Now, if you download 1000 ACC songs you've spent $1000 bucks and have a license. [...]
$70 gets you the same number of songs on used CDs.
Yes, that's all well and good if you're interested in buying complete albums (in fact I have no problem shelling out $10-12 USD for new CD's). Where iTMS and its ilk excel is at buying individual songs.
Sorry, but paying even $5 for a bunch of songs I don't want (and possibly a used CD in questionable condition) just in case I have major money problems down the road doesn't make a lot of sense. I'd rather pay $1 for the song that I do want and put the other $4 in the bank.
Federal highway funds were used in the creation/upkeep of all of the other roads mentioned, and many more.
Well I know that FHWA funds are used to maintain all of the interstates (they are interstate highways:), but do you have a source that points to MA receiving Federal funds to build the other interstates?
Admittedly I can't find any online sources to back my claim, but MA paying for its own highways was something I heard from several people "in the know" (multiple MTA and MassHighway officials, local CivE's).
Of course you like it. You didn't have to pay for most of it. The rest of the country did.
Sure. Just like we helped pay for the interstate highway system in the rest of the country. IIRC the Big Dig is the first project in MA built using Federal Highway funds. The other major interstate highways in MA - I-90, I-91, I-93 and I-95 - were built with state funds.
Parts of the MBTA light rail, heavy rail, and commuter rail systems were upgraded or expanded as part of the mitigate package to offset increased pollution from autos on the central artery.
Of course everyone in the Boston area knows how well the Old Colony Restoration (especially the Greenbush line) was received...
The Ted Williams has been opened for a long time, they just screwed with the tax payers by making it commercial and taxi's only during the day for well over a year.
The Ted Williams tunnel opened in ~1995 and was open only to commercial traffic until the northbound lands/I-90 connector opened last spring. Exceptions were made during certain heavy traffic periods (such as Thanksgiving weekend).
That tunnel was only opened to commercial traffic because the routes between I-90/I-93 and the tunnel couldn't handle the volume of daily non-commercial traffic. Once all the I-90/93 connectors were completed, the tunnel was opened to all traffic.
Original projected cost: $2.5 billion
Final cost: $16 billion
One point that is often missed when people trot out these figures: the original "Big Dig" was essentially just the 3rd Harbor (Ted Williams) Tunnel and a few local improvements. Certainly a lot of the cost increases can probably be attributed to inefficiencies (such as the infamous fireboat), but much of the cost increase is due to an increased scope (eg. the I-93 tunnel), inflation, and unforeseen difficulties (for example the tunnel jacking and soil freezing operations ran into major problems).
Once this thing got started, no one in power was going to say, "STOP! It's costing too much!"
While no one really wanted to spend $16B, no one in Boston was going to say "stop" simply because we are sick of sitting in traffic 16 hours per day
Really, the elevated artery could have been renovated to provide the same benefits---minus the prettiness---that the Big Dig provides, and at a much reduced cost.
It would have been significantly cheaper (in absolute dollars) to renovate the elevated artery, but the long-term cost to the region would have been devastating since you would have to shut down the major north/south artery through Boston to do it (and no, moving traffic to an already overcrowded I-95 wouldn't have helped).
WMA files protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption cannot be transferred from computer to computer. If you want to play music you downloaded from Walmart.com on another computer [..], you must burn your music onto an audio CD to play it.
That would seem to imply that your tunes are limited to one PC only - unless they're referring to casual sharing.
Decibels are a logarithmic scale: an increase of 1 decibel actually corresponds to a 30% increase in noise levels.
Well it's more like a 13% increase in pressure level ( 20Log10(113/100)=1 dB )
Even so, it's generally accepted that most people can just barely detect a 1 dB increase/decrease in sound only in very carefully controlled laboratory experiments. For all practical purposes, a 1 dB increase or decrease in SPL is insignificant.
Why microphones? Why not a decibel meter? Surely that's the proper tool. Ubiquitous microphones sounds like the seed of yet another Orwellian nightmare.
