I assume that most of your recordings are music (vs. spoken words or whale songs.). Where are you getting the files from? If you are encoding them yourself, then pick FLAC if you've got the space. Lossless will guarantee that you don't get artifacts, at the expense of storage space. If are ripping from CD, you'll want to have as high a quality as possible - unless you have a small collection, you won't want to go through the ripping process several times. If you can't rip into FLAC, pick a very high OGG or MP3. OGG should give you better quality for the same bitrate, while MP3 is a standard. If you go with a very high bit rate MP3, eventually you won't need to down-sample it, because storage is getting cheaper.
I would also recommend against keeping multiple versions of the same file, cause it would suck to lose the high quality archival files in a cut-and-pastectomy error.
The only other source of other formats is you are buying them or downloading them. Well, you'll have to take what you can get, but you would probably be better off buying the CD, since the hard media will survive a disk crash, you get control over the digital encoding, and you don't have to deal with any funky copy protection. Of course, the tradeoff is $$$.
You could explain the number of Lexi/Hummers/Mercs in a Walmart parking lot by the fact that they save soooo much money that the shoppers can afford such nice cars.
I don't know what universe you live in, but skin effect does not cause roll-off at frequencies as low as 100KHz. I am an electrical engineer, and I have to deal with skin effect in RF applications. I have not seen skin effect to be a significant effect until you get over 100MHz. Grounding, resistance, shielding, and matching are much more significant than skin effect below 100MHz, where all audio and video signals are (unless they are modulated).
There are two types of cables to talk about: patch cables and speaker cables. For speaker cables, it is all about resistance. Shielding is not a big deal, since you have 2 cables, and as long as they run close and parallel, you won't pick up any noticable noise, since the other cable would pick up pretty much the same noise, and the noise would cancel out. As for expensive wire - forget about all that deoxygenated copper and that BS. If you have doubts, measure the resistance. At 20KHz, the high end of human hearing, a wavelength of light is around 10KM, so you don't have to worry about matching cable lengths either (as one of my friends did in his home theater setup).
As for patch cable, the video applications are more difficult - the higher frequency is more problematic. Even then, shielding is easy. Twisted pair works quite well even up to those vidoe frequencies (if you are reading this over a DSL connection, then you are relying on a more sensitive signal sent over twisted pair). You can transmit 100baseT over steel barbed wire.
If you still want premium cables, buy the cheap cables, sned them to me, and I will pronounce magic words that will make them work just as well as the monster cables. Except for some fancy plastic jacketing, that's all monster does anyway.
For new and inexperienced users, XP's default may be a better interface. But to those who had already developed proficiency with 95/98/NT/2000, XP's interface is a pain. Of course, that is my experience, others may have a different viewpoint. It took me a few hours to 'regress' to the classic interface (there is more to it than simply selecting classic mode, BTW).
XP's default interface is some Disneyland, bubbly PITA. Not that the classic is some divinely inspired interface, but it is quite good, and I was already familar with it.
Thank you for pointing out my windows-centric worldview. I apologize for having one on/.
Of course, under linux, you would NEVER have such a problem, because you are so clever and you would use a cron job combined with a Rube Goldberg Device to automate this whole process.
Maybe a combination of techniques would work - Use an external USB drive backed up once a week or so, and combine that with the internal PCMCIA drive making delta backups... That way you could have a complete snapshot no older than 1 week old, and still maintain a current backup too.
Also, try arranging the drive to facilitate this. Partition the drive so that all the programs are on the C: partition, and all data is stored on a D: partition. That way, you can ghost the C: partition for your applications, and it will be easier to copy only your data from the D: drive.
While it would be neat to be able to carry a full-sized leatherman everywhere I go, the leatherman squirt p4 is the way to go. You won't wear holes in your pocket, or need to get a bat utility belt after adding on a cell-phone belt clip. Plus, it does 80% of what you need a full-sized leatherman for. Finally, the knife is wicked sharp.
Of course, this is for office/suburban duty. If you are out in the wilderness or in a workshop, there are a host of more appropriate tools.
Well - let's think about what you are saying. Intel owns the PC CPU market. But everytime they try to get anything else, they get their butts spanked. Remember Intel's graphics? Or their peripherals? Yes, they have chipsets, but their hold is very weak at this point.
The reason that Intel is bashed is cause they have owned x86, and rather than take x86 to the next level, they simply created a marketing chip (the P4, in case you weren't aware). They have become a giant turtle. AMD has gone in and totally flanked Intel. They are the ones doing the more creative implementations, by showing what you can do with x86 - taking x86 to the next level even though it is Intel's turf.
That is why AMD gets kudos while Intel gets bashed.
