Mod parent up, please. If I record a birdsong, it's my recording of that particular event -- just as if I take a photo of a waterfall, it's my picture of that particular moment.
Such works are automatically granted copyright protection in the US, just as any other creative work is.
In order for the birdsong recording to be literally owned by nobody, the creator of that recording would have to explicitly release it into the public domain. (And, no -- posting it on Youtube for the world to hear is not the same as giving it to the public to do whatever they want with.)
Adding to the game: Many retailers (including both Wal-Mart and my locally-owned corner grocery) will cash surprisingly large third-party checks for a small nominal fee.
I'm allergic to banks, so I personally use this type of service fairly regularly. What it comes down to is this: I give them $3 (Wal-Mart) or $5 (the local grocer), and they get to trade part of their till full of large bills in for an easily-handled and inherently secure slip of paper.
All PS3s are basically the same when they leave the factory. Yours, however, might well be different by this point.
I get weird scrolling issues when I accidentally bump a button on a controller, or one finds itself upside-down on the couch (thus moving one of the analog controls), but it's all PEBKAC -- not a system issue.
Try a different controller if you have one or can borrow one, and then just replace or fix the wonky controller (parts are available without looking very hard at all).
For work or play, I'd much more happily buy two 1920x1080 monitors than one 1920x1200 monitor. And with the prices of such kit, that's not far from realistic.
For that matter, I'd rather buy two 1920x1080 monitors and a whole lot of beer than two 1920x1200 monitors.
Our small (~40k people) city has done a variety of things that seem like they ought to make sense: First, induction loops. Then some hardwired connectivity between traffic lights downtown. Then 900MHz wireless connectivity between all traffic lights in the city. Now they're working on replacing induction loops with cameras that can see/detect vehicles further down the road, allowing for lookahead functions.
Each of these expensive permutations all seemed to work very well when initially implemented: Main roads get priority, while drivers on cross roads find that the a green light is waiting for them by the time they reach the intersection if traffic permits. It's really awesome when it's working well, and easily cuts travel time in half.
After a time, it seems invariable that someone goes and fucks up the system, apparently in an attempt to intentionally slow down traffic by implementing more red lights.
The systems are currently so thoroughly detuned that at night (when making this stuff work optimally is nearly trivial to perform) most of the lights revert to old dumb timer-based operation that causes every driver to experience random red lights even on an otherwise empty road.
I have a very nice 4x3 20" 1600x1200 NEC monitor with an IPS LCD panel. It is lovely (and at "20.3" inches, more-or-less the same as your CRT.)
I also have a very inexpensive 1920x1080 24" Asus monitor of a much newer design, with a comparatively-inferior TN LCD panel. It's a good monitor, to be sure, but it's not as pretty (in terms of color space, consistency, viewing angle...) as the NEC.
They're within about 3/4" of being exactly the same image height, with the 1080 Asus being slightly smaller than the 1200 NEC, and accordingly have darn near the same resolution in terms of DPI.
They're located side by side on my desk and connected to the same machine, and it's equally easy to turn my head to center my vision on either of them.
I find myself normally using the 16x9 Asus. Don't know why.
They're equally easy to use and they're adjusted to be appear nearly the same. It is a bit wider than the 4x3 NEC, but I never maximize a window anyway so whatever I'm working on is just using a portion of the screen real estate no matter which monitor I'm staring at.
To this end, I must say that if I have a natural preference, it is for a widescreen display -- even if the widescreen display is demonstrably worse.
Is capitalism only a blind faith that our environment is so stable we can do whatever we want with it?
I think you're really reading too much into it. A proper capitalist will be blind to the environment (or any other concern) unless it is profitable for them to behave differently.
If it's more profitable to use lots of "fresh" water than it is to reduce that water usage through different agricultural methods, then a good businessman will continue to use lots of "fresh" water.
If the opposite becomes true, then a good businessman will adjust accordingly.
I sold a domain to a gentleman who wanted it badly (hi Kyle), and had been using it for much of my personal business.
He just forwarded the email from my requested addresses over to my new email address. No big deal on his end -- any mail tosser worth its salt makes this easy.