When the article says "microphone" I'm sure it's just shorthand for "sound level meter." Alternatively, they may have recorded sound at all of the positions using calibrated microphones and determined the actual sound pressure levels in the laboratory.
Most of your points are valid, but I had to comment on this one:
1. When going through neighborhoods to prevent too much noise from being generated.
- Maglevs are MUCH more silent, not an issue
While it's true that a maglev vehicle is quieter than a steel wheel/steel rail train at the same speed, I can assure you (having participated in the noise & vibration measurement program for the TR08 for FRA) that when a maglev passes you at 300 mph, you will know it was there.
People have this perception that maglevs are guiet because they "float on air" - at low speeds (<100mph) they are fairly quiet, but at higher speeds the aerodynamic effects take over and they literally scream.
See my webpage for a link to the FRA TR08 vibration measurement report. The Volpe Center also has a link to the noise measurement report, but I don't have a direct link handy.
But the early universe at the moments they're talking about was crammed into a space less than a quarter the size of a proton. Any vibrations in the primordial soup would have to have a wavelength even smaller than this, and hence a frequency whose value in Hertz would boggle the mind.
The wavelengths of the vibrations have nothing to do with the size of the propagating medium. Some funny things can happen if the wavelength is much bigger than the the propagating medium (for example, think of a low frequency wave in a small room - the wave doesn't propagate, instead the whole room is pressurized). If this wasn't true, home audio/home theater would suck since bass response in most rooms would be limited to ~100 Hz.
Of course as some other posters have mentioned, physics were different during those first moments, so this hole explanation could be moot;)
But how much do you seriously think the mic is going to matter?
To the masses? It depends. The great majority probably won't care, although I have heard many audiophiles recommend recordings specifically because of the type and configuration of the mic(s) used in the recording.
But I didn't mean to imply that the talent (or marketing) doesn't matter - it certainly does. But your choice of mic can make a difference in the end product. You yourself pointed out the example of the Beastie Boys using cheap microphones because that is the sound they wanted.
Songwriting and playing talent is a lot more important than what mic you're using.
But your choice of mic can make a big difference in the quality of the sound recording. The Stereophile Test CD has a passage where J. Gordon Holt speaks text as the recording alternaties between 18 different high-quality microphones (brands include Shure, Sennheiser, Neumann, and even a B&K measurement mic). The difference in timbre between the different mics is amazing.
For example, the Atari laptop which looked in the same form factor as current ones. IBM Stole that design and produced its first thinkpad. Soon after, Apple stole the design again and produced the first Powerbook
Odd who gets the credit isn't it? It's Apple.
Apple isn't credited for the clamshell design, IIRC the clamshell design had appeared a couple of times before the first Powerbook. Apple is usually credited with the palmrest design that has come standard on many (not all) laptops since.
The 35 dBA spec is basically useless since it's given without a reference distance. With that in mind, 35 dBA is roughly the sound of a soft whisper at 5 feet (Ref: Martin Hirshorn, Noise Control Handbook). That's pretty darn quiet, assuming it refers to a reasonable distance from the chassis, say 3 to 5 feet.
My Panaflos are rated at 22dba, and I certainly wouldn't call them "silent".
Than they're probably louder than 22 dbA. 22 dBA is roughly the sound level at a remote area, at night, with no insect sounds or wind. If you live in a very quiet area, the sound level in your room may approach 25 dBA if your walls are well insulated, and no windows are open. No consumer sound level meter (Radio Shack brand, etc) would be able to accurately measure that low, and many professional level SLM's would have difficultly measuring that low (for example my $1800 TerraSonde ATB Pro has a noise floor of about 25 dB with its stock microphone).
Of course this all completely ignores the fact that measuring the sound level of a sound source that is lower than 40 dBA is pretty hard to do outside of an anechoic chamber since ambient sound levels can contaminate the measurements...
Not all email that is received in a spirit of hostility is spam, and sometimes, even if the receiver hates the message, they have to read it. But that's only if they get it. RSS significantly raises the barrier of entry, particularly for people without lots of Net savvy..
