoft's engineers is that they assume more features == more better. Implementing those features in an elegant way is entirely secondary, and there appears to be little (or at least, very bad) research to determine how much people want those features.
The classic example of this (apart from all of the products people here love to hate) is Bill Gates' attitude in "The Road Ahead." He focuses *entirely* on features, and not at all on usability or design. In the case of the "iPod Killer," it's pretty evident that Microsoft hasn't changed much since that book. People aren't interested in a clunky, unfashionable device -- Apple succeeds not only because their products are (fairly) simple to use, but because they're elegant and, in the case of the iPod, *fashionable*. Never underestimate the power of popularity. Microsoft- well, they need some good design engineers, and a general attitude that encourages quality over just-one-more-feature-itis.
I find it interesting that the article suggests that having experience in the online adult industry would be beneficial to one's resume. While technology may be driven by porn, I suspect that most subsequent employers would not be enlightened enough to see past the "porn" part of it...
World's best portable headphones: Etymotic ER-4S, $270 World's best headphones, period: Sennheiser HE90, $7500
Get the former from www.toddthevinyljunkie.com and the latter direct from Sennheiser. Note the former needs a good portable amplifier ( www.jmtaudio.com ) and the latter a good electrostatic headphone amplifier (send an email to ddmitriev at uwaterloo dot ca , he builds the Gilmore Hybrid, which happens to be the world's best electrostatic headphone amp)
Or has this been calculated in the same way that they calculate money lost from 'piracy' and 'hacking'?
I can certainly see how spam costs real money in terms of bandwidth and all, but I'm wondering whether they actually did some research or just guessed.
Interesting... the chief improvement many people find is in soundstage, which could very well be influenced by >42khz ultrasonics. But as for your idea that gear that takes 24/196 has better components being a main reason, the improvements are also noticed in DACs whose upsampling can be switched on and off, as Head-Fi admin and head reviewer noted: "This was the first DAC to arrive, and it was my first home experience with a digital source component marketed as an upsampler (24/96). With the upsampler off, this $2294 combination fell somewhere between the Arcam Diva CD72T and the Creek with me. Flip up the upsampling switch, and soundstage opened up -- way up. Not only does the soundstage open up, but also every voice and instrument occupies a more solid, real place within the image. I was sold on upsampling, almost from the get-go. But, just to be certain, I gave it more and more listening time, and, yeah, I really like this upsampling thing. The GoldLINK III makes big, strong bass, beautifully full mids, and liquid treble. " ( http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&t hreadid=14337&highlight=upsampling+dac )
* note that SACD is a different format, called DSD, and is not technically 24/196 in the fashion the original poster intended (PCM). You can, however, get upsampling DACs that do indeed show an impressive improvement (even though they shouldn't) when converting 16/44.1 PCM to 24/196 PCM [a company called dCS makes a DAC that converts the 16/44.1 to DSD/SACD, if you're curious], and the DVD-A format if I remember correctly is in 24/196 PCM. I haven't heard it, though, so I couldn't say anything about the sound quality.
"Do you honestly think that you can get an appreciable difference between 16/44 and 24/192 outside of a professional studio?"
Yes. It's called SACD. Pick up a copy of Stereophile if you feel like it; the difference is pretty extreme, AS LONG AS YOU'RE WILLING TO SPEND MONEY ON IT. For Joe Slashdot, no he probably can't hear the difference through his "multimedia" speakers. But, say, Bob Audiophile, with his $20,000/pr Martin Logan electrostatics fed by a $10,000 monoblock Krell amp from a passive transformer attenuator preamp and Sony XA777ES SACD player - SACD wins HANDS DOWN. No contest. Bob's redneck cousin would probably be blown away if he hadn't been already blown away in a "hold my beer and watch this" stunt involving a firecracker and a plugged toilet.
Hell, you don't even need to spend upwards of a few grand, if you get a decent system. You'll save even more if you skip the speakers and go with headphones... ask on Head-Fi, but off the top of my head, a HeadRoom Little ($260) feeding some Sennheiser HD600s (~$350 from HeadRoom, ~$200 from Meier Audio) and a Sony NS-500V (~$130 when they were still new, check eBay) will give you DAMN good sound with ASTRONOMICAL bang for the buck. But beware - you'll get upgraditis... "Headphone Hi-Fi: First hit's free."
