An automated script to download them would be nice. Or perhaps a nice rss feed in a slashbox. What resolution are they available in? If they're not in hidef, their viewers won't be able to recognize background nipples.
I'm wondering how many of the parents would have complained were it not for a "click here for the clip, click here to complain" campaign. Do they have a 1080i version available for perusal/slashdotting?
I can hear sub 150 Hz material just fine, thank you. Perhaps you need better equipment to properly reproduce this range.
And, no, it's not an undifferentiated rumble. Any number of techniques, from the use of digital filters, to a improperly set crossover point, to running a (good) satellite subwoofer system with the subwoofer turned off should allow you to cut all that bass content. The result sounds rather anemic, doesn't it?
You could also play with a frequency generator. Start with a 150 Hz sine wave. Add tones of various frequencies below this point. Notice any differences?
If they don't rip, they are useless to me. (sorry Sony artists)
Sony really is a dysfunctional company.
Music discs encoded with copyright protection technologies
This product is designed to playback discs that conform to the Compact Disc (CD) standard. Recently, various discs encoded with copyright protection technologies are marketed by some record companies. Please be aware that among those discs there are some that do not conform to the CD standard and may not be playable by this product
From the user manual for the Sony SCDC-2000ES, a product of moderately recent vintage.
SACD changers really aren't that expensive, and probably produce less mechanical noise than a HTPC. While the DSD side is encumbered by DRM, many SACDs also incorporate a CD-DA layer (not just a pre-scratched CD side, as dual discs do). The SACD selection tends to dwarf the DVD-A selection, at least for classical. It's not really clear which format has the most high resolution material-- many DVD-As only have 44.1 khz/16 bit tracks, but I'll be willing to entertain the prospect of low quality DSD.
Mistake-free copy is exceptionally rare. Despite this, most newspapers rely on the reporter to fact check, simply because verifying every fact of a story takes too much time. The role of a journalist is to report accurate, timely information-- and sometimes, sitting on a good, otherwise solid story because a source can't be recontacted is as much a disservice as printing rumor, innuendo or government propaganda.
The New Yorker was famous for fact-checking its stories. Another employee would call up each source, and verify each and every point of the article. But this takes time-- time which newspapers don't have. Yes, they may be scooped by competitors, but delays also reduce the value of the article as news.
Newspapers like to think of themselves as having some utility. If a person is nominated to an important government position, an article on that person's shady financial dealings has little utility if it is published after that person has been confirmed. It may be politically advantageous to publish the story right before the vote, but the newspaper's readers may prefer that it be published even earlier, so as to allow a sort of public debate over the assembled evidence.
Suppose that Mr X has engaged in some sort of accounting fraud, and yet he has been appointed to the SEC. Publishing the article after confirmation serves little purpose. Publishing the article just before the confirmation vote deals maximum political damage. But publishing the article during the hearings allows the public to decide whether this conduct, if serious, merits rejection, and if common, merits a reform of the relevant securities law.
Now, it may be true that the paper has a political agenda of sorts in publicizing the "securities fraud." But isn't also likely that the administration has a political agenda in not indicting this individual? If there were no (reasonably) independent media to publish the news, we'd have to rely on the government's word, and its lack of indictments.
Some might say that this is how it should be-- the government was elected, and we should trust them to dissemble and proclaim various truths when necessary. But, then, why are elections necessary? Isn't the best government an experienced government?
It just shows that Western media has a standard agenda of politicizing everything, and that checking sources is not honored by Western journalists (who really should set a good example on this to show Chinese journalists how to do it).
Yet you linked to an article China Daily, certainly not, as publications go, the best example of an apolitical journalistic institution. It does not pretend to engage in fact checking, except, perhaps to coordinate its message with relevant government ministries.
Everyone has their own biases. In the united states, a person working for haliburton might be biased towards a favourable impression of the current government. A person ruined by the Katrina disaster might be biased against the government. Similarly, in China, a capitalist who's been able to gain financially from the building of some new housing project might be biased in favour of the government; a peasant whose plot was expropriated, ad is still waiting for compensation might be biased against the government.
