CDs are 1411kbps. 128kbps just _can't_ be CD quality.
Yeah, I don't get how people can claim 128kbps is CD quality either. If MP3s weren't a lot smaller than the original source then there would be little point in their use as they made storage and transmission more convenient. It is widely known that MP3 is lossy anyways. Put those together and MP3 is going to be lesser than a CD at any of its available bitrates.
Crutchfield started hawking satellite radio in their catalog, it certainly isn't marketed locally.
I don't know about the in-car MP3 player thing, some compatible CD decks are being made but I'm not seeing them available locally either. They might be interesting to try out but by default they assume the owner has a CD writer and I don't care to deal with the hassle.
One advantage of USB is that it is designed for 'dumb' devices that don't do much work and thus cheap to implement.
That's the theory but it isn't all that easy to implement for the small guys, or all that cheap unless you go high volume. It makes Apple's old ADB look simple. To sell a USB device it requires a $2000+ (or something like that) per year membership to get unique manufacterer & device IDs and get compatibility testing in order to use the logo. I love the idea of compatibility testing but it hasn't worked, there are still flakey USB products being sold.
BTW, don't the 3Gb transfer rates depend on an optical connection?
I wouldn't know. 1000bTX is said to use several voltage states on a 125MHz clock rather than two voltage states on a 1GHz clock.
Please get real. There are plenty of science geeks (or nerds) in existence. If you don't like it there is the checkbox in your configuration.
Re:In The Days Before PC Boards - and Do-It-Yourse
on
A Hardware Threepack
·
· Score: 2
How hard is it to find sulphuric acid?
Go to the cleaning supplies section of the grocery store. I don't remember what the chemical is marketed as but it's probably one of several cemicals used to eat at drain clogs, just read the label for the active ingredients.
If you're doing something like controlling a VCR, a sprinkler system, TV channel changer, a thermostat, a stereo, or numerous other tasks a processor like that might be a bit too powerful. Zilog and others are still making bank off of 8bit processors.
Most of the applications you cited barely even need the performance of an 8088. As you hinted, often tasks like this are left to microcontrollers with specialized hardware built-in to the central chip to minimize the chip count, improve reliability, use less power, etc.
Some chips I use only consume one millionth of an amp when it goes to sleep, and unlike desktop systems, they don't wake up groggy or screw up something during the wake-up process.
I certainly will admit that people's reactions are different. Every person should definitely try one out before forming an opinion.
There are three sizes of Aerons. That might be a sizable part of your problems. I have no problems with the largest size and I'm a bit taller than you.
I have no idea why one sits cross-legged in a productive environment, buy hey, I'll admit it's difficult.
I do sweat a lot, I usually try to wear loose, thin clothing and an Aeron does help a lot. Actually it helps me in cold rooms too, with a small heater behind me, I get the heat direct to me but without the trapped moisture. On one hot day I've even sat in it bare-bottomed without abrasion problems.
I've worn a lot of different kinds of clothes and I haven't noticed accelerated wear attributable to the pellicle. I did work for the maker - Herman Miller and I did hear of feedback suggesting that the material does wear clothes faster. My particular chair is not abrasive that I can tell (and I work with abrasives daily, dangit), but I've been using it daily for four years or so, so maybe it's "broken in".
The biggest down side I've had is that they Aerons squeak too much for my tastes, and one of the adjusters did go weird once or twice.
For you, I would suggest a high back Ergon chair. Very comfortable, cheaper to boot, and it uses the standard iso foam cushioning that you prefer. I would still have one if I had the room to keep it when space was tight.
Note, I don't work for HM any more. Nice company for the most part, very good for the size, I don't normally like working for very large companies.
Benchmarks show that programs compiled with intels compiler using P4 optimisations
That's predictable. A code recompile is needed with every one of the Pentium processor generations in order to make any significant performance gains. I'm not saying that's good or bad, there are downsides and upsides to that. For one, we'd get faster code but that means that the compilers have been re-tweaked and all our software is re-compiled, but then that usually means waiting for the next revision, and buying new software.
The link claimed that the optimizations available in modern compilers aren't much beyond Pentium.
The way you describe it doesn't seem to fit with how the words are usually used.
Usually in sales & marketing, the term is mid _range_, mid _end_ is simply rediculous as even if the middle had an end, it's not descriptive as to what the end of a middle is, or which end assuming if there is one, or where that end is if there was only one.