Check out the Etymotic ER-4P. 23dB of full-band (not just bass, like those crappy Bose noise-cancelling ones) isolation, and if that fails you can play the music loud enough to drown out anything short of a missile impacting your head.
It's called a reaaaally powerful headphone amplifier...
DO a search on www.headwize.com, a guy named Apheared once built one that let his Grado SR80s be heard through a steel door in the middle of New York City.
It's a portable amp that ran (runs?) off 16AA batteries... (ok, maybe not so portable!)
Well, BASIC stamps may be overpriced and underperforming, but it's not like we're going to be coding an autonomous robot with target aquisition and image recognition here! BASIC stamps, IMHO, are a lot easier to learn to code for; it's a BASIC variant as opposed to an assembly one... in this case, where the original poster wanted something simple and easy, a BASIC stamp fits the bill quite nicely IMHO, even if it does cost a few bucks...
the Ambient Orb runs off a wireless network... no computer needed, and you can control it from anywhere in the world (theoretically). To manage that, you'd have to build an 802.11b -> relay interface, at least - if not a cellular one.
Now, assuming you don't want to muck about with that (and who does), your best bet would be to not use relays in the first place - they're loud, slow, and not gradual. Use a Basic Stamp from Parallax and write some code to output a PWM (Pulse Width Modulated) voltage to three different pins - one for each color. (Chances are you'll be using either one 4-pin, 3 color LED or 3 leds (red, green, blue). Infrared or UV leds could be interesting, but aren't recommended...) Then you can either leave the BASIC stamp connected to your serial port and controlled via DEBUG or SERIN (IIRC) commands from your host computer (and write some corresponding code for the host), or you can leave it standing alone and interface to it using any one of the who-knows-how-many add-on boards Parallax sells. (you might want to check out the Communications page - that modem looks like a good thing to try)
OK, whoever moderated the parent troll as +1 Insightful is on CRACK. -1, Offtopic, would be much more appropriate.
Now, with that out of the way, I as an element geek find this quite cool... I had no idea Technetium could be found in stars... so that what it's used for.
OK, so if I run that on my email inbox, I guess it'll tell me I have some long-running business relationships with penis enlargement companies, herbal viagra distributors, and various shady people in Nigeria...
...in under 10 minutes. Do some searching around for "AOL proggies" or the like, find something that can harvest names off chat rooms and spam them with fake 'send me your username and password' messages. Spam the moderators.
...if it can make your CD 'phone home' when playing it in a regular CD player (as mentioned in the article) that's not 'net connected!
In any case, this is seriously scary. While I don't think most Slashdotites (being technically literate) will be affected, think of your mom, little sister or brother (if any), peers at school (if any) - all those people who click "OK" mindlessly whenever a dialog box pops up. It's THOSE people that this kind of stuff targets - because those people don't know better. The only way to stop it is to TELL THEM ABOUT IT. Get the word out. Post flyers. Put it in your sig. Whenever you fix someone's computer, tell them about the new 'spy' CDs while you're digging around inside their case or (more likely) plugging in their eithernet cable.
I'm sure someone will come up with an anti-spy software for this soon, so give out as many copies (assuming the antispy software is freeware) as you can.
Look how well it worked for CD copy protection, at least for the first wave. We can do this.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with Microsoft's engineers is that they assume more features == more better. Implementing those features in an elegant way is entirely secondary, and there appears to be little (or at least, very bad) research to determine how much people want those features.
The classic example of this (apart from all of the products people here love to hate) is Bill Gates' attitude in "The Road Ahead." He focuses *entirely* on features, and not at all on usability or design. In the case of the "iPod Killer," it's pretty evident that Microsoft hasn't changed much since that book. People aren't interested in a clunky, unfashionable device -- Apple succeeds not only because their products are (fairly) simple to use, but because they're elegant and, in the case of the iPod, *fashionable*. Never underestimate the power of popularity. Microsoft- well, they need some good design engineers, and a general attitude that encourages quality over just-one-more-feature-itis.