In a democracy, these biases, collected together may sustain or overthrow the government. In China, these biases tend to have little effect. Maybe some government official will notice the corruption, and propose change, and maybe he will not.
In Friday's Telegraph, it was reported that Wen Jibao has doubts about Chinas growth in the face of corruption.
China's prime minister gave a surprisingly gloomy assessment of the state of the country's booming economy and fast-changing society in his annual speech to parliament yesterday.
In the face of near-euphoria among governments and businesses in the western world about the pace of its growth, Wen Jiabao said long-term economic health was at risk while society faced "deep-seated conflicts".
Wen Jiabao delivers the annual 'work report' yesterday For years, Communist leaders have worried about the growing wealth gap between the expanding cities of the east coast and the rural interior. But yesterday Mr Wen, delivering the annual "work report" to the rubber-stamp National People's Congress, added the need to be concerned about "social equity".
This was a strong nod to concern that inequalities are not just caused by different rates of economic growth but by such issues as corruption and illegal expropriation of land by officials. "Some deeply-seated conflicts that have accumulated over a long time have yet to be fundamentally resolved, and new problems have arisen that cannot be ignored," he said.
[...] Production gluts are increasingly severe, prices of related goods are falling and inventories are rising," he said. "Profits are shrinking, losses are growing and latent financial risks are increasing." If companies start defaulting on debts it could trigger a crisis in the banking system, which has given out huge loans to fuel the investment.
In the US, there's also an indifference to politics. Some accept it, some protest it. The difference is that in the United States, one can theoretically express a political opinion without running afoul of the propaganda ministry. In China, if one wants to express a political opinion, there's a cost. One's blog might get shut down, one's parents investigated, one's application denied.
So a little benzene leak might be covered up and a SARS report suppressed. The lives of commoners might be disrupted, or cut short, but think of the risks of letting the hoi-poloi have access to the news-- one's promotion chances ended, glorious careers cut short, the corner office taken away. Best to remain silent and hope the problem goes away on its own.
There's little point in mentioning the failure of the United States to live up to the ideals of an open society. I know all that. I know hat the bush regime is trying to emulate more, well, Chinese, attitudes towards classification. I know that white house seeks to learn more about what the Soviets can teach us about aggressive interrogation techniques. But ideals are not really ideals unless they are universal.
This argument is a waste of time. I don't consider the New China News Agency to be credible. You may. I consider some other sources (nytimes, foriegnpolicy, amnesty international) to be credible, while you may not...
2. ah well, when the stereo speakers are positioned that closely together, I suppose it doesn't quite matter if stereo imaging of bass is theoretically possible. My stereo's recommends a crossover of 150 hz for 90 mm drivers. But if the wavelength (2.3 metres) is long enough...
3. Apple itself wants this to replace older systems.
"Introducing the stereo for the new century." "Wide frequency range: iPod Hi-Fi accurately reproduces the lowest cello notes and the highest piccolo notes; the brittle strum of an acoustic guitar and the powerful thump of a driving bass"
I suppose Apple took one look at Bose, and decided that selling overpriced audio gadgets was more lucrative than coming out with properly designed stuff...
1. yeah, yeah. Typo. CDs extend up to 20,000 khz, not 16 kHz. And my disc player claims a frequency response of 2 Hz -- 40,000 Hz. 2. Dolby's LFE channel extends only up to 120 Hz. THX recommends a crossover frequency of 80 Hz for its systems, but it's not a sharp cutoff. I've heard that a (-3db) frequency response down to 40 Hz is desirable-- THX will only tell interested parties to "buy a THX rated speaker". 3. I dunno. I suppose that's why you also need a real surround sound system for playing DVDs. SACDs and DVD-Audio. But then, why not get a dock adaptor with a nice spdif cable, skipping the overpriced boombox?
Fact is, China's economy is doing better than most countries in the world today, and NO ONE can deny that.
Nope. At least not in China. If they try to deny it, they'll earn a visit from the "Ministry of Public Security's Internet and Security Supervision Bureau".
I'm guessing that you didn't read the article. Par for the course.
Fact is, their authoritarian government is doing a good job at improving their economy and therefore quality of living, so why would they want to change things?
