By that logic, one shouldn't teach evolution as the origin of species; evolution does, in fact, happen in nature -- we can observe this. But teaching it as the origin of all life on earth is a philisophical discussion, and is not provable, at least with current data.
Again, I'm quite religious, and believe that God worked by planting the seeds for life in the universe and used evolution to craft all species, but I wouldn't discuss that part in a science class. If I were teaching, I stick with the facts, and probably give nods to Darwin's "Origin of Species" as the biggest work that modern evolution theory sprung from, but would certainly not say that it factually provable that evolution is how all species came into being.
Meh... as a faithful Roman Catholic that does believe in macro-evolution (micro-evolution does, in fact, happen in nature and we can prove it. We have NOT proven that all species have a common ancestor, but we have some pretty good evidence for it), I still don't think it's proven. I don't like theory should be presented as absolute fact.
Presenting Intelligent Design (which I agree, was not thought out in an academic sense very well) as an alternative alongside teaching evolution is perfectly OK. Teach the kids the conflicting theories, let them use thier own intellect to sort it out.
And frankly, this wouldn't contradict the first ammendment, which forbids the creation/enforcement of a state religion. Many different faiths (Christian and non-Christian, organized or not) believe in intelligent design. I know a couple athiests that have some caveats that make them disagree with evolution, but can come up with no alternative. The point is, teaching this theory is not advocating or prostheletizing any particular religions, but at the same time, it is allowing for rational intellectual discussion.
The same people that expect a refund if they buy an watch for $5 and it craps out in a year... there aren't too many of them, but the few there are cost retail shops lots of money.
And if you're building a $200 PC, it's likely short on RAM, and having a really, really shoddy motherboard and power supply. Dell doesn't buy top-quality stuff, but they also don't by used parts from Marty's Wild World of Computers and Pizza.
Not true... AMD isn't that much cheaper any more. They'er just faster for most tasks (media encoding excluded) than Intel at a given price point, and offer more features.
Also, keep in mind, Dell will not be selling machines that cheap any time soon, even if the unit cost per machine was like $150. Why? Service. On systems sub-$500, support, assembly, sales, etc. becomes a notable overhead, and can cost nearly as much as the hardware itself.
Don't expect Dell to sell sub-$300 machines in the next decade unless they're absurdly cheap diskless thin clients.
Meh... I've listened to MP3's that are sampled at upwards of 320kbps... they sound better, but still like crap.
It's not that I'm not affected by masking -- it's that everyone is affected by masking slightly differently. Also, particularly in lower frequencies, there are often frequencies that you may not hear, but you will feel. For instance, the range I have the most trouble with is the male human vocal range; if there are two people speaking in my vicinity simultaneously, even if they are at different levels, I have a hard time hearing either. I have incredibly acute hearing in the high end (which actually makes some digital recordings with a lot of high-frequency stuff painful.)
I'm sorry... if the output is not bit-identical, or damn close, it's not good enough. The goal of audio systems is to faithfully reproduce the source material. Frankly, with hard drives as cheap as they are, FLAC's 2:1-3:1 compression is good enough. As is just throwing the discs in the changer...
That's why my sound card doesn't even have the capability of adjusting the volume on the way out. The only volume adjustment is done by the knob on my reciever. The sound card, in my equation, makes no difference.
I'm sorry, I use LAME and the reference vorbis libraries for encoding. There is NO influence on the part of the sound card of the output signal; that's all software.
Do you even know how MP3's work? They look at a wave, and try and identify series of waves that "mask" other series of waves when processed by the human ear, and throw out the masked waves. This only works so well... if we were talking about perfect sine waves, there would be little problem. However, everyone's ears are different, and the waveforms that are being analyzed are often quite complex (harmonically). And yes, I do distinctly hear a loss of harmonic complexity; it makes most (acoustic) string instruments sound like crap.
You, my friend, are simply not a discerning listener. There's nothing wrong with that. If you are happy, keep doing what you're doing.
