I'm disappointed that this was posted with such a ridiculous assertion in the headline. Are you kidding me? Certainly the tests aren't entirely accurate, and I've complained about them, but saying that there's "No Valid Information At All" is bogus. Obviously you can go to the fueleconomy.gov site and see that there's a correlation between big, heavy, overpowered cars using lots of fuel and smaller, lighter, lower-powered cars that sip gas. The EPA has updated their tests a couple of times, most recently around 2007 following controversies that the Toyota Prius didn't achieve real-world fuel economy as good as what was on the window sticker. They also didn't try to factor in air conditioning or other features that are now common on cars.
The original 1970s-style tests produce numbers about 30% better than the end result today (an adjustment around 1985 reduced MPG numbers by about 15%, and the second one around 2007 brought it down by another 15%). Notably, government fuel economy tests in Europe and Japan still have ridiculously optimistic figures, so U.S. figures are much, much more accurate and reasonable compared to other places around the world.
Are EPA figures perfect? No. I personally think they went a bit too far in the most recent adjustment, since my (pre-dieselgate era) 2006 VW Jetta TDI gets MPG figures almost exactly matching what it originally had on the window sticker when I bought it.
And if this is all about people expecting to get super MPG when driving at 90 mph all the time, just stop complaining. That's not an appropriate expectation for what you should get out of these tests.
If this system is using an Ethernet connection, just get a Linux or *BSD box running with bridged Ethernet interfaces or pay for a decent smart switch. Heck, you could probably do it in Windows -- that supports bridged interfaces too.
Simply disable the interface connected to the device you want to protect whenever you don't want outside access. With a Linux/*BSD box, this could be accomplished with simple scripts. You'd probably have to write up a simple manual procedure to do it with a switch or Windows box.
I've got a 3G phone that has two cameras in it -- one high-resolution camera for taking photographs on the back side, and one low-resolution camera in the face where the screen is. That way, I can look at the screen and get video of myself. I'm sure there must be a number of 3G phones with this layout, but I'm not a cell-phone junkie so I don't keep track of all of the features out there. Unfortunately, I'm on a carrier that has 3G, but on the wrong frequency band, so I'm stuck with EDGE...
I tried YouTube's TV interface on my PS3 yesterday. While I appreciated some aspects of the simplified interface, it seemed that the video playback itself was less pleasant. The framerate just about chopped in half if I attempted to play video in full-screen, and there were some annoyances with the progress bar and control buttons -- the progress bar didn't seem to work right, and the play/fullscreen/etc. buttons were just aesthetically displeasing.
I also ran into the problem where some videos are "not available for television viewing". What's up with that?
And this makes me ponder why the fsck MySpace doesn't use SSL for their logins. Not that it necessarily helps against phishing if a convincing page is presented, but at least Firefox would politely make the address bar yellow and display the lock icon plus "login.myspace.com" (or whatever it is) in the status bar on the bottom-right corner of the browser.
I have XM rather than Sirius, but a lot of people have said that both services definitely don't reach the level of 128k MP3 quality. XM is 96kbps at best, which puts it more on par with FM, though I personally find the digital artifacts to be more annoying than FM static. Well, maybe Sirius is better -- I haven't had a chance to listen to it with a proper speaker setup (as in, something other than being piped in through the overhead speakers at a store).
Oh, and that cable TV analogy doesn't work for me. It's true, but it doesn't work;-) With cable TV, I'm paying for all these channels I don't want. Considering that sports channels are the most expensive for content providers, yet are the ones I watch the least, I wish I could get rid of them. Similarly, I'm only interested in a handful of XM channels. But, I suppose I haven't given them much chance -- I've had to turn off my satellite radio after ten minutes just because the audio quality problems became too annoying.
Anyway, I just ended up getting satellite radio service as a built-in feature for the trim level I got on my car. I don't plan to continue the service after the initial free trial period.
I see that the NYT article linked to just about everything except MovieLens. I've used the site, and folks might like to try it out. It looks simple, but it's fairly nice, having some of those fun dynamic pages that are all the rage these days. One neat thing in comparison to Netflix is that it will give a projected star rating for you, rather than simply saying "Recommended".
Of course, I'm biased since I had John Riedl as a professor in a few easy classes. I think he tried to spin off this research as a new company, but I'm not sure if it ever got off the ground.