I think that it meets the needs of the police perfectly. You are not trying to show how wonderful those places are. Leaving a 'ghost' reminds people that their was a victim there, allowing people to review the background in a more neutral format while maintining the victim's privacy. If a quick 5 minute clone does the job, I don't see a need to perfect the image.
I can't believe how bent everyone is getting over the quality. If you think you can do a better job, go ahead and volunteer. I for one would not want to look at the originals.
I think you are applying dishonesty where obliviousness can equally explain to a situation. Left unsaid is the real scammers who prey upon this tragedy.
As for not doing anything before, I think a simple example will suffice: You are driving in your car, and you pass a person on the side of the road, working on their car. That person is obviously in distress, but it is not critical. However, if you are driving and you see an major accident occur in front of you, you would at the very least call 911 or some aid (if it were safe for you to do so).
Don't get me wrong - I agree a lot with you, but it is more of a shading of your statements.
Well, I hope you are rich. It sure sucks to be poor. As for welfare - are you opposed to donating relief to the victims of the tsunami?
At some point, you have to remember that capitalism doesn't care about grinding people down. Slavery fit perfectly fine in capitalism. So does prison labor and child labor. So does selling organs.
How hard is it to simply stick to MP3s? I avoid WMA files like the plague. Even if there is an exploit for MP3s, I doubt it would be effective on all clients.
The parent has a point. IT reminds me of HR - two functions that believe that they have inflated importance.
I am not in an educational organization, I work in an engineering role. First off - my company's primary product is not IT support. Don't forget that. While I do understand that users often make stupid decisions, your job is to keep the employees working. DON'T get in their way. Only when the user's actions are disrupting OTHER users should you take action. If the user does something stupid, then fix it. That is your job - you are (for lack of a better term) a technical maid.
An analogy of IT is in a car, IT would be the engine oil. No, it's not absolutely required for the car to go, but the car won't get very far without it. The better the quality of oil, the more efficient the engine is, up to a point. Don't make the mistake of thinking that IT is GAS.
Good post, but I would just like to add two points - there are some 'educational institutions' that exist solely to spread some particular viewpoint (e.g. ICR).
The second point is on refinement by debate. I can't buy that - Aristotle believed men had more teeth than women, but that is not true...
You need to use logic combined with facts and experiments to resolve a matter. Arguing often leads nowhere.
The first one I can answer: the penalties for killing or wounding your teammates are actually a significant behavior control. I haven't played in a while, but there are two factors for determining what your role is: your skill and your honor. While honor is the most important (a higher honor lets you choose any role you want on the team), as long as you have the requisite skills (e.g. you are qualified to be a sniper) you can choose what you want.
The goal is to improve your honor. If you are a team leader and the team is successful in its mission, you get a nice positive score, which helps your honor increase. If your team fails, then you lose points. If you violate the Rules of Engagement, you lose a lot of points. Lose too many points, you lose honor, and can even be booted from the game. Some games have a minimum honor to join.
BUT - it does not handle your question on civilians and innocents. It does at least divide the world into people you kill and people you don't kill, so it does help with quickly identifying do you shoot or not...
As for post-tramautic syndrome, no, not a problem. We will have conditioned killing machines without any difficulty in pulling the trigger. They won't evaluate the damage and disruption that they caused. But hey - I play these games too...
So, if the people of Bhopal had a chance to get a small little measure of justice by using the courts and lawyers, would that constitute not getting over it?
Your viewpoints are certainly balanced, but I think that you fail to see how much better off everyone is when companies have to stop and make sure that their products aren't dangerous (as one example). I will of course admit that there are absurdities in the legal system, but what human institution doesn't have them?
That is perhaps the best way to describe this situation, and many others.
It is easy to decry the apparent greed of lawyers, but at the end of the day, sometimes the only thing that you can use is the courts. A lot of times justice isn't served, but often enough that there is hope.
Go a decent distance from home. Wear non-descript clothing. Pay cash. Buy an extended warranty with a made up name and address. Don't register the purchase. Don't use the printer for a year. Those steps should at least slow down any investigation.
Basically, preparing for the inevitable republican legal hijinks is simply prudent. I wish they didn't have to do that, but having one election stolen is more than enough, IMHO.
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Maybe you need a structure for your audio files.
I assume that most of your recordings are music (vs. spoken words or whale songs.). Where are you getting the files from? If you are encoding them yourself, then pick FLAC if you've got the space. Lossless will guarantee that you don't get artifacts, at the expense of storage space. If are ripping from CD, you'll want to have as high a quality as possible - unless you have a small collection, you won't want to go through the ripping process several times. If you can't rip into FLAC, pick a very high OGG or MP3. OGG should give you better quality for the same bitrate, while MP3 is a standard. If you go with a very high bit rate MP3, eventually you won't need to down-sample it, because storage is getting cheaper.