It was completely informal, and it gave me time to transition to a more permanent (and less contentious) home.
Eventually, I dropped the "new" email address that Kyle was forwarding to, and haven't really missed it.
Just sell the thing (if its worth anything), ask for your email to be forwarded (and make sure it actually is being forwarded -- not everyone is as easy to work with and so adept as Kyle) and leisurely begin changing your email address at the places where it is important to you to do so.
It's a minor pain, but the worst that can happen is that your (presumably honest) buyer drops the ball and the forwarding never works right all, but then your Really Important Personal Stuff is still relatively easy to transfer.
People switch ISPs all the time, and a lot of the time change their email because of it. Banks / creditors / utilities are used to it, and have systems in place to deal with it. A bit of a PITA, but, seriously: It ain't so bad.
And the best case is that the old address(es) work fine for years to come. Your job is to not rely on that continuity, and to just get the hell off of the domain you've sold as soon as it convenes you.
Lawyers and contracts and explicit agreement are useful for times when you don't trust someone.
And if you don't trust your buyer, don't sell to them. Nobody's forcing you to, and a domain name and hosting is very cheap these days (especially for something that you no longer care about) compared to a lawyer or even the time discussing the matter with one.
I frequent a similar little coffee shop (excellent coffee, wonderful food, and awesome staff) across from campus (which campus doesn't matter), and the faces of the table-loiterers are different every time I go in there. There are outlets and Ethernet jacks at every table in addition to Wifi.
I've never seen anyone kicked out. It's a very laid-back atmosphere.
I've done real work there on occasion (including spreading out blueprints on a table and generally taking up space for six or more hours), but during that time I get hungry and get some food. Most of the time, though, I just get my pour-over Ethiopian and head out after chatting with the variously-hot barista for a few minutes as she makes my coffee.
It's not unusual to see other people doing what I occasionally do, with their books and their umbrella, though I don't think I've ever seen anyone bring in their own lunch or drinks.
What causes the phenomenon that you describe, I wonder? I have also noted that folks at my local coffee joint tend to consolidate "their" space when the place fills up with other people, and are often perfectly willing to share a cozy table with a stranger when things get tight.
(Back to the point: No, fancy outlets aren't the way to do this behavior amongst patrons. Facial recognition, purchase history, dwell time, and MAC filtering is.:) )
You do realize that there is a difference in scale between "I have good luck with one high-speed link in my home, between floors" and "I have 200 rooms, variously fed from multiple three-phase panels, along with elevator motors and swimming pool pumps and other non-home-user things" don't you?
As a counter-anecdote: I've had a trouble, in the past, with low-speed X10 gear with on a circuit that was new and cleanly run and not unusual in any way, but which just happened to have a chunky UPS plugged into it. As long as that UPS (and its big ferroresonant transformer) was plugged in anywhere on that run of Romex, X10 was a no-go.
I can just imagine the fun that an avid script-kiddie or frugal traveler would have with such outlets.
"What's that gizmo, Johnny?"
"Oh, this? It's just a capacitor that I plug into the hotel outlets whenever I travel. It crashes the billing system for the entire wing and makes it go failsafe, giving folks power for free."
"Are you sure that's safe, Johnny?"
"Who cares? I'm Johnny, and I hack stuff."
Others have mentioned lightbulb hacks: What's the difference to Sony's smart outlet between an aging CFL and my charging laptop?
And still others have mentioned vandalism: If the system actually does work in a hospitality environment, enough folks will bypass it haphazardly to make fire very real and very ugly concern -- perhaps even months or years after they've checked out.
Meanwhile: I, myself, go everywhere with a carefully-filed universal screwdriver, which is completely successful in removing all manner of both regular and "tamper-resistant" fasteners in the usual ranges between #6 and #10. If there's 110V behind that wall plate and I want it, I won't have any problem getting it. If nothing else, doing so will give me some entertainment while I fester in the boredom of a hotel room.
It's not a question of resolution or format shift, but of color. The chroma channel of composite NTSC video gets smeared all over the place by design, along with other issues (such as dot-crawl) that come with bad interlacing implementations -- especially with composite sync.
