"... For comparison, the economic impact of this phenomenon is roughly equal to that of Namibia or Macedonia...."
Okay, I'll bite (didn't see anyone else post it yet).
These are virtual goods that, in about two years, have transformed themselves into a real economy (the things sell for hard currency) already as big as whole countries?
Sure, they're small countries. But, they have lots of real people eating, working, making stuff. Probably a few rich ones, fattening the offshore bank account in the usual ways. Trust me, my own personal economy isn't that big, by a long shot.
Put another way, are we seeing a phenomena that would have doubled these economies, while making "goods" that didn't even exist a couple of years ago?
If I were the "Benign Dictator" of Nambia, I'd be getting right on it. Pronto.
"... I don't understand how the last manufacturer of this type of tape in the world could go out of business due to financial problems. If this type of tape really is still somewhat widely used as many people have noted, why didn't they just raise their price to whatever level they needed in order to be profitable?..."
The topic is a bit misleading; what he might have said is Quantegy makes the recording tape formula favored, for a bunch of reasons, by recording studios, and they're shutting down that factory.
Analog tape is still being made for other applications; this wasn't the world's last tape factory by a long shot, and there's a real possibility someone might resurrect the Quantegy plant yet. It's happened before. **
It also might help to note that digital is a form of data storage which is easily manipulated by computers; it's not tied to the storage medium itself. You can use open-reel tape to make digital recordings, and many digital recorders used by music professionals do exactly that.
However, in the last 5 years Hard Drives (hey, isn't that an analog medium storing digital data? Yes, it is!) and processing has come way down in price; while 24Bit/96Khz and recently 24/192Khz software and hardware has really come down in price. Studios use that more and more now.
The analog deck (ie stays in the analog domain) is mostly used for effects now, although a few very well respected engineers still stay all analog, or have gone back to it for their own reasons.
You don't need to buy cases of tape every week to do effects; it's not the recording/mixing/storage medium. You can get by with a few reels here and there.
The Studio needs to keep masters of a sufficient quality that it will be good not for today's 16/44.1 CDs but for tomorrow's hi-resolution format. Until very recently, tape was best for that. Now, it's not really necessary, thus the falling sales.
** Someone posted earlier about the last tube factory closing in the US. Well, they still make tubes in the US and will continue to do so for quite a while; it has military/aviation/space/broadcast applications and certain factories that the public never hears about are listed as critical national security facilities by the Defense Department. The US Gov't would subsidize, outright purchase, or otherwise "convince" these factories to stay running, if only in batch production, and they'll say so if you ask. They never really did quit.
But, I think he was referring to the tubes we're more familiar with, like music amplifier tubes. Well, the "last" factory has been bought and is running again, making the equivalent of the Western Electric 300B tube in the US as we speak. The same could happen to the Quantegy factory; after all the Quantegy factory this topic is about is really an AMPEX factory that AMPEX announced was shutting down years ago. It was purchased turn-key and kept running. It could happen again, quite easily. Maybe it's just bad management; who knows?
The big issue with tube manufacturing in the US is it's basically a nice big chemical Contamination-And-Cancer factory; it's got more to do with the EPA and liability than the lack of any market for tubes. There's a lot of factories in China, Eastern Europe, Russia, etc still running and making a very nice living, thank you.
"... Just a thought - if a developing country/state can afford to go that cheap, why here in US we have this rampant prices ?? Someone(Corporate world) out here is making big money. Isn't it time companies act in the interest of consumer rather than their own ?..."
The local costs are lower in India. Now, that's not to say there's no possibility of state subsidy; India does a great deal of it now, and have since independence. And I'm sure we could agree that some companies are making big money.
However, a large factor in comparing US and India's (or any delveloping country/state's) price structure is local costs. If they had to pay their IT staff 30 or 60K a year it would be more, but they don't have to because food, rents and clothing are much less there.
That's just one example, but it's illustrative. You might just as easily have said "workers out here [are] making big money". If you had, you probably would have quickly seen many of the issues affecting consumer costs of broadband in the USA; after all once the bills are paid workers don't feel rich at all.
Not all costs or pricing can move across borders like TV sets or a spool of optical cable. Rents are one common example. You can't move an acre of land from Idaho to New York City, so rents are stubbornly local, and significantly affect prevailing wages (and therefore costs) from one area to another.
Since wages comprise a significant portion of every single item or service's cost, all your suppliers, all your maintenance, everything is lower (or higher, as the case may be) which compounds the differences.
There are other factors, but that should get on your way to figuring it out. Some other factors would be regulatory issues (lots in the US, few in India), rights of way to lay cable (a major problem in the US), etc.
I worked in the industry at the time when cassette decks were mature products (the decade before the CD came out in '84). Our customers were consumers, musicians, broadcast and live sound; we sold a wide variety of gear from many vendors, including about 8 brands of cassette decks.
AIWA cassettes is a great example; no-one can accuse me of shilling a product they might be considering today.
AIWA made excellent, not just good, products, at a value price point to boot. In other words, the best of both worlds for consumer use.
Pro use requires sturdier gear, and AIWA simply didn't have the cash to stuff everything in there at the retail prices they engineered to. 2 out of 3 ain't bad, though, and sure beats 0 out of 3, which was pretty common. In fact, 3 out of 3 is about as rare as it gets. They were most certainly sturdy enough for the duty cycle in the home.
I always recommended them to my friends, and each and every one of them were very happy I did. But, they trusted me, and weren't afraid to buy something they hadn't seen or heard of elsewhere.
But, perhaps it does illustrate why the shennaigans are so common; AIWA was not the #1 or #3 and probably not even the #10 best selling decks at the time. Most of the people outside the industry had never heard of them, and they didn't get the press the Pioneers and Sonys did. The reviews tended to be favorable, but not overwhelming.
When you see reviews that range from, say, 7/10 to 9/10, and those 9's are shared by a dozen products you personally know to be variable in value, you have to wonder what, exactly they're good for.
The only reasonable approach is to know the reviewer. When his reviews and recommendations support your known "real-world" experiences, you can trust him.
Don't buy based on the others, but do read them so you can discover which are in someone's pocket; valuable information indeed.
"... and most of Canada not until the mid 1990s..."
Not sure where you get your information, but Photo Drivers Licenses were the norm in Canada in the 1980's and in some provinces were mandatory issue in the 1970's.
Saskatchewan did not have a photo driver's license requirement until 2001.
Every other province did, with Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia (which represent 75% of the population of Canada) having that requirement for 30 years or more.
I'm not positive on when, exactly other provinces not cited above made photo drivers licenses mandatory, but certainly before the 90's; it was well known that SK was the only holdout at the beginning of that decade.
As of June 01 2003 all Canadian Provincial Photo Licenses were revoked and replaced by the current (mandatory) version, which is a Canadian National Photo Drivers ID; issued by each province, it follows a specific form and contains identical information encoded in both a barcode and a magnetic stripe.
It also has a number of other security features including holograms, fleurescent inks, magnetic ink fonts, both magnetic bar and optical barcode scannable, etc.
For an idea of what a US Peace Officer can obtain in a routine check or traffic stop on a Canadian Resident with or without a driver's license see http://www.in.gov/isp/idacs/documentation/midx6g02.html (State of Indiana).
US residents in Canada will find that Canadian Police can access similar information (ie whatever a US officer can get) from Interpol/FBI quickly from the car or on patrol due to a formal information sharing agreement signed about 15 years ago and informally available for at least 10 years before that (they signed a formal agreement when the two governments figured out what they were doing was technically illegal prior to that point).
