Google Voice has one critical flaw, and that is it has an inherent "processing delay" that it introduces into the voice path.
The delay is slightly longer than the delay most cell phones have talking to another cell phone. When you add the Google Voice delay in, it's almost an unbearable 1/3 to 1/2 a second.
I've used it from my land line calling calling out because of the free calling feature, and for that the delay is tolerable. But I can't justify having it forward to my cell phone because if anyone calls me from a cell phone, the combined lag makes the conversations really hard to have.
I'm suspicious of the quality of his results, especially his assertion that kids actually *preferred* the MP3 encoded results.
There are MANY explanations for why this could be occuring. For one, many MP3 encoders apply a low-pass filter to encoded data to smooth out artifacts. It's not clear that this professor's audio playback equipment is uniformly able to reproduce higher frequency sounds - very few people have that kind of equipment who aren't professional audio recording engineers.
I would believe it's just as likely that his "uncompressed" audio files actually SOUND WORSE because they are creating distortion in the playback equipment that the MP3 filtered files are not.
This reminds me of a story I heard once on NPR about audio engineers who worked on live audio feeds for music shows. They found that most people had crappy quality radios - they got the best response from supposed audiophiles when they applied a low-pass filter below 9KHz before it went out over the air waves.
Without a doubt, Wii Sports made the Wii the popular console that it is today. That small collection of easy to play games has the biggest mass appeal of any game I've seen come out in many, many years. How many games have you seen that entices your parents and grandparents to buy a console?
I'd even go as far to say that if Wii Sports was not bundled with the Wii at launch, the Wii probably would not be the runaway success it is today.
If you don't want to mess with drivers and hunting everything down, and want a MythTV box that JUST WORKS, get or build a Dragon.
http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?products_id=44
The specs about what is in the box are open - you are welcome to build your own, or you can just pay the guys at StormLogic your money and they will custom build the box and ship it out to you.
I bought one of their boxes and am happy customer. I'm watching dual-channel HDTV over the air and as a loyal Tivo customer for over 5 years, I have to say this is one of the BEST purchases I've made. Being able to customize it later once you get braver with linux is just icing on the cake.
I got so tired of waiting for the radioSHARK that I ended up cobbling together the equivalent; I bought a Griffin iMic and hooked it up to a D-LINK USB FM Radio (DSBR-100), now discontinued. It requires both of the USB ports of my powerbook.
I use it to record Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and A Prairie Home Companion each week, which then gets burned as mp3 files to a CD-RW that play in my car's mp3 player. It's great to listen to the NPR weekend programming as part of my daily commute. It's all done with some Applescripts and cron entries in OS X. I also have scripts which change the Energy control panel so the laptop automatically turns on before the broadcast and powers down when the recording is complete.
If I had to replace my setup I'd have to buy the radioSHARK since there are no FM USB tuners that will work with my powerbook. I hope there will be an API so I can have it write mp3 files instead of making a pit-stop through AIFF.
OpenDebates has been doing a good job publicizing the lack of a real presidential debate recently. The founder, George Farah, was recently on NOW with Bill Moyers to discuss this. He also has a book out, No Debate, which covers this. The website is a fascinating read.
Probably the only way to get good audio quality
on
Linux Toys
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· Score: 1
I've debated about setting one of these up too. I've been rather disappointed with the audio quality of all of the consumer answering machines out there. Way back when they were new, I understood the need to skimp on memory and use rather lossy compression algorithms, but now, it seems you can't get any decent audio out of an answering machine these days. Part of me thinks this is a conspiracy to get you to purchase a telephone company supplied subscription to their service. Has anyone found any good quality answering machines? Or even low-cost business voicemail systems?
Is it to protect the copyright of the software author? No, that's what copyright law is for.
I disagree. The point is that you might be able to code a nice, very efficient voting system with cool features you don't want your competitors to *easily* replicate by copying your code. If you copyright your code, and close the source, that makes it a bit easier. If your code is open-source, then you've given up that advantage.
I agree with the original poster - leave a paper trail! The primary reason for having a computer help you vote is so to make it less likely for you as a user to make a mistake.
I encode with lame --nogap and it works great with software players such as xmms, but I have yet to find any hardware-based players which will be able to play it back with no gap.
I'm not interested in doing random mixes - I'd just like to listen to albums the way they were intended, with tracks that smoothly transition from one to the other. This is common in classical concert performances, and with DJ-ed trance mixes.
Does this mean we *finally* have a portable mp3 player (non-cd based) that can play back gapless recordings? This is one of the few features that has held me back from buying an iPod.
Universal Home Video actually did fix the problem, and you can obtain free replacement discs for parts 2 and 3 by writing or calling Universal Home Video. Call 1-888-703-0100 and they'll even send you a pre-paid mailing envelope so you don't even have to pay for postage!