S-Video would help some of these problems without increasing resolution, but VGA does not have these problems at all, which is what makes it useful.
To be clear: It's into the realm of esoteria. But in this area of stuff, we also have people modifying Sega Genesis systems for improved video and sound, along with a lot of other stuff that would only interest a real enthusiast (of which you don't seem to be one -- neither am I).
Get back to your books, kid. I'm sure you'll be able to solve the rest of the world's little problems by dawn if you just continue to pretend that they simply don't exist.
Because it's Unix, and in Unix it's not supposed to care.
In userland, as you seem to agree, it's just files. And mount is a userland tool. So mount should deal with files (not devices described in some other way), as far as the user is concerned.
*shrug*
The other way of doing things is like what Windows does, which while appearing simple, makes it very difficult or impossible to get anything out-of-the-ordinary done.
Except the question is not "how to make something work that can display this old machine on a new monitor," but "how to make this old machine have the best video output possible."
Composite video is inherently ugly, and was especially so on consumer electronics back then.
Replacing the video output chip with a custom part that outputs VGA directly eliminates all of the ugly that is composite video; putting a $30 Monoprice adapter in-line does not.
All that said, I think the point Mr. Parsons was trying to make is that a lot of people will pour money into their speakers, cables, amps, turntables, etc. but totally ignore the room they are in.
In TFA, Mr. Parsons declared that he doesn't listen to music much except in the car. He's a very talented studio engineer, and some of his work is treasured to me, but his advice is meritless because he himself doesn't follow it.
In other words, FFS, he doesn't really just passively listens to music to begin with: He's mostly either also driving or also playing engineer when he hears music.
I refuse to take advice from a person who doesn't even understand the topic due to lack of current experience.
Stupid audiophile territory starts a little higher; once you get to around $5,000 plus or minus a couple thousand, yeah, you're into the realm of rapidly diminishing returns and you probably aren't going to hear any difference unless you really look for it.
It all depends.
A month or so ago I upgraded from an old $10 fleamarket JVC CD player (which was probably $125-150 in the early 90s) to an $8,000 Krell. (Yes, really.)
It is night-and-day different, which I frankly did not expect (my ears are not what they once were, though I have trained myself in listening carefully in ways that only become obvious once you hear them yourself, that anyone can do...).
The Krell fancies itself as a high-end DVD player of circa-2003 design, but my cheap-ish PS3 Slim does a better job with DVD video over HDMI, and also groks Blu-Ray, so that makes the Krell a CD-playing machine.
But is it $7,990.00 better than the JVC? No, not to me. Not by a long shot. Not even with a gun to my head. But it's plainly and obviously better in all sonic respects: Bass really is deeper (not more bass - just better bass), dynamics really are bigger, and etc. I could go on for Stereophile-esque reams about the thing, but it's not my style. Anyone, unless they're mostly deaf, could hear the better-ness of the Krell vs. the JVC without being a studious listener.
Even my 15-year-old boy, who has always had bad hearing and generally doesn't care what it sounds like as long as its loud, was pointing out specific differences in the sound of the thing.
A week or so ago, I upgraded some of the rest of my system from a perfectly reasonable (but old) Rotel stereo preamp (~$400 in 1995-ish) with good outboard amps to an enormously flexible Lexicon surround receiver ($4,000, 2008-ish).
The Lexicon upgrade produced same sort of improvements as the Krell and gave me a lot of video switching and conversion options that I just didn't have before (which is handy, since I've also begun collecting old game consoles...). Again, I could go on forever about this or that, but it's really a lot better than the perfectly-good, impressively clean gear that I was using before. It's a shame that it cost someone $4,000, though...
And before anyone accuses me of being an audiophile snob who wastes too much goddamn money on gear, let me just say this: I paid (literally) nothing* for the $8,000 Krell. I traded a day's worth of easy work and two days travel for the Lexicon**. I also have very little money time or money involved in the rest of my current excruciatingly-detailed system, so I doubt that there is much confirmation bias in my observations.