And for an example of an enterprising private firm that takes data off your driver's license when you shop or have a drink, see SWIPE http://www.we-swipe.us/plain.html#about/
I couldn't get the other links to work from the SWIPE site on this post (wrong referrer, perhaps?), but interesting info can be found at the SWIPE site, including an interactive map of each State and Province's current encryption methods and information on the SWIPE bar, that scans data from your drivers license when you order a refreshing beverage, ostensibly to "confirm" your drinking age.
If you don't care, you don't have to read the rest about the SK license and photo ID.
Although SK did not use a photo on the annual paper driver's license, Government Issue Provincial Photo ID was available for a fee ($10) from the provincial department regulating liquor laws as early as 1976 and was legal photo ID and proof of age in Canada; by the early 90's an optional Photo Drivers license was available as well as an non-drivers Photo ID card from a Motor License issuer.
This is similar to the "Identification Cards" for non-drivers issued in Minnesota (and other States) during the mid-to-late 80's and possibly earlier, which closely resemble the MN Photo Driver's License.
The current SK license is two parts; a 5-year photo ID and an annual paper license. It is not a valid drivers license without both parts present and current. This is similar to a Pilot's License, at least in Canada (the license is not valid without a current Medical Certificate accompanying it).
SK uses this system because the Driver's License is both an operator's permit and an annual insurance certificate, providing additional insurance beyond plate insurance for the holder involved in a motor vehicle accident in the US, Canada or Mexico (the insured does not have to be the driver; it covers the holder as passenger in a bus or as a pedestrian, for example).
Saw this about a month or possibly even two months ago. Same site, same test (more or less). At that time, they said it affected only browsers that had tabbed browsing enabled. Checked with Safari, vulnerable.
OSX Security Update of I dunno, a month ago fixed it.
Checked again, just to make sure. I always get the Citibank window, not the Security Site's one. In other words, not vulnerable.
I suppose a certain configuration could bring the vulnerability up, but I don't show the exploit and I'm on pretty much default config; java & javascript enabled, etc.
Maybe I just pay attention more than most, but doesn't everyone know this by now?
20 years ago they told us the kind of underwear you choose (and we can include going commando here as a choice) determines sperm count.
Tight underwear = lower count; loose = higher. They even told us it was because of the heat retention, which adversely affects the count and motility (how "peppy" the little fellas are).
Now, exactly which normal cognitive person needs a study to tell you s hot machine (or a heat lamp for that matter) on your upper legs might do the same thing?
I got it. Lets do a combo study to cross-correlate exactly which kind of underwear and which type of laptop is the absolute worst . Yeah, that's it.
Or maybe we could just figure it out for ourselves. Nah, let's submit it anyway; there's no research grant in using common sense, is there?
"... I have no idea how intellectual property prices will be affected by the dollar's decline. It depends upon the U.S. music / recording / software industries ability to maintain dominant and demand higher prices than the rest of the world. Should be interesting...."
They won't. Prices are negotiated with the rights holders, which in Canada is CIRA and in the US is the RIAA. They aren't related, except for being in the same business; ie a national rights organization for music.
The British have always paid the most for music (iTMS UK, Napster UK, CDs etc) and prices in Canada have always been lower than in the US since the 70's, if you convert currencies to make that comparison.
Although a comparison of download or CD prices versus currency values is interesting, the currency values themselves are irrelevant, because in each case it's domestic pricing for a domestic market, and in the domestic market only one rights holder has the right to sell music in that market.
In other words, the RIAA has the right to collect royalties for the Rolling Stones in the USA but not anywhere else. Technically, importing CDs, for example, deprives the RIAA of their legal revenue while rewarding the rights holder in the exporting country. Online downloads are not cross-border because of this.
Apple negotiates rates with the national rights holders, and that's about it, in a nutshell.
Some of the posters seem to be confused as to what, exactly this does. Now, they all seem to get the TV over IP part. Fine.
You buy the box for $6,500.00 and stick it in your house. Then you go off somewhere, let's say a hotel 3,000 miles away, and log in to your stream.
You don't lug the box around. It stays at home.
You don't "get" the Manchester United game or Moscow TV, unless you already could get them. Reread last sentence. Twice.
If you want to stream ESPN, you must already subscribe to ESPN at home. Reread that sentence, if necessary.
You can stream the local, over-the-air channels you might be missing in whatever God-forsaken hotel room you might find yourself in, for free if they are free at your house. At home.
You can stream the cable, satellite, or whatever you pay for and get at home.
What you don't get: Any channel you can't get at home, now. Channels you don't pay for now, if they require you to pay at home. No, you can't say goodbye to the cable company, tear down the dish, or steal the world's broadcast signals unless you already do steal them.
If you need the local news when you're in Bali, it's a workable solution. If you want 2,000 channels you can't get at home while you're in Bali, you still can't get them.
"... Not sayin' it is so... but HAD the election been accidentally given to Bush, now that Kerry has conceded, what would the legal recourse be??..."
Well, in the US, the offices of President and Vice-President are not directly elected by ordinary voters; they are elected by the Electoral College. So, technically, no-one has been elected yet.
December 7 2004 is the deadline to " Resolve any issues regarding election recounts, controversies, or contests. "
There are various meetings and deadlines in the near future (December 13, meeting of Electors; December 22, prepare and distribute Certificates of Vote; January 6, 2005, Count the Electoral Votes in Congress).
January 6 is the day the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates are declared elected.
The Electoral College is not necessarily bound by the votes of ordinary citizens and although the rules vary from State to State, it's possible for one candidate to get a State's Electoral College votes not supported by majority votes cast by ordinary voters on Election Day.
In other words, technically and legally, the College could easily give a majority vote to Kerry over Bush.
However, once Congress counts those Electoral College votes, it's over. There could, conceivably, be massive voter fraud committed during the General Election on November 2, but the Offices simply are not elected by those votes. The College rules, and what the College says, goes. There is no mechanism to reverse Electoral College votes once they are counted by Congress.
So, it's possible that Kerry could be declared President by the Electoral College vote tally, although highly unlikely. And, once the College declares Bush President, as they should do so according to both custom and the rules, then he is, quite simply, The President for the next four years. Nothing can change that (barring obvious things like death in office, impeachment, etc).
That's the second half of your post and isn't even relevant to what I commented on. You could even assume I agree with the "second half", since I haven't stated otherwise, anywhere.
"... No, people who like tubes are just infatuated with old stuff. No more complex than that.... "
Your statement that I replied to. Yes, I read your post. But after reading your polite response, why stop there?
"... Tube amps are still useful and fun, but they ARE obsolete.... "
Obsolete means no longer in use. You use them, and so do many others. You meant to say obsolescent; in other words becoming obsolete but still in use.
"... I do know that just because a crt has a vacuum, it isn't the same as a "vacuum tube" valve...."
It IS a "tube" or "valve" or your redundant term "Vacuum Tube Valve". Period. Perhaps you meant to say it's a tube with a different function than the tubes used in amplification.
"... One makes little pixels glow, the other regulates circuit flow...." Yep. By using charged electrodes (anode, cathode), one or more grids (controls flow of electrons) to move and control electrons in a vacuum. The electrons in a CRT strike a phospor coating which glows briefly at the point of impact.
Pixels are groups of these bright dots, and has to do with how computers work, not the tubes that display the output.