Essentially the same on a $20 boom box maybe. Listen to it on a decent hi-fi. On my sub-$1000 rig (Yamaha HTR-5150 reciever, a pair Boston Acoustic CR-9's), lossy sounds noticeably worse than non-lossy. With my Linux box as the audio source, and an S/PDIF-out (so you can't claim it's my crappy sound card's fault for a shitty signal), if I'm actually listening (as opposed to having music just "in the background" for a conversation) I can certainly hear the difference between 160kbps Vorbis and FLAC. Hell, I can often tell what compression method is used (between Vorbis and MP3) by the types of artifacts. MP3's, for instance, have a huge drop in harmonic complexity (VERY noticeable in violins and cello!) and a limp, flat, soundfield. Vorbis, though not as terrible as MP3, is a hair... soft and muddy.
Both work rather well for portable units with cheap headphones. But for my home system, it's FLAC and CD-Audio.
Not to mention, even if you notice a small difference, you may not think it's worth the price differential. Different peoples' ears are sensitive to different types of distortion.
Also, when auditioning, it's good to have a wide variety of source material. I have friends who bought speakers that sound great on most things, but make female vocals (upper soprano-range) sound painful.
I'm not endorsing Monsters. You can get cheaper cables from companies like Phillips, Acoustic Research, etc. that will perform just as well. Monster's biggest innovation is in marketting.
$200 is generally a mark that someone is spending more on a system than a cheapo boom box that can't produce and discernable notes under 500Hz.
Again, the upgrade from complete crap to not complete crap as far as cables go is the most that many will want or need. Generally, the most notable upgrade in a modern system will be from your output transducers (TV, speakers). Second to that would be input transducers (tuner, CD/DVD player). Then your switching/multiplexing hardware. Then your amps. Cables mark pretty much dead last.
You are correct that a move from composite to S-Video will generally yield more difference than brand of cable. S-Video has seperate channels that don't require an extensive comb filter. The move to component is better still.
The X-Box move was a move from composite to S-Video, while the Game Cube was an upgrade from cheap S-Video to the Monsters (wasn't expecting a picture quality upgrade; wanted a longer cable.) The X-Box switch was MUCH more noticeable -- as anyone would expect. In the GameCube, however, I noticed far less shimmering due to aliasing in Metroid Prime... When I was using composite, the shimmering was headache inducing, so I quickly switched to S-Video. And later the upgrade to the Monster Cable.
I'm not really an audiophile... I do research, and know my physics, and know that placing rocks under my transducers won't yield any discernable benefits, nor will custom-soldering on $600 power cables. However, cables do matter -- though as you've observed, not as much as the technology used.
I'll agree with you to a point. They'er crap compared to some other brands at the same price. I'll stick by my statement about thier game cables -- you have two choices: crap and Monster Cable. Other reputable brands don't bother making cables for the proprietary connectors used by Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft on thier respective systems.
The only time you want to pay extra cash for brand-name DVI cables is if it's long. Cheaper cables can degrade the signal and fail occasionally on long (>2 meter) runs.
They'er on crack. There's two possible ways a crappy optical cable could pass a bitstream poorly:
1) It fails to pass a bit properly (a 1 becomes a zero, or vice versa) 2) Frame jitter
If 1) was an issue, you'd be hearing skipping and popping very loudly in a way that the system would be unlistenable. Though CD's have error-correction built in, the S/PDIF standard doesn't; it just passes 16-bit words; no ECC codes.
Frame jitter can be corrected REALLY easilly by about a dollar's worth of hardware on the other end; you have a 16 frame delay (16 x 16-bits = 32 bytes of memory required) and a little clock generator. You fill up the queue as everything comes in, and send things from the front of the queue to the DAC. Not hard! I'm a programmer that took one hardware class 6 years ago, and *I* could design this circuit! Yeah, a 16 frame delay does translate to a delay -- but one of only.0004 seconds. Even when syncing with video, that's completely imperceptible by the human brain.
In my experience, Monster Cable is very good, but not necessarily the best.
In high-end Home Theater/Home Audio/etc., cables do matter. NEVER use the cheapo skinny no-brand cables for anything greater than 15" TV set, or any audio setup you spent more than $200 for. There's a huge jump from going to better than junk cables, a much lesser jump going from those to premium brand cables (like Monster, Acoustic Research, etc.)
Go to a decent (but not too snooty) hi-fi store. Ask them what they recommend for someone on a budget. The often carry brands you'll have never heard of that will be better than Monster for the same price. Monster makes good stuff, but frankly they charge too much for it.