*: The free Krell was certainly surprising to me, but the friend who owned the Krell kit also had literally nothing in it, and his sense of fairness precluded him from asking for any money for it. Market value is in the dirt for this device, because while it does have both interlaced and progressive-scan outputs on separate banks of RCA and BNC component outputs (4 sets in total), along with composite, S-Video, and VGA, and a shit-ton of other connectivity including an RS-232 port and even balanced audio on XLR connectors, it's useless these days: It do
He also said he doesn't actually listen to music much, except in the car (which is possibly the worst acoustic environment in common application), or while working professionally (which isn't at all the same thing -- there's a difference between listening to your creations as you create them and just, you know, listening to music).
How are we to take advice on listening-room acoustics from a man whose primary listening environment is lined with glass?
FFS.
To be clear: The man is a brilliant engineer who has done some heavy lifting on some utterly astounding works, but...
Nearly? You were lucky you weren't working for a private corporation or else not only would you have been fired, you would probably never have worked again as anything other than a burger flipper. You are a disgrace to your profession. You sound proud of the fact that you didn't actually fuck up their system, well whoopy do for you Mr Citizen Journalist Tosspot.
I was working for a private corporation. I still am. Same one, in fact. Business is great.
I didn't write about anything that wasn't already published, public knowledge, available to anyone willing to do a little bit of homework. All I did was connect the dots without pulling any punches, and ask that my collected observations be published.
I'm just a citizen. I happen to be a citizen with certain relevant experience, abilities and tools that many other citizens do not have, but this does not diminish my role as a citizen.
One of the few genuinely great concepts still remaining in this country is that we're all entitled to stand on our soap box and make some noise whenever we feel compelled to do so.
And I'll defend your right to do so as well, even though I think I'd rather that you choke to death on a cock.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up, please. If I record a birdsong, it's my recording of that particular event -- just as if I take a photo of a waterfall, it's my picture of that particular moment.
Such works are automatically granted copyright protection in the US, just as any other creative work is.
In order for the birdsong recording to be literally owned by nobody, the creator of that recording would have to explicitly release it into the public domain. (And, no -- posting it on Youtube for the world to hear is not the same as giving it to the public to do whatever they want with.)
I had a lesser-gen 40GB, and now have a 160GB slim. Both behaved identically with Netflix (which is to say that they both were predictably fine).
I submit that the only variable in the equation is you. Whether you can find the problem and overcome it or not is your problem.
Adding to the game: Many retailers (including both Wal-Mart and my locally-owned corner grocery) will cash surprisingly large third-party checks for a small nominal fee.
I'm allergic to banks, so I personally use this type of service fairly regularly. What it comes down to is this: I give them $3 (Wal-Mart) or $5 (the local grocer), and they get to trade part of their till full of large bills in for an easily-handled and inherently secure slip of paper.
All PS3s are basically the same when they leave the factory. Yours, however, might well be different by this point.
I get weird scrolling issues when I accidentally bump a button on a controller, or one finds itself upside-down on the couch (thus moving one of the analog controls), but it's all PEBKAC -- not a system issue.
Try a different controller if you have one or can borrow one, and then just replace or fix the wonky controller (parts are available without looking very hard at all).
Netflix worked fine for me on my PS3 throughout the PSN outage, using whatever was the then-current firmware.
Meh, again.
For work or play, I'd much more happily buy two 1920x1080 monitors than one 1920x1200 monitor. And with the prices of such kit, that's not far from realistic.
For that matter, I'd rather buy two 1920x1080 monitors and a whole lot of beer than two 1920x1200 monitors.
Your dollars may vary.
Our small (~40k people) city has done a variety of things that seem like they ought to make sense: First, induction loops. Then some hardwired connectivity between traffic lights downtown. Then 900MHz wireless connectivity between all traffic lights in the city. Now they're working on replacing induction loops with cameras that can see/detect vehicles further down the road, allowing for lookahead functions.
Each of these expensive permutations all seemed to work very well when initially implemented: Main roads get priority, while drivers on cross roads find that the a green light is waiting for them by the time they reach the intersection if traffic permits. It's really awesome when it's working well, and easily cuts travel time in half.