The topic is the 100th anniversary of the first tube, which acted as a diode, and a diode is not an amp either. But they all can be tubes. Perhaps you meant to post to some other topic regarding guitar amps.
Many tubes are obsolescent, many more are obsolete, but some are essential and in the case of high power applications (microwave frequencies, radar, etc), impossible with solid state.
Thermionic Valve, short form Valve = British term for vacuum tube. Vacuum Tube, Electron Tube, Tube = American terms for the same thing.
They are never properly called Vacuum Tube Valves.
Do you like your monitor or tv set? Like to warm a cup of soup with your microwave? Find it handy not to crash the commercial jet you're in with Air Traffic Control? Feel confident that your military can see and shoot down incoming threats? Are you happy that military can see and target hostile ships, planes, or submarines?
I can't argue with anything you've said; it's all pretty much the way things were.
I do think you misread me, however. "... model of access designed to take advantage of a new, emerging technology; ie dial-up internet for us ordinary folk...."
Let's rewrite it, replacing the latin for what it means in english:... new, emerging technology, for example: dial-up internet for us ordinary folk....
"For example" is not exclusive; it's just one example. ARPANET and BBS's are as much a part of the internet's history as online services like AOL; I don't draw a line between what went before and what we have now. WANs in one way or another.
In any case, thanks for your comments (expanding on the early user experience in particular).
"... ancelled AOL screen names were kept in a reserve for 6 months before they were available for use again..."
Actually, it's more like forever. I moved to a new house, and while waiting for broadband, fired up the ever-present AOL disk. This was 2 years after I had AOL for 2 months (similar reasons).
My "old" screenname was still "reserved". Got it back, used it for 2 weeks; and sat on the phone for the now familiar 2 hour call and 3rd degree interrogation to cancel after the DSL guy came and did his thing (added some filters to the non-broadband phone jacks).
AOL and similar services (Compuserve) were built around a model of access designed to take advantage of a new, emerging technology; ie dial-up internet for us ordinary folk. In the early 90's, they were the cutting edge; they made it easy for the ordinary person to get online, plain and simple. How could this not be popular? And it was.
Broadband and other providers are now beginning to eat at AOL's US marketshare (lack of new subscribers figures prominently), and for some reason, people (perhaps including the Time-Warner/AOL people) are surprised.
Where is AOL strong? The USA and the UK. Both have similar (in a broad sense) market realities; in the US it's the slow rollout of broadband due to structural reasons while in the UK it's the network's structure itself (expensive phone charges, often including tolls for local calls, and monopoly providers of broadband, who coincidentally have a financial interest in keeping you on dialup).
Now, Compuserve and AOL were big competitors in Canada at the beginning; then AOL bought Compuserve and quit offering it to new customers, although technically it still exists, sort of. Roll the clock back to 1995.
For a mature product category, it's a standard marketing given that a firm can expect to get business in Canada roughly equal to 10% of it's US business. At first, it looked like that with AOL/Compuserve in the US and Canada.
Then came broadband, and lots of competition. Storefront providers began showing up in my town around then, to the point where I could get access from dozens of dialup ISPs, some of which had as little as a few hundred customers. The local University offered it's network access at home for 10 bucks a month to employees and students.
As well, Cable and telephone companies began to get in (they lagged the mom-and-pop providers, getting serious towards the end of the decade). The local teleco had already rebuilt province-wide with fibre optic cable, completing it's network in the early 80's.
I had AOL for about 3 months in 1995 (you know, free with the computer). Then, I switched to broadband (CableModem) when it was introduced in my city. February 1996. A few months later DSL was offered (my local teleco was the first full-scale launch in N America, if you lived in the 2 largest cities 80% of the residential area had it available at launch). See "structural reasons", above.
Now, I don't live in some techno-heaven; I live in a city of less than 200K in a rural area; draw a circle 100 miles in radius around city hall and you get 260K, not 500. But, no regularory/right-of-way issues. Rollout is quick. Today (2004), if you live within 10 miles of a town of 800 people or more, anywhere in the province, you can get DSL.
Virtually all Canadian internet users came on after the introduction of broadband, not before. These customers don't know anything about AOL, and signed up with the broadband provider itself.
So, around 1998, after being firstest on the block, AOL was around number 8 in Canada (subscriber numbers). By 2000 they don't even register in the top 20. AOL/Compuserve never got past 1 million subscribers and have some fraction of that now.
We know AOL is quite familiar with this history; a lot of it is their history. So, here are the questions they should have asked themselves: Why didn't we get our 10%? We should have had around 3 million in Canada. Never even got to 1/3 of that. What can we do to combat broadband? Content? Pricing? Added Value? What? What is it our competition offers that's so attractive and how can we offer something that competes? Since we had this little micro-model showing us the future, what did we do to use this info to combat market forces in the US, where we still have a leg to stand on? What do you mean, "we did nothing"?
Personally, I think I would have switched to some variation of the @home model and made my service integral with a broadband provider. AOL would still be getting checks and new subscribers. Now that @home has failed and providers know how easy it is to do it themselves, even this model is now doomed.
Now, it may well be that the thing is not ready for prime time, although some other reviewers seem to think it is.
It's just that, I've read Good Old Charlie's stuff before, reviewing things I'm intimately familiar with.
His experiences, conclusions, and pretty much everything else conflicted with mine so much that I now simply trash anything with his byline without reading it at all (I didn't notice his byline on this article until the bottom of page 2; in other words, the end. I wish I'd noticed it earlier, coulda saved some time).
" Microsoft indeed has provided funding to the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution for five years, a Microsoft representative said, without disclosing how much has been granted. Microsoft funds several public policy institutes, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, the representative said. "
I think the real issue is whether hybrids offer significant advantages over well-engineered conventional vehicles with regard to gas mileage (and indirectly, emissions).
Away from the hype, it does seem that there is still much work to do on the hybrids; Volkswagen Diesels come very close in EPA tests, do very good on road tests by people like Car & Driver, and users report great mileage (I know a few; they're happy). So, are hybrids the answer, or are the auto companies just getting people to pay for beta testing?
There are driving styles that promote and kill your mileage; but considering all the other issues over driving, period, I don't see much hope in converting anyone there. I see people every day who don't know how to make a left turn, let alone think about how they might want to apply power and preserve momentum on the road.
I do get good mileage on my vehicle, and it's not, by any means, the darling of the eco movement (I drive a 3/4 ton truck, and yes, I haul 1-2 thousand pounds of stuff in the box most of the time; yes, it's different stuff every day, and a great many miles are not on pavement).
City mileage is around 15 and I get better than 25 on the highway, with a large engine (using an undersized engine in a working truck uses more, not less, gas).
Basically with an automatic you maintain steady power up to speed, and predict traffic (look beyond the guy directly in front of you and coast rather than brake when you know you're going to have to slow/stop soon).
If I mention it to a passenger, they are usually pretty amazed at exactly how much time I spend in traffic with my foot completely off the accelerator; they are also amazed at how little you slow doing that; momentum is pretty high in a 6,000 pound (loaded) vehicle.
With a manual, I find it best to accelerate fairly quickly to your desired speed (ie faster than with an auto trans but smoothly on the throttle) and then shift to the highest gear you can run at that point. But whatever.
But few people will drive that way; for one it requires you leave a few car lengths between you and the next guy even in slower city traffic, and people are always trying to take that space in lane changes.
In other words, you let guys get in front of you, and not many drivers on the roads today can stand that, so they keep close and use the gas and brake a lot.