I don't expect an UltraSparc comparison, but given that there are known performance issues in the P4 with "legacy" code, I wonder how easily that benchmark could have been stacked. How well would it compare with a PIII?
Hatch is also the Senator that verbally abused Metallica and the RIAA for abusing the DMCA, particularly for prosecuting electronic music distribution but not having a legit alternative.
The same guy also used Napster to download Metallica songs and say that they need a better songwriter.
He also quized the RIAA leader on what counts as fair use and pointed out that fair use has a larger scope than what the RIAA claims. The lady heading the RIAA simply did not know the rules.
Hatch also threatened that if they don't quit being an ass about fair use he'll codify a law explicitly laying down what fair use is and what rights consumers have, and promised that the RIAA et al. won't like it.
But let's not disclose facts inconvenient to our arguments, right?
How many programmers own guns? Besides they already have their dangerous computers.
Most people I know don't go out to a shooting range or hunt _that_ regularly, and I really don't know that many people that are actively into guns, most of them are hardly the business or techie type.
In a way, anime is/are "cartoons" by dictionary definition. Generally I find the Japanese cartoons (anime) more interesting than the American ones or for that matter anywhere else.
Unfortunately the typical anime falls into cliches too many times but the standouts are extraordinary. The hard part is trying to figure out the originals and the copycats, and determining the merit of the copycats.
Also, I would consider Akira very dang popular (but that doesn't mean I liked it). there will be 100,000 of Pioneer's "Limited Edition" tin of Akira released and they are already pre-sold out over a month before release (currently late July). Most limited goodies take a few months to sell out in quantities of 10,000 or 20,000.
I don't know what's going on, but every gas station I've been to in the USA has at least two diesel pumps. Nearly every gas station on an interstate highway is a mini-truckstop meaning they have as many diesel pumps as gasoline pumps.
While the USA is behind on diesel implementation for passenger vehicles, it is very common as tractor-trailers are almost exclusively diesel. Count most busses among them was well. I believe most farm tractors now made are diesel.
LD ultimately failed because people didn't have the tolerance for disk-flipping, I think.
There are lots of factors, the size wasn't exactly convenient, and they were heavy. Players can get louder than with DVDs due to the drive power needed to spin them.
I don't know when it started, but LD players did end up having dual-side play. Apparently it made the players a bit taller.
I still get a few LDs mainly because they are now cheaper used (sometimes new!) than DVDs. For stuff that has a progressive/anamorphic/DD5.1 DVD I just get the DVD though as that is much better though. My player is a combo DVD/LD player so that cuts out a few considerations for me.
Actually, the movie studios don't "own" them either, they simply own the copyrights to them until the copyrights run out (yeah, I know, like that'll ever happen)
They are fine point distinctions which can be argued ad nauseam. Movie studios DO own the film prints and the master materials of their movies. I don't know if the prints are ever sold, they usually are only rented or leased out that I understand anyways. They sell a copy of the movie and limited rights to play the movie for private performance. Suffice to say that you don't own a movie, but rather a copy of the movie, which you do technically have rights to, but they are limited in scope.
These are more fine, maybe incorrect, distinctions which I don't think will really get anywhere in a Slashdot argument as it usually takes months or years to change minds, not single threads.
Well, I don't know a whole lot of people that give a rat's arse concerning the Catholic church's stance on contraceptives, etc. Even a lot of the Catholics give those teachings the shaft.
Re:Better have a flat screen
on
Surround Lights
·
· Score: 2
Just a nitpick, but despite the awful logo, it is spelled "Wega", and historically pronounced "Vega".
Your comments on glare and contrast ring true. When a person goes through to tune a video setting, it is recommended to have a constant bias light at 10% of the TV's maximum set brightness (after calibration), a bunch of lights will throw all that off.
You thought you were joking...
on
Surround Lights
·
· Score: 2
But there exist little transducer modules that you can bolt to couches to literally shake your booty. They cost $1000 and up all set up.
The latest issue of Home Theater reviewed a couple of these things. One is really called "ButtKicker Shaker".
What's wrong with being able to share something for which I have paid???
That is an overly simplistic argument. If you didn't get the rights to share the hard work someone else made, then you are likely in the wrong.
