Parent poster makes an excellent point which is why I believe a large part of going to school should be about teaching people how to teach themselves.
I really do believe that teaching somebody to learn on their own is an important yet widely ignored skill set. As an employer, people who can are high on the hiring list.
Those with a higher brain capacity are precisely the type of people who would choose to become taxi drivers where their increased mental capacity could best be used to advance society.
That's a good question actually. For example, when I get the deja vu feeling, it is usually because I feel as I have heard something (or discussed something with someone) before. If my sighted deja vu is mostly auditory, why is it a surprise that someone who can't see experiences the same feeling?
I don't know about anybody else but this hasn't induced any fear, uncertainty or doubt in me about Linux.
However, it has induced REAL fear, REAL uncertainty and REAL doubt in Novell SUSE. Up until this incident started, I had pretty much decided that SUSE would be the distribution we would base all our new web/db/mail servers on owing to its combination of corporate support and ease of use.
Now I'm back on the fence considering Red Hat or another distro.
Unfortunately, I think SUSE inadvertently screwed themselves. In this regard, I have to say that Red Hat is doing an awesome job. They have deliberately tried to meet the Linux "community standards" while still being commercial. If only they were more open with their non-Fedora distributions, we would have probably standardized on Red Hat from the start.
This is an interesting concept but I see it having a major shortcoming:
You are now forced to make a decision before you print on whether the output should be temporary or permanent. Sometimes I will print something thinking it's temporary but I decide I need it longer. Or imagine the potential disaster of writing notes on the printout "in context" and that context disappears after 16 hours. Stuff like "ask Mary about this part" or "copy editing" marks.
I applaud the idea of paper recycling like this but couldn't see myself using it.
I think it has a few other issues too:
1. Needing two printers to print
2. Possibly not being able to distinguish between the two types of paper (assuming they look similar)
3. Having to print twice if you decide that you want a permanent copy
Thanks for chiming in Bozdune. I felt reluctant to reply to an "Anonymous Coward" but I figure I'd chime in to your reply.
In fact, we consciously made the decision to use the non-English "$20 bucks" because we wanted the copy to sound friendly. "20 bucks" (without the $) didn't look right because there is a quick and strong cognitive link with the "$" symbol while "$20" didn't read right because it would probably be pronounced "20 dollars." We found that nobody had a problem reading "$20 bucks."
Our CityMax copy is based on a direct advertising style which takes on a conversational tone.
We have written and tested (I estimate) a hundred revisions and keep the copy that has the highest sales rates. Our target market seems to be attracted to this copy.
That said, we are working on a complete revamp to all of the copy on the citymax.com website to take a more "informational" style instead of a "direct" marketing style. I feel this is much more appropriate to today's Internet users. Our copy, while continually refined, is based on a direct style which I think is less popular now than it was even just a few years ago. That said, only testing of this new copy will tell us for sure.
Our user interface is largely based on research done by Jakob Nielsen (useit.com) and the new copy will be based around the same ideas.
Note: Another reason for the change is that direct marketing is often good for making sales but less good for building a brand. When we started, we made a clear directive that we were not interested in brand at all, but only in sales. I did start the company very close to the Internet bubble bursting after all. Our company is now becoming a size and success level which I believe requires us to consider brand development.
While we aren't looking for cash at this point (we are cash rich) we may consider fund raising in the future either through IPO or private funding or an outright sale. At this point, brand becomes important.
If you are managing tech and either of these describes you, you could use improvement:
You are a manager with little tech knowledge
You are a techie with little management knowledge
The problem with the tech managers you had is that they just didn't know enough about how to manage or had enough management experience. They believed that all techies are just like them. That TRAIT, is a problem. And while it may be beneficial to be managed by a non-techie, the company may suffer overall because the manager does not know how to drive his team.
I am CEO/owner of a 25 person (successful, profitable and fast growing) Internet company and my best managers are both comfortable being in a management role and are very smart in the area they manage. A good manager knows the capabilities of his/her team and also knows what they don't know and helps them learn it. Instead of resigning ourselves to be as weak as our weakest link, we teach that we need to be as strong as our strongest link and we have created a teaching and learning environment. This doesn't work if the manager doesn't understand much of the tech him/herself.
The result? Many people think our company is 2-4x as large as it actually is. We have an environment where everybody loves coming to work. There is a huge amount of respect for our managers and there is constant praise both from managers, from the teams and across team boundaries. We love our work, we work hard and in our case, our tech managers were actually all techies first but they have received guidance on how to be a good manager. I don't think a really good manager can be just either/or.
This is a philosophy I have personally taken throughout my life. I came out of business school from marketing (though most of my best marketing knowledge I learned through books), but also am a programmer (wrote most of our original code), graphic designer (owned a design co) and was CTO for another Internet company. The more I know about my business as a whole, the better I can run my company.
I tend not to reply to replies to my own postings but I'm glad that I replied to yours. Thanks for taking the time to explain, in more detail, knowledge of the problem space. You've picked up a part-time reader for your blog (I tend not to read any blog continuously).
I agree with everything you've said
I do feel that a major part of the solution is harnessing what I feel is a generous amount of untapped power in the free market.
For example, I believe that if you put in a reward system that makes sense (the "makes sense" is the hard part) then talented entrepreneurs will make each dollar work harder.
Here is another launching point for discussion. To be clear, I don't think this (like the other idea) is the actual solution, but I believe it's a valid starting point.
Let's say each school is completely independent. You can open as many schools as possible but each school must accept all applicants up to its capacity in its region. In cases where capacity is full, applicants are accepted based on proximity or a lottery (there are problems with both methods I know but this is just an example). Also, I'm realizing that this wouldn't happen immediately, but we're pretending we're there already.