One question I have after reading about how the EPA test estimates mileage based on what is essentially an emissions test, and how the test is quite old, is this:
Does the EPA still test the highway portion at 55?
There is a huge difference in fuel efficiency between 55 and 65; the absolute most efficient speed a modern auto drives at (for fuel consumption) is somewhere between 50 and 55 MPH.
Since hybrids are, shall we say, high-speed challenged vehicles, it may well be that driving 70 or 75 is way out of their efficiency range compared to a conventional engine (at 70-75) that will do an honest 100 if asked.
Not really a criticism, just a comment, mostly because we're seeing more and more of this type of story in the press where a lot of people are getting the wrong impression about eMail in general.
Although it's certainly of interest from an IT professional's perspective, I'm starting to get a little annoyed at how this is reported. We seem to have a format that simply gets repeated with each new study.
Statements like "32% of all eMail" reflect the volume of messages but we are really comparing (for a crude but illustrative example) 10,000 identical messages versus 20,000 individually crafted, wanted messages, for a total of 20,001 unique transmissions versus the sysadmin's problem of making room for 30,000 messages.
As this gets reported in the press, we're seeing more people who consider this good evidence to consider restricting the use of or abandoning eMail altogether. I know that the squeaky stat gets the headlines, but hopefully people have some perspective of what's really being described by the percentage.
eMail is very useful, for some indispensable. Spam is a problem (OK, it's a huge problem), but lest try to keep things in perspective. If you run across users in panic-mode, calm them down a bit.
I did a quick link to the "sound quality test" from the original Slashdot post, and we see a lone frequency response test chart. Umm, that's a half dozen tests and a few thousand words short, folks.
What's worse, I can tell from simply viewing the graph that the lone "test" is invalid. So, off we go to the test portion of the article to see what's up, and more importantly, if there is any other real audio data other than that chart that might be useful.
Aha. In plain English, there it is:
"... To verify the ear buds' frequency response, we devised the Ear 2.0, a life-size silicone rubber ear coupled with a calibrated microphone and sound level meter {Italics mine}. We played our test files into audio spectrum analyzer software and used the RightMark Audio Analyzer test suite (www.rightmark.audio.org) to verify our observations...."
And pretty much that's it. Not even a voltage/impedance measurement a 15-year old nerd could do to see what 3rd party headphones would work best. Oh, well.
Kids playing at a pro's game. I won't go into all the reasons why this is a silly idea, but for starters who told them that silicone and flesh/cartiledge have the same sonic absorption/reflection factor? Well, nobody, 'cuz they don't.
Where is the correction factor for the ear's own frequency response in direct near-field? No, it most certainly is not the same as the response from a sound in free air at a distance.
You could google for, i dunno, about a thousand long, confusing papers, but a nice short one that still gives the idea of how difficult (and how non-linear) this is can be found here: National Library of Medicine
For the lazy, the short answer is a correct earspeaker has nowhere near flat response in order for us to perceive it to be "flat" compared to sounds from what amounts to many thousand times the distance away. In their test, a "flat" response would actually be the worst performer.
The chart linked actually states "Minimal deviation from 0db is ideal." That's out and out wrong without correction factored in.
The problem starts with the assumptions they make for the "calibrated" microphone; it's only "calibrated" at a specific distance and frankly I don't see how you could calibrate it with their fixture at near-field. Most likely they just used a pre-calibrated mic (typically these are calibrated for a 1metre distance in free air) and ran with it. That alone could account for the wild swings, let alone their test fixture's own anomalies.
The graph shows swings of up to 30+ dB in the midrange, where the ear is most sensitive. This is like the difference between way loud and inaudible, and if that were the case each of these headphones/earbuds would sound terrible, perhaps worse than terrible. Since they don't sound that bad, why did they not glean the test must be flawed? Nah, just publish it, nobody will know the difference.
Excuse me, but I think I'll leave PCMac to the computer stuff and the audio stuff to the audio guys. Take it all with a grain of salt unless you're just interested in the digital details. These guys can't be trusted with a microphone.
"... Doubtful that a German decision would be considered by any court in the US...."
Replace "German. Germany, etc" with "US, American, etc" in the following prior post; still stands.
In fact, replace these two with any reasonably mature legal system with an established tort law (ie Russia may not be appropriate, Ireland or Australia or Finland would).
Any ruling by any court can be presented as an argument supporting your position; it is most compelling if there are no prior relevant precedents in your jurisdiction. By definition, that means the court will consider it, with varying weight but certainly not no weight whatsoever, providing it's applicable to the situation at all.
Parent Post:
"... A ruling from a German court can, and, in light od [sic] the recent drive (last five-ten years) to harmonize US with European copyright law, SHOULD be considered by a US court. It will never be considered "binding authority, but if no other US court has addressed the question presented, it would be trated as "persuasive authority" and followed IF the US judge found the German judge's legal analysis convincing.
Since the principles of contract (read, licensing) law are pretty similar on a worldwide basis, I imagine the US judges will give considerable weight to the only ruling on this question, particularly if it came out of a German Appellate court...."
Good flying weather; clear cloudless skys, most sunshine hours in North America (1), and a little less atmosphere the closer you get to the poles, gives a nice, wide launch window.
Same reason why 80,000 US pilots trained there in WWII, and many NATO nations train there now.
(1) Note; there are a few places with comparable or perhaps a bit more sunshine over 12 months, due to less sun in winter as you go further north. For the summer months, with even longer days, it's way more than anywhere in N America.
Horns will typically exhibit different distortion characteristics than, say, cone speakers. The high efficiency, for example, means the amplifier will be operating at a different part of it's range and can (but not always will) have much lower distortion at that level. Taken as a whole, they can sound terrible or quite good in comparison to conventional speakers.
They do work very well over a limited frequency range, however, and a sub qualifies there. Especially if it's a true subsonic frequency that is felt more than heard; the "seat of the pants" is far less annoyed at harmonic distortion than the ears are.
I don't see many problems with properly designed horns at subsonic frequencies, given enough physical space to pull it off, especially compared to the typical distortion characteristics of larger cone speakers which generally run around 10% THD at very low frequencies.
Since we easily tolerate large amounts of 2nd harmonic distortion (in fact, we don't even recognize it as distortion at all unless we are very familiar with what the original instrument sounds like unamplified) but are very sensitive to 3rd and other higher harmonics, sometimes the "total harmionic distortion" figure doesn't correlate to what we consider pleasing sound, so it's clearly not impossible to build a good sounding sub with cone speakers.
You are right that there are far more examples of poor sounding horns than good ones, but properly designed they can be quite amazing and lifelike.
They generally do have a character that is quite different from cone speakers and not everyone likes it, but then again you can say that for electrostatics and planar systems as well.
Computers, and CNC manufacturing, ironically, help enormously with the very complex math required to build a good horn, which for most of hifi's history were poorly designed and it shows.
Like you, however, I prefer conventional speakers overall; but I've certainly heard some very good horn speakers that have some qualities I can't get with cone speakers. The last word on any of this technology hasn't been written yet, there's room for improvement on all these topologies.
Slashdot Mirror
" ... For comparison, the economic impact of this phenomenon is roughly equal to that of Namibia or Macedonia. ..."
Okay, I'll bite (didn't see anyone else post it yet).
These are virtual goods that, in about two years, have transformed themselves into a real economy (the things sell for hard currency) already as big as whole countries?