One thing I'd really like to see has little to do with the quality of ratings, though. I'd like to be able to keep a common database of my ratings across multiple sites. At the moment, I've rated a number of movies at Netflix, MovieLens, and IMDb, but they aren't entirely consistent. Unfortunately, two of the sites use a ten-point system (IMDb has a ten-point scale, MovieLens goes up to 5 stars, but in half-star increments), while the other uses a five-point one (maybe six if you say "Not Interested"..).
Well, I'll have to poke around a bit with this stuff. I wouldn't be able to do much, though, since my level of knowledge in this arena is very limited...
A friend of mine told me about something similar to this many years ago where a lawyer was experimenting with the idea of a one-second commercial. Apparently the guy in the ad just yelled "HURT?!?" and flashed his phone number.
If there's any American industry that we'd like to see outsourced....
The timing of traffic lights has been one of the biggest factors for me, though that's mostly been since I live near downtown and have commuted out to suburbs/exurbs for work for the last few years. Highway congestion usually wasn't a big factor since I was generally traveling out in the opposite direction of most folks, but traffic lights could easily destroy any headway I had. Their cycles are hard to pin down, and shift of just a few minutes in departure time can mean you're stuck at nearly every light rather than seeing green. But maybe my normal departure times have led me to visit intersections just before or after the point where they switch from "rush hour" mode to "normal" mode. Of course, traffic lights in some areas are biased to allow more traffic inbound to downtown areas, which makes sense, though it effectively penalizes people like me who commute outbound.
Fortunately, I now work at a place that is only about 3.5 miles from where I live, and I can get doorstop-to-doorstop in just over ten minutes and only deal with one traffic light. I'm moving soon, and my commute will be even shorter.
Yep, I think this is a major factor, and don't forget to add in the fact that most (big) radio stations follow the Billboard charts rather than lead them. When your playlist is a genre-specific streamlined version of what has been on the Hot 100 in the past five, ten, or more years, things get to be a little repetitive. While a lot of stations say that they've got "The Most New Music!", they still rarely add to their playlists, and new songs will be drowned out by whatever was #1 on the chart last month. In a time when people have to listen to the background of TV shows, movies, and even ads to hear new music, it's hardly surprising that sales are on the decline.
Last year, I was really annoyed with the big music radio stations in my area. If I stopped listening to the radio for a month, I'd notice a few new tracks when I returned, but that would only last a few days. In frustration, I listened to the University of Minnesota's station when I could, but they're only on the air with their main AM signal during the day, and their FM coverage is pretty limited. I tried KFAI, a small community radio station, couldn't deal with their block programming -- I just wanted to hear some new music. I tried some web streams, but I got sick of sitting by my computer.
In January of this year, Minnesota Public Radio switched on a new format at a station they'd bought in late 2004. They dubbed it "89.3 The Current." While I still have trouble saying that name with a straight face, I do like the format, whatever it is. It's not for everyone, and probably tends to jump around more than I'd like, but they're always playing new material. It's even a full-power station, a little off-center in a fairly major market.
The folks at MPR have very professional sound production staff, so the live performances they've had often sound like they could have been on CD (after all, they do record audio for CDs and national broadcast on a regular basis). Okay, half or more of the performances aren't truly "live", and might get tweaked more than they should, but that's okay. Mary Lucia, one of the on-air hosts, once compared their work very favorably to her previous jobs where there was usually "just a stoned guy and a microhpone."
I've bought a lot of new music this year because of the station. They avoid most stuff that gets significant airplay on commercial radio, so I often don't know about certain things that everyone else seems to be talking about ("My Humps"? Wha?) But, I think I'll live;-)
Anyway, I contributed $10 a month to the station since it went on the air. Yeah, I could get a satellite radio subscription for just a little more, but I like the fact that I can support something that is local. They play a lot of music from Minnesota artists (and they're very good about only sprinkling in Prince on rare occasions), so gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies (which is important right now with temperatures hovering around 5 degrees Fahrenheit...)
What's a GD2 signature? A quick search only brings up material related to the GD graphics library, plus a handful of articles related to this webmail site.
Unfortunately, archive.org seems to be slashdotted at the moment, so I can't figure out what I really want to know -- How is it that this film is now in the public domain? Are there people that keep track of this sort of thing?
This is similar to asking why IT consultants can't do the same thing, and charge $10 an hour instead of, say, $50 an hour.
Heh, and people wonder why jobs go overseas... Well, even when people try to advertise themselves as discount workers in the U.S., it's hard to find companies that will go that low. A cult of overvaluation in some cases, IMHO (how many consultants are really worth $50 or more per hour?)