Some things I see coming out of this are:
* If somebody comes up with a fantastic way to improve education quality at lower costs, the idea will move around a lot faster. Money is a great incentive for change. * If somebody develops a learning system, schools would buy this up because of increases in efficiency * There would be incentives for schools to hire good teachers * There would be incentives for schools to fire bad ones (which I think is a good thing)
I think my preferred solution isn't necessarily equality because I don't know if that would work today (though I think it is a laudable goal for the future); my preferred solution is efficiency. So will there be discrepancy? Sure. But if the system as a whole got better in the process, the poorer schools would still be better off by 25% (or whatever the overall efficiency improvement was).
In other words, poor school may still have 20% lower grades than rich school but both schools might have 25% more knowledge transfer than under the old system. It's sort of like when people compare U.S. (or Canadian) poverty levels to that of other countries and complain that we're falling behind. Our poverty levels still include food, walls and a television. If everybody's new C grade level became the old B grade level, I think that's a good step.
Thanks again for your reply. Improvements in education actually is one of the things I'd like to pursue in my lifetime.
You seem quite angered but what I meant was that I think the actual solution (the final system) would be quite simple but that finding the algorithm for that solution would require thought. In fact, I do say this but I think this was not clear enough.
I know that the totality of an education system is more complex than the business that I run but I also know that I've come up with some amazingly 'simple' solutions that have reduced my operating costs in parts of the company by 50%. The solution itself is simple, but figuring that out was difficult enough that I don't see any of our competitors doing the same, even though our solution is actually publicly visible.
I think one part of the equation that I missed explaining myself about is this:
Kids in rich neighbourhoods ALREADY get more money than kids in poor neighbourhoods (at least if the U.S. system works anything like the Canadian). The reason why I felt this system has a good chance at being acceptable is it doesn't start by turning the system on its head. A system that pays all schools equally from the get-go simply wouldn't have any political traction.
However, smart innovators have the ability to actually make more money in the poor sectors because the high end would already be very competitive. This would actually allow competition in the poorer areas. As it is, an innovative principle in a poor area could work their ass off creating the ultimate teaching system and while he would, perhaps, have a great deal of pride, he wouldn't earn anymore than he already is.
To be clear, at the time I wrote my original post, I immediately thought of about five areas that weren't being properly handled by only a direct x-y algorithm. I also figured there'd be hundreds of other ideas that need to be considered. What I was hoping for was a kick-start of, perhaps, some ideas that made sense that would piggy back or replace that original idea.
Bounce those ideas off of others who've done the same. If you are not serious about offering a solution, then quit spouting off on chat boards about how 'simple' that solution assuredly is.
Just to be clear, I realize this isn't an education board but it is a chat board and this is one of the places I choose to bounce my ideas off of. Sometimes I can get good ideas about my business from smart people who happen not to be in my industry. I think there are many (many) bright people on SlashDot (and well some not so bright ones too) who could have added to the idea.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I also realize that being on a board like SlashDot, I've opened myself up to criticism and, well, I got an earful of that. I took my chances.
But I also believe that constructive conversations on an idea are inherently good. My post here, and sometimes elsewhere, is to convince others that it is as well.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest
on
More A's, More Pay
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· Score: 4, Interesting
You've made bad assumptions in the equation.
That the "buyer" of public education is a citizen. But it doesn't have to be.
The "buyer" of public education can remain, as it is now, the government. By this criteria, the government decides how to reward schools for good performance and part of that could be rewarding for improving education in poor areas. In other words, the system breaking down under your analysis assumes that the citizens pay and rich citizens can pay more. This part of the free market system actually already exists. It's called a private school.
What the department of education is doing is creating competition within their suppliers of education (i.e. public schools).
I'd say, if you "objectively" rate education levels and reward based on objective criteria, this system has a chance of working.
Make no mistake, an algorithm for doing this requires some thought, but I think it can be done.
For example, consider this:
Schools earn x-y dollars per student where the actual value is determined by an objective performance measurement
Objective performance measurements are done nationally.
The performance measurement changes year by year based on national averages.
Of course, this does mean that areas pre-disposed to have smarter kids (e.g. rich kids who can afford better education aids, tutors, books, etc.) would tend to have better schools because it is easier to get better results but these schools would also tend to have more competition.
The free market would come up with innovative ways to tap the lower end market with new education ideas. Possibly things like more computer aided teaching so that there could be a lower teacher/student ratio without sacrificing education quality. Never underestimate the power of a free market and the desire to earn a buck.
Imagine if you were an entertainment company and you could sell software to schools that would teach kids how to read at an accelerated pace in a fun environment with less teacher involvement. Make kids want to learn. You'd have an automatic market for your product because the schools would want to buy it to increase their bottom line.
I know there are issues with this model but I also believe that a model can be designed that would ultimately be quite simple that would work and, I bet you almost any amount of money, you'd see amazingly innovative ideas that would give us better education cheaper.
Japanese seem to have a thing for liking made up names that are not easy to pronounce in Japanese. I'm Japanese and I remember making fun of all of the Japanese car names because most could not be pronounced in Japanese.
* Honda Accord (can't pronounce "r") * Honda Civic (can't pronounce "v") * Acura (can't pronounce "r") * Integra (can't pronounce "r") * Legend (can't pronounce "l") * Camry ( no 'r') * Corolla (holy crap!) * Celica (no 'l') * Supra (no 'r') * Avalon (no 'r')
I say no 'l' and no 'r' but they have a similar sound which is halfway between 'l' and 'r' which is why Japanese often mix these two letters up.
I was just going to comment that this may be less now that Acura has switched to letters but actually, that's not entirely true either.
* RL (both letters not easy to pronounce) * TL (L?) * RSX (R?)
Anyways, the fact that it can't be pronounced is not an impediment to them using that name. In fact, I think for many using these sounds make the products sound more upmarket. Besides, Revolution is also difficult to pronounce in Japanese.
p.s. wii would most likely be pronounced like oo-ee.
You can do the equivalent of a hot backup without any special software by replicating your database to another server. When you need the backup, you stop the replication and make a backup of the copy. After you reconnect the replication, the replication server will catch up again.
This is documented in the excellent book "High Performance MySQL" by O'Reilly. One of the authors is a database guru at Yahoo.