Sure, they're small countries. But, they have lots of real people eating, working, making stuff. Probably a few rich ones, fattening the offshore bank account in the usual ways. Trust me, my own personal economy isn't that big, by a long shot.
Put another way, are we seeing a phenomena that would have doubled these economies, while making "goods" that didn't even exist a couple of years ago?
If I were the "Benign Dictator" of Nambia, I'd be getting right on it. Pronto.
" ... I don't understand how the last manufacturer of this type of tape in the world could go out of business due to financial problems. If this type of tape really is still somewhat widely used as many people have noted, why didn't they just raise their price to whatever level they needed in order to be profitable? ..."
The topic is a bit misleading; what he might have said is Quantegy makes the recording tape formula favored, for a bunch of reasons, by recording studios, and they're shutting down that factory.
Analog tape is still being made for other applications; this wasn't the world's last tape factory by a long shot, and there's a real possibility someone might resurrect the Quantegy plant yet. It's happened before. **
It also might help to note that digital is a form of data storage which is easily manipulated by computers; it's not tied to the storage medium itself. You can use open-reel tape to make digital recordings, and many digital recorders used by music professionals do exactly that.
However, in the last 5 years Hard Drives (hey, isn't that an analog medium storing digital data? Yes, it is!) and processing has come way down in price; while 24Bit/96Khz and recently 24/192Khz software and hardware has really come down in price. Studios use that more and more now.
The analog deck (ie stays in the analog domain) is mostly used for effects now, although a few very well respected engineers still stay all analog, or have gone back to it for their own reasons.
You don't need to buy cases of tape every week to do effects; it's not the recording/mixing/storage medium. You can get by with a few reels here and there.
The Studio needs to keep masters of a sufficient quality that it will be good not for today's 16/44.1 CDs but for tomorrow's hi-resolution format. Until very recently, tape was best for that. Now, it's not really necessary, thus the falling sales.
** Someone posted earlier about the last tube factory closing in the US. Well, they still make tubes in the US and will continue to do so for quite a while; it has military/aviation/space/broadcast applications and certain factories that the public never hears about are listed as critical national security facilities by the Defense Department. The US Gov't would subsidize, outright purchase, or otherwise "convince" these factories to stay running, if only in batch production, and they'll say so if you ask. They never really did quit.
But, I think he was referring to the tubes we're more familiar with, like music amplifier tubes. Well, the "last" factory has been bought and is running again, making the equivalent of the Western Electric 300B tube in the US as we speak. The same could happen to the Quantegy factory; after all the Quantegy factory this topic is about is really an AMPEX factory that AMPEX announced was shutting down years ago. It was purchased turn-key and kept running. It could happen again, quite easily. Maybe it's just bad management; who knows?
The big issue with tube manufacturing in the US is it's basically a nice big chemical Contamination-And-Cancer factory; it's got more to do with the EPA and liability than the lack of any market for tubes. There's a lot of factories in China, Eastern Europe, Russia, etc still running and making a very nice living, thank you.
" ... Just a thought - if a developing country/state can afford to go that cheap, why here in US we have this rampant prices ?? Someone(Corporate world) out here is making big money. Isn't it time companies act in the interest of consumer rather than their own ? ..."
The local costs are lower in India. Now, that's not to say there's no possibility of state subsidy; India does a great deal of it now, and have since independence. And I'm sure we could agree that some companies are making big money.
However, a large factor in comparing US and India's (or any delveloping country/state's) price structure is local costs. If they had to pay their IT staff 30 or 60K a year it would be more, but they don't have to because food, rents and clothing are much less there.
That's just one example, but it's illustrative. You might just as easily have said "workers out here [are] making big money". If you had, you probably would have quickly seen many of the issues affecting consumer costs of broadband in the USA; after all once the bills are paid workers don't feel rich at all.
Not all costs or pricing can move across borders like TV sets or a spool of optical cable. Rents are one common example. You can't move an acre of land from Idaho to New York City, so rents are stubbornly local, and significantly affect prevailing wages (and therefore costs) from one area to another.
Since wages comprise a significant portion of every single item or service's cost, all your suppliers, all your maintenance, everything is lower (or higher, as the case may be) which compounds the differences.
There are other factors, but that should get on your way to figuring it out. Some other factors would be regulatory issues (lots in the US, few in India), rights of way to lay cable (a major problem in the US), etc.
The US did not declare war on Germany in 1941.
The US declared war on Japan after a brief debate in Congress. During the debate it was agreed not to declare war on Germany.
Hitler, for some reason eager to engage the US, lost patience after waiting about a week and then Germany declared war on the USA.
I worked in the industry at the time when cassette decks were mature products (the decade before the CD came out in '84). Our customers were consumers, musicians, broadcast and live sound; we sold a wide variety of gear from many vendors, including about 8 brands of cassette decks.
AIWA cassettes is a great example; no-one can accuse me of shilling a product they might be considering today.
AIWA made excellent, not just good, products, at a value price point to boot. In other words, the best of both worlds for consumer use.
Pro use requires sturdier gear, and AIWA simply didn't have the cash to stuff everything in there at the retail prices they engineered to. 2 out of 3 ain't bad, though, and sure beats 0 out of 3, which was pretty common. In fact, 3 out of 3 is about as rare as it gets. They were most certainly sturdy enough for the duty cycle in the home.
I always recommended them to my friends, and each and every one of them were very happy I did. But, they trusted me, and weren't afraid to buy something they hadn't seen or heard of elsewhere.
But, perhaps it does illustrate why the shennaigans are so common; AIWA was not the #1 or #3 and probably not even the #10 best selling decks at the time. Most of the people outside the industry had never heard of them, and they didn't get the press the Pioneers and Sonys did. The reviews tended to be favorable, but not overwhelming.
When you see reviews that range from, say, 7/10 to 9/10, and those 9's are shared by a dozen products you personally know to be variable in value, you have to wonder what, exactly they're good for.
The only reasonable approach is to know the reviewer. When his reviews and recommendations support your known "real-world" experiences, you can trust him.
Don't buy based on the others, but do read them so you can discover which are in someone's pocket; valuable information indeed.
" ... and most of Canada not until the mid 1990s ..."
2 .html (State of Indiana).
Not sure where you get your information, but Photo Drivers Licenses were the norm in Canada in the 1980's and in some provinces were mandatory issue in the 1970's.
Saskatchewan did not have a photo driver's license requirement until 2001.
Every other province did, with Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia (which represent 75% of the population of Canada) having that requirement for 30 years or more.
I'm not positive on when, exactly other provinces not cited above made photo drivers licenses mandatory, but certainly before the 90's; it was well known that SK was the only holdout at the beginning of that decade.
As of June 01 2003 all Canadian Provincial Photo Licenses were revoked and replaced by the current (mandatory) version, which is a Canadian National Photo Drivers ID; issued by each province, it follows a specific form and contains identical information encoded in both a barcode and a magnetic stripe.
It also has a number of other security features including holograms, fleurescent inks, magnetic ink fonts, both magnetic bar and optical barcode scannable, etc.
For an idea of what a US Peace Officer can obtain in a routine check or traffic stop on a Canadian Resident with or without a driver's license see http://www.in.gov/isp/idacs/documentation/midx6g0
US residents in Canada will find that Canadian Police can access similar information (ie whatever a US officer can get) from Interpol/FBI quickly from the car or on patrol due to a formal information sharing agreement signed about 15 years ago and informally available for at least 10 years before that (they signed a formal agreement when the two governments figured out what they were doing was technically illegal prior to that point).