I would also recommend against keeping multiple versions of the same file, cause it would suck to lose the high quality archival files in a cut-and-pastectomy error.
The only other source of other formats is you are buying them or downloading them. Well, you'll have to take what you can get, but you would probably be better off buying the CD, since the hard media will survive a disk crash, you get control over the digital encoding, and you don't have to deal with any funky copy protection. Of course, the tradeoff is $$$.
You could explain the number of Lexi/Hummers/Mercs in a Walmart parking lot by the fact that they save soooo much money that the shoppers can afford such nice cars.
But I doubt it...
I don't know what universe you live in, but skin effect does not cause roll-off at frequencies as low as 100KHz. I am an electrical engineer, and I have to deal with skin effect in RF applications. I have not seen skin effect to be a significant effect until you get over 100MHz. Grounding, resistance, shielding, and matching are much more significant than skin effect below 100MHz, where all audio and video signals are (unless they are modulated).
There are two types of cables to talk about: patch cables and speaker cables. For speaker cables, it is all about resistance. Shielding is not a big deal, since you have 2 cables, and as long as they run close and parallel, you won't pick up any noticable noise, since the other cable would pick up pretty much the same noise, and the noise would cancel out. As for expensive wire - forget about all that deoxygenated copper and that BS. If you have doubts, measure the resistance. At 20KHz, the high end of human hearing, a wavelength of light is around 10KM, so you don't have to worry about matching cable lengths either (as one of my friends did in his home theater setup).
As for patch cable, the video applications are more difficult - the higher frequency is more problematic. Even then, shielding is easy. Twisted pair works quite well even up to those vidoe frequencies (if you are reading this over a DSL connection, then you are relying on a more sensitive signal sent over twisted pair).
You can transmit 100baseT over steel barbed wire.
If you still want premium cables, buy the cheap cables, sned them to me, and I will pronounce magic words that will make them work just as well as the monster cables. Except for some fancy plastic jacketing, that's all monster does anyway.
For new and inexperienced users, XP's default may be a better interface. But to those who had already developed proficiency with 95/98/NT/2000, XP's interface is a pain. Of course, that is my experience, others may have a different viewpoint. It took me a few hours to 'regress' to the classic interface (there is more to it than simply selecting classic mode, BTW).
XP's default interface is some Disneyland, bubbly PITA. Not that the classic is some divinely inspired interface, but it is quite good, and I was already familar with it.
Thank you for pointing out my windows-centric worldview. I apologize for having one on /.
Of course, under linux, you would NEVER have such a problem, because you are so clever and you would use a cron job combined with a Rube Goldberg Device to automate this whole process.
Maybe a combination of techniques would work -
Use an external USB drive backed up once a week or so, and combine that with the internal PCMCIA drive making delta backups...
That way you could have a complete snapshot no older than 1 week old, and still maintain a current backup too.
Also, try arranging the drive to facilitate this. Partition the drive so that all the programs are on the C: partition, and all data is stored on a D: partition. That way, you can ghost the C: partition for your applications, and it will be easier to copy only your data from the D: drive.
While it would be neat to be able to carry a full-sized leatherman everywhere I go, the leatherman squirt p4 is the way to go. You won't wear holes in your pocket, or need to get a bat utility belt after adding on a cell-phone belt clip. Plus, it does 80% of what you need a full-sized leatherman for. Finally, the knife is wicked sharp.
Of course, this is for office/suburban duty. If you are out in the wilderness or in a workshop, there are a host of more appropriate tools.
I think that the Wright brother's patents on airplanes were taken away by the US govt in WWI. So this is not unprecedented.
Well - let's think about what you are saying. Intel owns the PC CPU market. But everytime they try to get anything else, they get their butts spanked. Remember Intel's graphics? Or their peripherals? Yes, they have chipsets, but their hold is very weak at this point.
The reason that Intel is bashed is cause they have owned x86, and rather than take x86 to the next level, they simply created a marketing chip (the P4, in case you weren't aware). They have become a giant turtle. AMD has gone in and totally flanked Intel. They are the ones doing the more creative implementations, by showing what you can do with x86 - taking x86 to the next level even though it is Intel's turf.
That is why AMD gets kudos while Intel gets bashed.
I think that it meets the needs of the police perfectly. You are not trying to show how wonderful those places are. Leaving a 'ghost' reminds people that their was a victim there, allowing people to review the background in a more neutral format while maintining the victim's privacy.