I think there was some reference to the fact that there are some hardware devices that always do this upsampling, and always do it badly. The SoundBlaster Live! is the dominant example. In some cases, it is better to do this in software than to leave it to the SBLive. Actually, I think that in the worst case, the SBLive starts with a 44.1 kHz signal, converts it to 48kHz for equalizing, then converts it back to 44.1 kHz. Better to just have it go through one conversion at the beginning than twice.
I haven't had MTV in my channel list for years. Okay, it's partially because I don't get laid enough to be taunted by watching rappers prance around with naked women. Combined with the lack of actual music, it's a no-brainer. Now if I could only get Time Warner to reimburse me...
Yeah, talkative drive-time shows suck. I think this is why many radio companies are under the mistaken impression that people hate DJs. I don't hate DJs that tell me what the music is or where I can go see a show. I hate these "personalities" who ask people to call up and relate nasty stories about lawnmower accidents and all sorts of other crap.
Unfortunately, a CD doesn't hold enough music for me. Even an MP3 CD would get old quick, I think, especially since I would select the music. I just like having someone hand me something new on a regular basis. Fortunately, I now have a decent radio station in town.
Actually, these aacPlus streams sound really good to me, and they're considerably lower than 128kbps (the top two there are actually 5.1 surround audio).
Honestly, there are a lot more radio companies out there than ClearChannel and Entercom, though you do make a fairly valid point that in any given market, there are two or three major players, plus a bunch of tiny outlets bringing up the rear (or a pile of those annoying Christian satellite stations). I'm actually amazed at how many different owners there are. I think the problem is that the big guys want to go out and get a huge slice of the pie. If companies were content with being in fifthor even fifteenthplace in the ratings, there would probably be a greater variety of material on the airwaves.
Well, I think I'm sticking with public radio myself..
Slashdot Mirror
I'm disappointed that this was posted with such a ridiculous assertion in the headline. Are you kidding me? Certainly the tests aren't entirely accurate, and I've complained about them, but saying that there's "No Valid Information At All" is bogus. Obviously you can go to the fueleconomy.gov site and see that there's a correlation between big, heavy, overpowered cars using lots of fuel and smaller, lighter, lower-powered cars that sip gas. The EPA has updated their tests a couple of times, most recently around 2007 following controversies that the Toyota Prius didn't achieve real-world fuel economy as good as what was on the window sticker. They also didn't try to factor in air conditioning or other features that are now common on cars.
The original 1970s-style tests produce numbers about 30% better than the end result today (an adjustment around 1985 reduced MPG numbers by about 15%, and the second one around 2007 brought it down by another 15%). Notably, government fuel economy tests in Europe and Japan still have ridiculously optimistic figures, so U.S. figures are much, much more accurate and reasonable compared to other places around the world.
Are EPA figures perfect? No. I personally think they went a bit too far in the most recent adjustment, since my (pre-dieselgate era) 2006 VW Jetta TDI gets MPG figures almost exactly matching what it originally had on the window sticker when I bought it.
And if this is all about people expecting to get super MPG when driving at 90 mph all the time, just stop complaining. That's not an appropriate expectation for what you should get out of these tests.
Are hybrid drives working well on Linux yet? Last I checked, support for hybrid SSDs was still in its infancy.
If this system is using an Ethernet connection, just get a Linux or *BSD box running with bridged Ethernet interfaces or pay for a decent smart switch. Heck, you could probably do it in Windows -- that supports bridged interfaces too.
Simply disable the interface connected to the device you want to protect whenever you don't want outside access. With a Linux/*BSD box, this could be accomplished with simple scripts. You'd probably have to write up a simple manual procedure to do it with a switch or Windows box.
...I suppose I'm the only person who wants someone to recreate Claris CAD.
I've got a 3G phone that has two cameras in it -- one high-resolution camera for taking photographs on the back side, and one low-resolution camera in the face where the screen is. That way, I can look at the screen and get video of myself. I'm sure there must be a number of 3G phones with this layout, but I'm not a cell-phone junkie so I don't keep track of all of the features out there. Unfortunately, I'm on a carrier that has 3G, but on the wrong frequency band, so I'm stuck with EDGE...