Agreed. However, I would point out that Microsoft has recently started offering RSS feeds. If they find it to be a useful technology, I'll bet we'll see an RSS aggregator integrated into Outlook or MSIE. If that happens, the barrier of entry will be significantly reduced.
Of course that brings about the question of whether or not having MS in the RSS client game is a good thing, but I'll worry about that later...
Why do the publishers just not do something like a moderated newsgroup on a restricted server?
If you're talking about a web-based newsgroup, then the only way to effectively moderate it is to register users, which means giving out an email address, and you have that whole "providing an email address just to get spammed" issue again.
If you're talking about a restricted NNTP server, then you have the issue with 1) people actually knowing what NNTP/Usenet is, and 2) people having to deal with multiple NNTP servers (some news clients are better than others at dealing with that).
Certainly you can work around these problems, but there is nothing inherent in a restricted newsgroup that automatically makes them better than an RSS-based solution, especially for one-way traffic.
Re:their SE course sucks
on
MIT Everyware
·
· Score: 1
I may be wrong, because I was Course VI and have no firsthand knowledge, but I think this is now 2.009,
You may be right - they reorganized the MechE curriculum my senior year (2.01, 2.02, 2.20, 2.40 etc got
morphed into 2.001, 2.002 etc), and I never really got to know the new courses.
with groups of 10-12 and a budget more like $10,000.
Is that $10,000 per group? Or per class? If it's per group, I'm gonna have to re-evaluate my alum donations...
Re:their SE course sucks
on
MIT Everyware
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I've been involved in software engineering education in two universities and this is by far the least realistic course I've seen. Realism is important because otherwise students won't understand what problems await them after they finish their education.
The courses offered through OpenCourseWare by no means represent all of the courses offered through MIT. I would actually be surprised if the EECS department didn't offer a course similar to what you described. Certainly you can so similar work through the Media Lab,
In MechE we were required to take a course (2.73) where we were presented with a problem and we where expected to develop an engineering solution to the problem. We were organized into groups of 30 students, given a real budget ($2000/group) and expected to do research and coordinate with industry contacts. So we got to deal with things like late suppliers, unreasonable expectations, prior art, etc.
By the end of the semester, we had to develop a working prototype of our solution, within the budget we were given. Each group then presented this prototype to a group of professors, investors and industry people, and had to demonstrate that the device was feasible to use and mass-produce.
Trust me, you will get real-world experience at MIT
Re:Something to keep in mind.
on
MIT Everyware
·
· Score: 1
while other universities are milking every cent they can MIT are actually promoting an interest in learning and sharing of information.
Trust me when I say that MIT is milking every cent they can get their hands on. It was a great experience, but "altruistic" is not a word I would associate with MIT.
Sure, I figure that Macs might have a place in a business or accounting context but not for engineering.
Engineering!=CAD
I am an engineer. I've worked on manyengineeringstudies over the past few years. I run a engineering company now. The number of times I've had to use a propriety CAD package I can count on my right hand.
Thanks to all of the open source packages out there, there are plenty of engineerng apps available for Mac OS X.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, if you download 1000 ACC songs you've spent $1000 bucks and have a license. [...]
$70 gets you the same number of songs on used CDs.
Yes, that's all well and good if you're interested in buying complete albums (in fact I have no problem shelling out $10-12 USD for new CD's). Where iTMS and its ilk excel is at buying individual songs.
Sorry, but paying even $5 for a bunch of songs I don't want (and possibly a used CD in questionable condition) just in case I have major money problems down the road doesn't make a lot of sense. I'd rather pay $1 for the song that I do want and put the other $4 in the bank.
Well I know that FHWA funds are used to maintain all of the interstates (they are interstate highways :), but do you have a source that points to MA receiving Federal funds to build the other interstates?
Admittedly I can't find any online sources to back my claim, but MA paying for its own highways was something I heard from several people "in the know" (multiple MTA and MassHighway officials, local CivE's).
Sure. Just like we helped pay for the interstate highway system in the rest of the country. IIRC the Big Dig is the first project in MA built using Federal Highway funds. The other major interstate highways in MA - I-90, I-91, I-93 and I-95 - were built with state funds.
