I understand the need for the Red Cross and other shelter organizers to promote a good atmosphere (well, as good as possible), but sheesh, I fail to see the harm done by a microtransmitter.
I am of the opinion that, overall, the American Red Cross is well organized and operated (I'm speaking with over six years of experience with EMS, SAR and Disaster Relief here). However, I have to sigh at the bureaucracy and lack of "out-of-the-box" thinking that sometimes crops up when I'm volunteering with them.
Not necessarily. There was a post on this topic earlier in the comments chain, regarding ARRL and Motorola testing BPL equipment that appears to _not_ cause interference.
You have clearly never been to Portland, Oregon. During the Spring, Summer and Fall, we have Farmer's Markets across the city that sell freshly picked produce, meats and incredible organic cheeses.
We have award-winning bakers from France who've started their own shops (St. Honore) and American-founded places like Ken's Artisan Bakery who could challenge nearly any boulangerie I've eaten at in Paris.
One could stand most anywhere in Portland and be within a mile of several kinds of ethnic food.
We're also the birthplace of James Beard, not far from the Willamette Valley wine appelation, which includes Domaine Drouhin Oregon (of the French Joseph Drouhin family), and frequently enjoy some of the best Pinot Noir made in the world, as well as the per-capita leading number of microbreweries in the world.
I've had the pleasure of spending two months in Europe, including Italy and France. While I've immensely enjoyed the food there, for you to say that we are completely lacking in taste makes you an ignorant gastrocentrist. We have over 270 million people, and can't all be the same.
Well, I agree with you about sales methodology. I've been in sales before, although I was never put in a position to be in the "dirty tricks" department (which is merciful). One aspect about living in Portland, however, is that there is a plethora of places to buy various things from (well, except cars) that are staffed by people who do put a lot of weight into letting the customer decide what they want. It jibes well with a tendency for Portlanders to be on the mellow/passive-aggressive temperament continuum.
I also agree with you on the subjectivity of sound reproduction. There is some research in the ability of some to hear and cognitively process sound (e.g., tone, timbre, rhythm) better (for instance, cardiologists). It's the whole tube vs. solid-state argument, which I personally think is more taste than anything else. Certainly, one could buy an expensive system for listening to Top 40 music, but ironically, some of my favorite pop songs I've heard on audiophile systems sounds downright horrible and strange in phase. Jewel, comes to mind--and even worse, it was engineered with HDCD.
Funny you mention Patek Philippe--my Swiss acquaintances love watches (especially Piaget), but none would ever cop a notion that they somehow keep time better. I like analog watches for the simple reason that they're easier to use when I need them for EMT work (much easier for me to see 15 seconds go by with a second hand during pulse or respiration measurement), but I'll take it in quartz over complications and jewelled-bearings.
Thirded, but for a different reason. I have a difficult time keeping up with the speed of some of my lectures, and typing (rather than writing) has always been quicker for me.
It works: I've frequently volunteered my class notes for other students (http://psych211.petelee.org/ and teachers are interested in seeing what I've written about their lectures.
The only thing I wish was for better battery life for notetaking. The ultimate notetaking machine for me was my PowerBook 100. Seems like I could get 3-4 hours of solid notetaking out of it.
Well, you seem to be really hung up on the weasely aspect of the store I purchased my equipment from. So, a few points:
1) I've known these folks for several years, and spent a lot of time listening to equipment prior to purchasing it. There was no overt "selling" going on--for the most part, I could spend three hours listening to something, and not even be bothered.
2) Hiding speakers is for amateurs. While I certainly question the intentions of some of these shops, this small, two-person operation makes it quite clear that if you don't like it, return it in a month, no questions asked. I've known people who've done this, and they were more than happy to oblige.
3) The chief engineer of the speakers used by the reference system (Avalon Acoustics) is well-known amongst studio engineers. And, his speakers were used for a Grammy-nominated recording of the Minnesota Orchestra (directed by Eiji Oue at that point).
And, when it comes to salespeople, I'm as much a skeptic as you are. My acquaintances who sell cars pretty much tell me that I'm their customer from hell, and I've helped structure several deals in my career that were worth over $10 million. And, as work as a volunteer EMT in an urban area, I'm constantly needing to figure out if someone wants pain medication for bonafide pain or an addiction problem.
If you're calling me gullible, you've set the bar awfully high.