Now, where Monster Cable excels, IMHO, is in game console cables. We upgraded from the stock cables on our X-Box and Game Cube to Monster S-Video cables, and the difference was nothing short of staggering. Plus, they give you long runs (10') in a nice snagless casing. Super happy with the results!
Me too... I remember about 6 or 7 years ago, living in the dorms, and Napster had come out. I first downloaded a bunch of stuff that my dad used to listen too when I grew up, and started remembering how good it was. Then I got even more experimentative, searching by genre. Within two years, my collection of a dozen CD's was about 100. It's close to 300 today, and still growing.
All in all, I've spent more money BECAUSE of Napster than I would have without it. Now I don't download a whole lot; I just trade MP3's and OGG's with a bunch of friends, and I buy the CD if I like it enough. (Why do I buy the CD? First, I like to support the artists. Second, MP3's sound like crap, and OGG's aren't THAT much better. Fine for listening to at work on my head phones, but at home on the hi-fi, the flatness and loss of harmonic complexity is God-awful!)
Audacity is great for simple little things; I recommend it for people that want to edit WAV's that they rip from CD before burning to mixes, or placing in a powerpoint presentation, or whatever. It is rather primitive, and hideously ugly. Octal is in too early of a stage to tell.
The problem is, I can't wait for the tools to catch up to my needs. And I've found setting up a Linux distro for audio stuff to be a serious bitch. Like getting ALSA compiled right, getting Jack to work, getting applications to talk to jack properly... hell, I can't get MIDI support to work on my Linux box! On the Macs at work, it isn't a problem. I'll be buying a dual 1.8 ghz G5 this summer when I can afford it.
Again, Linux on the desktop works for lots of things -- content creation isn't one of them (For work I use Flash MX 2004 and ProTools).
Sound studio is a poor example. Unless of course you can point to free software that is of the same calibur as ProTools, Logic, etc.
And frankly, if you're buying the hardware to do this, the software is free (as in beer). Every DigiDesign interface comes with ProTools, and an MBox or a Digi002 should be enough for most home user's needs.
I'm a big fan of Linux, as well as MacOS. I'd LOVE to be able to do everything on open source stuff, but I can't given the limited time and resources to hire programmers to make software for me.
Regardless of whether Linux gets the n00bs, it will live on for quite a while. Why? Because it's really useful in a lot of niche environments, very flexible and customizable, and great for us geeks that just want a computer to work the way we want it to.
Who's developing it? The geeks. Who gets the most use out of it? The geeks.
That being said, unless someone comes up with a distro that can provide just as good of an end-to-end user experience than Win32 or OSX can, it won't catch on for the home desktop. Corporate desktop is another matter; if you have a farm of cubes full of accountants, secrataries, telemarketers, or anything else that has needs to be met by OO.o and Mozilla, LTSP is a seriously viable and cheap and easy option that a number of companies have already jumped onto.
Your two choices are emulation (like VirtualPC) or new hardware.
My advice is go to a computer show, buy an old, fully-functional 386, 486, or Pentium based machine, and install either DOS or Linux or *BSD. You could probably get one for less than $50.
They're not feasable choices. No bus/train would get me to work on time. I can't bike or walk 25 miles every morning. I can't afford a taxi every day or a helicopter. There would be no job I'm qualified for in walking distance that would cover my mortgage. My only real choices are:
1) drive 2) sell my house and move closer (which means buying a house that costs almost twice as much). 3) relocate and find a new job (in this job market, that's unlikely).
Driving is a right, as far as I'm concerned. It should be assumed that all persons over a certain age are allowed to drive, unless they prove themselves dangerous. There should be no requirement of a state-issued liscense.
I agree. They changed. But in recent years, they've been casting out fedral baggage anywhere they can.
I personally think that the size and scope of the Federal government today was the fault of Lincoln. Worst president ever. If the states still had the right to secede from the union, the federal government would have to stop and think before making these big laws that take away a states' rights.
And don't bring up the damn slavery argument. That was a minor issue for the north -- the north didn't care that much. And because of economic reasons, slavery would have been done with in a decade anyway. The biggest reason for the south's secession was over the selection of the northen standard for railroad tracks.
Slashdot Mirror
By that logic, one shouldn't teach evolution as the origin of species; evolution does, in fact, happen in nature -- we can observe this. But teaching it as the origin of all life on earth is a philisophical discussion, and is not provable, at least with current data.