Huh? It's an interstate highway! They couldn't build a pedestrian or bicycle lane!
Parts of the MBTA light rail, heavy rail, and commuter rail systems were upgraded or expanded as part of the mitigate package to offset increased pollution from autos on the central artery.
Of course everyone in the Boston area knows how well the Old Colony Restoration (especially the Greenbush line) was received...
The Ted Williams tunnel opened in ~1995 and was open only to commercial traffic until the northbound lands/I-90 connector opened last spring. Exceptions were made during certain heavy traffic periods (such as Thanksgiving weekend).
That tunnel was only opened to commercial traffic because the routes between I-90/I-93 and the tunnel couldn't handle the volume of daily non-commercial traffic. Once all the I-90/93 connectors were completed, the tunnel was opened to all traffic.
One point that is often missed when people trot out these figures: the original "Big Dig" was essentially just the 3rd Harbor (Ted Williams) Tunnel and a few local improvements. Certainly a lot of the cost increases can probably be attributed to inefficiencies (such as the infamous fireboat), but much of the cost increase is due to an increased scope (eg. the I-93 tunnel), inflation, and unforeseen difficulties (for example the tunnel jacking and soil freezing operations ran into major problems).
Once this thing got started, no one in power was going to say, "STOP! It's costing too much!"While no one really wanted to spend $16B, no one in Boston was going to say "stop" simply because we are sick of sitting in traffic 16 hours per day
Really, the elevated artery could have been renovated to provide the same benefits---minus the prettiness---that the Big Dig provides, and at a much reduced cost.It would have been significantly cheaper (in absolute dollars) to renovate the elevated artery, but the long-term cost to the region would have been devastating since you would have to shut down the major north/south artery through Boston to do it (and no, moving traffic to an already overcrowded I-95 wouldn't have helped).
Their FAQ says:
That would seem to imply that your tunes are limited to one PC only - unless they're referring to casual sharing.Well it's more like a 13% increase in pressure level ( 20Log10(113/100)=1 dB )
Even so, it's generally accepted that most people can just barely detect a 1 dB increase/decrease in sound only in very carefully controlled laboratory experiments. For all practical purposes, a 1 dB increase or decrease in SPL is insignificant.
When the article says "microphone" I'm sure it's just shorthand for "sound level meter." Alternatively, they may have recorded sound at all of the positions using calibrated microphones and determined the actual sound pressure levels in the laboratory.
Most of your points are valid, but I had to comment on this one:
1. When going through neighborhoods to prevent too much noise from being generated.
- Maglevs are MUCH more silent, not an issue
While it's true that a maglev vehicle is quieter than a steel wheel/steel rail train at the same speed, I can assure you (having participated in the noise & vibration measurement program for the TR08 for FRA) that when a maglev passes you at 300 mph, you will know it was there.
People have this perception that maglevs are guiet because they "float on air" - at low speeds (<100mph) they are fairly quiet, but at higher speeds the aerodynamic effects take over and they literally scream.
See my webpage for a link to the FRA TR08 vibration measurement report. The Volpe Center also has a link to the noise measurement report, but I don't have a direct link handy.
You can try LyME from Calerga. It's a lightweight Matlab clone that runs on the Palm OS.
And the best part: it's free! (as in beer)
Well depending on your POV, vinyl is also lossless. Both CD and vinyl are limited by audio bandwidth and noise.
The wavelengths of the vibrations have nothing to do with the size of the propagating medium. Some funny things can happen if the wavelength is much bigger than the the propagating medium (for example, think of a low frequency wave in a small room - the wave doesn't propagate, instead the whole room is pressurized). If this wasn't true, home audio/home theater would suck since bass response in most rooms would be limited to ~100 Hz.
Of course as some other posters have mentioned, physics were different during those first moments, so this hole explanation could be moot ;)
To the masses? It depends. The great majority probably won't care, although I have heard many audiophiles recommend recordings specifically because of the type and configuration of the mic(s) used in the recording.
But I didn't mean to imply that the talent (or marketing) doesn't matter - it certainly does. But your choice of mic can make a difference in the end product. You yourself pointed out the example of the Beastie Boys using cheap microphones because that is the sound they wanted.