If the sound was recorded with a good dual-mic setup (in a performance hall with good acoustics for recording) you might get some distance information from the timings and echos of footsteps, but any "three-diminsional" positioning (and most 2D positioning) is in your imagination.
My imagination? Perhaps, but I also had others with me who have NEVER heard a reference system set up in this manner (custom room treatments, bass traps, etc.), who were suitably impressed, and commented on the same.
And, this is hardly something new: folks like Brian Eno have been using research in psychoacoustics to create albums that, when played back on the two-speaker reference system I mentioned earlier, include sounds that clearly seem like they emanate from the back of the room.
We've known about some of the aspects of sound spatialization for a while, but creating and reproducing them in a life-like manner has been difficult. After all, we only have two ears, but know when sound is coming from in front of us or behind us. With how you describe sound, you'd need an ear on the back of your head.
Absolute codswallop, "thousands of dollars of precision equipment". For 200 quid (GBP) you can buy a decent turntable and probably a good stylus as well.
I concur. After years of bashing "audiophiles"--I ended up becoming one. The truth, really, is in the listening. My friends (who also thought audiophiles were insane) were quickly converted upon listening to some music on my setup. I spent more than one would on something from Circuit City (around $3000), but quite frankly, it sounds nice, and articulates midrange especially well--key for jazz and classical.
I'll also note that there is fair amount of audiophile equipment that is overpriced and complete crap. The shop near Portland, Oregon I went to was very pleasant and had zero-pressure sales. Their philosophy: listen to what you want, stay as long as you'd like, and feel free to ask questions. And, if you don't like it when you bring it home, return it for a full refund. A basic new-in-box setup could be had for less than $1500, and last for years (compare that to the PC components that get disposed of almost annually).
I'd also note that not all audiophiles are in it simply to blow money on really expensive equipment. Richard Vandersteen, designer of my first set of speakers, once called me to personally answer some questions about equipment. While his favorite amps were quite pricey, he noted that once in a blue moon, a great amp design could be bought at Circuit City from a decidedly non-audiophile-oriented company (Sony, Yamaha, etc.). To snobs, this is heresy--but he was willing to admit that good stuff can be occasionally had for cheap.
As for LPs vs. CDs, it depends. Well engineered, pressed and preserved LPs sound really incredible, even on the $160K (no joke) reference system they have. (The speakers, I recall, have been used at Skywalker Sound, and were also used during the engineering of some Grammy-award winning classical music albums in the last year or so.) It was truly amazing to audibly "see" the footsteps of people walking in a three-dimensional space--on a record that was 30 years old. Downright scary and hair-raising, actually. This, from an old opera LP.
I side with my friends that note that a key difference between CDs and LPs is transient response. Loud drum crashes and rapid changes in volume seem to be rendered better on a well-engineered CD. Only in the last few years, I'd note, has CD come of age: HDCD (now owned by Microsoft) was a format that certainly helped, as well as better engineering (even the die-hard vinylphiles were very impressed by the Sony/Legacy re-release of Dave Brubeck's Take Five).
While the benefits of great engineering in 10 years has been a boon to audiophile equipment (especially in RF and high-frequency advancements), anyone involved in the arcane science of acoustic engineering will tell you that it's not just all TLAs (THD, SNR, blah blah) and numbers. Ultimately, like Ellington said, "if it sounds good and feels good, it IS good!"
I'm going to cautiously disagree here. I was raised in a church with an above-average quantity of homeschooled kids. I also ended up attending a philosophy school in California for a semester with many kids from homeschooled backgrounds.
Some aspects of their academic ability were impressively strong, especially in liberal arts, speaking and writing. Their abilities in the sciences were, perhaps, a bit weaker, and they weren't very well versed in discussing divergent political notions.
Probably the biggest criticism I (and my other college mates) had of the homeschooled students was that they were socially inept. The college I went to was very big on student-discussion driven, seminar classes. The homeschooled students frequently lacked the ability to dialogue in a diplomatic manner and had a hard time arguing different sides of things, both of which was very irritating.
Also, I'd be hard pressed to see how a parent could compete with a teacher with extensive training in education using multiple modalities, present at a school that was well-staffed with adequate resources.
The homeschooled kids weren't bad people by any stretch of the imagination, but to say that homeschooling is a panacea is a mistake. Socialization is a learned trait, and children miss out on that when they're not around others from diverse cultural, economic and religious backgrounds.