Again, I'm quite religious, and believe that God worked by planting the seeds for life in the universe and used evolution to craft all species, but I wouldn't discuss that part in a science class. If I were teaching, I stick with the facts, and probably give nods to Darwin's "Origin of Species" as the biggest work that modern evolution theory sprung from, but would certainly not say that it factually provable that evolution is how all species came into being.
Meh... as a faithful Roman Catholic that does believe in macro-evolution (micro-evolution does, in fact, happen in nature and we can prove it. We have NOT proven that all species have a common ancestor, but we have some pretty good evidence for it), I still don't think it's proven. I don't like theory should be presented as absolute fact.
Presenting Intelligent Design (which I agree, was not thought out in an academic sense very well) as an alternative alongside teaching evolution is perfectly OK. Teach the kids the conflicting theories, let them use thier own intellect to sort it out.
And frankly, this wouldn't contradict the first ammendment, which forbids the creation/enforcement of a state religion. Many different faiths (Christian and non-Christian, organized or not) believe in intelligent design. I know a couple athiests that have some caveats that make them disagree with evolution, but can come up with no alternative. The point is, teaching this theory is not advocating or prostheletizing any particular religions, but at the same time, it is allowing for rational intellectual discussion.
The same people that expect a refund if they buy an watch for $5 and it craps out in a year... there aren't too many of them, but the few there are cost retail shops lots of money.
And if you're building a $200 PC, it's likely short on RAM, and having a really, really shoddy motherboard and power supply. Dell doesn't buy top-quality stuff, but they also don't by used parts from Marty's Wild World of Computers and Pizza.
Not true... AMD isn't that much cheaper any more. They'er just faster for most tasks (media encoding excluded) than Intel at a given price point, and offer more features.
Also, keep in mind, Dell will not be selling machines that cheap any time soon, even if the unit cost per machine was like $150. Why? Service. On systems sub-$500, support, assembly, sales, etc. becomes a notable overhead, and can cost nearly as much as the hardware itself.
Don't expect Dell to sell sub-$300 machines in the next decade unless they're absurdly cheap diskless thin clients.
Meh... I've listened to MP3's that are sampled at upwards of 320kbps... they sound better, but still like crap.
It's not that I'm not affected by masking -- it's that everyone is affected by masking slightly differently. Also, particularly in lower frequencies, there are often frequencies that you may not hear, but you will feel. For instance, the range I have the most trouble with is the male human vocal range; if there are two people speaking in my vicinity simultaneously, even if they are at different levels, I have a hard time hearing either. I have incredibly acute hearing in the high end (which actually makes some digital recordings with a lot of high-frequency stuff painful.)
I'm sorry... if the output is not bit-identical, or damn close, it's not good enough. The goal of audio systems is to faithfully reproduce the source material. Frankly, with hard drives as cheap as they are, FLAC's 2:1-3:1 compression is good enough. As is just throwing the discs in the changer...
That's why my sound card doesn't even have the capability of adjusting the volume on the way out. The only volume adjustment is done by the knob on my reciever. The sound card, in my equation, makes no difference.
I'm sorry, I use LAME and the reference vorbis libraries for encoding. There is NO influence on the part of the sound card of the output signal; that's all software.
Do you even know how MP3's work? They look at a wave, and try and identify series of waves that "mask" other series of waves when processed by the human ear, and throw out the masked waves. This only works so well... if we were talking about perfect sine waves, there would be little problem. However, everyone's ears are different, and the waveforms that are being analyzed are often quite complex (harmonically). And yes, I do distinctly hear a loss of harmonic complexity; it makes most (acoustic) string instruments sound like crap.
You, my friend, are simply not a discerning listener. There's nothing wrong with that. If you are happy, keep doing what you're doing.
Essentially the same on a $20 boom box maybe. Listen to it on a decent hi-fi. On my sub-$1000 rig (Yamaha HTR-5150 reciever, a pair Boston Acoustic CR-9's), lossy sounds noticeably worse than non-lossy. With my Linux box as the audio source, and an S/PDIF-out (so you can't claim it's my crappy sound card's fault for a shitty signal), if I'm actually listening (as opposed to having music just "in the background" for a conversation) I can certainly hear the difference between 160kbps Vorbis and FLAC. Hell, I can often tell what compression method is used (between Vorbis and MP3) by the types of artifacts. MP3's, for instance, have a huge drop in harmonic complexity (VERY noticeable in violins and cello!) and a limp, flat, soundfield. Vorbis, though not as terrible as MP3, is a hair... soft and muddy.