For those of you buying a DVD set in the store, look for a small "V2" printed on the back of the box. The new discs also have a small "V2" printed on them, but only on discs 2 and 3. Disc 1 is not misframed.
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Google Voice has one critical flaw, and that is it has an inherent "processing delay" that it introduces into the voice path.
The delay is slightly longer than the delay most cell phones have talking to another cell phone. When you add the Google Voice delay in, it's almost an unbearable 1/3 to 1/2 a second.
I've used it from my land line calling calling out because of the free calling feature, and for that the delay is tolerable. But I can't justify having it forward to my cell phone because if anyone calls me from a cell phone, the combined lag makes the conversations really hard to have.
You can't talk to bus drivers, and that's been banned.
I'm suspicious of the quality of his results, especially his assertion that kids actually *preferred* the MP3 encoded results.
There are MANY explanations for why this could be occuring. For one, many MP3 encoders apply a low-pass filter to encoded data to smooth out artifacts. It's not clear that this professor's audio playback equipment is uniformly able to reproduce higher frequency sounds - very few people have that kind of equipment who aren't professional audio recording engineers.
I would believe it's just as likely that his "uncompressed" audio files actually SOUND WORSE because they are creating distortion in the playback equipment that the MP3 filtered files are not.
This reminds me of a story I heard once on NPR about audio engineers who worked on live audio feeds for music shows. They found that most people had crappy quality radios - they got the best response from supposed audiophiles when they applied a low-pass filter below 9KHz before it went out over the air waves.
I'd even go as far to say that if Wii Sports was not bundled with the Wii at launch, the Wii probably would not be the runaway success it is today.
If you don't want to mess with drivers and hunting everything down, and want a MythTV box that JUST WORKS, get or build a Dragon. http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?products_id=44 The specs about what is in the box are open - you are welcome to build your own, or you can just pay the guys at StormLogic your money and they will custom build the box and ship it out to you. I bought one of their boxes and am happy customer. I'm watching dual-channel HDTV over the air and as a loyal Tivo customer for over 5 years, I have to say this is one of the BEST purchases I've made. Being able to customize it later once you get braver with linux is just icing on the cake.
The default home page, and links to msn.com, are worth a *lot* of money in terms of traffic.
I got so tired of waiting for the radioSHARK that I ended up cobbling together the equivalent; I bought a Griffin iMic and hooked it up to a D-LINK USB FM Radio (DSBR-100), now discontinued. It requires both of the USB ports of my powerbook.
I use it to record Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and A Prairie Home Companion each week, which then gets burned as mp3 files to a CD-RW that play in my car's mp3 player. It's great to listen to the NPR weekend programming as part of my daily commute. It's all done with some Applescripts and cron entries in OS X. I also have scripts which change the Energy control panel so the laptop automatically turns on before the broadcast and powers down when the recording is complete.
If I had to replace my setup I'd have to buy the radioSHARK since there are no FM USB tuners that will work with my powerbook. I hope there will be an API so I can have it write mp3 files instead of making a pit-stop through AIFF.
OpenDebates has been doing a good job publicizing the lack of a real presidential debate recently. The founder, George Farah, was recently on NOW with Bill Moyers to discuss this. He also has a book out, No Debate, which covers this. The website is a fascinating read.
I've debated about setting one of these up too. I've been rather disappointed with the audio quality of all of the consumer answering machines out there. Way back when they were new, I understood the need to skimp on memory and use rather lossy compression algorithms, but now, it seems you can't get any decent audio out of an answering machine these days. Part of me thinks this is a conspiracy to get you to purchase a telephone company supplied subscription to their service. Has anyone found any good quality answering machines? Or even low-cost business voicemail systems?
I disagree. The point is that you might be able to code a nice, very efficient voting system with cool features you don't want your competitors to *easily* replicate by copying your code. If you copyright your code, and close the source, that makes it a bit easier. If your code is open-source, then you've given up that advantage. I agree with the original poster - leave a paper trail! The primary reason for having a computer help you vote is so to make it less likely for you as a user to make a mistake.
Wow, you have one of these already?
I encode with lame --nogap and it works great with software players such as xmms, but I have yet to find any hardware-based players which will be able to play it back with no gap.
I'm not interested in doing random mixes - I'd just like to listen to albums the way they were intended, with tracks that smoothly transition from one to the other. This is common in classical concert performances, and with DJ-ed trance mixes.
Does this mean we *finally* have a portable mp3 player (non-cd based) that can play back gapless recordings? This is one of the few features that has held me back from buying an iPod.
Universal Home Video actually did fix the problem, and you can obtain free replacement discs for parts 2 and 3 by writing or calling Universal Home Video.
Call 1-888-703-0100 and they'll even send you a pre-paid mailing envelope so you don't even have to pay for postage!
For those of you buying a DVD set in the store, look for a small "V2" printed on the back of the box. The new discs also have a small "V2" printed on them, but only on discs 2 and 3. Disc 1 is not misframed.