My sociology class was probably one of the best opportunities I've had to critically consider educational issues. I have private and public high school teachers among my friends, as well as professors at some good universities, and many of our conversations seem to involve several points:
* Lack of parent participation in the child's learning process * Lack of learning resources for teachers to draw on * Overburdened teachers * Teacher's unions protecting bad teachers, and providing no incentives for good performance * Emphasis on rote learning (especially with standardized testing, instead of taking the backgrounds of the students into consideration, and developing critical thinking abilities
Good books I read for this class:
Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol --Discussed about how a lack of funding, and perhaps more importantly, a lack of consideration for a multicultural classroom setting, is hampering the learning abilities of lower socioeconomic status students.
The Freedom Writers Diary --An aggregation of diary entries from a teacher and students of mixed socioeconomic status, and how literature motivated all of them to rise to the challenge of varying personal problems and go beyond the expectations of parents and school administrators. Of note: an interesting mention of support for the Freedom Writers program by John Tu, one of the founders of Kingston Technology.
I'd be amiss not to mention John Dewey, an American educational reformer who was seen as quite the rebel in his day. Much of his work we take for granted as good educational practice now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey
Therefore it is entirely possible lots of people will pay extra for hardware, expanding Apple's hardware base. You disprove your own argument here
You're getting hung up on semantics and missing the point here. It's also entirely possible for a car to fall on your domicile today. Likely? No.
The 'pretty looking box' examples you brought up are grotesquely expensive status symbols. Sorry, but mentioning that you own one or more of those items will likely get you laid. Telling a girl that you've got a dual G5 at home to show her will likely not work so well.
There are more than adequate numbers of sexy PC cases available, and any self-respecting overseas case manufacturer could clone the Apple case design in a matter of days. Apple's key marketing strategy is to associate their brand with a stable, user-friendly product--chiefly due to their OS. Lose that, and Apple's luster would be quite tarnished.
This is an improvement from his previously questionable submissions.
However, it appears that he did not RTFA. There is no evidence that Alain Ducasse had anything to do with this project--just his company.
This would be much like saying that "Bill Gates, the world's wealthiest man, was personally involved with removing spyware." Well, Microsoft was, but Bill. Ehhhh....
And, when I was a volunteer with Civil Air Patrol and sheriff's SAR groups in Oregon, yes, we did indeed spend our very own hard earned cash (probably around $1500 over 10 years), to purchase radio equipment that would be used for The Common Good.
Did we have organized procedures and methods, based on years of experience, science and analysis? Yes. Did we practice? Yes. Were we used when the local tri-county Motorola trunked radio system went down several years ago in Portland? Yes.
Believe it or not, there are quite a few people who do spend a not insignificant portion of their time to DEVELOP, PRACTICE and VOLUNTEER when disasters come up. I've been doing it for about 10 years now.
I test VoIP products for my company, and have found that QoS needs to be managed at a basic level. If you're in a household that has slower DSL, or limited upstream bandwidth (for instance, Comcast Cable Modem in Portland), it would be wise to have your router process and remark (DSCP) all of the traffic between your IP phones and the router as EF.
Granted, your ISP probably doesn't care if your traffic is marked EF, but would prevent PCs on your local network from clobbering your bandwidth during a call.
Also, check out OnDo SIP Server from Brekeke. I play with it in my VoIP lab, and find that it's a find piece of software for quick n' dirty SIP setups. It's free for non-commercial users.
The slightly more adventurous can try Asterisk@Home which has a streamlined setup.
Uh, what are you talking about? There are other codecs other than iLBC (a-law, u-law, TrueVoice, CELP, etc.). The GrandStream Budgetone-100 phones, for instance, default to a/u-law.
There is more difficulty than you assume in the process intercepting RTP/RTSP traffic and playing back the audio data.
I agree. I won't repeat the many good reasons why FireFox is an excellent solution, but would also remind people that open-source software must be easy to use and implement for adoption.
This may seem like a hackneyed point, but it really is quite true. I would have great confidence sending most anyone to the Firefox website to obtain and install FireFox. And, extending FireFox with plug-ins is relatively trivial.
I would not, however, feel so good about sending the general public over to SourceForge. Too confusing for most, I think. Open-source zealots forget this all too often. If you're designing a website to implement open-source to tech-savvy people, SourceForge is great. The real question is: would you send your grandmother there?
I, too, have worked in both state/federal government and corporate environments, and yes, there is definately waste in both.