Funny that. I was just reading an article that claimed
China's economic performance since 1979, for example, is actually less impressive than that of its East Asian neighbors, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, during comparable periods of growth. Its banking system, which costs Beijing about 30 percent of annual GDP in bailouts, is saddled with nonperforming loans and is probably the most fragile in Asia. The comparison with India is especially striking. In six major industrial sectors (ranging from autos to telecom), from 1999 to 2003, Indian companies delivered rates of return on investment that were 80 to 200 percent higher than their Chinese counterparts. The often breathless conventional wisdom on China's economic reform overlooks major flaws that render many predictions about China's trajectory misleading, if not downright hazardous.
and that the Chinese government was quite happy to use its internal police to suppress any criticism of its economic mismanagement.
Democracy is not about feeling good and showering oneself with plaudits. It's about making the government accountable to the governed.
I'm not so sure that macosx was designed with security in mind. Yes, it is possible to create a somewhat secure operating system based on unix, but it is so very tempting to breach some of that security in the name of user friendliness.
On a good dvd-a mix, the music surrounds the listener. Some use the rear speakers just for ambience:
"The listener is in a church, listening to a string quartet performing in front of him. The rear speakers record what is is reflected off the walls and ceiling of the church."
or for more adventurous stuff...
"The listener is seated between two small orchestras, one towards the rear, and one towards the front."
On rock recordings, things might be mixed rather creatively. R.E.M.'s "Orange Crush", for instance, is an exceptionally vigorous mix, and the rear speakers are used for everything from backup lyrics to what sounds suspiciously like a helicopter. I could listen to it in stereo, over headphones, but the three-dimensionality of the recording is lost. It's not a binaural mix.
Now, it is possible to recreate a binaural mixdown of surround material, but I imagine it would be quite difficult to use HRTFs to do so without coloring the resultant sound.
Some surround recordings are made by plugging the stereo mix into a DSP/"echo machine" and recording the outputs. There's very little point in doing that. I mean, if a listener wants a fake mix, he can take plain old stereo, and run it throug DTS:Neo or Dolby Prologic II.
6 channel PCM is pretty neat, but it's not portable. Maybe someone will hit on a technique of reproducing the 6 channel PCM with "really good" head-related transfer functions.
MP3s and iTunes weren't around in 1970. I can walk one block down the street, and buy a 192 KHz/24 bit PCM recording. But it's not a very popular format. Maybe I should have gotten a DSD player instead.
Lossy compressed Music of future years is likely to be higher quality than real CD's of current year. In 50 years, will you be whining about how your AAC -> MP3 conversion caused you to looks quality when there are holographic sound being sold? Higher quality? I doubt it. 192 KHz PCM is not very popular these days.
Slashdot Mirror
An automated script to download them would be nice. Or perhaps a nice rss feed in a slashbox. What resolution are they available in? If they're not in hidef, their viewers won't be able to recognize background nipples.
I'm wondering how many of the parents would have complained were it not for a "click here for the clip, click here to complain" campaign.
Do they have a 1080i version available for perusal/slashdotting?
Suppose that the no threats were made against the cartoons? Would they have been worth of printing, or reprinting? They're not terribly witty.
won what?
I can hear sub 150 Hz material just fine, thank you. Perhaps you need better equipment to properly reproduce this range.
And, no, it's not an undifferentiated rumble. Any number of techniques, from the use of digital filters, to a improperly set crossover point, to running a (good) satellite subwoofer system with the subwoofer turned off should allow you to cut all that bass content. The result sounds rather anemic, doesn't it?
You could also play with a frequency generator. Start with a 150 Hz sine wave. Add tones of various frequencies below this point. Notice any differences?
Sony really is a dysfunctional company.
From the user manual for the Sony SCDC-2000ES, a product of moderately recent vintage.
SACD changers really aren't that expensive, and probably produce less mechanical noise than a HTPC. While the DSD side is encumbered by DRM, many SACDs also incorporate a CD-DA layer (not just a pre-scratched CD side, as dual discs do). The SACD selection tends to dwarf the DVD-A selection, at least for classical. It's not really clear which format has the most high resolution material-- many DVD-As only have 44.1 khz/16 bit tracks, but I'll be willing to entertain the prospect of low quality DSD.