We were using MS SQL and, while I was interested in open source databases, did not have the confidence to use an open source database until reading this book. I know many will point me to PostgreSQL too, but the tools and the references for MySQL were better.
I tried to make that post so ridiculous that it would never be mistaken for anything but a joke. I was hoping for +4 funny but got +4 interesting instead.
My apologies to Mr. Lim and Mr. Takei who never said any of those things.
You see, the joke was, Lim was pissed he lost his role as Mr. Sulu to Takei. Of course, he lost it because Takei IS Mr. Sulu (more or less). Why would Lim be pissed? The irony was supposed be funny (obviously not if you have to explain the joke). The thing about the worm hole was supposed to add to the ridiculousness of the post but I guess in Star Trek, it came across as dead serious.
John Lim (Hikaru Sulu in New Voyages) playing the character formally played by actor George Takei, was reportedly pissed. "It's obviously an anti-Chinese thing," he noted. Takei maintained that Sulu was indeed Japanese and not Chinese and that Mr. Lim was just miscast from the beginning.
Lim suggested he was still open to reprise his role as Sulu in an upcoming New Voyages episode in which a future Sulu (Played by Takei) would meet his younger self in a time warp created by a worm hole.
The simulator setup of this is extremely cool but if I drive my car immediately after, say, playing Burnout, I have to suppress the urge to drive like I'm in a video game. I mean, I KNOW I'm not playing a video game anymore, but every car I see looks like a ramming object and I feel like if I just tip the back wheel of that car coming up, I can get a nice burnout bonus going.
I wonder if removing an important psychological difference between the videogame and the reality might (not saying will) cause instinctive reactions to be wrong. Obviously you still have the visual difference but now the steering wheel, accelerator, brake, etc. will be the same.
Let me attribute it this way: there is this door leading into an area with a bank machine. This door was horribly designed in that it had two bars. A vertical bar and a horizontal bar. Through years of design, we know that a vertical bar means pull and a horizontal means push. I had a good laugh watching people push/pull this thing the wrong way over and over again. I even commented on this to a friend. And of course, I had to go get some cash and I got in just fine. On the way out, in the split second where I was trying to figure it out in my head to decipher how it was backward, I screwed it up.
My point of all this is that if a problem were to happen, it would probably be in the instinctive category where our knowledge is not always tied to our reactions.
That said, I've always thought it would be cool to be able to "play car" in your real car.
What's most curious about this is why less complex creatures have an enormous ability to regenerate but more complex ones don't. If it is a matter of a few genes, you would expect that random mutations would impart the self-regeneration trait onto us but evolution has chosen not to.
I can only surmise that for complex creatures, self-regeneration is not only worthless, but is undesirable (since no complex creatures seem to have self-regeneration but many less complex creatures do). This, of course applies to complex creatures as a species anyways. I think I'd find it extremely valuable for myself.
I don't know the answer but perhaps it has to do with the thinking aspect of complex creatures and how that affects mating. I'd be interested in hearing others hypothesize about this.
Mono, Orange and Microsoft arrived early, and set out all of the stuff for the event... including the raffle prizes. The prizes were, foolishly it seems, laid out in the corner... footballs, kites, goodies and an SPV C550!
We are not entirely sure at which point the phone was stolen... but a number of people witnessed what appeared to be the C550 being wrapped in a cardigan and placed in a bag along with a couple of other items including an Orange football, and a kite that was apparently discarded.
At some point, probably prior to the raffle, the thief or his companion probably left the building, and took the C550 somewhere for safe keeping.
As those present at the event will know, when the theft was discovered, Monolithix (who should be commended for staying calm!) offered the thief every opportunity to return the phone with no comeback, pointing out the phone would be useless anyway as it would be blocked on all UK networks... but nobody came forward. Having spoken to 'cocky', he said he was afraid to come forward.
At this point, there was not a lot more we could do... we liaised with the staff at the Microsoft building, and determined that although there was no CCTV in the room, there was CCTV in the foyer.
On the following Monday, I contacted Orange to ask for the IMEI of the stolen phone so that we could conduct investigations, which Orange duly provided. I also investigated whether we could determine whether the stolen phone had been used with an Orange SIM (99% necessary if the thief unlocks the phone), and Orange confirmed that they could do this, albeit with a 1 week delay. This provided us with one possible avenue... although for Data Protection reasons, pursuing this route would have required the action to be taken with the Police.
I considered it very likely that the thief would have tried to unlock the phone... so armed with the IMEI of the stolen phone... I contacted the key players in the C550 unlock scene, Florin from IMEI-check and zone-mr from SPV-Developers.
Florin confirmed that the phone had not been unlocked with IMEI-check... however zone-mr couldn't confirm immediately, as he only retains an temporary backup of encrypted data from the phone, which he wasn't sure included the IMEI
A couple of hours later, on Monday evening, zone-mr contacted me to let me know he WAS storing the IMEI... and we had a match! Our thief HAD unlocked his C550... at 10:30pm on Saturday in fact! Even better news... careful analysis of the server logs on the spv-developers unlock server gave us the IP address of our thief!
The next step was to find out as much information as possible about the thief. We determined their ISP and some other information, and thought about how to proceed. On an off chance that the thief was foolish enough to unlock the phone from the same connection they used to browse MoDaCo... I checked out the MoDaCo logs, and the MoDaCo sessions table.
Success!
Our thief was logged on, and the logs were full of the IP address in question... all pointing to one user.... COCKY!
Cross matching this address with the Event registration list confirmed that cocky HAD attended the event... and not only that... upon further consultation we determined that cocky was the person that witnesses had cast suspicion on.
The next step was how to decide how to proceed, armed with the evidence that we were sure conclusively led us to our thief. I stayed up late on Monday night and prepared a dossier of evidence, with excerpts from server logs, witness statements etc. to pass to the Police. After a late night... I decided to sleep on it before deciding how to proceed.
Tuesday came, and I decided that I was going to contact the Police... and spoke to both our contacts at Orange, and a contact at Orange security, about how to proceed. As the morning prog
Yes, they are a public company and yes they are accountable to the public but that doesn't mean that going public means "Don't be evil" lost all value.