I find it interesting that the article suggests that having experience in the online adult industry would be beneficial to one's resume. While technology may be driven by porn, I suspect that most subsequent employers would not be enlightened enough to see past the "porn" part of it...
It's a feature!
Heh, those are the old school ones...
I have a pair of Stax Lambda Basics I use to test electrostatic amps when I'm done building them. Cost $80 off eBay.
The top of the line Stax at the moment is the Omega2. I prefer the HE90.
Even better are the Etymotic ER-4S, and they're $230 cheaper.
www.toddthevinyljunkie.com
Including headphones...
World's best portable headphones: Etymotic ER-4S, $270
World's best headphones, period: Sennheiser HE90, $7500
Get the former from www.toddthevinyljunkie.com and the latter direct from Sennheiser. Note the former needs a good portable amplifier ( www.jmtaudio.com ) and the latter a good electrostatic headphone amplifier (send an email to ddmitriev at uwaterloo dot ca , he builds the Gilmore Hybrid, which happens to be the world's best electrostatic headphone amp)
What can I say; I think we all saw it coming...
Quick summary:
CLECs have a harder time getting access to ILEC networks.
Less competition in broadband.
OH well...
Or has this been calculated in the same way that they calculate money lost from 'piracy' and 'hacking'?
I can certainly see how spam costs real money in terms of bandwidth and all, but I'm wondering whether they actually did some research or just guessed.
Lots of dangerous DIY type sites, two in a row in fact...
Note to self: Call off team planning to burglarize Slashdot Headquarters.
Games? There are Discworld GAMES?! WHERE??
Any other Terry Pratchett fans around here reminded of Hex, the ant-powered computer (of Unseen University)?
:-)
Now, THAT would be cool. To overclock, just add caffeine to the water supply
Well, at least Star Trek 'science' never got Slashdotted...
Hey, Neo, use your powers to bring this server back up!
Interesting... the chief improvement many people find is in soundstage, which could very well be influenced by >42khz ultrasonics. But as for your idea that gear that takes 24/196 has better components being a main reason, the improvements are also noticed in DACs whose upsampling can be switched on and off, as Head-Fi admin and head reviewer noted: "This was the first DAC to arrive, and it was my first home experience with a digital source component marketed as an upsampler (24/96). With the upsampler off, this $2294 combination fell somewhere between the Arcam Diva CD72T and the Creek with me. Flip up the upsampling switch, and soundstage opened up -- way up. Not only does the soundstage open up, but also every voice and instrument occupies a more solid, real place within the image. I was sold on upsampling, almost from the get-go. But, just to be certain, I gave it more and more listening time, and, yeah, I really like this upsampling thing. The GoldLINK III makes big, strong bass, beautifully full mids, and liquid treble. "t hreadid=14337&highlight=upsampling+dac )
( http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&
* note that SACD is a different format, called DSD, and is not technically 24/196 in the fashion the original poster intended (PCM). You can, however, get upsampling DACs that do indeed show an impressive improvement (even though they shouldn't) when converting 16/44.1 PCM to 24/196 PCM [a company called dCS makes a DAC that converts the 16/44.1 to DSD/SACD, if you're curious], and the DVD-A format if I remember correctly is in 24/196 PCM. I haven't heard it, though, so I couldn't say anything about the sound quality.
"Do you honestly think that you can get an appreciable difference between 16/44 and 24/192 outside of a professional studio?"
Yes. It's called SACD. Pick up a copy of Stereophile if you feel like it; the difference is pretty extreme, AS LONG AS YOU'RE WILLING TO SPEND MONEY ON IT. For Joe Slashdot, no he probably can't hear the difference through his "multimedia" speakers. But, say, Bob Audiophile, with his $20,000/pr Martin Logan electrostatics fed by a $10,000 monoblock Krell amp from a passive transformer attenuator preamp and Sony XA777ES SACD player - SACD wins HANDS DOWN. No contest. Bob's redneck cousin would probably be blown away if he hadn't been already blown away in a "hold my beer and watch this" stunt involving a firecracker and a plugged toilet.