After a time, it seems invariable that someone goes and fucks up the system, apparently in an attempt to intentionally slow down traffic by implementing more red lights.
The systems are currently so thoroughly detuned that at night (when making this stuff work optimally is nearly trivial to perform) most of the lights revert to old dumb timer-based operation that causes every driver to experience random red lights even on an otherwise empty road.
Meh. I also have a laptop with a 1920x1200 display.
Somehow, I don't find myself missing the extra 120 vertical pixels when I switch from that to my desktop monitor at 1920x1080.
Allow me to add an anecdote to your speculation.
I have a very nice 4x3 20" 1600x1200 NEC monitor with an IPS LCD panel. It is lovely (and at "20.3" inches, more-or-less the same as your CRT.)
I also have a very inexpensive 1920x1080 24" Asus monitor of a much newer design, with a comparatively-inferior TN LCD panel. It's a good monitor, to be sure, but it's not as pretty (in terms of color space, consistency, viewing angle...) as the NEC.
They're within about 3/4" of being exactly the same image height, with the 1080 Asus being slightly smaller than the 1200 NEC, and accordingly have darn near the same resolution in terms of DPI.
They're located side by side on my desk and connected to the same machine, and it's equally easy to turn my head to center my vision on either of them.
I find myself normally using the 16x9 Asus. Don't know why.
They're equally easy to use and they're adjusted to be appear nearly the same. It is a bit wider than the 4x3 NEC, but I never maximize a window anyway so whatever I'm working on is just using a portion of the screen real estate no matter which monitor I'm staring at.
To this end, I must say that if I have a natural preference, it is for a widescreen display -- even if the widescreen display is demonstrably worse.
Shuddup, private.
I think you're really reading too much into it. A proper capitalist will be blind to the environment (or any other concern) unless it is profitable for them to behave differently.
And, well...that's it.
It's just a basic business decision.
If it's more profitable to use lots of "fresh" water than it is to reduce that water usage through different agricultural methods, then a good businessman will continue to use lots of "fresh" water.
If the opposite becomes true, then a good businessman will adjust accordingly.
Welcome to Capitalism.
I sold a domain to a gentleman who wanted it badly (hi Kyle), and had been using it for much of my personal business.
He just forwarded the email from my requested addresses over to my new email address. No big deal on his end -- any mail tosser worth its salt makes this easy.
It was completely informal, and it gave me time to transition to a more permanent (and less contentious) home.
Eventually, I dropped the "new" email address that Kyle was forwarding to, and haven't really missed it.
Just sell the thing (if its worth anything), ask for your email to be forwarded (and make sure it actually is being forwarded -- not everyone is as easy to work with and so adept as Kyle) and leisurely begin changing your email address at the places where it is important to you to do so.
It's a minor pain, but the worst that can happen is that your (presumably honest) buyer drops the ball and the forwarding never works right all, but then your Really Important Personal Stuff is still relatively easy to transfer.
People switch ISPs all the time, and a lot of the time change their email because of it. Banks / creditors / utilities are used to it, and have systems in place to deal with it. A bit of a PITA, but, seriously: It ain't so bad.
And the best case is that the old address(es) work fine for years to come. Your job is to not rely on that continuity, and to just get the hell off of the domain you've sold as soon as it convenes you.
Lawyers and contracts and explicit agreement are useful for times when you don't trust someone.
And if you don't trust your buyer, don't sell to them. Nobody's forcing you to, and a domain name and hosting is very cheap these days (especially for something that you no longer care about) compared to a lawyer or even the time discussing the matter with one.
No, it's not supposed to happen.
Common appliance switches work the same way. Take one apart and have a look if this seems foreign in concept to you.
Arcing is, I dare say, normal operation.
An arc fault circuit interrupter that fails in normal operation is a problem, not a solution.
Must be a lot of miscreants in your town.
I frequent a similar little coffee shop (excellent coffee, wonderful food, and awesome staff) across from campus (which campus doesn't matter), and the faces of the table-loiterers are different every time I go in there. There are outlets and Ethernet jacks at every table in addition to Wifi.