I tried YouTube's TV interface on my PS3 yesterday. While I appreciated some aspects of the simplified interface, it seemed that the video playback itself was less pleasant. The framerate just about chopped in half if I attempted to play video in full-screen, and there were some annoyances with the progress bar and control buttons -- the progress bar didn't seem to work right, and the play/fullscreen/etc. buttons were just aesthetically displeasing.
I also ran into the problem where some videos are "not available for television viewing". What's up with that?
Yeah, but how often will the news be this instead?
Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred.
This error has been forwarded to MySpace's technical group.
What do you expect when using hellium?
And this makes me ponder why the fsck MySpace doesn't use SSL for their logins. Not that it necessarily helps against phishing if a convincing page is presented, but at least Firefox would politely make the address bar yellow and display the lock icon plus "login.myspace.com" (or whatever it is) in the status bar on the bottom-right corner of the browser.
I have XM rather than Sirius, but a lot of people have said that both services definitely don't reach the level of 128k MP3 quality. XM is 96kbps at best, which puts it more on par with FM, though I personally find the digital artifacts to be more annoying than FM static. Well, maybe Sirius is better -- I haven't had a chance to listen to it with a proper speaker setup (as in, something other than being piped in through the overhead speakers at a store).
;-) With cable TV, I'm paying for all these channels I don't want. Considering that sports channels are the most expensive for content providers, yet are the ones I watch the least, I wish I could get rid of them. Similarly, I'm only interested in a handful of XM channels. But, I suppose I haven't given them much chance -- I've had to turn off my satellite radio after ten minutes just because the audio quality problems became too annoying.
Oh, and that cable TV analogy doesn't work for me. It's true, but it doesn't work
Anyway, I just ended up getting satellite radio service as a built-in feature for the trim level I got on my car. I don't plan to continue the service after the initial free trial period.
I see that the NYT article linked to just about everything except MovieLens. I've used the site, and folks might like to try it out. It looks simple, but it's fairly nice, having some of those fun dynamic pages that are all the rage these days. One neat thing in comparison to Netflix is that it will give a projected star rating for you, rather than simply saying "Recommended".
Of course, I'm biased since I had John Riedl as a professor in a few easy classes. I think he tried to spin off this research as a new company, but I'm not sure if it ever got off the ground.
One thing I'd really like to see has little to do with the quality of ratings, though. I'd like to be able to keep a common database of my ratings across multiple sites. At the moment, I've rated a number of movies at Netflix, MovieLens, and IMDb, but they aren't entirely consistent. Unfortunately, two of the sites use a ten-point system (IMDb has a ten-point scale, MovieLens goes up to 5 stars, but in half-star increments), while the other uses a five-point one (maybe six if you say "Not Interested"..).
Well, I'll have to poke around a bit with this stuff. I wouldn't be able to do much, though, since my level of knowledge in this arena is very limited...
A friend of mine told me about something similar to this many years ago where a lawyer was experimenting with the idea of a one-second commercial. Apparently the guy in the ad just yelled "HURT?!?" and flashed his phone number.
If there's any American industry that we'd like to see outsourced....
The timing of traffic lights has been one of the biggest factors for me, though that's mostly been since I live near downtown and have commuted out to suburbs/exurbs for work for the last few years. Highway congestion usually wasn't a big factor since I was generally traveling out in the opposite direction of most folks, but traffic lights could easily destroy any headway I had. Their cycles are hard to pin down, and shift of just a few minutes in departure time can mean you're stuck at nearly every light rather than seeing green. But maybe my normal departure times have led me to visit intersections just before or after the point where they switch from "rush hour" mode to "normal" mode. Of course, traffic lights in some areas are biased to allow more traffic inbound to downtown areas, which makes sense, though it effectively penalizes people like me who commute outbound.
Fortunately, I now work at a place that is only about 3.5 miles from where I live, and I can get doorstop-to-doorstop in just over ten minutes and only deal with one traffic light. I'm moving soon, and my commute will be even shorter.
Yep, I think this is a major factor, and don't forget to add in the fact that most (big) radio stations follow the Billboard charts rather than lead them. When your playlist is a genre-specific streamlined version of what has been on the Hot 100 in the past five, ten, or more years, things get to be a little repetitive. While a lot of stations say that they've got "The Most New Music!", they still rarely add to their playlists, and new songs will be drowned out by whatever was #1 on the chart last month. In a time when people have to listen to the background of TV shows, movies, and even ads to hear new music, it's hardly surprising that sales are on the decline.