Think about this:
(1) The company was based on Do No Evil and much of their success has been attributed to it.
(2) If they become associated with Evil then all the time and money spent earning this good-will is lost.
(3) There is an enormous cost associated with losing this good will. Think of all the money that IBM and Novell are using to back up Linux in what seems, at least partially, to gain the trust of the tech community.
In other words, there is a great monetary incentive to be known as the good company. That they are in a public company that has banked on this trust they have with the community means that breaking this trust has a huge cost and that is NOT maximizing shareholder value.
The public company may be the best thing Google has for keeping it from becoming Evil. Okay, I may be going too far now, but you get my point. Not being evil is just a valid business position as being evil.
Now that's my economic argument.
My personal argument goes like this. Regardless of what you may think, I believe the leaders have a strong influence on the direction of a company, public or private. I honestly don't think it will be that easy to change Google so long as the old leaders are still in the position of control.
Yes, they are growing bigger and people point to that as an indication of Google becoming evil but it isn't. EVIL is the indication that things are becoming evil. Not OPPORTUNITY to become evil.
Blu-Ray originally did not support MPEG4 and VC1 which meant that picture quality was inferior, even with higher capacity. Blu-Ray later added VC1 AND MPEG4.
HD-DVD originally had less capacity than Blu-Ray. A recent change has upped the capacity to within 5% of Blu-Ray which is probably negligible.
HD-DVD introduced DVD/HD-DVD hybrids meaning we can have a DVD movie and the HD version on one disc for forward/backward compatibility.
Blu-Ray introduced the same (via JVC) shortly after.
HD-DVD cheaper to manufacture (and faster to start manufacturing) because they can be stamped on the same lines as DVDs with little modification (this is the big selling point of HD-DVD and seems to be the one thing Blu-Ray can never match)
Blu-Ray still has (marginally) higher capacity than HD-DVD but has made an experimental 200GB drive. Blu-Ray *appears* to have more growth though capacity as it is now seems to be pretty close.
I used to prefer HD-DVD due to support of better codecs meaning a better picture, even with less capacity.
Then I preferred Blu-Ray for its higher capacity and high picture quality when they decided to support the new codecs. Then HD-DVD increased its capacity.
Now I just wish the two camps would get together and give us a single format.
That said, the fact that HD-DVD can be built on the same lines as DVD seems to be a pretty strong argument. It sure would keep the introductory costs of next-gen media cheaper.
They have been trying to work it out for some time now but the big fight is who's disc structure they are going to use. Neither are budging on this facet.
TRUE: You will not be able to fit that many characters in a 6x4 grid so you will need a larger grid per character.
FALSE: it seems unlikely that a useful amount of chinese text could be displayed on an ordinary TV.
Remember, in Chinese, 1 character equals ONE WORD, not 1/5th of a word.
Not only that, Chinese has simpler sentence construction and ideas can be expressed in fewer words.
I was running
I ran
I used to run
I am running
Can all be expressed, basically as, "I RUN" and then if you want, you can modify it but not as a required part of sentence structure. If you want to express the past, you say something like "I RUN BEFORE." Most likely, you can express all of these sentences in two or three characters.
Okay, I'm not Chinese (Japanese actually) so my rules are off (feel free to correct). But the point is, even with less characters, you are saying more words and potentially expressing more ideas.
Posting anonymously since this topic is way past but I think there are some misunderstandings here. But first, let me say that it was not my intention to call your system bad. I could have worded that better and I apologize and I could see it may appear as an insult to your system. It wasn't. For all I know, your system is better than mine. I was just trying to make a point.
By the way, I'm a big fan of recognizing logical fallacy's and like to acknowledge them if they are there because I think they are manipulative. Again, it was not my intention to insult your system to prove that I'm smarter than you. What I was trying to show, however, is that it is VERY EASY to think that there are no differences in CD players. In fact, I believe that very smart, reasonable, prudent and scientifically minded people could be easily led to believe that they are no differences in CD players. If anything, I'd count on many smart people getting this wrong. *I* count myself among the people who have gotten this wrong.
My point is this. You will never hear more than the lowest quality part of your audio chain and FOR MOST PEOPLE, that is not the CD player. I would say a lot of things come before the CD player, most notably the speakers. But saying CD players don't sound different is wrong. I also do not attribute this to bad hearing, though this can be a factor. I believe many people with normal hearing can hear the difference in CD players under the right conditions. This has nothing to do with brains or your ability to afford equipment.
But first of all, let me say that I am a big skeptic of audiophile claims. Like I said, I didn't believe that there were differences in CD players for a long time and I bought accordingly. In fact, for many CD players, I don't think there are appreciable differences and for myself, having this as a hobby for a long time, until recently the CD player wouldn't make much difference because the rest of my system wasn't at that level yet and you may as well just buy for aesthetics.
Second, I CAN'T hear differences in a lot of things that are supposedly audiophile elite. Like I can't hear the differences between cables and, in fact, A/B testing has shown that the experts can't tell the differences between any two decent cables (there was a great article in Widescreen Review where they test many cables and nobody could tell the difference). My guess is that the same goes for speaker wire as long as it's decent.
I also know that level differences can create a perceived difference in sound quality. I warn everybody about this when they go listen to speakers. I also tell everybody to bring their own material and a lot of different kinds. A lot of speakers sound good with only one kind of music but lousy on others. A great speaker will sound good on all music. That said, in most people's price range, you make compromises, but at least you should know what those compromises are.
Anyways, back to topic, you can help eliminate the level difference by dialing the volume up from zero every time which is what I do.
The reason I mentioned room accoustics and speaker placement was not to prove that they make a difference. I know most people interested in audio know this. My point was that most people don't have very good systems set up. Most people I know don't care about speaker placement or room acoustics nor know that they are important. If these people don't even care, I doubt that in their system they will hear a difference. My point here is that unless you've made sure to optimize ALL OF THESE THINGS in advance, which most people don't, one wouldn't hear the difference in a cd player and attribute it to there not being a difference.