It isn't about "sharing" I think it's about a bunch of people benefiting from other's work without proper compensation. It seems that it is the people that haven't tried to live life on both sides of the supply and demand equation that can't understand. If you wrote a program to make money would you appreciate people copying it, enjoying your work without compensating you?
Oh, I get it. Y'all recording companies came up with some "agreement" that we have to live by when we buy your stuff for no reason other than to make y'allselves billionaires.
Um, no. The idea of copyright existed long before anyone could record and reproduce an audio waveform. The industries may have tried to pervert it but it is still there and in general we've always had certain rights and they've always had certain rights, the only thing that changed was technology to allow people much more easily swap tunes that they had no right to swap. If you swap legit CDs that is your right, but swapping MP3s is not.
"That doesn't change the fact that it is theft. Taking something without permission is still illegal."
So if I meet you in the street and you light my cigarette, I've stolen the fire from match manufacturers?
We need to start a What Would Dogbert Do?" movement.
I don't think it is valid to compare a flame made with a cheap lighter to copyright ownership of intellectual property. Bic doesn't licence lighters, they sell them, and the music and movie owners licence movies, they don't sell them.
If you don't like intellectual property, fine, but the GNU-ish ideal isn't exactly taking over the world that I can tell, despite what the "free software" fans like to think. I probably won't be writing free software because I need to do something that MAKES MONEY, and I can't live on tips and I can't support users thousands of miles away.
It is the software or music owner's every right to determine the distribution and sales method of the product they make, and I believe in fair compensation. Yes, some companies take it too far, but there is the other extreme of sharing movies that you don't own the rights to share.
There is absolutely no reason to assume that the Xbox will be delayed.
I'd say previous history <u>can</u> be a strong indicator, versus <b><i>absolutely no</b></i> reason.
Sure MS's latest OSs are an improvement, but keep in mind that W95 was supposed to be released in '94, Windows 2000 was originally slated to be released in '97, there is a history to consider. WinME was supposed to ship at the same time as W2K but there were problems there too.
I'm not saying that it will absolutely ship on time, but to say that there's no chance that it would be delayed is equally silly.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you consider "really high end"?
I fear the answer as it seems the Altec Lansing and Cambridge Sound Works computer speaker combos are practically considered reference quality here.
CDs are 1411kbps. 128kbps just _can't_ be CD quality.
Yeah, I don't get how people can claim 128kbps is CD quality either. If MP3s weren't a lot smaller than the original source then there would be little point in their use as they made storage and transmission more convenient. It is widely known that MP3 is lossy anyways. Put those together and MP3 is going to be lesser than a CD at any of its available bitrates.
I think names of famous rivers was used as code names for other projects, I forget where, maybe Scott Adams mentioned it.
I seem to remember something of a complaint about a proposed "Volga" project.
Or how about naming projects after mountains, there's always the Urals.
Crutchfield started hawking satellite radio in their catalog, it certainly isn't marketed locally.
I don't know about the in-car MP3 player thing, some compatible CD decks are being made but I'm not seeing them available locally either. They might be interesting to try out but by default they assume the owner has a CD writer and I don't care to deal with the hassle.
One advantage of USB is that it is designed for 'dumb' devices that don't do much work and thus cheap to implement.
That's the theory but it isn't all that easy to implement for the small guys, or all that cheap unless you go high volume. It makes Apple's old ADB look simple. To sell a USB device it requires a $2000+ (or something like that) per year membership to get unique manufacterer & device IDs and get compatibility testing in order to use the logo. I love the idea of compatibility testing but it hasn't worked, there are still flakey USB products being sold.
BTW, don't the 3Gb transfer rates depend on an optical connection?
I wouldn't know. 1000bTX is said to use several voltage states on a 125MHz clock rather than two voltage states on a 1GHz clock.
Yup, Stuff that matters.
Please get real. There are plenty of science geeks (or nerds) in existence. If you don't like it there is the checkbox in your configuration.
Go to the cleaning supplies section of the grocery store. I don't remember what the chemical is marketed as but it's probably one of several cemicals used to eat at drain clogs, just read the label for the active ingredients.
If you're doing something like controlling a VCR, a sprinkler system, TV channel changer, a thermostat, a stereo, or numerous other tasks a processor like that might be a bit too powerful. Zilog and others are still making bank off of 8bit processors.
