Oh I certainly don't have golden ears. That's why I'm confused that people can't hear the difference between quality headphones and not-so-quality.
I'm honest and right up front: I can't hear the difference between LAME 160kbps and FLAC. I can't hear the difference between audio cables (I really want to, but I can't) I can't hear the difference beween 24bit audio and 16 bit audio
I can easily hear the difference between different headphones. I've got 3 sets of headphones right now, Sennheiser HD650s, Beyerdynamic DT880, and Alessandro MS1s. They're all quite different from one another. If you aren't hearing the differences between them, it's probably you. You probably just don't care. That's fine. Doesn't bother me any.
To go back to the car analogy, it's like someone saying they can't tell the difference between a mitsubishi evo, a chevy camaro, and a VW GTI. They're all very different cars to anybody who cares about such things, yet at the same time there are probably also people out there who would get in them and say "they all have a steering wheel, 4 wheels, and a stereo. they get you from point A to point B. they're the same thing. why do you get so worked up about it."
You can make the same arguement about damn near anything. what's the difference between programming languages? you write code to take input, process it, and provide output. same thing. What's the difference between political parties? they all take donations, try and get themselves elected, and then try and stay in office any way they can. same thing. What's the difference between vodka and scotch? Both alcohol. same thing. ps3 and xbox? both video game consoles, same thing. coke and pepsi, showtime and hbo, slashdot and ars technica, android and iphone, etc. the list goes on and on.
To people who aren't involved in what the finer details and nuances of the differences are, there are no differences. To people who care, there's a world of difference. What's your particluar hobby? I'm sure that there's people who think that there is no difference between item A and item B in your hobby either.
I can't even see something as good as an 80% match rate on anything less than a full page of text, you'd need a damn huge sample size if you're going to be using typos and capitalization as "fingerprinting".
Also, doesn't this mean that a simple spellchecker and the auto-capitalization function on many smartphones would defeat this technology?
I can hear the difference between my old Sennheiser HD650 headphones and my new Beyerdynamic DT880s. I can hear the difference between my wife's HD580 headphones and my HD650s. I don't see any reason to suspect that I wouldn't be able to hear a difference between the HD650s / DT880s and a set of HD800s or Tesla T1s.
That said, you are correct that there are diminishing returns for your money, but that's true of any hobby.
Say you've got an old 1991 5.0 mustang. completely stock, it's going to probably run a high 14 second quarter mile. Getting it into the 13s would probably take you all of $200 or $300 if you put it in the right place. 12s? more like $1000 11s? More like $3000 or $4000 10s? now we're talking easily well into five digit price tag land to do it right, assuming you don't want to blow the engine every other pass, twist the frame into a pretzel, etc.
if you want a car that can consistently run in 8 second land or faster, you're probably at the $100,000 mark.
Each time you go up that next tier, it costs correspondingly more... or the corollary to that, you get smaller returns for your money the further up you go.
pretty sure crysis was ported -to- consoles, not from it, although I could be wrong. Mass effect was released on the xbox first, but since the 360 is running directx 9 I believe, it can't have been that much of a port job.
as a side point, PC ports of console games often get a bad rep for performance compared to their console brethren. The PC version usually has a lot more eye candy in my experience. Aside from the convenience of using a mouse, I can't play the 360 version of mass effect nor the ps3 version of modern warfare 2 after seeing the respective PC versions. MW2 especially looks like a blurry piece of low textured crap on the console compared to the sharp high res textures on the pc (yes, I was running them on the same monitor so I could A/B them).
I've got an i-inc (rebranded Hanns-G) 28" 1920x1200 on my desk that cost me $250 from compusa/tiger direct?
I really do prefer the 16x10 ratio for computer monitors. The thing about 1080p is that the vertical resolution on it is really about the same as the 19" crt I had on my desk 10 years ago, it's just wider.
I will agree that getting to 2560x1600 does seem to take a big paycheck though.
Had I that kind of money to waste on a computer, I'm pretty sure I'd be much better off in the long run spending tha tmoney on something like a single upper mainstream (say, gtx 570) card, a 30" monitor, and two solid state drives in raid 0, but that's just me.
Come to think of it, anybody who spent $1400 on two of these probably have the 30" monitor and the two SSDs as well.
It isn't about some specific need per se; overclocking and tuning is a hobby, an expensive and not always such a smart hobby, but nevertheless there's some even worse hobbies in the world.