And for an example of an enterprising private firm that takes data off your driver's license when you shop or have a drink, see SWIPE http://www.we-swipe.us/plain.html#about/
I couldn't get the other links to work from the SWIPE site on this post (wrong referrer, perhaps?), but interesting info can be found at the SWIPE site, including an interactive map of each State and Province's current encryption methods and information on the SWIPE bar, that scans data from your drivers license when you order a refreshing beverage, ostensibly to "confirm" your drinking age.
If you don't care, you don't have to read the rest about the SK license and photo ID.
Although SK did not use a photo on the annual paper driver's license, Government Issue Provincial Photo ID was available for a fee ($10) from the provincial department regulating liquor laws as early as 1976 and was legal photo ID and proof of age in Canada; by the early 90's an optional Photo Drivers license was available as well as an non-drivers Photo ID card from a Motor License issuer.
This is similar to the "Identification Cards" for non-drivers issued in Minnesota (and other States) during the mid-to-late 80's and possibly earlier, which closely resemble the MN Photo Driver's License.
The current SK license is two parts; a 5-year photo ID and an annual paper license. It is not a valid drivers license without both parts present and current. This is similar to a Pilot's License, at least in Canada (the license is not valid without a current Medical Certificate accompanying it).
SK uses this system because the Driver's License is both an operator's permit and an annual insurance certificate, providing additional insurance beyond plate insurance for the holder involved in a motor vehicle accident in the US, Canada or Mexico (the insured does not have to be the driver; it covers the holder as passenger in a bus or as a pedestrian, for example).
Saw this about a month or possibly even two months ago. Same site, same test (more or less). At that time, they said it affected only browsers that had tabbed browsing enabled. Checked with Safari, vulnerable.
OSX Security Update of I dunno, a month ago fixed it.
Checked again, just to make sure. I always get the Citibank window, not the Security Site's one. In other words, not vulnerable.
I suppose a certain configuration could bring the vulnerability up, but I don't show the exploit and I'm on pretty much default config; java & javascript enabled, etc.
OSX 10.3.6/Safari 1.2.4
Maybe I just pay attention more than most, but doesn't everyone know this by now?
20 years ago they told us the kind of underwear you choose (and we can include going commando here as a choice) determines sperm count.
Tight underwear = lower count; loose = higher. They even told us it was because of the heat retention, which adversely affects the count and motility (how "peppy" the little fellas are).
Now, exactly which normal cognitive person needs a study to tell you s hot machine (or a heat lamp for that matter) on your upper legs might do the same thing?
I got it. Lets do a combo study to cross-correlate exactly which kind of underwear and which type of laptop is the absolute worst . Yeah, that's it.
Or maybe we could just figure it out for ourselves. Nah, let's submit it anyway; there's no research grant in using common sense, is there?
" ... I have no idea how intellectual property prices will be affected by the dollar's decline. It depends upon the U.S. music / recording / software industries ability to maintain dominant and demand higher prices than the rest of the world. Should be interesting. ..."
They won't. Prices are negotiated with the rights holders, which in Canada is CIRA and in the US is the RIAA. They aren't related, except for being in the same business; ie a national rights organization for music.
The British have always paid the most for music (iTMS UK, Napster UK, CDs etc) and prices in Canada have always been lower than in the US since the 70's, if you convert currencies to make that comparison.
Although a comparison of download or CD prices versus currency values is interesting, the currency values themselves are irrelevant, because in each case it's domestic pricing for a domestic market, and in the domestic market only one rights holder has the right to sell music in that market.
In other words, the RIAA has the right to collect royalties for the Rolling Stones in the USA but not anywhere else. Technically, importing CDs, for example, deprives the RIAA of their legal revenue while rewarding the rights holder in the exporting country. Online downloads are not cross-border because of this.
Apple negotiates rates with the national rights holders, and that's about it, in a nutshell.
Some of the posters seem to be confused as to what, exactly this does. Now, they all seem to get the TV over IP part. Fine.
You buy the box for $6,500.00 and stick it in your house. Then you go off somewhere, let's say a hotel 3,000 miles away, and log in to your stream.
You don't lug the box around. It stays at home.
You don't "get" the Manchester United game or Moscow TV, unless you already could get them. Reread last sentence. Twice.
If you want to stream ESPN, you must already subscribe to ESPN at home. Reread that sentence, if necessary.
You can stream the local, over-the-air channels you might be missing in whatever God-forsaken hotel room you might find yourself in, for free if they are free at your house. At home.
You can stream the cable, satellite, or whatever you pay for and get at home.
What you don't get:
Any channel you can't get at home, now.
Channels you don't pay for now, if they require you to pay at home.
No, you can't say goodbye to the cable company, tear down the dish, or steal the world's broadcast signals unless you already do steal them.
If you need the local news when you're in Bali, it's a workable solution. If you want 2,000 channels you can't get at home while you're in Bali, you still can't get them.
" ... Not sayin' it is so... but HAD the election been accidentally given to Bush, now that Kerry has conceded, what would the legal recourse be?? ..."
Well, in the US, the offices of President and Vice-President are not directly elected by ordinary voters; they are elected by the Electoral College. So, technically, no-one has been elected yet.
December 7 2004 is the deadline to " Resolve any issues regarding election recounts, controversies, or contests. "
There are various meetings and deadlines in the near future (December 13, meeting of Electors; December 22, prepare and distribute Certificates of Vote; January 6, 2005, Count the Electoral Votes in Congress).
January 6 is the day the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates are declared elected.
The Electoral College is not necessarily bound by the votes of ordinary citizens and although the rules vary from State to State, it's possible for one candidate to get a State's Electoral College votes not supported by majority votes cast by ordinary voters on Election Day.
In other words, technically and legally, the College could easily give a majority vote to Kerry over Bush.
However, once Congress counts those Electoral College votes, it's over. There could, conceivably, be massive voter fraud committed during the General Election on November 2, but the Offices simply are not elected by those votes. The College rules, and what the College says, goes. There is no mechanism to reverse Electoral College votes once they are counted by Congress.
So, it's possible that Kerry could be declared President by the Electoral College vote tally, although highly unlikely. And, once the College declares Bush President, as they should do so according to both custom and the rules, then he is, quite simply, The President for the next four years. Nothing can change that (barring obvious things like death in office, impeachment, etc).
" ... Refer to the second half of the topic: ..."
That's the second half of your post and isn't even relevant to what I commented on. You could even assume I agree with the "second half", since I haven't stated otherwise, anywhere.
The topic is "Happy 100th To The Vacuum Tube".
" ... No, people who like tubes are just infatuated with old stuff. No more complex than that. ... "
... "
... I do know that just because a crt has a vacuum, it isn't the same as a "vacuum tube" valve. ..."
... One makes little pixels glow, the other regulates circuit flow. ..."
Your statement that I replied to. Yes, I read your post. But after reading your polite response, why stop there?
"... Tube amps are still useful and fun, but they ARE obsolete.
Obsolete means no longer in use. You use them, and so do many others. You meant to say obsolescent; in other words becoming obsolete but still in use.
"
It IS a "tube" or "valve" or your redundant term "Vacuum Tube Valve". Period. Perhaps you meant to say it's a tube with a different function than the tubes used in amplification.
"
Yep. By using charged electrodes (anode, cathode), one or more grids (controls flow of electrons) to move and control electrons in a vacuum. The electrons in a CRT strike a phospor coating which glows briefly at the point of impact.