I've never seen anyone kicked out. It's a very laid-back atmosphere.
I've done real work there on occasion (including spreading out blueprints on a table and generally taking up space for six or more hours), but during that time I get hungry and get some food. Most of the time, though, I just get my pour-over Ethiopian and head out after chatting with the variously-hot barista for a few minutes as she makes my coffee.
It's not unusual to see other people doing what I occasionally do, with their books and their umbrella, though I don't think I've ever seen anyone bring in their own lunch or drinks.
What causes the phenomenon that you describe, I wonder? I have also noted that folks at my local coffee joint tend to consolidate "their" space when the place fills up with other people, and are often perfectly willing to share a cozy table with a stranger when things get tight.
(Back to the point: No, fancy outlets aren't the way to do this behavior amongst patrons. Facial recognition, purchase history, dwell time, and MAC filtering is. :) )
You do realize that there is a difference in scale between "I have good luck with one high-speed link in my home, between floors" and "I have 200 rooms, variously fed from multiple three-phase panels, along with elevator motors and swimming pool pumps and other non-home-user things" don't you?
As a counter-anecdote: I've had a trouble, in the past, with low-speed X10 gear with on a circuit that was new and cleanly run and not unusual in any way, but which just happened to have a chunky UPS plugged into it. As long as that UPS (and its big ferroresonant transformer) was plugged in anywhere on that run of Romex, X10 was a no-go.
I can just imagine the fun that an avid script-kiddie or frugal traveler would have with such outlets.
"What's that gizmo, Johnny?"
"Oh, this? It's just a capacitor that I plug into the hotel outlets whenever I travel. It crashes the billing system for the entire wing and makes it go failsafe, giving folks power for free."
"Are you sure that's safe, Johnny?"
"Who cares? I'm Johnny, and I hack stuff."
Others have mentioned lightbulb hacks: What's the difference to Sony's smart outlet between an aging CFL and my charging laptop?
And still others have mentioned vandalism: If the system actually does work in a hospitality environment, enough folks will bypass it haphazardly to make fire very real and very ugly concern -- perhaps even months or years after they've checked out.
Meanwhile: I, myself, go everywhere with a carefully-filed universal screwdriver, which is completely successful in removing all manner of both regular and "tamper-resistant" fasteners in the usual ranges between #6 and #10. If there's 110V behind that wall plate and I want it, I won't have any problem getting it. If nothing else, doing so will give me some entertainment while I fester in the boredom of a hotel room.
It's not a question of resolution or format shift, but of color. The chroma channel of composite NTSC video gets smeared all over the place by design, along with other issues (such as dot-crawl) that come with bad interlacing implementations -- especially with composite sync.
S-Video would help some of these problems without increasing resolution, but VGA does not have these problems at all, which is what makes it useful.
To be clear: It's into the realm of esoteria. But in this area of stuff, we also have people modifying Sega Genesis systems for improved video and sound, along with a lot of other stuff that would only interest a real enthusiast (of which you don't seem to be one -- neither am I).
Get back to your books, kid. I'm sure you'll be able to solve the rest of the world's little problems by dawn if you just continue to pretend that they simply don't exist.
Because it's Unix, and in Unix it's not supposed to care.
In userland, as you seem to agree, it's just files. And mount is a userland tool. So mount should deal with files (not devices described in some other way), as far as the user is concerned.
*shrug*
The other way of doing things is like what Windows does, which while appearing simple, makes it very difficult or impossible to get anything out-of-the-ordinary done.
Except the question is not "how to make something work that can display this old machine on a new monitor," but "how to make this old machine have the best video output possible."
Composite video is inherently ugly, and was especially so on consumer electronics back then.
Replacing the video output chip with a custom part that outputs VGA directly eliminates all of the ugly that is composite video; putting a $30 Monoprice adapter in-line does not.
Because it's Unix, and everything is a file.
Sure, absolutely. I work with audio from time to time, myself.
But I'm still not taking advice from someone about how to do something that they, themselves, admit that they don't do.