As an example from another of my hobbies, the price of this card would get you halfway towards a top-of-the-line set of headphones... not counting of course the top-of-the-line amp to go with it... which put together are WAY cheaper than an equivalent speaker setup... which in turn is WAY cheaper than an offshore boat... which is of course way cheaper than manipulating the world financial markets for shits and giggles.
ATI and Nvidia have been doing this dance since 1998 I believe. I don't think they're going to change anything soon.
Also, I'm a bit confused by your logic, as GPU clock speeds haven't advanced anything like CPU clock speeds in the same time period. GPUs have mostly been going for the massively parallel multi-core architecture design ever since the Voodoo2, which CPUs have only really started doing in the past few years. Hell, I think my GTX478 has something like 448 cores or something like that, clocked -lower- than the GTS 8800 I had before it.
I admit I haven't kept up to date on the latest PC games. I was a WoWaholic for a long time, and I've been spending most of my gaming time with my PS3 recently. my GTX 470 has had a nice break the past few months. That said, in just about every generation of games and hardware, there's at least one game that still runs like crap even on the best current hardware when you push all the settings to ultra and run it on a 30inch monitor, be it mass effect, crysis, or what have you. Don't we have one of those this generation?
Adblock removes the majority of those for me, but the "click here to continue to tom's hardware" pages still come up. they're just blank. I hate those things since half the time they forget what page you were on/going to anyway.
I'm a home user. I use virtualization (or I did. windows 7 is too good to bother with other OSes except for fun anymore).
so, I just went and checked desktop cpus. Every i7 (and extreme) cpu supports VT-x, every i5 does, every i3 does. That's all current non-budget cpus. I checked out the available celeron models, and only the very cheapest (As I said earler, sub $50) lacks VT-x. I went back further, and every core 2 extreme does, almost all the core 2 quads (Except the q8200 and q8300) do. I wasn't able to find a core 2 duo on newegg that didn't have VT-x, and at that point I quit looking. Basically, long story short, you'd have to go out of your way to buy an intel cpu that doesn't have hardware virtualization now.
if your cpu is running at 207'F, you have other things to worry about before magic marker becomes a concern. Last I checked, thermal shutdown for intel cpus was between 65'c (149'F) and 75'c (167'F) depending on model.
depends on the game. if you're playing at a high res (say, 1080p or higher. I play at 1920x1200) with anti-aliasing turned on, chances are you're video-card limited not cpu limited. Most video games don't really take advantage of more than 2 cores. sure the other two (or 4) may be running a thread here or there, but the majority of the processing is being done on core 0, with perhaps a significant amount on core 1, but not a whole heck of a lot going on beyond that.
Sure you could make the argument "I have other programs running as well, and by moving them to the extra cores, I can free up processor cycles on those cores that the game is actually using", which is true... but you could also just shut those programs off and get the same performance from less cores.
I have a long standing dislike of Tom's hardware (www.tomshardware.com) dating back over a decade (I can't even remember why anymore), but I must admit that they update their "to-buy at a given price point" list fairly regularly. If memory serves, price per watt used and processing power per watt is also on their comparison list.
I think all modern CPUs except the very cheapest ones (like, sub-$50) support hardware virtualization.
I didn't say payware was any better. I just said that nothing about the fact that the author isn't taking money for his work magically makes the work any better, and of course the argument works just as well in reverse.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that FOSS is somehow more targeted at the user than pay software. In my experience, most FOSS starts off as "I wrote this for myself. The interface is kinda wonky, but it works for me, maybe some of you guys can get some use out of it too" and grows from there. Playing devil's advocate here, pay software on the other hand is written specifically to be sold to customers and therefore if it has a wonky interface and is missing features customers want, chances are it won't sell (unless it's bundled with MS office or is made by Apple and the name starts with a lowercase "i").
"Some FOSS, worked on by a competent team, revised often with care towards the experience of users other than the authors and attention to the forward pace of current technology, can equal or better proprietary software".
You and I (and everybody else) have used some pretty godawful pieces of FOSS on pretty much any given OS, as well as the gems. There's nothing about FOSS that inherently makes it better.
Slashdot Mirror
How will I know how close the stormtrooper is to hitting me?
Adblock has worked for at least the past 3 betas, and that's the one I care about.
Oh I certainly don't have golden ears. That's why I'm confused that people can't hear the difference between quality headphones and not-so-quality.
I'm honest and right up front:
I can't hear the difference between LAME 160kbps and FLAC.
I can't hear the difference between audio cables (I really want to, but I can't)
I can't hear the difference beween 24bit audio and 16 bit audio
I can easily hear the difference between different headphones. I've got 3 sets of headphones right now, Sennheiser HD650s, Beyerdynamic DT880, and Alessandro MS1s. They're all quite different from one another. If you aren't hearing the differences between them, it's probably you. You probably just don't care. That's fine. Doesn't bother me any.
