When the audio is converted from a raw PCM format (the way it's stored on the CD) to AAC, a lot of quality is lost. Converting to AAC or MP3 involves removing parts of the waveform that you don't hear or degrading quality to fit the music into a given bitrate.
So by definition, the AAC is going to sound worse than the CD. In any case, if you try to transcode an AAC file to another format (like Ogg or MP3), the result will sound quite crappy, because all the compressing the codec would have done (removing the stuff you can't hear) is already done.
Also, CDs definatly do NOT begin to sound worse over time! How the heck would that happen? The data on a CD is digital, therefore if quality is going to be lost it'll result in a "skip" or a weird noise or static that lasts for a second or less. Overall, the quality will be exactly the same as when the CD was produced.
The reason many people, including myself, will not buy music online until it is offered in a lossless format (like PCM, FLAC, APE, or Shorten) is because we want the music as it was on the CD with nothing removed! Someday, a new, better lossy compression will come out, and everyone who bought MP3s or AACs will be SOL because when they try to convert their files, they'll sound like crap! Plus, if you're going to buy something, why buy a very inferior product, which is what these lossy songs are?
It seems like the reason people like the PTT feature is because it connects within a few seconds, instead of the 10 or so it takes to make a phone call. Why does it have to take more time for the cell phone to connect a regular phone call than a PTT call? Also, it doesn't seem like the phones are really operating as "walkie-talkies" because they still send the data to a cell tower and back to destination cell phone....if they're going to bundle a walkie talkie, why not make it a real one that doesn't use your cell minutes? Also, last time I used it, PTT was only half duplex...what's the point of a phone if only one person can talk at a time? It's not as if they're short on bandwidth...in fact I'd rather trade off sound quality for full duplex.
Maybe someone who knows more about PPT can tell me why anyone would use this feature.
I think even with the other hack, you needed to crack open the case an put a drop of solder on something. With the dashboard exploit, absolutley no hardware mods are necessary.
if you really are such a cheapskate that you don't want to pay for a quality product like Adobe Distiller, you can always use GhostView/GhostScript
GNU Ghostscript performs as well as or better than distiller in most cases, and it is more versatile. Plus it's Free (beer and speech). Adobe Distiller is in no way a quality product.
Why can't these companies support formats that don't suck? MP3 and WMA are great if you're short on space, but with 15 gigs i'd be hard pressed to fill that up. They either need to support a lossless format like FLAC or even Shorten, or even better release an SDK so the users can code the support in. Hard drive mp3 players should not be marred by low quality music!
If this was a microsoft hole, slashdot would be jumping all over it. "MS sucks! Look at these security holes! Waa! I'm gonna go cry about it now, even though they patch them quickly!"
I know a lot of people hate MS, especially the slashdot/open source community. But at least be fair....why is it so egregious for MS to have a few security holes where any other company would be cut some considerable slack? Like Seti@Home for example. No piece of software is perfect, open or closed.
And what if we got off this damn stupid broadcast model? I want on-demand music and movies...I don't want to have to call up some DJ to be able to listen to a song.
If an ISP advertises UNLIMITED, ALWAYS ON INTERNET then that ISP must deliver said service. The customer should not, and can not, be charged for "excessive" or "malicious" traffic. If an ISP wants to sell prorated internet, then advertise it! Unlimited means unlimited.
Why isn't Vice City on the PC yet? Why did they release it on an old console that has no life left in it? Oh yeah, I forgot there for a second....Sony is frucking greedy! They're obviously delaying or even stopping Rockstar from releasing it on the PC or XBox because they want to sell more consoles. Bullshit.
I don't have or use any form of banking system. I live strictly by GREEN CASH ALONE and have nothing at all to do with any financial institute in any form.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but your "green cash" is an investment in the Bank of the United States (assuming you live in the US). I'd call that a financial institute. And how do you pay for your ISP without some kind of checking account?