However, when I look back over roughly 10 years of technology work, divided nearly equally into large corporation, medium-size business, and state/federal government, I'd have to say that the government employees tend to be the worst overall.
This is not to say that I have not worked with some incredibly talented and hard-working government employees. But when they make up roughly one out of the 20 people you deal with on a regular basis, your faith in the average government worker is not great.
Benefits? Sure, the pay may not necessarily be the best, but is sure as hell isn't the worst. And the benefits are easily among the best I've seen. I had to keep my mouth shut while patiently listening to a government employee gripe about how he only gets six weeks of vacation a year (plus federal holidays).
And yes: I do vote, I volunteer for my community, and have the pleasure of debating issues with individuals from many different walks of life.
Your straw man argument is hardly worth the chaff it's composed of.
The way they tested the quality of the video was HIGHLY questionable, IMHO.
I would have preferred that they use color bars and other reference standards that are relied upon by broadcasters and videographers.
For example, these DVDs: http://www.videoessentials.com
Also, they don't mention whether or not the monitor (TV or otherwise) they were using was calibrated. Quite frankly, it's possible that the color looked better simply because the video card was outputting a signal that was more amenable to the display device.
I worked with an engineering team that was working on broadcast-quality MPEG-2 streaming. They used things like Tektronix PQA picture quality analyzers, which are far more "objective."
While people should certainly adjust their TV settings (hue, saturation, contrast) to their taste, video testing should use better selection in content being analyzed, and be standards based. I'm sure that broadcast engineers reading this are rolling their eyes over the test methodology.
Of note: You should know that this scathing review of the NCLB was not written by a "bleeding heart liberal." In previous years, I worked on the Bush-Quayle campaign; I am no longer affilliated with any political party.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand the need for the Red Cross and other shelter organizers to promote a good atmosphere (well, as good as possible), but sheesh, I fail to see the harm done by a microtransmitter.
I am of the opinion that, overall, the American Red Cross is well organized and operated (I'm speaking with over six years of experience with EMS, SAR and Disaster Relief here). However, I have to sigh at the bureaucracy and lack of "out-of-the-box" thinking that sometimes crops up when I'm volunteering with them.
Not necessarily. There was a post on this topic earlier in the comments chain, regarding ARRL and Motorola testing BPL equipment that appears to _not_ cause interference.
= 13440126
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=160601&cid
You have clearly never been to Portland, Oregon. During the Spring, Summer and Fall, we have Farmer's Markets across the city that sell freshly picked produce, meats and incredible organic cheeses.
We have award-winning bakers from France who've started their own shops (St. Honore) and American-founded places like Ken's Artisan Bakery who could challenge nearly any boulangerie I've eaten at in Paris.
One could stand most anywhere in Portland and be within a mile of several kinds of ethnic food.
We're also the birthplace of James Beard, not far from the Willamette Valley wine appelation, which includes Domaine Drouhin Oregon (of the French Joseph Drouhin family), and frequently enjoy some of the best Pinot Noir made in the world, as well as the per-capita leading number of microbreweries in the world.
I've had the pleasure of spending two months in Europe, including Italy and France. While I've immensely enjoyed the food there, for you to say that we are completely lacking in taste makes you an ignorant gastrocentrist. We have over 270 million people, and can't all be the same.
Well, I agree with you about sales methodology. I've been in sales before, although I was never put in a position to be in the "dirty tricks" department (which is merciful). One aspect about living in Portland, however, is that there is a plethora of places to buy various things from (well, except cars) that are staffed by people who do put a lot of weight into letting the customer decide what they want. It jibes well with a tendency for Portlanders to be on the mellow/passive-aggressive temperament continuum.
I also agree with you on the subjectivity of sound reproduction. There is some research in the ability of some to hear and cognitively process sound (e.g., tone, timbre, rhythm) better (for instance, cardiologists). It's the whole tube vs. solid-state argument, which I personally think is more taste than anything else. Certainly, one could buy an expensive system for listening to Top 40 music, but ironically, some of my favorite pop songs I've heard on audiophile systems sounds downright horrible and strange in phase. Jewel, comes to mind--and even worse, it was engineered with HDCD.
Funny you mention Patek Philippe--my Swiss acquaintances love watches (especially Piaget), but none would ever cop a notion that they somehow keep time better. I like analog watches for the simple reason that they're easier to use when I need them for EMT work (much easier for me to see 15 seconds go by with a second hand during pulse or respiration measurement), but I'll take it in quartz over complications and jewelled-bearings.