Mistake-free copy is exceptionally rare. Despite this, most newspapers rely on the reporter to fact check, simply because verifying every fact of a story takes too much time. The role of a journalist is to report accurate, timely information-- and sometimes, sitting on a good, otherwise solid story because a source can't be recontacted is as much a disservice as printing rumor, innuendo or government propaganda.
The New Yorker was famous for fact-checking its stories. Another employee would call up each source, and verify each and every point of the article. But this takes time-- time which newspapers don't have. Yes, they may be scooped by competitors, but delays also reduce the value of the article as news.
Newspapers like to think of themselves as having some utility. If a person is nominated to an important government position, an article on that person's shady financial dealings has little utility if it is published after that person has been confirmed. It may be politically advantageous to publish the story right before the vote, but the newspaper's readers may prefer that it be published even earlier, so as to allow a sort of public debate over the assembled evidence.
Suppose that Mr X has engaged in some sort of accounting fraud, and yet he has been appointed to the SEC. Publishing the article after confirmation serves little purpose. Publishing the article just before the confirmation vote deals maximum political damage. But publishing the article during the hearings allows the public to decide whether this conduct, if serious, merits rejection, and if common, merits a reform of the relevant securities law.
Now, it may be true that the paper has a political agenda of sorts in publicizing the "securities fraud." But isn't also likely that the administration has a political agenda in not indicting this individual? If there were no (reasonably) independent media to publish the news, we'd have to rely on the government's word, and its lack of indictments.
Some might say that this is how it should be-- the government was elected, and we should trust them to dissemble and proclaim various truths when necessary. But, then, why are elections necessary? Isn't the best government an experienced government?
It just shows that Western media has a standard agenda of politicizing everything, and that checking sources is not honored by Western journalists (who really should set a good example on this to show Chinese journalists how to do it).
Yet you linked to an article China Daily, certainly not, as publications go, the best example of an apolitical journalistic institution. It does not pretend to engage in fact checking, except, perhaps to coordinate its message with relevant government ministries.
Native HD output?
Now I can download them to one of my systems in the office and watch them in the front room on my HDTV
I'm not sure why you need HD, considering that itunes video is less than SD. But maybe you like pixelation.
In a democracy, these biases, collected together may sustain or overthrow the government. In China, these biases tend to have little effect. Maybe some government official will notice the corruption, and propose change, and maybe he will not.
In Friday's Telegraph, it was reported that Wen Jibao has doubts about Chinas growth in the face of corruption.
In the US, there's also an indifference to politics. Some accept it, some protest it. The difference is that in the United States, one can theoretically express a political opinion without running afoul of the propaganda ministry. In China, if one wants to express a political opinion, there's a cost. One's blog might get shut down, one's parents investigated, one's application denied.
So a little benzene leak might be covered up and a SARS report suppressed. The lives of commoners might be disrupted, or cut short, but think of the risks of letting the hoi-poloi have access to the news-- one's promotion chances ended, glorious careers cut short, the corner office taken away. Best to remain silent and hope the problem goes away on its own.
There's little point in mentioning the failure of the United States to live up to the ideals of an open society. I know all that. I know hat the bush regime is trying to emulate more, well, Chinese, attitudes towards classification. I know that white house seeks to learn more about what the Soviets can teach us about aggressive interrogation techniques. But ideals are not really ideals unless they are universal.
A shave so "close" it'll expose your esophagus, while sounding great.
Introducing the iShave, preloaded with Sweeney Todd.
"They all to deserve to die..."
This argument is a waste of time. I don't consider the New China News Agency to be credible. You may. I consider some other sources (nytimes, foriegnpolicy, amnesty international) to be credible, while you may not...
Maybe you should google for the following terms:
china "state secret" journalism
Lots and lots of sources. Perhaps some of them are even Falun Gong cultists! Or counter-revolutionaries!.