Pixels are groups of these bright dots, and has to do with how computers work, not the tubes that display the output.
The topic is the 100th anniversary of the first tube, which acted as a diode, and a diode is not an amp either. But they all can be tubes. Perhaps you meant to post to some other topic regarding guitar amps.
Many tubes are obsolescent, many more are obsolete, but some are essential and in the case of high power applications (microwave frequencies, radar, etc), impossible with solid state.
Thermionic Valve, short form Valve = British term for vacuum tube.
Vacuum Tube, Electron Tube, Tube = American terms for the same thing.
They are never properly called Vacuum Tube Valves.
Do you like your monitor or tv set? Like to warm a cup of soup with your microwave? Find it handy not to crash the commercial jet you're in with Air Traffic Control? Feel confident that your military can see and shoot down incoming threats? Are you happy that military can see and target hostile ships, planes, or submarines?
All impossible without vacuum tubes, even today.
I can't argue with anything you've said; it's all pretty much the way things were.
... model of access designed to take advantage of a new, emerging technology; ie dial-up internet for us ordinary folk. ..."
... new, emerging technology, for example: dial-up internet for us ordinary folk. ...
I do think you misread me, however. "
Let's rewrite it, replacing the latin for what it means in english:
"For example" is not exclusive; it's just one example. ARPANET and BBS's are as much a part of the internet's history as online services like AOL; I don't draw a line between what went before and what we have now. WANs in one way or another.
In any case, thanks for your comments (expanding on the early user experience in particular).
Regards.
" ... ancelled AOL screen names were kept in a reserve for 6 months before they were available for use again ..."
Actually, it's more like forever. I moved to a new house, and while waiting for broadband, fired up the ever-present AOL disk. This was 2 years after I had AOL for 2 months (similar reasons).
My "old" screenname was still "reserved". Got it back, used it for 2 weeks; and sat on the phone for the now familiar 2 hour call and 3rd degree interrogation to cancel after the DSL guy came and did his thing (added some filters to the non-broadband phone jacks).
AOL and similar services (Compuserve) were built around a model of access designed to take advantage of a new, emerging technology; ie dial-up internet for us ordinary folk. In the early 90's, they were the cutting edge; they made it easy for the ordinary person to get online, plain and simple. How could this not be popular? And it was.
Broadband and other providers are now beginning to eat at AOL's US marketshare (lack of new subscribers figures prominently), and for some reason, people (perhaps including the Time-Warner/AOL people) are surprised.
Where is AOL strong? The USA and the UK. Both have similar (in a broad sense) market realities; in the US it's the slow rollout of broadband due to structural reasons while in the UK it's the network's structure itself (expensive phone charges, often including tolls for local calls, and monopoly providers of broadband, who coincidentally have a financial interest in keeping you on dialup).
Now, Compuserve and AOL were big competitors in Canada at the beginning; then AOL bought Compuserve and quit offering it to new customers, although technically it still exists, sort of. Roll the clock back to 1995.
For a mature product category, it's a standard marketing given that a firm can expect to get business in Canada roughly equal to 10% of it's US business. At first, it looked like that with AOL/Compuserve in the US and Canada.
Then came broadband, and lots of competition. Storefront providers began showing up in my town around then, to the point where I could get access from dozens of dialup ISPs, some of which had as little as a few hundred customers. The local University offered it's network access at home for 10 bucks a month to employees and students.
As well, Cable and telephone companies began to get in (they lagged the mom-and-pop providers, getting serious towards the end of the decade). The local teleco had already rebuilt province-wide with fibre optic cable, completing it's network in the early 80's.
I had AOL for about 3 months in 1995 (you know, free with the computer). Then, I switched to broadband (CableModem) when it was introduced in my city. February 1996. A few months later DSL was offered (my local teleco was the first full-scale launch in N America, if you lived in the 2 largest cities 80% of the residential area had it available at launch). See "structural reasons", above.
Now, I don't live in some techno-heaven; I live in a city of less than 200K in a rural area; draw a circle 100 miles in radius around city hall and you get 260K, not 500. But, no regularory/right-of-way issues. Rollout is quick. Today (2004), if you live within 10 miles of a town of 800 people or more, anywhere in the province, you can get DSL.
Virtually all Canadian internet users came on after the introduction of broadband, not before. These customers don't know anything about AOL, and signed up with the broadband provider itself.
So, around 1998, after being firstest on the block, AOL was around number 8 in Canada (subscriber numbers). By 2000 they don't even register in the top 20. AOL/Compuserve never got past 1 million subscribers and have some fraction of that now.
We know AOL is quite familiar with this history; a lot of it is their history. So, here are the questions they should have asked themselves:
Why didn't we get our 10%? We should have had around 3 million in Canada. Never even got to 1/3 of that.
What can we do to combat broadband? Content? Pricing? Added Value? What? What is it our competition offers that's so attractive and how can we offer something that competes?
Since we had this little micro-model showing us the future, what did we do to use this info to combat market forces in the US, where we still have a leg to stand on?
What do you mean, "we did nothing"?
Personally, I think I would have switched to some variation of the @home model and made my service integral with a broadband provider. AOL would still be getting checks and new subscribers. Now that @home has failed and providers know how easy it is to do it themselves, even this model is now doomed.
The review is by Charlie White.
Now, it may well be that the thing is not ready for prime time, although some other reviewers seem to think it is.
It's just that, I've read Good Old Charlie's stuff before, reviewing things I'm intimately familiar with.
His experiences, conclusions, and pretty much everything else conflicted with mine so much that I now simply trash anything with his byline without reading it at all (I didn't notice his byline on this article until the bottom of page 2; in other words, the end. I wish I'd noticed it earlier, coulda saved some time).
" Microsoft indeed has provided funding to the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution for five years, a Microsoft representative said, without disclosing how much has been granted. Microsoft funds several public policy institutes, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, the representative said. "
CNet
I think the real issue is whether hybrids offer significant advantages over well-engineered conventional vehicles with regard to gas mileage (and indirectly, emissions).
Away from the hype, it does seem that there is still much work to do on the hybrids; Volkswagen Diesels come very close in EPA tests, do very good on road tests by people like Car & Driver, and users report great mileage (I know a few; they're happy). So, are hybrids the answer, or are the auto companies just getting people to pay for beta testing?
There are driving styles that promote and kill your mileage; but considering all the other issues over driving, period, I don't see much hope in converting anyone there. I see people every day who don't know how to make a left turn, let alone think about how they might want to apply power and preserve momentum on the road.
I do get good mileage on my vehicle, and it's not, by any means, the darling of the eco movement (I drive a 3/4 ton truck, and yes, I haul 1-2 thousand pounds of stuff in the box most of the time; yes, it's different stuff every day, and a great many miles are not on pavement).
City mileage is around 15 and I get better than 25 on the highway, with a large engine (using an undersized engine in a working truck uses more, not less, gas).
Basically with an automatic you maintain steady power up to speed, and predict traffic (look beyond the guy directly in front of you and coast rather than brake when you know you're going to have to slow/stop soon).
If I mention it to a passenger, they are usually pretty amazed at exactly how much time I spend in traffic with my foot completely off the accelerator; they are also amazed at how little you slow doing that; momentum is pretty high in a 6,000 pound (loaded) vehicle.