;-)
Last year, I was really annoyed with the big music radio stations in my area. If I stopped listening to the radio for a month, I'd notice a few new tracks when I returned, but that would only last a few days. In frustration, I listened to the University of Minnesota's station when I could, but they're only on the air with their main AM signal during the day, and their FM coverage is pretty limited. I tried KFAI, a small community radio station, couldn't deal with their block programming -- I just wanted to hear some new music. I tried some web streams, but I got sick of sitting by my computer.
In January of this year, Minnesota Public Radio switched on a new format at a station they'd bought in late 2004. They dubbed it "89.3 The Current." While I still have trouble saying that name with a straight face, I do like the format, whatever it is. It's not for everyone, and probably tends to jump around more than I'd like, but they're always playing new material. It's even a full-power station, a little off-center in a fairly major market.
The folks at MPR have very professional sound production staff, so the live performances they've had often sound like they could have been on CD (after all, they do record audio for CDs and national broadcast on a regular basis). Okay, half or more of the performances aren't truly "live", and might get tweaked more than they should, but that's okay. Mary Lucia, one of the on-air hosts, once compared their work very favorably to her previous jobs where there was usually "just a stoned guy and a microhpone."
I've bought a lot of new music this year because of the station. They avoid most stuff that gets significant airplay on commercial radio, so I often don't know about certain things that everyone else seems to be talking about ("My Humps"? Wha?) But, I think I'll live
Anyway, I contributed $10 a month to the station since it went on the air. Yeah, I could get a satellite radio subscription for just a little more, but I like the fact that I can support something that is local. They play a lot of music from Minnesota artists (and they're very good about only sprinkling in Prince on rare occasions), so gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies (which is important right now with temperatures hovering around 5 degrees Fahrenheit...)
What's a GD2 signature? A quick search only brings up material related to the GD graphics library, plus a handful of articles related to this webmail site.
The Internet Archive page finally loaded for me, but says it's public domain...
Unfortunately, archive.org seems to be slashdotted at the moment, so I can't figure out what I really want to know -- How is it that this film is now in the public domain? Are there people that keep track of this sort of thing?
This is similar to asking why IT consultants can't do the same thing, and charge $10 an hour instead of, say, $50 an hour.
Heh, and people wonder why jobs go overseas... Well, even when people try to advertise themselves as discount workers in the U.S., it's hard to find companies that will go that low. A cult of overvaluation in some cases, IMHO (how many consultants are really worth $50 or more per hour?)
Eh.. It's a news report on a study, not the study itself. Reports about studies are always a little wonky.
Ugh.. I think I missed the actual message you were replying to.. Nevermind...
I think there was some reference to the fact that there are some hardware devices that always do this upsampling, and always do it badly. The SoundBlaster Live! is the dominant example. In some cases, it is better to do this in software than to leave it to the SBLive. Actually, I think that in the worst case, the SBLive starts with a 44.1 kHz signal, converts it to 48kHz for equalizing, then converts it back to 44.1 kHz. Better to just have it go through one conversion at the beginning than twice.
I haven't had MTV in my channel list for years. Okay, it's partially because I don't get laid enough to be taunted by watching rappers prance around with naked women. Combined with the lack of actual music, it's a no-brainer. Now if I could only get Time Warner to reimburse me...
Yeah, talkative drive-time shows suck. I think this is why many radio companies are under the mistaken impression that people hate DJs. I don't hate DJs that tell me what the music is or where I can go see a show. I hate these "personalities" who ask people to call up and relate nasty stories about lawnmower accidents and all sorts of other crap.
Unfortunately, a CD doesn't hold enough music for me. Even an MP3 CD would get old quick, I think, especially since I would select the music. I just like having someone hand me something new on a regular basis. Fortunately, I now have a decent radio station in town.
LOL. You need a better radio ;-)
Actually, these aacPlus streams sound really good to me, and they're considerably lower than 128kbps (the top two there are actually 5.1 surround audio).
Honestly, there are a lot more radio companies out there than ClearChannel and Entercom, though you do make a fairly valid point that in any given market, there are two or three major players, plus a bunch of tiny outlets bringing up the rear (or a pile of those annoying Christian satellite stations). I'm actually amazed at how many different owners there are. I think the problem is that the big guys want to go out and get a huge slice of the pie. If companies were content with being in fifthor even fifteenthplace in the ratings, there would probably be a greater variety of material on the airwaves.
Well, I think I'm sticking with public radio myself..