The bottom line is that the PC tech race has lost all purpose, except to stroke the ego of hardware fanboys
If we never make progress, we'll never get anywhere! Every piece of technology needs a killer app, and there's great potential for future computers in this reguard. We're beginning to see a push to turn the PC into the "media hub" of a modern household. This is going to take lots of processing power, even current computers aren't up to the task without dedicated MPEG4 encoding hardware.
Uh...so keep a copy of Windows 95 on your computer. Keep that 3dfx card in your computer, just use the pass through cable and it'll work fine. If you want to play really old games that run too fast on modern processors, keep an old machine around!
Expecting newer operating systems to maintain backwards compatibility at the cost of stability is foolish. XP and 2000 are stable because they left out all the old code that was in 95/98/ME.
To use your console example, let's say you upgrade from an N64 to a Gamecube. The Gamecube must suck because, gasp, it doesn't run N64 games! N64s don't run SNES games. If you want to play old games, you keep the old system. Same thing with PCs.
Home users don't use some psuedo-random number generator to generate their private/public keypair when using PGP, they at least use data sampled from random keypresses. I doubt that Microsoft would have used just any random source.
Remember, their control of the monopoly on X-Box games relies on this code. They probably used some very random source, like sampling data from a real-world random source such as the matter emmited by a radioactive isotope or something.
I fail to see how being an avid reader will land you a job. Technical writing is a very different skill than being able to write ficiton, and how do you make a connection between reading fictional literary works and coding ability or fitness for a coding job?
Also, you exclude fantasy/sci-fi from your so-called "great literature." Why?
Slashdot Mirror
When the audio is converted from a raw PCM format (the way it's stored on the CD) to AAC, a lot of quality is lost. Converting to AAC or MP3 involves removing parts of the waveform that you don't hear or degrading quality to fit the music into a given bitrate.
So by definition, the AAC is going to sound worse than the CD. In any case, if you try to transcode an AAC file to another format (like Ogg or MP3), the result will sound quite crappy, because all the compressing the codec would have done (removing the stuff you can't hear) is already done.
Also, CDs definatly do NOT begin to sound worse over time! How the heck would that happen? The data on a CD is digital, therefore if quality is going to be lost it'll result in a "skip" or a weird noise or static that lasts for a second or less. Overall, the quality will be exactly the same as when the CD was produced.
The reason many people, including myself, will not buy music online until it is offered in a lossless format (like PCM, FLAC, APE, or Shorten) is because we want the music as it was on the CD with nothing removed! Someday, a new, better lossy compression will come out, and everyone who bought MP3s or AACs will be SOL because when they try to convert their files, they'll sound like crap! Plus, if you're going to buy something, why buy a very inferior product, which is what these lossy songs are?
It seems like the reason people like the PTT feature is because it connects within a few seconds, instead of the 10 or so it takes to make a phone call. Why does it have to take more time for the cell phone to connect a regular phone call than a PTT call? Also, it doesn't seem like the phones are really operating as "walkie-talkies" because they still send the data to a cell tower and back to destination cell phone....if they're going to bundle a walkie talkie, why not make it a real one that doesn't use your cell minutes? Also, last time I used it, PTT was only half duplex...what's the point of a phone if only one person can talk at a time? It's not as if they're short on bandwidth...in fact I'd rather trade off sound quality for full duplex.
Maybe someone who knows more about PPT can tell me why anyone would use this feature.
I think even with the other hack, you needed to crack open the case an put a drop of solder on something. With the dashboard exploit, absolutley no hardware mods are necessary.
I think you mean Austrians?
How is releasing information about a bug going to land them in court? Microsoft had plenty of time to respond, but they didn't.
if you really are such a cheapskate that you don't want to pay for a quality product like Adobe Distiller, you can always use GhostView/GhostScript
GNU Ghostscript performs as well as or better than distiller in most cases, and it is more versatile. Plus it's Free (beer and speech). Adobe Distiller is in no way a quality product.