Both work rather well for portable units with cheap headphones. But for my home system, it's FLAC and CD-Audio.
Many "bbom boxes" and the like I've heard make everything below around 500Hz sound like the same note...
Not to mention, even if you notice a small difference, you may not think it's worth the price differential. Different peoples' ears are sensitive to different types of distortion.
Also, when auditioning, it's good to have a wide variety of source material. I have friends who bought speakers that sound great on most things, but make female vocals (upper soprano-range) sound painful.
Good, but overpriced. You can get the same quality for less, or better quality for the same.
I'm not endorsing Monsters. You can get cheaper cables from companies like Phillips, Acoustic Research, etc. that will perform just as well. Monster's biggest innovation is in marketting.
$200 is generally a mark that someone is spending more on a system than a cheapo boom box that can't produce and discernable notes under 500Hz.
Again, the upgrade from complete crap to not complete crap as far as cables go is the most that many will want or need. Generally, the most notable upgrade in a modern system will be from your output transducers (TV, speakers). Second to that would be input transducers (tuner, CD/DVD player). Then your switching/multiplexing hardware. Then your amps. Cables mark pretty much dead last.
You are correct that a move from composite to S-Video will generally yield more difference than brand of cable. S-Video has seperate channels that don't require an extensive comb filter. The move to component is better still.
The X-Box move was a move from composite to S-Video, while the Game Cube was an upgrade from cheap S-Video to the Monsters (wasn't expecting a picture quality upgrade; wanted a longer cable.) The X-Box switch was MUCH more noticeable -- as anyone would expect. In the GameCube, however, I noticed far less shimmering due to aliasing in Metroid Prime... When I was using composite, the shimmering was headache inducing, so I quickly switched to S-Video. And later the upgrade to the Monster Cable.
I'm not really an audiophile... I do research, and know my physics, and know that placing rocks under my transducers won't yield any discernable benefits, nor will custom-soldering on $600 power cables. However, cables do matter -- though as you've observed, not as much as the technology used.
I'll agree with you to a point. They'er crap compared to some other brands at the same price. I'll stick by my statement about thier game cables -- you have two choices: crap and Monster Cable. Other reputable brands don't bother making cables for the proprietary connectors used by Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft on thier respective systems.
The only time you want to pay extra cash for brand-name DVI cables is if it's long. Cheaper cables can degrade the signal and fail occasionally on long (>2 meter) runs.
They'er on crack. There's two possible ways a crappy optical cable could pass a bitstream poorly:
.0004 seconds. Even when syncing with video, that's completely imperceptible by the human brain.
1) It fails to pass a bit properly (a 1 becomes a zero, or vice versa)
2) Frame jitter
If 1) was an issue, you'd be hearing skipping and popping very loudly in a way that the system would be unlistenable. Though CD's have error-correction built in, the S/PDIF standard doesn't; it just passes 16-bit words; no ECC codes.
Frame jitter can be corrected REALLY easilly by about a dollar's worth of hardware on the other end; you have a 16 frame delay (16 x 16-bits = 32 bytes of memory required) and a little clock generator. You fill up the queue as everything comes in, and send things from the front of the queue to the DAC. Not hard! I'm a programmer that took one hardware class 6 years ago, and *I* could design this circuit! Yeah, a 16 frame delay does translate to a delay -- but one of only
In my experience, Monster Cable is very good, but not necessarily the best.
In high-end Home Theater/Home Audio/etc., cables do matter. NEVER use the cheapo skinny no-brand cables for anything greater than 15" TV set, or any audio setup you spent more than $200 for. There's a huge jump from going to better than junk cables, a much lesser jump going from those to premium brand cables (like Monster, Acoustic Research, etc.)
Go to a decent (but not too snooty) hi-fi store. Ask them what they recommend for someone on a budget. The often carry brands you'll have never heard of that will be better than Monster for the same price. Monster makes good stuff, but frankly they charge too much for it.