Most of the applications you cited barely even need the performance of an 8088. As you hinted, often tasks like this are left to microcontrollers with specialized hardware built-in to the central chip to minimize the chip count, improve reliability, use less power, etc.
Some chips I use only consume one millionth of an amp when it goes to sleep, and unlike desktop systems, they don't wake up groggy or screw up something during the wake-up process.
I certainly will admit that people's reactions are different. Every person should definitely try one out before forming an opinion.
There are three sizes of Aerons. That might be a sizable part of your problems. I have no problems with the largest size and I'm a bit taller than you.
I have no idea why one sits cross-legged in a productive environment, buy hey, I'll admit it's difficult.
I do sweat a lot, I usually try to wear loose, thin clothing and an Aeron does help a lot. Actually it helps me in cold rooms too, with a small heater behind me, I get the heat direct to me but without the trapped moisture. On one hot day I've even sat in it bare-bottomed without abrasion problems.
I've worn a lot of different kinds of clothes and I haven't noticed accelerated wear attributable to the pellicle. I did work for the maker - Herman Miller and I did hear of feedback suggesting that the material does wear clothes faster. My particular chair is not abrasive that I can tell (and I work with abrasives daily, dangit), but I've been using it daily for four years or so, so maybe it's "broken in".
The biggest down side I've had is that they Aerons squeak too much for my tastes, and one of the adjusters did go weird once or twice.
For you, I would suggest a high back Ergon chair. Very comfortable, cheaper to boot, and it uses the standard iso foam cushioning that you prefer. I would still have one if I had the room to keep it when space was tight.
Note, I don't work for HM any more. Nice company for the most part, very good for the size, I don't normally like working for very large companies.
Benchmarks show that programs compiled with intels compiler using P4 optimisations
That's predictable. A code recompile is needed with every one of the Pentium processor generations in order to make any significant performance gains. I'm not saying that's good or bad, there are downsides and upsides to that. For one, we'd get faster code but that means that the compilers have been re-tweaked and all our software is re-compiled, but then that usually means waiting for the next revision, and buying new software.
The link claimed that the optimizations available in modern compilers aren't much beyond Pentium.
Which end of the middle would that be?
The way you describe it doesn't seem to fit with how the words are usually used.
Usually in sales & marketing, the term is mid _range_, mid _end_ is simply rediculous as even if the middle had an end, it's not descriptive as to what the end of a middle is, or which end assuming if there is one, or where that end is if there was only one.
I don't expect an UltraSparc comparison, but given that there are known performance issues in the P4 with "legacy" code, I wonder how easily that benchmark could have been stacked. How well would it compare with a PIII?
And comparision with _just_ a P4 isn't going to be much of a believable benchmark.
Hatch is also the Senator that verbally abused Metallica and the RIAA for abusing the DMCA, particularly for prosecuting electronic music distribution but not having a legit alternative.
The same guy also used Napster to download Metallica songs and say that they need a better songwriter.
He also quized the RIAA leader on what counts as fair use and pointed out that fair use has a larger scope than what the RIAA claims. The lady heading the RIAA simply did not know the rules.
Hatch also threatened that if they don't quit being an ass about fair use he'll codify a law explicitly laying down what fair use is and what rights consumers have, and promised that the RIAA et al. won't like it.
But let's not disclose facts inconvenient to our arguments, right?
How many programmers own guns? Besides they already have their dangerous computers.
Most people I know don't go out to a shooting range or hunt _that_ regularly, and I really don't know that many people that are actively into guns, most of them are hardly the business or techie type.
In a way, anime is/are "cartoons" by dictionary definition. Generally I find the Japanese cartoons (anime) more interesting than the American ones or for that matter anywhere else.
Unfortunately the typical anime falls into cliches too many times but the standouts are extraordinary. The hard part is trying to figure out the originals and the copycats, and determining the merit of the copycats.
Also, I would consider Akira very dang popular (but that doesn't mean I liked it). there will be 100,000 of Pioneer's "Limited Edition" tin of Akira released and they are already pre-sold out over a month before release (currently late July). Most limited goodies take a few months to sell out in quantities of 10,000 or 20,000.
Where are you people living?
I don't know what's going on, but every gas station I've been to in the USA has at least two diesel pumps. Nearly every gas station on an interstate highway is a mini-truckstop meaning they have as many diesel pumps as gasoline pumps.