If a quick 5 minute clone does the job, I don't see a need to perfect the image.
I can't believe how bent everyone is getting over the quality. If you think you can do a better job, go ahead and volunteer. I for one would not want to look at the originals.
I think you are applying dishonesty where obliviousness can equally explain to a situation. Left unsaid is the real scammers who prey upon this tragedy.
As for not doing anything before, I think a simple example will suffice: You are driving in your car, and you pass a person on the side of the road, working on their car. That person is obviously in distress, but it is not critical. However, if you are driving and you see an major accident occur in front of you, you would at the very least call 911 or some aid (if it were safe for you to do so).
Don't get me wrong - I agree a lot with you, but it is more of a shading of your statements.
Well, I hope you are rich. It sure sucks to be poor. As for welfare - are you opposed to donating relief to the victims of the tsunami?
At some point, you have to remember that capitalism doesn't care about grinding people down. Slavery fit perfectly fine in capitalism. So does prison labor and child labor. So does selling organs.
Why use WMA files?
How hard is it to simply stick to MP3s? I avoid WMA files like the plague. Even if there is an exploit for MP3s, I doubt it would be effective on all clients.
I respect the computer - it's obviously not a sell-out.
The parent has a point. IT reminds me of HR - two functions that believe that they have inflated importance.
I am not in an educational organization, I work in an engineering role. First off - my company's primary product is not IT support. Don't forget that. While I do understand that users often make stupid decisions, your job is to keep the employees working. DON'T get in their way. Only when the user's actions are disrupting OTHER users should you take action. If the user does something stupid, then fix it. That is your job - you are (for lack of a better term) a technical maid.
An analogy of IT is in a car, IT would be the engine oil. No, it's not absolutely required for the car to go, but the car won't get very far without it. The better the quality of oil, the more efficient the engine is, up to a point. Don't make the mistake of thinking that IT is GAS.
Good post, but I would just like to add two points - there are some 'educational institutions' that exist solely to spread some particular viewpoint (e.g. ICR).
The second point is on refinement by debate. I can't buy that - Aristotle believed men had more teeth than women, but that is not true...
You need to use logic combined with facts and experiments to resolve a matter. Arguing often leads nowhere.
You ask some very good questions.
The first one I can answer: the penalties for killing or wounding your teammates are actually a significant behavior control. I haven't played in a while, but there are two factors for determining what your role is: your skill and your honor. While honor is the most important (a higher honor lets you choose any role you want on the team), as long as you have the requisite skills (e.g. you are qualified to be a sniper) you can choose what you want.
The goal is to improve your honor. If you are a team leader and the team is successful in its mission, you get a nice positive score, which helps your honor increase. If your team fails, then you lose points. If you violate the Rules of Engagement, you lose a lot of points. Lose too many points, you lose honor, and can even be booted from the game. Some games have a minimum honor to join.
BUT - it does not handle your question on civilians and innocents. It does at least divide the world into people you kill and people you don't kill, so it does help with quickly identifying do you shoot or not...
As for post-tramautic syndrome, no, not a problem. We will have conditioned killing machines without any difficulty in pulling the trigger. They won't evaluate the damage and disruption that they caused. But hey - I play these games too...
So, if the people of Bhopal had a chance to get a small little measure of justice by using the courts and lawyers, would that constitute not getting over it?
Your viewpoints are certainly balanced, but I think that you fail to see how much better off everyone is when companies have to stop and make sure that their products aren't dangerous (as one example).
I will of course admit that there are absurdities in the legal system, but what human institution doesn't have them?
So you think that these people should just move on? I wish I could have your detachment.
That is perhaps the best way to describe this situation, and many others.
It is easy to decry the apparent greed of lawyers, but at the end of the day, sometimes the only thing that you can use is the courts. A lot of times justice isn't served, but often enough that there is hope.
Mod parent up!
Go a decent distance from home. Wear non-descript clothing. Pay cash. Buy an extended warranty with a made up name and address. Don't register the purchase. Don't use the printer for a year. Those steps should at least slow down any investigation.
Of course, don't do anything else stupid...
If you have two cars, you could fill up with the car that has the lower mileage, and siphon the gas over to your high milage car.
Experience is a wonderful thing. It allows you to recoginize a mistake when you make it again.
or another way of looking at it is:
A vote for Nader is the triumph of hope over experience.
Basically, preparing for the inevitable republican legal hijinks is simply prudent. I wish they didn't have to do that, but having one election stolen is more than enough, IMHO.
Lets say we know N. Korea is about to launch a nuke at S. Korea with a full scale attack.
You mean knowing in the way that Bush knew that Iraq had WMD?
Ohhh... nevermind.