"Hydrogen is like electricity. Neither can be mined or found by exploration. The upside is that you can make hydrogen from almost anything -- out of any material that has hydrogen in it."
-- Christine Sloane, GM director of technology strategy development
Thanks for that insight, director of technology strategy development!
Geez, doesn't Steven Hawking have anything better to do with his time????:)
New Scientist had a feature on this earlier...
on
Listening to Leonids
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· Score: 2, Informative
This was described in a New Scientist feature, first issue this year, and the same explanation was given.
To see the article, you'll need to get a trailist account with their archive. Once you have it, go here, or search for "Sizzling Skies" in the 06 Jan 01 issue.
You should look into alternatives to those two. MPEGplus (*.mpc; *.mp+) is a variable bit rate (VBR) codec that gives much higher sound quality than MP3 at equivalent bit rates. I used it in conjunction with Exact Audio Copy (EAC - the *best* CD ripping software out there), and was quite pleased with the results. Supposedly, if you use the "-insane" parameter on the encoder, it's completely indistinguishable from the original, with average bit rate of around 230 kbps. I didn't test this, but here is a link to a simple comparison, and here is a more detailed one. MPEGplus' homepage has a pretty detailed description of how it works. Unfortunately it doesn't sound very good at low bit rates (but at 170 kpbs it sounds better than high (192-256+ kbps) bit rate MP3s), but hey, what's that 100 GB drive for?
Of course, with a drive that size, you could go all-out and use Monkey's Audio, lossless audio compression (you can decode to get *exactly* the same WAV file that was encoded. Compression ratio of only 2:1 or so, but again...what's the 100 GB drive for?!! Get on Google and search around for some comparisons, and make an educated choice.
Believe me, I'd love to move. I finally made it to the last year of school and, if all goes well, I'll be heading out to do a first degree in the U.S. (ahhh...fat connection...drool).
I live in a country (Oman) where the government owns the only ISP, and, as it is an Islamic government, censors the web (by blocking all "offensive" content). If you want to see what we get when trying to access an "offensive" website, here is the page that comes up. (I must say, however, that "we hope that they will find Internet interesting in many other areas" is a slightly amusing indirect insult if the user was trying to access pr0n, and, as such, almost makes up for the whole censorship thing - NOT!)
This would be OK if they just blocked pornography, but they also block hacking sites (such as 2600.com) and, as with all other censorship, they also block their fair share of non-offensive (by their standards) websites. www.newton.org.uk is the only example I can think of now, but I've seen more. Previously, an anonymous web browser could be used to get around this, but they caught on and decided to brand those as "offensive" too.
So, if you ever feel like your government is clamping down on your freedom, just remember that there are people like me in countries where the government is <WORDPLAY> just plain unjust.</WORDPLAY>
Oh, I forgot to mention that the single, government-owned ISP provides 56kbps as its fastest option (unless you are a government agency or Internet cafe, in which case you can have 256kbps for a measly $2,500 a month). So, not only does it block many interesting sites (I keep seeing links in/. comments - click - D'oh! That stupid "Important Notice" again) but it provides a very slow, unreliable service with which to access then non-offensive content.
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Thanks for that insight, director of technology strategy development!
Geez, doesn't Steven Hawking have anything better to do with his time???? :)
To see the article, you'll need to get a trailist account with their archive. Once you have it, go here, or search for "Sizzling Skies" in the 06 Jan 01 issue.
Of course, with a drive that size, you could go all-out and use Monkey's Audio, lossless audio compression (you can decode to get *exactly* the same WAV file that was encoded. Compression ratio of only 2:1 or so, but again...what's the 100 GB drive for?!! Get on Google and search around for some comparisons, and make an educated choice.
Believe me, I'd love to move. I finally made it to the last year of school and, if all goes well, I'll be heading out to do a first degree in the U.S. (ahhh...fat connection...drool).
This would be OK if they just blocked pornography, but they also block hacking sites (such as 2600.com) and, as with all other censorship, they also block their fair share of non-offensive (by their standards) websites. www.newton.org.uk is the only example I can think of now, but I've seen more. Previously, an anonymous web browser could be used to get around this, but they caught on and decided to brand those as "offensive" too.
So, if you ever feel like your government is clamping down on your freedom, just remember that there are people like me in countries where the government is <WORDPLAY> just plain unjust.</WORDPLAY>
Oh, I forgot to mention that the single, government-owned ISP provides 56kbps as its fastest option (unless you are a government agency or Internet cafe, in which case you can have 256kbps for a measly $2,500 a month). So, not only does it block many interesting sites (I keep seeing links in /. comments - click - D'oh! That stupid "Important Notice" again) but it provides a very slow, unreliable service with which to access then non-offensive content.