Now let me ask you. Have YOU A/B'ed cheap cd players vs high end ones in a high end setup? I doubt it and you have no more basis in THAT fact than I do. But when differences are so huge, I don't need to A/B to have a fair level of confidence. Like I can tell a Ferrari is faster than a stock civic by the seat of my pants (and
Oh come on now. This is such carp that it deserves to be refuted. I can't believe nobody has. Some of your main points are valid but you back it up by saying correctly functioning players all sound the same?
Sure some people induce voodoo into the audiophile world but that doesn't mean there aren't any real world differences. I would bet you that YOU could tell the differences between two CD players (assuming one was very good and one was merely decent) in a GOOD system setup.
All CD players do not sound the same! I repeat. All CD players do not sound the same. And you don't have to be an audiophile to know it.
They will sound the same in a piece of SH*T system. I repeat. They will sound the same in a piece of SH*T system.
I can put my dad and my mom in front of my stereo system and they can tell the difference. They are the first ones to complain that they wouldn't be able to hear a difference so why waste money. Then all of a sudden they are talking about how clear it sounds. Girlfriend was the same.
I could put them up against two decent CD players (one a Marantz Special Edition and one a Toshiba DVD player) and swap them with very good CD players (a Creek CD player or any CD player with my external DAC1), and they could tell the difference on otherwise equal equipment.
Frequency response all equal? Give me a break. There is NO deep bass coming out of the Toshiba DVD and the Marantz (which I had high hopes for) has no clarity. This isn't the kind where you have to strain so hard to hear the differences.
I don't think I can tell the difference between any pair of decent audio cables but I can hear the differences in the CD players. I would never confidently be able to A/B audio cables. I will A/B anybody on my CD players anytime.
Although I can't say for sure that is absolutely frequency response as it might be some other artificat that reduces the bass response. I'm not an audio scientific expert (though pretty well versed) but perhaps it is a bad harmonic that makes the bass appear weaker. Whatever. I HEAR a difference.
Also, frequency response isn't the be all end all. It measures one specific very controlled setup. The Marantz lacks crispness though it can very well not be frequency response. It could be something else. My DAC has a re-timing crystal that removes jitter. Again. I'm not going to try and explain the differences. Merely that there are differences.
The point is this. You CAN hear differences. ANYBODY can hear differences not just the audiophile elite. I was as skeptical as anybody on first blush. In fact, I always thought all CD players sounded the same until I was demo'd a good system.
But only in a good sytem. And people have A/B'd difference successfully in the past. It is a myth that people can't A/B differences for a lot of components. People have. I would suggest a CD player is one of the easier things to A/B differences on (in a decent system).
In regards to a good system, small differences can make or break it. For example:
(a) If I push my Paradigm Reference Studio/60 speakers anywhere near the back wall (like 95% of people have it set up) the image falls flat and I probably would have a hard time hearing the difference.
(b) I recently re-organized my bedroom so that the bed is now in front of the speakers. Unfortunately, while this config is nicer for me layout-wise, the imaging now sucks due to the bed's intrusion on the signal. I might have a hard time hearing the differences now.
I would agree that you, the reader right now, couldn't hear the difference in your system, as it is now. But in a properly controlled good system, I would be shocked (shocked!) that you couldn't hear the difference between a decent CD player and a lousy one.
p.s. I'm the first one to call bull-carp on the guys at Best Buy. The guy was trying to convince me that the digital HDMI/DVI converter from monster was WAY BETTER than the Acoustic Research (I think) one. I would have bet $10,000 against that he could see the difference in A/B testing unless one was defective. It's DIGITAL!
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You forgot the other AK-47 link in YouTube.
Purchase the AK-47 from the shopping channel.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=H_3BWv3FYg0
Parent poster makes an excellent point which is why I believe a large part of going to school should be about teaching people how to teach themselves.
I really do believe that teaching somebody to learn on their own is an important yet widely ignored skill set. As an employer, people who can are high on the hiring list.
Correlation does not equal causation.
Those with a higher brain capacity are precisely the type of people who would choose to become taxi drivers where their increased mental capacity could best be used to advance society.
That's a good question actually. For example, when I get the deja vu feeling, it is usually because I feel as I have heard something (or discussed something with someone) before. If my sighted deja vu is mostly auditory, why is it a surprise that someone who can't see experiences the same feeling?
I don't know about anybody else but this hasn't induced any fear, uncertainty or doubt in me about Linux.
However, it has induced REAL fear, REAL uncertainty and REAL doubt in Novell SUSE. Up until this incident started, I had pretty much decided that SUSE would be the distribution we would base all our new web/db/mail servers on owing to its combination of corporate support and ease of use.
Now I'm back on the fence considering Red Hat or another distro.
Unfortunately, I think SUSE inadvertently screwed themselves. In this regard, I have to say that Red Hat is doing an awesome job. They have deliberately tried to meet the Linux "community standards" while still being commercial. If only they were more open with their non-Fedora distributions, we would have probably standardized on Red Hat from the start.
This is an interesting concept but I see it having a major shortcoming:
You are now forced to make a decision before you print on whether the output should be temporary or permanent. Sometimes I will print something thinking it's temporary but I decide I need it longer. Or imagine the potential disaster of writing notes on the printout "in context" and that context disappears after 16 hours. Stuff like "ask Mary about this part" or "copy editing" marks.
I applaud the idea of paper recycling like this but couldn't see myself using it.
I think it has a few other issues too:
1. Needing two printers to print
2. Possibly not being able to distinguish between the two types of paper (assuming they look similar)
3. Having to print twice if you decide that you want a permanent copy
4. Cost(?)
Thanks for chiming in Bozdune. I felt reluctant to reply to an "Anonymous Coward" but I figure I'd chime in to your reply.