But your choice of mic can make a big difference in the quality of the sound recording. The Stereophile Test CD has a passage where J. Gordon Holt speaks text as the recording alternaties between 18 different high-quality microphones (brands include Shure, Sennheiser, Neumann, and even a B&K measurement mic). The difference in timbre between the different mics is amazing.
You would be mistaken.
Odd who gets the credit isn't it? It's Apple.
Apple isn't credited for the clamshell design, IIRC the clamshell design had appeared a couple of times before the first Powerbook. Apple is usually credited with the palmrest design that has come standard on many (not all) laptops since.
The 35 dBA spec is basically useless since it's given without a reference distance. With that in mind, 35 dBA is roughly the sound of a soft whisper at 5 feet (Ref: Martin Hirshorn, Noise Control Handbook). That's pretty darn quiet, assuming it refers to a reasonable distance from the chassis, say 3 to 5 feet.
My Panaflos are rated at 22dba, and I certainly wouldn't call them "silent".Than they're probably louder than 22 dbA. 22 dBA is roughly the sound level at a remote area, at night, with no insect sounds or wind. If you live in a very quiet area, the sound level in your room may approach 25 dBA if your walls are well insulated, and no windows are open. No consumer sound level meter (Radio Shack brand, etc) would be able to accurately measure that low, and many professional level SLM's would have difficultly measuring that low (for example my $1800 TerraSonde ATB Pro has a noise floor of about 25 dB with its stock microphone).
Of course this all completely ignores the fact that measuring the sound level of a sound source that is lower than 40 dBA is pretty hard to do outside of an anechoic chamber since ambient sound levels can contaminate the measurements...
Agreed. However, I would point out that Microsoft has recently started offering RSS feeds. If they find it to be a useful technology, I'll bet we'll see an RSS aggregator integrated into Outlook or MSIE. If that happens, the barrier of entry will be significantly reduced.
Of course that brings about the question of whether or not having MS in the RSS client game is a good thing, but I'll worry about that later...
If you're talking about a web-based newsgroup, then the only way to effectively moderate it is to register users, which means giving out an email address, and you have that whole "providing an email address just to get spammed" issue again.
If you're talking about a restricted NNTP server, then you have the issue with 1) people actually knowing what NNTP/Usenet is, and 2) people having to deal with multiple NNTP servers (some news clients are better than others at dealing with that).
Certainly you can work around these problems, but there is nothing inherent in a restricted newsgroup that automatically makes them better than an RSS-based solution, especially for one-way traffic.
You may be right - they reorganized the MechE curriculum my senior year (2.01, 2.02, 2.20, 2.40 etc got morphed into 2.001, 2.002 etc), and I never really got to know the new courses.
with groups of 10-12 and a budget more like $10,000.Is that $10,000 per group? Or per class? If it's per group, I'm gonna have to re-evaluate my alum donations...
The courses offered through OpenCourseWare by no means represent all of the courses offered through MIT. I would actually be surprised if the EECS department didn't offer a course similar to what you described. Certainly you can so similar work through the Media Lab,
In MechE we were required to take a course (2.73) where we were presented with a problem and we where expected to develop an engineering solution to the problem. We were organized into groups of 30 students, given a real budget ($2000/group) and expected to do research and coordinate with industry contacts. So we got to deal with things like late suppliers, unreasonable expectations, prior art, etc.
By the end of the semester, we had to develop a working prototype of our solution, within the budget we were given. Each group then presented this prototype to a group of professors, investors and industry people, and had to demonstrate that the device was feasible to use and mass-produce.Trust me, you will get real-world experience at MIT
Trust me when I say that MIT is milking every cent they can get their hands on. It was a great experience, but "altruistic" is not a word I would associate with MIT.
Engineering!=CAD
I am an engineer. I've worked on many engineering studies over the past few years. I run a engineering company now. The number of times I've had to use a propriety CAD package I can count on my right hand.
Thanks to all of the open source packages out there, there are plenty of engineerng apps available for Mac OS X.