1. Right. I forgot they were selling to aging baby boomers. And it appears that low bitrate mp3 files do discard spectral information above 16-18 kHz Since Apple sells low bitrate stuff, it stands to reason. At the same time, though, they have a lossless codec, and their airport does have a spdif connector
2. ah well, when the stereo speakers are positioned that closely together, I suppose it doesn't quite matter if stereo imaging of bass is theoretically possible. My stereo's recommends a crossover of 150 hz for 90 mm drivers. But if the wavelength (2.3 metres) is long enough...
3. Apple itself wants this to replace older systems.
"Introducing the stereo for the new century."
"Wide frequency range: iPod Hi-Fi accurately reproduces the lowest cello notes and the highest piccolo notes; the brittle strum of an acoustic guitar and the powerful thump of a driving bass"
Let's see:
Lowest Cello note: C2 65.41 Hz
Highest Piccolo note: that's not terribly impressive
I suppose Apple took one look at Bose, and decided that selling overpriced audio gadgets was more lucrative than coming out with properly designed stuff...
1. yeah, yeah. Typo. CDs extend up to 20,000 khz, not 16 kHz. And my disc player claims a frequency response of 2 Hz -- 40,000 Hz.
2. Dolby's LFE channel extends only up to 120 Hz. THX recommends a crossover frequency of 80 Hz for its systems, but it's not a sharp cutoff. I've heard that a (-3db) frequency response down to 40 Hz is desirable-- THX will only tell interested parties to "buy a THX rated speaker".
3. I dunno. I suppose that's why you also need a real surround sound system for playing DVDs. SACDs and DVD-Audio. But then, why not get a dock adaptor with a nice spdif cable, skipping the overpriced boombox?
1. Sound begins at 53Hz, and ends at 16 Hz.
2. What cannot be reproduced on three inch speakers is monophonic.
3. Surround sound does not exist.
Fact is, China's economy is doing better than most countries in the world today, and NO ONE can deny that.
Nope. At least not in China. If they try to deny it, they'll earn a visit from the "Ministry of Public Security's Internet and Security Supervision Bureau".
I'm guessing that you didn't read the article. Par for the course.
Funny that. I was just reading an article that claimed
and that the Chinese government was quite happy to use its internal police to suppress any criticism of its economic mismanagement.
Democracy is not about feeling good and showering oneself with plaudits. It's about making the government accountable to the governed.
I'm not so sure that macosx was designed with security in mind. Yes, it is possible to create a somewhat secure operating system based on unix, but it is so very tempting to breach some of that security in the name of user friendliness.
On a good dvd-a mix, the music surrounds the listener. Some use the rear speakers just for ambience:
"The listener is in a church, listening to a string quartet performing in front of him. The rear speakers record what is is reflected off the walls and ceiling of the church."
or for more adventurous stuff...
"The listener is seated between two small orchestras, one towards the rear, and one towards the front."
On rock recordings, things might be mixed rather creatively. R.E.M.'s "Orange Crush", for instance, is an exceptionally vigorous mix, and the rear speakers are used for everything from backup lyrics to what sounds suspiciously like a helicopter. I could listen to it in stereo, over headphones, but the three-dimensionality of the recording is lost. It's not a binaural mix.
Now, it is possible to recreate a binaural mixdown of surround material, but I imagine it would be quite difficult to use HRTFs to do so without coloring the resultant sound.
Some surround recordings are made by plugging the stereo mix into a DSP/"echo machine" and recording the outputs. There's very little point in doing that. I mean, if a listener wants a fake mix, he can take plain old stereo, and run it throug DTS:Neo or Dolby Prologic II.
6 channel PCM is pretty neat, but it's not portable. Maybe someone will hit on a technique of reproducing the 6 channel PCM with "really good" head-related transfer functions.
MP3s and iTunes weren't around in 1970. I can walk one block down the street, and buy a 192 KHz/24 bit PCM recording. But it's not a very popular format. Maybe I should have gotten a DSD player instead.
Lossy compressed Music of future years is likely to be higher quality than real CD's of current year. In 50 years, will you be whining about how your AAC -> MP3 conversion caused you to looks quality when there are holographic sound being sold?
Higher quality?
I doubt it. 192 KHz PCM is not very popular these days.