In fact, we consciously made the decision to use the non-English "$20 bucks" because we wanted the copy to sound friendly. "20 bucks" (without the $) didn't look right because there is a quick and strong cognitive link with the "$" symbol while "$20" didn't read right because it would probably be pronounced "20 dollars." We found that nobody had a problem reading "$20 bucks."
Our CityMax copy is based on a direct advertising style which takes on a conversational tone.
We have written and tested (I estimate) a hundred revisions and keep the copy that has the highest sales rates. Our target market seems to be attracted to this copy.
That said, we are working on a complete revamp to all of the copy on the citymax.com website to take a more "informational" style instead of a "direct" marketing style. I feel this is much more appropriate to today's Internet users. Our copy, while continually refined, is based on a direct style which I think is less popular now than it was even just a few years ago. That said, only testing of this new copy will tell us for sure.
Our user interface is largely based on research done by Jakob Nielsen (useit.com) and the new copy will be based around the same ideas.
Note: Another reason for the change is that direct marketing is often good for making sales but less good for building a brand. When we started, we made a clear directive that we were not interested in brand at all, but only in sales. I did start the company very close to the Internet bubble bursting after all. Our company is now becoming a size and success level which I believe requires us to consider brand development.
While we aren't looking for cash at this point (we are cash rich) we may consider fund raising in the future either through IPO or private funding or an outright sale. At this point, brand becomes important.
You are a manager with little tech knowledge
You are a techie with little management knowledge
The problem with the tech managers you had is that they just didn't know enough about how to manage or had enough management experience. They believed that all techies are just like them. That TRAIT, is a problem. And while it may be beneficial to be managed by a non-techie, the company may suffer overall because the manager does not know how to drive his team.
I am CEO/owner of a 25 person (successful, profitable and fast growing) Internet company and my best managers are both comfortable being in a management role and are very smart in the area they manage. A good manager knows the capabilities of his/her team and also knows what they don't know and helps them learn it. Instead of resigning ourselves to be as weak as our weakest link, we teach that we need to be as strong as our strongest link and we have created a teaching and learning environment. This doesn't work if the manager doesn't understand much of the tech him/herself.
The result? Many people think our company is 2-4x as large as it actually is. We have an environment where everybody loves coming to work. There is a huge amount of respect for our managers and there is constant praise both from managers, from the teams and across team boundaries. We love our work, we work hard and in our case, our tech managers were actually all techies first but they have received guidance on how to be a good manager. I don't think a really good manager can be just either/or.
This is a philosophy I have personally taken throughout my life. I came out of business school from marketing (though most of my best marketing knowledge I learned through books), but also am a programmer (wrote most of our original code), graphic designer (owned a design co) and was CTO for another Internet company. The more I know about my business as a whole, the better I can run my company.
Thanks for your reply Tom.
I tend not to reply to replies to my own postings but I'm glad that I replied to yours. Thanks for taking the time to explain, in more detail, knowledge of the problem space. You've picked up a part-time reader for your blog (I tend not to read any blog continuously).
I agree with everything you've said
I do feel that a major part of the solution is harnessing what I feel is a generous amount of untapped power in the free market.
For example, I believe that if you put in a reward system that makes sense (the "makes sense" is the hard part) then talented entrepreneurs will make each dollar work harder.
Here is another launching point for discussion. To be clear, I don't think this (like the other idea) is the actual solution, but I believe it's a valid starting point.
Let's say each school is completely independent. You can open as many schools as possible but each school must accept all applicants up to its capacity in its region. In cases where capacity is full, applicants are accepted based on proximity or a lottery (there are problems with both methods I know but this is just an example). Also, I'm realizing that this wouldn't happen immediately, but we're pretending we're there already.
Some things I see coming out of this are:
* If somebody comes up with a fantastic way to improve education quality at lower costs, the idea will move around a lot faster. Money is a great incentive for change.
* If somebody develops a learning system, schools would buy this up because of increases in efficiency
* There would be incentives for schools to hire good teachers
* There would be incentives for schools to fire bad ones (which I think is a good thing)
I think my preferred solution isn't necessarily equality because I don't know if that would work today (though I think it is a laudable goal for the future); my preferred solution is efficiency. So will there be discrepancy? Sure. But if the system as a whole got better in the process, the poorer schools would still be better off by 25% (or whatever the overall efficiency improvement was).
In other words, poor school may still have 20% lower grades than rich school but both schools might have 25% more knowledge transfer than under the old system. It's sort of like when people compare U.S. (or Canadian) poverty levels to that of other countries and complain that we're falling behind. Our poverty levels still include food, walls and a television. If everybody's new C grade level became the old B grade level, I think that's a good step.
Thanks again for your reply. Improvements in education actually is one of the things I'd like to pursue in my lifetime.
I know that the totality of an education system is more complex than the business that I run but I also know that I've come up with some amazingly 'simple' solutions that have reduced my operating costs in parts of the company by 50%. The solution itself is simple, but figuring that out was difficult enough that I don't see any of our competitors doing the same, even though our solution is actually publicly visible.
I think one part of the equation that I missed explaining myself about is this:
Kids in rich neighbourhoods ALREADY get more money than kids in poor neighbourhoods (at least if the U.S. system works anything like the Canadian). The reason why I felt this system has a good chance at being acceptable is it doesn't start by turning the system on its head. A system that pays all schools equally from the get-go simply wouldn't have any political traction.
However, smart innovators have the ability to actually make more money in the poor sectors because the high end would already be very competitive. This would actually allow competition in the poorer areas. As it is, an innovative principle in a poor area could work their ass off creating the ultimate teaching system and while he would, perhaps, have a great deal of pride, he wouldn't earn anymore than he already is.
To be clear, at the time I wrote my original post, I immediately thought of about five areas that weren't being properly handled by only a direct x-y algorithm. I also figured there'd be hundreds of other ideas that need to be considered. What I was hoping for was a kick-start of, perhaps, some ideas that made sense that would piggy back or replace that original idea.