To go back to the car analogy, it's like someone saying they can't tell the difference between a mitsubishi evo, a chevy camaro, and a VW GTI. They're all very different cars to anybody who cares about such things, yet at the same time there are probably also people out there who would get in them and say "they all have a steering wheel, 4 wheels, and a stereo. they get you from point A to point B. they're the same thing. why do you get so worked up about it."
You can make the same arguement about damn near anything. what's the difference between programming languages? you write code to take input, process it, and provide output. same thing. What's the difference between political parties? they all take donations, try and get themselves elected, and then try and stay in office any way they can. same thing. What's the difference between vodka and scotch? Both alcohol. same thing. ps3 and xbox? both video game consoles, same thing. coke and pepsi, showtime and hbo, slashdot and ars technica, android and iphone, etc. the list goes on and on.
To people who aren't involved in what the finer details and nuances of the differences are, there are no differences. To people who care, there's a world of difference. What's your particluar hobby? I'm sure that there's people who think that there is no difference between item A and item B in your hobby either.
jesus, they're down to $210. maybe I should get another one.
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SKUSearch.asp?px=NT&scriteria=AA98799
I can't even see something as good as an 80% match rate on anything less than a full page of text, you'd need a damn huge sample size if you're going to be using typos and capitalization as "fingerprinting".
Also, doesn't this mean that a simple spellchecker and the auto-capitalization function on many smartphones would defeat this technology?
I can hear the difference between my old Sennheiser HD650 headphones and my new Beyerdynamic DT880s. I can hear the difference between my wife's HD580 headphones and my HD650s. I don't see any reason to suspect that I wouldn't be able to hear a difference between the HD650s / DT880s and a set of HD800s or Tesla T1s.
That said, you are correct that there are diminishing returns for your money, but that's true of any hobby.
Say you've got an old 1991 5.0 mustang. completely stock, it's going to probably run a high 14 second quarter mile. Getting it into the 13s would probably take you all of $200 or $300 if you put it in the right place.
12s? more like $1000
11s? More like $3000 or $4000
10s? now we're talking easily well into five digit price tag land to do it right, assuming you don't want to blow the engine every other pass, twist the frame into a pretzel, etc.
if you want a car that can consistently run in 8 second land or faster, you're probably at the $100,000 mark.
Each time you go up that next tier, it costs correspondingly more... or the corollary to that, you get smaller returns for your money the further up you go.
pretty sure crysis was ported -to- consoles, not from it, although I could be wrong. Mass effect was released on the xbox first, but since the 360 is running directx 9 I believe, it can't have been that much of a port job.
as a side point, PC ports of console games often get a bad rep for performance compared to their console brethren. The PC version usually has a lot more eye candy in my experience. Aside from the convenience of using a mouse, I can't play the 360 version of mass effect nor the ps3 version of modern warfare 2 after seeing the respective PC versions. MW2 especially looks like a blurry piece of low textured crap on the console compared to the sharp high res textures on the pc (yes, I was running them on the same monitor so I could A/B them).
I've got an i-inc (rebranded Hanns-G) 28" 1920x1200 on my desk that cost me $250 from compusa/tiger direct?
I really do prefer the 16x10 ratio for computer monitors. The thing about 1080p is that the vertical resolution on it is really about the same as the 19" crt I had on my desk 10 years ago, it's just wider.
I will agree that getting to 2560x1600 does seem to take a big paycheck though.
true that.
Had I that kind of money to waste on a computer, I'm pretty sure I'd be much better off in the long run spending tha tmoney on something like a single upper mainstream (say, gtx 570) card, a 30" monitor, and two solid state drives in raid 0, but that's just me.
Come to think of it, anybody who spent $1400 on two of these probably have the 30" monitor and the two SSDs as well.
It isn't about some specific need per se; overclocking and tuning is a hobby, an expensive and not always such a smart hobby, but nevertheless there's some even worse hobbies in the world.
As an example from another of my hobbies, the price of this card would get you halfway towards a top-of-the-line set of headphones... not counting of course the top-of-the-line amp to go with it... which put together are WAY cheaper than an equivalent speaker setup... which in turn is WAY cheaper than an offshore boat... which is of course way cheaper than manipulating the world financial markets for shits and giggles.
That last hobby scares me.
I wouldn't buy a monitor bigger than 24" that only supported 1080p.
TV sure.