Thirded, but for a different reason. I have a difficult time keeping up with the speed of some of my lectures, and typing (rather than writing) has always been quicker for me.
It works: I've frequently volunteered my class notes for other students (http://psych211.petelee.org/ and teachers are interested in seeing what I've written about their lectures.
The only thing I wish was for better battery life for notetaking. The ultimate notetaking machine for me was my PowerBook 100. Seems like I could get 3-4 hours of solid notetaking out of it.
Well, you seem to be really hung up on the weasely aspect of the store I purchased my equipment from. So, a few points:
1) I've known these folks for several years, and spent a lot of time listening to equipment prior to purchasing it. There was no overt "selling" going on--for the most part, I could spend three hours listening to something, and not even be bothered.
2) Hiding speakers is for amateurs. While I certainly question the intentions of some of these shops, this small, two-person operation makes it quite clear that if you don't like it, return it in a month, no questions asked. I've known people who've done this, and they were more than happy to oblige.
3) The chief engineer of the speakers used by the reference system (Avalon Acoustics) is well-known amongst studio engineers. And, his speakers were used for a Grammy-nominated recording of the Minnesota Orchestra (directed by Eiji Oue at that point).
And, when it comes to salespeople, I'm as much a skeptic as you are. My acquaintances who sell cars pretty much tell me that I'm their customer from hell, and I've helped structure several deals in my career that were worth over $10 million. And, as work as a volunteer EMT in an urban area, I'm constantly needing to figure out if someone wants pain medication for bonafide pain or an addiction problem.
If you're calling me gullible, you've set the bar awfully high.
If the sound was recorded with a good dual-mic setup (in a performance hall with good acoustics for recording) you might get some distance information from the timings and echos of footsteps, but any "three-diminsional" positioning (and most 2D positioning) is in your imagination.
My imagination? Perhaps, but I also had others with me who have NEVER heard a reference system set up in this manner (custom room treatments, bass traps, etc.), who were suitably impressed, and commented on the same.
And, this is hardly something new: folks like Brian Eno have been using research in psychoacoustics to create albums that, when played back on the two-speaker reference system I mentioned earlier, include sounds that clearly seem like they emanate from the back of the room.
We've known about some of the aspects of sound spatialization for a while, but creating and reproducing them in a life-like manner has been difficult. After all, we only have two ears, but know when sound is coming from in front of us or behind us. With how you describe sound, you'd need an ear on the back of your head.
Absolute codswallop, "thousands of dollars of precision equipment". For 200 quid (GBP) you can buy a decent turntable and probably a good stylus as well.
I concur. After years of bashing "audiophiles"--I ended up becoming one. The truth, really, is in the listening. My friends (who also thought audiophiles were insane) were quickly converted upon listening to some music on my setup. I spent more than one would on something from Circuit City (around $3000), but quite frankly, it sounds nice, and articulates midrange especially well--key for jazz and classical.
I'll also note that there is fair amount of audiophile equipment that is overpriced and complete crap. The shop near Portland, Oregon I went to was very pleasant and had zero-pressure sales. Their philosophy: listen to what you want, stay as long as you'd like, and feel free to ask questions. And, if you don't like it when you bring it home, return it for a full refund. A basic new-in-box setup could be had for less than $1500, and last for years (compare that to the PC components that get disposed of almost annually).
I'd also note that not all audiophiles are in it simply to blow money on really expensive equipment. Richard Vandersteen, designer of my first set of speakers, once called me to personally answer some questions about equipment. While his favorite amps were quite pricey, he noted that once in a blue moon, a great amp design could be bought at Circuit City from a decidedly non-audiophile-oriented company (Sony, Yamaha, etc.). To snobs, this is heresy--but he was willing to admit that good stuff can be occasionally had for cheap.
As for LPs vs. CDs, it depends. Well engineered, pressed and preserved LPs sound really incredible, even on the $160K (no joke) reference system they have. (The speakers, I recall, have been used at Skywalker Sound, and were also used during the engineering of some Grammy-award winning classical music albums in the last year or so.) It was truly amazing to audibly "see" the footsteps of people walking in a three-dimensional space--on a record that was 30 years old. Downright scary and hair-raising, actually. This, from an old opera LP.