While the USA is behind on diesel implementation for passenger vehicles, it is very common as tractor-trailers are almost exclusively diesel. Count most busses among them was well. I believe most farm tractors now made are diesel.
LD ultimately failed because people didn't have the tolerance for disk-flipping, I think.
There are lots of factors, the size wasn't exactly convenient, and they were heavy. Players can get louder than with DVDs due to the drive power needed to spin them.
I don't know when it started, but LD players did end up having dual-side play. Apparently it made the players a bit taller.
I still get a few LDs mainly because they are now cheaper used (sometimes new!) than DVDs. For stuff that has a progressive/anamorphic/DD5.1 DVD I just get the DVD though as that is much better though. My player is a combo DVD/LD player so that cuts out a few considerations for me.
Actually, the movie studios don't "own" them either, they simply own the copyrights to them until the copyrights run out (yeah, I know, like that'll ever happen)
They are fine point distinctions which can be argued ad nauseam. Movie studios DO own the film prints and the master materials of their movies. I don't know if the prints are ever sold, they usually are only rented or leased out that I understand anyways. They sell a copy of the movie and limited rights to play the movie for private performance. Suffice to say that you don't own a movie, but rather a copy of the movie, which you do technically have rights to, but they are limited in scope.
These are more fine, maybe incorrect, distinctions which I don't think will really get anywhere in a Slashdot argument as it usually takes months or years to change minds, not single threads.
ignoring the Catholic church
Well, I don't know a whole lot of people that give a rat's arse concerning the Catholic church's stance on contraceptives, etc. Even a lot of the Catholics give those teachings the shaft.
Just a nitpick, but despite the awful logo, it is spelled "Wega", and historically pronounced "Vega".
Your comments on glare and contrast ring true. When a person goes through to tune a video setting, it is recommended to have a constant bias light at 10% of the TV's maximum set brightness (after calibration), a bunch of lights will throw all that off.
But there exist little transducer modules that you can bolt to couches to literally shake your booty. They cost $1000 and up all set up.
The latest issue of Home Theater reviewed a couple of these things. One is really called "ButtKicker Shaker".
What's wrong with being able to share something for which I have paid???
That is an overly simplistic argument. If you didn't get the rights to share the hard work someone else made, then you are likely in the wrong.
It isn't about "sharing" I think it's about a bunch of people benefiting from other's work without proper compensation. It seems that it is the people that haven't tried to live life on both sides of the supply and demand equation that can't understand. If you wrote a program to make money would you appreciate people copying it, enjoying your work without compensating you?
Oh, I get it. Y'all recording companies came up with some "agreement" that we have to live by when we buy your stuff for no reason other than to make y'allselves billionaires.
Um, no. The idea of copyright existed long before anyone could record and reproduce an audio waveform. The industries may have tried to pervert it but it is still there and in general we've always had certain rights and they've always had certain rights, the only thing that changed was technology to allow people much more easily swap tunes that they had no right to swap. If you swap legit CDs that is your right, but swapping MP3s is not.
"That doesn't change the fact that it is theft. Taking something without permission is still illegal."
So if I meet you in the street and you light my cigarette, I've stolen the fire from match manufacturers?
We need to start a What Would Dogbert Do?" movement.
I don't think it is valid to compare a flame made with a cheap lighter to copyright ownership of intellectual property. Bic doesn't licence lighters, they sell them, and the music and movie owners licence movies, they don't sell them.
If you don't like intellectual property, fine, but the GNU-ish ideal isn't exactly taking over the world that I can tell, despite what the "free software" fans like to think. I probably won't be writing free software because I need to do something that MAKES MONEY, and I can't live on tips and I can't support users thousands of miles away.
It is the software or music owner's every right to determine the distribution and sales method of the product they make, and I believe in fair compensation. Yes, some companies take it too far, but there is the other extreme of sharing movies that you don't own the rights to share.
There is absolutely no reason to assume that the Xbox will be delayed.
I'd say previous history <u>can</u> be a strong indicator, versus <b><i>absolutely no</b></i> reason.
Sure MS's latest OSs are an improvement, but keep in mind that W95 was supposed to be released in '94, Windows 2000 was originally slated to be released in '97, there is a history to consider. WinME was supposed to ship at the same time as W2K but there were problems there too.
I'm not saying that it will absolutely ship on time, but to say that there's no chance that it would be delayed is equally silly.