With a manual, I find it best to accelerate fairly quickly to your desired speed (ie faster than with an auto trans but smoothly on the throttle) and then shift to the highest gear you can run at that point. But whatever.
But few people will drive that way; for one it requires you leave a few car lengths between you and the next guy even in slower city traffic, and people are always trying to take that space in lane changes.
In other words, you let guys get in front of you, and not many drivers on the roads today can stand that, so they keep close and use the gas and brake a lot.
One question I have after reading about how the EPA test estimates mileage based on what is essentially an emissions test, and how the test is quite old, is this:
Does the EPA still test the highway portion at 55?
There is a huge difference in fuel efficiency between 55 and 65; the absolute most efficient speed a modern auto drives at (for fuel consumption) is somewhere between 50 and 55 MPH.
Since hybrids are, shall we say, high-speed challenged vehicles, it may well be that driving 70 or 75 is way out of their efficiency range compared to a conventional engine (at 70-75) that will do an honest 100 if asked.
Not really a criticism, just a comment, mostly because we're seeing more and more of this type of story in the press where a lot of people are getting the wrong impression about eMail in general.
Although it's certainly of interest from an IT professional's perspective, I'm starting to get a little annoyed at how this is reported. We seem to have a format that simply gets repeated with each new study.
Statements like "32% of all eMail" reflect the volume of messages but we are really comparing (for a crude but illustrative example) 10,000 identical messages versus 20,000 individually crafted, wanted messages, for a total of 20,001 unique transmissions versus the sysadmin's problem of making room for 30,000 messages.
As this gets reported in the press, we're seeing more people who consider this good evidence to consider restricting the use of or abandoning eMail altogether. I know that the squeaky stat gets the headlines, but hopefully people have some perspective of what's really being described by the percentage.
eMail is very useful, for some indispensable. Spam is a problem (OK, it's a huge problem), but lest try to keep things in perspective. If you run across users in panic-mode, calm them down a bit.
I did a quick link to the "sound quality test" from the original Slashdot post, and we see a lone frequency response test chart. Umm, that's a half dozen tests and a few thousand words short, folks.
... To verify the ear buds' frequency response, we devised the Ear 2.0, a life-size silicone rubber ear coupled with a calibrated microphone and sound level meter {Italics mine}. We played our test files into audio spectrum analyzer software and used the RightMark Audio Analyzer test suite (www.rightmark.audio.org) to verify our observations. ..."
What's worse, I can tell from simply viewing the graph that the lone "test" is invalid. So, off we go to the test portion of the article to see what's up, and more importantly, if there is any other real audio data other than that chart that might be useful.
Aha. In plain English, there it is:
"
And pretty much that's it. Not even a voltage/impedance measurement a 15-year old nerd could do to see what 3rd party headphones would work best. Oh, well.
Kids playing at a pro's game. I won't go into all the reasons why this is a silly idea, but for starters who told them that silicone and flesh/cartiledge have the same sonic absorption/reflection factor? Well, nobody, 'cuz they don't.
Where is the correction factor for the ear's own frequency response in direct near-field? No, it most certainly is not the same as the response from a sound in free air at a distance.
You could google for, i dunno, about a thousand long, confusing papers, but a nice short one that still gives the idea of how difficult (and how non-linear) this is can be found here:
National Library of Medicine
For the lazy, the short answer is a correct earspeaker has nowhere near flat response in order for us to perceive it to be "flat" compared to sounds from what amounts to many thousand times the distance away. In their test, a "flat" response would actually be the worst performer.
The chart linked actually states "Minimal deviation from 0db is ideal." That's out and out wrong without correction factored in.
The problem starts with the assumptions they make for the "calibrated" microphone; it's only "calibrated" at a specific distance and frankly I don't see how you could calibrate it with their fixture at near-field. Most likely they just used a pre-calibrated mic (typically these are calibrated for a 1metre distance in free air) and ran with it. That alone could account for the wild swings, let alone their test fixture's own anomalies.
The graph shows swings of up to 30+ dB in the midrange, where the ear is most sensitive. This is like the difference between way loud and inaudible, and if that were the case each of these headphones/earbuds would sound terrible, perhaps worse than terrible. Since they don't sound that bad, why did they not glean the test must be flawed? Nah, just publish it, nobody will know the difference.
Excuse me, but I think I'll leave PCMac to the computer stuff and the audio stuff to the audio guys. Take it all with a grain of salt unless you're just interested in the digital details. These guys can't be trusted with a microphone.
" ... Doubtful that a German decision would be considered by any court in the US. ..."
... A ruling from a German court can, and, in light od [sic] the recent drive (last five-ten years) to harmonize US with European copyright law, SHOULD be considered by a US court. It will never be considered "binding authority, but if no other US court has addressed the question presented, it would be trated as "persuasive authority" and followed IF the US judge found the German judge's legal analysis convincing.
..."
Replace "German. Germany, etc" with "US, American, etc" in the following prior post; still stands.
In fact, replace these two with any reasonably mature legal system with an established tort law (ie Russia may not be appropriate, Ireland or Australia or Finland would).
Any ruling by any court can be presented as an argument supporting your position; it is most compelling if there are no prior relevant precedents in your jurisdiction. By definition, that means the court will consider it, with varying weight but certainly not no weight whatsoever, providing it's applicable to the situation at all.
Parent Post:
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Since the principles of contract (read, licensing) law are pretty similar on a worldwide basis, I imagine the US judges will give considerable weight to the only ruling on this question, particularly if it came out of a German Appellate court.
Good flying weather; clear cloudless skys, most sunshine hours in North America (1), and a little less atmosphere the closer you get to the poles, gives a nice, wide launch window.
Same reason why 80,000 US pilots trained there in WWII, and many NATO nations train there now.
(1) Note; there are a few places with comparable or perhaps a bit more sunshine over 12 months, due to less sun in winter as you go further north. For the summer months, with even longer days, it's way more than anywhere in N America.
Horns will typically exhibit different distortion characteristics than, say, cone speakers. The high efficiency, for example, means the amplifier will be operating at a different part of it's range and can (but not always will) have much lower distortion at that level. Taken as a whole, they can sound terrible or quite good in comparison to conventional speakers.
They do work very well over a limited frequency range, however, and a sub qualifies there. Especially if it's a true subsonic frequency that is felt more than heard; the "seat of the pants" is far less annoyed at harmonic distortion than the ears are.
I don't see many problems with properly designed horns at subsonic frequencies, given enough physical space to pull it off, especially compared to the typical distortion characteristics of larger cone speakers which generally run around 10% THD at very low frequencies.
Since we easily tolerate large amounts of 2nd harmonic distortion (in fact, we don't even recognize it as distortion at all unless we are very familiar with what the original instrument sounds like unamplified) but are very sensitive to 3rd and other higher harmonics, sometimes the "total harmionic distortion" figure doesn't correlate to what we consider pleasing sound, so it's clearly not impossible to build a good sounding sub with cone speakers.
You are right that there are far more examples of poor sounding horns than good ones, but properly designed they can be quite amazing and lifelike.
They generally do have a character that is quite different from cone speakers and not everyone likes it, but then again you can say that for electrostatics and planar systems as well.
Computers, and CNC manufacturing, ironically, help enormously with the very complex math required to build a good horn, which for most of hifi's history were poorly designed and it shows.
Like you, however, I prefer conventional speakers overall; but I've certainly heard some very good horn speakers that have some qualities I can't get with cone speakers. The last word on any of this technology hasn't been written yet, there's room for improvement on all these topologies.