Computer monitor no.
ATI and Nvidia have been doing this dance since 1998 I believe. I don't think they're going to change anything soon.
Also, I'm a bit confused by your logic, as GPU clock speeds haven't advanced anything like CPU clock speeds in the same time period. GPUs have mostly been going for the massively parallel multi-core architecture design ever since the Voodoo2, which CPUs have only really started doing in the past few years. Hell, I think my GTX478 has something like 448 cores or something like that, clocked -lower- than the GTS 8800 I had before it.
I admit I haven't kept up to date on the latest PC games. I was a WoWaholic for a long time, and I've been spending most of my gaming time with my PS3 recently. my GTX 470 has had a nice break the past few months. That said, in just about every generation of games and hardware, there's at least one game that still runs like crap even on the best current hardware when you push all the settings to ultra and run it on a 30inch monitor, be it mass effect, crysis, or what have you. Don't we have one of those this generation?
and your wallet too!
$700. ouch.
Hey, if you've got the money to play, lucky you. I'm envious.
anchorman rapist?
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2006/10/anchorman-rapist2.jpg
Your hyperbole is unnecessary. Do I truly have to put the tag "in my opinion" or "for my own use" the the line for it to be self-explanatory?
Adblock removes the majority of those for me, but the "click here to continue to tom's hardware" pages still come up. they're just blank. I hate those things since half the time they forget what page you were on/going to anyway.
I'm a home user. I use virtualization (or I did. windows 7 is too good to bother with other OSes except for fun anymore).
so, I just went and checked desktop cpus. Every i7 (and extreme) cpu supports VT-x, every i5 does, every i3 does. That's all current non-budget cpus. I checked out the available celeron models, and only the very cheapest (As I said earler, sub $50) lacks VT-x. I went back further, and every core 2 extreme does, almost all the core 2 quads (Except the q8200 and q8300) do. I wasn't able to find a core 2 duo on newegg that didn't have VT-x, and at that point I quit looking. Basically, long story short, you'd have to go out of your way to buy an intel cpu that doesn't have hardware virtualization now.
if your cpu is running at 207'F, you have other things to worry about before magic marker becomes a concern. Last I checked, thermal shutdown for intel cpus was between 65'c (149'F) and 75'c (167'F) depending on model.
depends on the game. if you're playing at a high res (say, 1080p or higher. I play at 1920x1200) with anti-aliasing turned on, chances are you're video-card limited not cpu limited. Most video games don't really take advantage of more than 2 cores. sure the other two (or 4) may be running a thread here or there, but the majority of the processing is being done on core 0, with perhaps a significant amount on core 1, but not a whole heck of a lot going on beyond that.
Sure you could make the argument "I have other programs running as well, and by moving them to the extra cores, I can free up processor cycles on those cores that the game is actually using", which is true... but you could also just shut those programs off and get the same performance from less cores.
I have a long standing dislike of Tom's hardware (www.tomshardware.com) dating back over a decade (I can't even remember why anymore), but I must admit that they update their "to-buy at a given price point" list fairly regularly. If memory serves, price per watt used and processing power per watt is also on their comparison list.
I think all modern CPUs except the very cheapest ones (like, sub-$50) support hardware virtualization.
Oxygen is one of the most highly reactive substances we run into in any quantity on a day to day basis.
Also (somewhat off topic) ask the Apollo 1 astronauts how awesome oxygen is!
I didn't say payware was any better. I just said that nothing about the fact that the author isn't taking money for his work magically makes the work any better, and of course the argument works just as well in reverse.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that FOSS is somehow more targeted at the user than pay software. In my experience, most FOSS starts off as "I wrote this for myself. The interface is kinda wonky, but it works for me, maybe some of you guys can get some use out of it too" and grows from there. Playing devil's advocate here, pay software on the other hand is written specifically to be sold to customers and therefore if it has a wonky interface and is missing features customers want, chances are it won't sell (unless it's bundled with MS office or is made by Apple and the name starts with a lowercase "i").
Be fair. This should read:
"Some FOSS, worked on by a competent team, revised often with care towards the experience of users other than the authors and attention to the forward pace of current technology, can equal or better proprietary software".
You and I (and everybody else) have used some pretty godawful pieces of FOSS on pretty much any given OS, as well as the gems. There's nothing about FOSS that inherently makes it better.
Dude, if you can't tell the difference between 24/96 and 44.1/16, you should get to an audiologist to get your ears checked.
dude, if you can tell the difference between 44.1/16 and 24/96, you need to apply to the legion of justice and get your spandex tights and cape.