Why can't these companies support formats that don't suck? MP3 and WMA are great if you're short on space, but with 15 gigs i'd be hard pressed to fill that up. They either need to support a lossless format like FLAC or even Shorten, or even better release an SDK so the users can code the support in. Hard drive mp3 players should not be marred by low quality music!
If this was a microsoft hole, slashdot would be jumping all over it. "MS sucks! Look at these security holes! Waa! I'm gonna go cry about it now, even though they patch them quickly!"
I know a lot of people hate MS, especially the slashdot/open source community. But at least be fair....why is it so egregious for MS to have a few security holes where any other company would be cut some considerable slack? Like Seti@Home for example. No piece of software is perfect, open or closed.
does anyone have a link to the actual patents? there's probably prior art for this.
nice reporting :/ I nearly cried when I saw this...it better be fake.
Does a slashdotting mean anything to you? The server is probably in a puddle on the floor by now and no one can RTFA (read the fucking article).
I LOVED Escape Velocity on the Mac. I used to play it all the time...I'd love to be able to play the latest version of it on Windows or Linux. Cool.
And what if we got off this damn stupid broadcast model? I want on-demand music and movies...I don't want to have to call up some DJ to be able to listen to a song.
Freedom of speech IS a fundamental freedom. And censorship=bad in ANY form.
If an ISP advertises UNLIMITED, ALWAYS ON INTERNET then that ISP must deliver said service. The customer should not, and can not, be charged for "excessive" or "malicious" traffic. If an ISP wants to sell prorated internet, then advertise it! Unlimited means unlimited.
Why isn't Vice City on the PC yet? Why did they release it on an old console that has no life left in it? Oh yeah, I forgot there for a second....Sony is frucking greedy! They're obviously delaying or even stopping Rockstar from releasing it on the PC or XBox because they want to sell more consoles. Bullshit.
but so long as my babble fish doesn't go anywhere, i'll still visit altavista
google has the same thing, except ad-free:
Google Language tools
By your definition, how would an advertisment for an Open Source project be any different? It's still "spam" according to you.
Is anyone else really confused about what has been accomplished here? What does GNU Radio do? The site's not too helpful.
I don't have or use any form of banking system. I live strictly by GREEN CASH ALONE and have nothing at all to do with any financial institute in any form.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but your "green cash" is an investment in the Bank of the United States (assuming you live in the US). I'd call that a financial institute. And how do you pay for your ISP without some kind of checking account?
The bottom line is that the PC tech race has lost all purpose, except to stroke the ego of hardware fanboys
If we never make progress, we'll never get anywhere! Every piece of technology needs a killer app, and there's great potential for future computers in this reguard. We're beginning to see a push to turn the PC into the "media hub" of a modern household. This is going to take lots of processing power, even current computers aren't up to the task without dedicated MPEG4 encoding hardware.
Uh...so keep a copy of Windows 95 on your computer. Keep that 3dfx card in your computer, just use the pass through cable and it'll work fine. If you want to play really old games that run too fast on modern processors, keep an old machine around!
Expecting newer operating systems to maintain backwards compatibility at the cost of stability is foolish. XP and 2000 are stable because they left out all the old code that was in 95/98/ME.
To use your console example, let's say you upgrade from an N64 to a Gamecube. The Gamecube must suck because, gasp, it doesn't run N64 games! N64s don't run SNES games. If you want to play old games, you keep the old system. Same thing with PCs.
Why would one what to do that when we have nice higher level APIs like OpenGL and Direct3D that do the same thing and are more portable?
Home users don't use some psuedo-random number generator to generate their private/public keypair when using PGP, they at least use data sampled from random keypresses. I doubt that Microsoft would have used just any random source.
Remember, their control of the monopoly on X-Box games relies on this code. They probably used some very random source, like sampling data from a real-world random source such as the matter emmited by a radioactive isotope or something.
I fail to see how being an avid reader will land you a job. Technical writing is a very different skill than being able to write ficiton, and how do you make a connection between reading fictional literary works and coding ability or fitness for a coding job?
Also, you exclude fantasy/sci-fi from your so-called "great literature." Why?