Just to be clear, I realize this isn't an education board but it is a chat board and this is one of the places I choose to bounce my ideas off of. Sometimes I can get good ideas about my business from smart people who happen not to be in my industry. I think there are many (many) bright people on SlashDot (and well some not so bright ones too) who could have added to the idea.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I also realize that being on a board like SlashDot, I've opened myself up to criticism and, well, I got an earful of that. I took my chances.
But I also believe that constructive conversations on an idea are inherently good. My post here, and sometimes elsewhere, is to convince others that it is as well.
You've made bad assumptions in the equation.
That the "buyer" of public education is a citizen. But it doesn't have to be.
The "buyer" of public education can remain, as it is now, the government. By this criteria, the government decides how to reward schools for good performance and part of that could be rewarding for improving education in poor areas. In other words, the system breaking down under your analysis assumes that the citizens pay and rich citizens can pay more. This part of the free market system actually already exists. It's called a private school.
What the department of education is doing is creating competition within their suppliers of education (i.e. public schools).
I'd say, if you "objectively" rate education levels and reward based on objective criteria, this system has a chance of working.
Make no mistake, an algorithm for doing this requires some thought, but I think it can be done.
For example, consider this:
Schools earn x-y dollars per student where the actual value is determined by an objective performance measurement
Objective performance measurements are done nationally.
The performance measurement changes year by year based on national averages.
Of course, this does mean that areas pre-disposed to have smarter kids (e.g. rich kids who can afford better education aids, tutors, books, etc.) would tend to have better schools because it is easier to get better results but these schools would also tend to have more competition.
The free market would come up with innovative ways to tap the lower end market with new education ideas. Possibly things like more computer aided teaching so that there could be a lower teacher/student ratio without sacrificing education quality. Never underestimate the power of a free market and the desire to earn a buck.
Imagine if you were an entertainment company and you could sell software to schools that would teach kids how to read at an accelerated pace in a fun environment with less teacher involvement. Make kids want to learn. You'd have an automatic market for your product because the schools would want to buy it to increase their bottom line.
I know there are issues with this model but I also believe that a model can be designed that would ultimately be quite simple that would work and, I bet you almost any amount of money, you'd see amazingly innovative ideas that would give us better education cheaper.
Sunny
Japanese seem to have a thing for liking made up names that are not easy to pronounce in Japanese. I'm Japanese and I remember making fun of all of the Japanese car names because most could not be pronounced in Japanese.
* Honda Accord (can't pronounce "r")
* Honda Civic (can't pronounce "v")
* Acura (can't pronounce "r")
* Integra (can't pronounce "r")
* Legend (can't pronounce "l")
* Camry ( no 'r')
* Corolla (holy crap!)
* Celica (no 'l')
* Supra (no 'r')
* Avalon (no 'r')
I say no 'l' and no 'r' but they have a similar sound which is halfway between 'l' and 'r' which is why Japanese often mix these two letters up.
I was just going to comment that this may be less now that Acura has switched to letters but actually, that's not entirely true either.
* RL (both letters not easy to pronounce)
* TL (L?)
* RSX (R?)
Anyways, the fact that it can't be pronounced is not an impediment to them using that name. In fact, I think for many using these sounds make the products sound more upmarket. Besides, Revolution is also difficult to pronounce in Japanese.
p.s. wii would most likely be pronounced like oo-ee.
The difference is this:
The hardcore developers write the sofware that the joes use to build their software.
You can do the equivalent of a hot backup without any special software by replicating your database to another server. When you need the backup, you stop the replication and make a backup of the copy. After you reconnect the replication, the replication server will catch up again.
This is documented in the excellent book "High Performance MySQL" by O'Reilly. One of the authors is a database guru at Yahoo.
We were using MS SQL and, while I was interested in open source databases, did not have the confidence to use an open source database until reading this book. I know many will point me to PostgreSQL too, but the tools and the references for MySQL were better.
Gee, now I feel really bad.
I tried to make that post so ridiculous that it would never be mistaken for anything but a joke. I was hoping for +4 funny but got +4 interesting instead.
My apologies to Mr. Lim and Mr. Takei who never said any of those things.
You see, the joke was, Lim was pissed he lost his role as Mr. Sulu to Takei. Of course, he lost it because Takei IS Mr. Sulu (more or less). Why would Lim be pissed? The irony was supposed be funny (obviously not if you have to explain the joke). The thing about the worm hole was supposed to add to the ridiculousness of the post but I guess in Star Trek, it came across as dead serious.
Ah well, there goes my mod points...
John Lim (Hikaru Sulu in New Voyages) playing the character formally played by actor George Takei, was reportedly pissed. "It's obviously an anti-Chinese thing," he noted. Takei maintained that Sulu was indeed Japanese and not Chinese and that Mr. Lim was just miscast from the beginning.
. jpg
Lim suggested he was still open to reprise his role as Sulu in an upcoming New Voyages episode in which a future Sulu (Played by Takei) would meet his younger self in a time warp created by a worm hole.
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/images/cast/lim
The simulator setup of this is extremely cool but if I drive my car immediately after, say, playing Burnout, I have to suppress the urge to drive like I'm in a video game. I mean, I KNOW I'm not playing a video game anymore, but every car I see looks like a ramming object and I feel like if I just tip the back wheel of that car coming up, I can get a nice burnout bonus going.
I wonder if removing an important psychological difference between the videogame and the reality might (not saying will) cause instinctive reactions to be wrong. Obviously you still have the visual difference but now the steering wheel, accelerator, brake, etc. will be the same.
Let me attribute it this way: there is this door leading into an area with a bank machine. This door was horribly designed in that it had two bars. A vertical bar and a horizontal bar. Through years of design, we know that a vertical bar means pull and a horizontal means push. I had a good laugh watching people push/pull this thing the wrong way over and over again. I even commented on this to a friend. And of course, I had to go get some cash and I got in just fine. On the way out, in the split second where I was trying to figure it out in my head to decipher how it was backward, I screwed it up.
My point of all this is that if a problem were to happen, it would probably be in the instinctive category where our knowledge is not always tied to our reactions.
That said, I've always thought it would be cool to be able to "play car" in your real car.