Now, where Monster Cable excels, IMHO, is in game console cables. We upgraded from the stock cables on our X-Box and Game Cube to Monster S-Video cables, and the difference was nothing short of staggering. Plus, they give you long runs (10') in a nice snagless casing. Super happy with the results!
Me too... I remember about 6 or 7 years ago, living in the dorms, and Napster had come out. I first downloaded a bunch of stuff that my dad used to listen too when I grew up, and started remembering how good it was. Then I got even more experimentative, searching by genre. Within two years, my collection of a dozen CD's was about 100. It's close to 300 today, and still growing.
All in all, I've spent more money BECAUSE of Napster than I would have without it. Now I don't download a whole lot; I just trade MP3's and OGG's with a bunch of friends, and I buy the CD if I like it enough. (Why do I buy the CD? First, I like to support the artists. Second, MP3's sound like crap, and OGG's aren't THAT much better. Fine for listening to at work on my head phones, but at home on the hi-fi, the flatness and loss of harmonic complexity is God-awful!)
Audacity is great for simple little things; I recommend it for people that want to edit WAV's that they rip from CD before burning to mixes, or placing in a powerpoint presentation, or whatever. It is rather primitive, and hideously ugly. Octal is in too early of a stage to tell.
The problem is, I can't wait for the tools to catch up to my needs. And I've found setting up a Linux distro for audio stuff to be a serious bitch. Like getting ALSA compiled right, getting Jack to work, getting applications to talk to jack properly... hell, I can't get MIDI support to work on my Linux box! On the Macs at work, it isn't a problem. I'll be buying a dual 1.8 ghz G5 this summer when I can afford it.
Again, Linux on the desktop works for lots of things -- content creation isn't one of them (For work I use Flash MX 2004 and ProTools).
Sound studio is a poor example. Unless of course you can point to free software that is of the same calibur as ProTools, Logic, etc.
And frankly, if you're buying the hardware to do this, the software is free (as in beer). Every DigiDesign interface comes with ProTools, and an MBox or a Digi002 should be enough for most home user's needs.
I'm a big fan of Linux, as well as MacOS. I'd LOVE to be able to do everything on open source stuff, but I can't given the limited time and resources to hire programmers to make software for me.
Wow -- way to necropost, and give exactly the same advice I did.
Regardless of whether Linux gets the n00bs, it will live on for quite a while. Why? Because it's really useful in a lot of niche environments, very flexible and customizable, and great for us geeks that just want a computer to work the way we want it to.
Who's developing it? The geeks. Who gets the most use out of it? The geeks.
That being said, unless someone comes up with a distro that can provide just as good of an end-to-end user experience than Win32 or OSX can, it won't catch on for the home desktop. Corporate desktop is another matter; if you have a farm of cubes full of accountants, secrataries, telemarketers, or anything else that has needs to be met by OO.o and Mozilla, LTSP is a seriously viable and cheap and easy option that a number of companies have already jumped onto.
Umm...I CAN afford my mortgage. But that requires a job. If I lose my job, I won't be able to live ANYWHERE, because I couldn't pay rent either.
Your two choices are emulation (like VirtualPC) or new hardware.
My advice is go to a computer show, buy an old, fully-functional 386, 486, or Pentium based machine, and install either DOS or Linux or *BSD. You could probably get one for less than $50.
They're not feasable choices. No bus/train would get me to work on time. I can't bike or walk 25 miles every morning. I can't afford a taxi every day or a helicopter. There would be no job I'm qualified for in walking distance that would cover my mortgage. My only real choices are:
1) drive
2) sell my house and move closer (which means buying a house that costs almost twice as much).
3) relocate and find a new job (in this job market, that's unlikely).
Driving is a right, as far as I'm concerned. It should be assumed that all persons over a certain age are allowed to drive, unless they prove themselves dangerous. There should be no requirement of a state-issued liscense.
I agree. They changed. But in recent years, they've been casting out fedral baggage anywhere they can.
I personally think that the size and scope of the Federal government today was the fault of Lincoln. Worst president ever. If the states still had the right to secede from the union, the federal government would have to stop and think before making these big laws that take away a states' rights.
And don't bring up the damn slavery argument. That was a minor issue for the north -- the north didn't care that much. And because of economic reasons, slavery would have been done with in a decade anyway. The biggest reason for the south's secession was over the selection of the northen standard for railroad tracks.