I side with my friends that note that a key difference between CDs and LPs is transient response. Loud drum crashes and rapid changes in volume seem to be rendered better on a well-engineered CD. Only in the last few years, I'd note, has CD come of age: HDCD (now owned by Microsoft) was a format that certainly helped, as well as better engineering (even the die-hard vinylphiles were very impressed by the Sony/Legacy re-release of Dave Brubeck's Take Five).
While the benefits of great engineering in 10 years has been a boon to audiophile equipment (especially in RF and high-frequency advancements), anyone involved in the arcane science of acoustic engineering will tell you that it's not just all TLAs (THD, SNR, blah blah) and numbers. Ultimately, like Ellington said, "if it sounds good and feels good, it IS good!"
Sure, articles are self-serving, but they generally contain more information than his blog entries.
It's really about style points (which he is sadly lacking) and being grotesquely self-serving.
And, there are other technologies as well, such as TraumaDex:
http://www.buyemp.com/dept.asp?dept_id=10829&
Sheezus, did nobody notice the date on this article?
I'm going to cautiously disagree here. I was raised in a church with an above-average quantity of homeschooled kids. I also ended up attending a philosophy school in California for a semester with many kids from homeschooled backgrounds.
Some aspects of their academic ability were impressively strong, especially in liberal arts, speaking and writing. Their abilities in the sciences were, perhaps, a bit weaker, and they weren't very well versed in discussing divergent political notions.
Probably the biggest criticism I (and my other college mates) had of the homeschooled students was that they were socially inept. The college I went to was very big on student-discussion driven, seminar classes. The homeschooled students frequently lacked the ability to dialogue in a diplomatic manner and had a hard time arguing different sides of things, both of which was very irritating.
Also, I'd be hard pressed to see how a parent could compete with a teacher with extensive training in education using multiple modalities, present at a school that was well-staffed with adequate resources.
The homeschooled kids weren't bad people by any stretch of the imagination, but to say that homeschooling is a panacea is a mistake. Socialization is a learned trait, and children miss out on that when they're not around others from diverse cultural, economic and religious backgrounds.
My sociology class was probably one of the best opportunities I've had to critically consider educational issues. I have private and public high school teachers among my friends, as well as professors at some good universities, and many of our conversations seem to involve several points:
- behind-or-so-wed-like-to.html
- community-war-on-poverty.html
* Lack of parent participation in the child's learning process
* Lack of learning resources for teachers to draw on
* Overburdened teachers
* Teacher's unions protecting bad teachers, and providing no incentives for good performance
* Emphasis on rote learning (especially with standardized testing, instead of taking the backgrounds of the students into consideration, and developing critical thinking abilities
Good books I read for this class:
Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
--Discussed about how a lack of funding, and perhaps more importantly, a lack of consideration for a multicultural classroom setting, is hampering the learning abilities of lower socioeconomic status students.
The Freedom Writers Diary
--An aggregation of diary entries from a teacher and students of mixed socioeconomic status, and how literature motivated all of them to rise to the challenge of varying personal problems and go beyond the expectations of parents and school administrators. Of note: an interesting mention of support for the Freedom Writers program by John Tu, one of the founders of Kingston Technology.
I'd be amiss not to mention John Dewey, an American educational reformer who was seen as quite the rebel in his day. Much of his work we take for granted as good educational practice now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey
I ended up writing two essays for this class:
Why the NCLB won't work:
http://petelee.blogspot.com/2005/02/no-child-left
Education & The War on Poverty
http://petelee.blogspot.com/2005/03/education-and
Therefore it is entirely possible lots of people will pay extra for hardware, expanding Apple's hardware base. You disprove your own argument here
You're getting hung up on semantics and missing the point here. It's also entirely possible for a car to fall on your domicile today. Likely? No.
The 'pretty looking box' examples you brought up are grotesquely expensive status symbols. Sorry, but mentioning that you own one or more of those items will likely get you laid. Telling a girl that you've got a dual G5 at home to show her will likely not work so well.
There are more than adequate numbers of sexy PC cases available, and any self-respecting overseas case manufacturer could clone the Apple case design in a matter of days. Apple's key marketing strategy is to associate their brand with a stable, user-friendly product--chiefly due to their OS. Lose that, and Apple's luster would be quite tarnished.
This is an improvement from his previously questionable submissions.
However, it appears that he did not RTFA. There is no evidence that Alain Ducasse had anything to do with this project--just his company.