Hell, you don't even need to spend upwards of a few grand, if you get a decent system. You'll save even more if you skip the speakers and go with headphones... ask on Head-Fi, but off the top of my head, a HeadRoom Little ($260) feeding some Sennheiser HD600s (~$350 from HeadRoom, ~$200 from Meier Audio) and a Sony NS-500V (~$130 when they were still new, check eBay) will give you DAMN good sound with ASTRONOMICAL bang for the buck. But beware - you'll get upgraditis... "Headphone Hi-Fi: First hit's free."
Head-Fi: http://www.head-fi.org
HeadRoom: http://www.headphone.com
Meier Audio: http://www.meier-audio.com
Check out the Etymotic ER-4P. 23dB of full-band (not just bass, like those crappy Bose noise-cancelling ones) isolation, and if that fails you can play the music loud enough to drown out anything short of a missile impacting your head.
It's called a reaaaally powerful headphone amplifier...
DO a search on www.headwize.com, a guy named Apheared once built one that let his Grado SR80s be heard through a steel door in the middle of New York City.
It's a portable amp that ran (runs?) off 16AA batteries... (ok, maybe not so portable!)
Well, BASIC stamps may be overpriced and underperforming, but it's not like we're going to be coding an autonomous robot with target aquisition and image recognition here! BASIC stamps, IMHO, are a lot easier to learn to code for; it's a BASIC variant as opposed to an assembly one... in this case, where the original poster wanted something simple and easy, a BASIC stamp fits the bill quite nicely IMHO, even if it does cost a few bucks...
the Ambient Orb runs off a wireless network... no computer needed, and you can control it from anywhere in the world (theoretically). To manage that, you'd have to build an 802.11b -> relay interface, at least - if not a cellular one.
Now, assuming you don't want to muck about with that (and who does), your best bet would be to not use relays in the first place - they're loud, slow, and not gradual. Use a Basic Stamp from Parallax and write some code to output a PWM (Pulse Width Modulated) voltage to three different pins - one for each color. (Chances are you'll be using either one 4-pin, 3 color LED or 3 leds (red, green, blue). Infrared or UV leds could be interesting, but aren't recommended...) Then you can either leave the BASIC stamp connected to your serial port and controlled via DEBUG or SERIN (IIRC) commands from your host computer (and write some corresponding code for the host), or you can leave it standing alone and interface to it using any one of the who-knows-how-many add-on boards Parallax sells. (you might want to check out the Communications page - that modem looks like a good thing to try)
OK, whoever moderated the parent troll as +1 Insightful is on CRACK. -1, Offtopic, would be much more appropriate.
Now, with that out of the way, I as an element geek find this quite cool... I had no idea Technetium could be found in stars... so that what it's used for.
OK, so if I run that on my email inbox, I guess it'll tell me I have some long-running business relationships with penis enlargement companies, herbal viagra distributors, and various shady people in Nigeria...
...in under 10 minutes. Do some searching around for "AOL proggies" or the like, find something that can harvest names off chat rooms and spam them with fake 'send me your username and password' messages. Spam the moderators.
Voila! No more AOL!
(no, seriously, it works.)
Not necessarily your Slashdot sig! your EMAIL sig. Belive it or not, I'll bet many Slashdotters get people asking them questions via email...
I said the FIRST WAVE of CD copyprotection...
...if it can make your CD 'phone home' when playing it in a regular CD player (as mentioned in the article) that's not 'net connected!
In any case, this is seriously scary. While I don't think most Slashdotites (being technically literate) will be affected, think of your mom, little sister or brother (if any), peers at school (if any) - all those people who click "OK" mindlessly whenever a dialog box pops up. It's THOSE people that this kind of stuff targets - because those people don't know better. The only way to stop it is to TELL THEM ABOUT IT. Get the word out. Post flyers. Put it in your sig. Whenever you fix someone's computer, tell them about the new 'spy' CDs while you're digging around inside their case or (more likely) plugging in their eithernet cable.
I'm sure someone will come up with an anti-spy software for this soon, so give out as many copies (assuming the antispy software is freeware) as you can.
Look how well it worked for CD copy protection, at least for the first wave. We can do this.