With sufficient amounts of randomness, the room becomes neutral. This is my prediction, and it wasn't hard to arrive at it.
In TFA, Mr. Parsons declared that he doesn't listen to music much except in the car. He's a very talented studio engineer, and some of his work is treasured to me, but his advice is meritless because he himself doesn't follow it.
In other words, FFS, he doesn't really just passively listens to music to begin with: He's mostly either also driving or also playing engineer when he hears music.
I refuse to take advice from a person who doesn't even understand the topic due to lack of current experience.
It all depends.
A month or so ago I upgraded from an old $10 fleamarket JVC CD player (which was probably $125-150 in the early 90s) to an $8,000 Krell. (Yes, really.)
It is night-and-day different, which I frankly did not expect (my ears are not what they once were, though I have trained myself in listening carefully in ways that only become obvious once you hear them yourself, that anyone can do...).
The Krell fancies itself as a high-end DVD player of circa-2003 design, but my cheap-ish PS3 Slim does a better job with DVD video over HDMI, and also groks Blu-Ray, so that makes the Krell a CD-playing machine.
But is it $7,990.00 better than the JVC? No, not to me. Not by a long shot. Not even with a gun to my head. But it's plainly and obviously better in all sonic respects: Bass really is deeper (not more bass - just better bass), dynamics really are bigger, and etc. I could go on for Stereophile-esque reams about the thing, but it's not my style. Anyone, unless they're mostly deaf, could hear the better-ness of the Krell vs. the JVC without being a studious listener.
Even my 15-year-old boy, who has always had bad hearing and generally doesn't care what it sounds like as long as its loud, was pointing out specific differences in the sound of the thing.
A week or so ago, I upgraded some of the rest of my system from a perfectly reasonable (but old) Rotel stereo preamp (~$400 in 1995-ish) with good outboard amps to an enormously flexible Lexicon surround receiver ($4,000, 2008-ish).
The Lexicon upgrade produced same sort of improvements as the Krell and gave me a lot of video switching and conversion options that I just didn't have before (which is handy, since I've also begun collecting old game consoles...). Again, I could go on forever about this or that, but it's really a lot better than the perfectly-good, impressively clean gear that I was using before. It's a shame that it cost someone $4,000, though...
And before anyone accuses me of being an audiophile snob who wastes too much goddamn money on gear, let me just say this: I paid (literally) nothing* for the $8,000 Krell. I traded a day's worth of easy work and two days travel for the Lexicon**. I also have very little money time or money involved in the rest of my current excruciatingly-detailed system, so I doubt that there is much confirmation bias in my observations.
*: The free Krell was certainly surprising to me, but the friend who owned the Krell kit also had literally nothing in it, and his sense of fairness precluded him from asking for any money for it. Market value is in the dirt for this device, because while it does have both interlaced and progressive-scan outputs on separate banks of RCA and BNC component outputs (4 sets in total), along with composite, S-Video, and VGA, and a shit-ton of other connectivity including an RS-232 port and even balanced audio on XLR connectors, it's useless these days: It do
He also said he doesn't actually listen to music much, except in the car (which is possibly the worst acoustic environment in common application), or while working professionally (which isn't at all the same thing -- there's a difference between listening to your creations as you create them and just, you know, listening to music).
How are we to take advice on listening-room acoustics from a man whose primary listening environment is lined with glass?
FFS.
To be clear: The man is a brilliant engineer who has done some heavy lifting on some utterly astounding works, but...
I was working for a private corporation. I still am. Same one, in fact. Business is great.
I didn't write about anything that wasn't already published, public knowledge, available to anyone willing to do a little bit of homework. All I did was connect the dots without pulling any punches, and ask that my collected observations be published.
I'm just a citizen. I happen to be a citizen with certain relevant experience, abilities and tools that many other citizens do not have, but this does not diminish my role as a citizen.
One of the few genuinely great concepts still remaining in this country is that we're all entitled to stand on our soap box and make some noise whenever we feel compelled to do so.
And I'll defend your right to do so as well, even though I think I'd rather that you choke to death on a cock.