This would be much like saying that "Bill Gates, the world's wealthiest man, was personally involved with removing spyware." Well, Microsoft was, but Bill. Ehhhh....
No kidding. Goooooooooooooal!!!
Good lord, who modded this post up?
And, when I was a volunteer with Civil Air Patrol and sheriff's SAR groups in Oregon, yes, we did indeed spend our very own hard earned cash (probably around $1500 over 10 years), to purchase radio equipment that would be used for The Common Good.
Did we have organized procedures and methods, based on years of experience, science and analysis? Yes. Did we practice? Yes. Were we used when the local tri-county Motorola trunked radio system went down several years ago in Portland? Yes.
Believe it or not, there are quite a few people who do spend a not insignificant portion of their time to DEVELOP, PRACTICE and VOLUNTEER when disasters come up. I've been doing it for about 10 years now.
I test VoIP products for my company, and have found that QoS needs to be managed at a basic level. If you're in a household that has slower DSL, or limited upstream bandwidth (for instance, Comcast Cable Modem in Portland), it would be wise to have your router process and remark (DSCP) all of the traffic between your IP phones and the router as EF.
Granted, your ISP probably doesn't care if your traffic is marked EF, but would prevent PCs on your local network from clobbering your bandwidth during a call.
Also, check out OnDo SIP Server from Brekeke. I play with it in my VoIP lab, and find that it's a find piece of software for quick n' dirty SIP setups. It's free for non-commercial users.
The slightly more adventurous can try Asterisk@Home which has a streamlined setup.
Uh, what are you talking about? There are other codecs other than iLBC (a-law, u-law, TrueVoice, CELP, etc.). The GrandStream Budgetone-100 phones, for instance, default to a/u-law.
There is more difficulty than you assume in the process intercepting RTP/RTSP traffic and playing back the audio data.
I agree. I won't repeat the many good reasons why FireFox is an excellent solution, but would also remind people that open-source software must be easy to use and implement for adoption.
This may seem like a hackneyed point, but it really is quite true. I would have great confidence sending most anyone to the Firefox website to obtain and install FireFox. And, extending FireFox with plug-ins is relatively trivial.
I would not, however, feel so good about sending the general public over to SourceForge. Too confusing for most, I think. Open-source zealots forget this all too often. If you're designing a website to implement open-source to tech-savvy people, SourceForge is great. The real question is: would you send your grandmother there?
Redirect all traffic from the Goatse.cx domain to SpreadFirefox.com?
Oh please, spare me the polemic.
I, too, have worked in both state/federal government and corporate environments, and yes, there is definately waste in both.
However, when I look back over roughly 10 years of technology work, divided nearly equally into large corporation, medium-size business, and state/federal government, I'd have to say that the government employees tend to be the worst overall.
This is not to say that I have not worked with some incredibly talented and hard-working government employees. But when they make up roughly one out of the 20 people you deal with on a regular basis, your faith in the average government worker is not great.
Benefits? Sure, the pay may not necessarily be the best, but is sure as hell isn't the worst. And the benefits are easily among the best I've seen. I had to keep my mouth shut while patiently listening to a government employee gripe about how he only gets six weeks of vacation a year (plus federal holidays).
And yes: I do vote, I volunteer for my community, and have the pleasure of debating issues with individuals from many different walks of life.
Your straw man argument is hardly worth the chaff it's composed of.
The way they tested the quality of the video was HIGHLY questionable, IMHO.
I would have preferred that they use color bars and other reference standards that are relied upon by broadcasters and videographers.
For example, these DVDs:
http://www.videoessentials.com
Also, they don't mention whether or not the monitor (TV or otherwise) they were using was calibrated. Quite frankly, it's possible that the color looked better simply because the video card was outputting a signal that was more amenable to the display device.
I worked with an engineering team that was working on broadcast-quality MPEG-2 streaming. They used things like Tektronix PQA picture quality analyzers, which are far more "objective."
While people should certainly adjust their TV settings (hue, saturation, contrast) to their taste, video testing should use better selection in content being analyzed, and be standards based. I'm sure that broadcast engineers reading this are rolling their eyes over the test methodology.
It doesn't answer one of the most important questions of our modern times:
"What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
Of note:
You should know that this scathing review of the NCLB was not written by a "bleeding heart liberal." In previous years, I worked on the Bush-Quayle campaign; I am no longer affilliated with any political party.