What's most curious about this is why less complex creatures have an enormous ability to regenerate but more complex ones don't. If it is a matter of a few genes, you would expect that random mutations would impart the self-regeneration trait onto us but evolution has chosen not to.
I can only surmise that for complex creatures, self-regeneration is not only worthless, but is undesirable (since no complex creatures seem to have self-regeneration but many less complex creatures do). This, of course applies to complex creatures as a species anyways. I think I'd find it extremely valuable for myself.
I don't know the answer but perhaps it has to do with the thinking aspect of complex creatures and how that affects mating. I'd be interested in hearing others hypothesize about this.
Another slightly more detailed account of the same event:
Detailed Account
Mono, Orange and Microsoft arrived early, and set out all of the stuff for the event... including the raffle prizes. The prizes were, foolishly it seems, laid out in the corner... footballs, kites, goodies and an SPV C550!
We are not entirely sure at which point the phone was stolen... but a number of people witnessed what appeared to be the C550 being wrapped in a cardigan and placed in a bag along with a couple of other items including an Orange football, and a kite that was apparently discarded.
At some point, probably prior to the raffle, the thief or his companion probably left the building, and took the C550 somewhere for safe keeping.
As those present at the event will know, when the theft was discovered, Monolithix (who should be commended for staying calm!) offered the thief every opportunity to return the phone with no comeback, pointing out the phone would be useless anyway as it would be blocked on all UK networks... but nobody came forward. Having spoken to 'cocky', he said he was afraid to come forward.
At this point, there was not a lot more we could do... we liaised with the staff at the Microsoft building, and determined that although there was no CCTV in the room, there was CCTV in the foyer.
On the following Monday, I contacted Orange to ask for the IMEI of the stolen phone so that we could conduct investigations, which Orange duly provided. I also investigated whether we could determine whether the stolen phone had been used with an Orange SIM (99% necessary if the thief unlocks the phone), and Orange confirmed that they could do this, albeit with a 1 week delay. This provided us with one possible avenue... although for Data Protection reasons, pursuing this route would have required the action to be taken with the Police.
I considered it very likely that the thief would have tried to unlock the phone... so armed with the IMEI of the stolen phone... I contacted the key players in the C550 unlock scene, Florin from IMEI-check and zone-mr from SPV-Developers.
Florin confirmed that the phone had not been unlocked with IMEI-check... however zone-mr couldn't confirm immediately, as he only retains an temporary backup of encrypted data from the phone, which he wasn't sure included the IMEI
A couple of hours later, on Monday evening, zone-mr contacted me to let me know he WAS storing the IMEI... and we had a match! Our thief HAD unlocked his C550... at 10:30pm on Saturday in fact! Even better news... careful analysis of the server logs on the spv-developers unlock server gave us the IP address of our thief!
The next step was to find out as much information as possible about the thief. We determined their ISP and some other information, and thought about how to proceed. On an off chance that the thief was foolish enough to unlock the phone from the same connection they used to browse MoDaCo... I checked out the MoDaCo logs, and the MoDaCo sessions table.
Success!
Our thief was logged on, and the logs were full of the IP address in question... all pointing to one user.... COCKY!
Cross matching this address with the Event registration list confirmed that cocky HAD attended the event... and not only that... upon further consultation we determined that cocky was the person that witnesses had cast suspicion on.
The next step was how to decide how to proceed, armed with the evidence that we were sure conclusively led us to our thief. I stayed up late on Monday night and prepared a dossier of evidence, with excerpts from server logs, witness statements etc. to pass to the Police. After a late night... I decided to sleep on it before deciding how to proceed.
Tuesday came, and I decided that I was going to contact the Police... and spoke to both our contacts at Orange, and a contact at Orange security, about how to proceed. As the morning prog
Lasers. Sperm. the Internet?
This thing is a marketers dream.
Now, if you caught the sperm immediately post coitus, you've got a movie of the week.
Yes, they are a public company and yes they are accountable to the public but that doesn't mean that going public means "Don't be evil" lost all value.
Think about this:
(1) The company was based on Do No Evil and much of their success has been attributed to it.
(2) If they become associated with Evil then all the time and money spent earning this good-will is lost.
(3) There is an enormous cost associated with losing this good will. Think of all the money that IBM and Novell are using to back up Linux in what seems, at least partially, to gain the trust of the tech community.
In other words, there is a great monetary incentive to be known as the good company. That they are in a public company that has banked on this trust they have with the community means that breaking this trust has a huge cost and that is NOT maximizing shareholder value.
The public company may be the best thing Google has for keeping it from becoming Evil. Okay, I may be going too far now, but you get my point. Not being evil is just a valid business position as being evil.
Now that's my economic argument.
My personal argument goes like this. Regardless of what you may think, I believe the leaders have a strong influence on the direction of a company, public or private. I honestly don't think it will be that easy to change Google so long as the old leaders are still in the position of control.
Yes, they are growing bigger and people point to that as an indication of Google becoming evil but it isn't. EVIL is the indication that things are becoming evil. Not OPPORTUNITY to become evil.
I used to prefer HD-DVD due to support of better codecs meaning a better picture, even with less capacity.
Then I preferred Blu-Ray for its higher capacity and high picture quality when they decided to support the new codecs. Then HD-DVD increased its capacity.
Now I just wish the two camps would get together and give us a single format.
That said, the fact that HD-DVD can be built on the same lines as DVD seems to be a pretty strong argument. It sure would keep the introductory costs of next-gen media cheaper.
They have been trying to work it out for some time now but the big fight is who's disc structure they are going to use. Neither are budging on this facet.
TRUE: You will not be able to fit that many characters in a 6x4 grid so you will need a larger grid per character.
FALSE: it seems unlikely that a useful amount of chinese text could be displayed on an ordinary TV.
Remember, in Chinese, 1 character equals ONE WORD, not 1/5th of a word.
Not only that, Chinese has simpler sentence construction and ideas can be expressed in fewer words.
Can all be expressed, basically as, "I RUN" and then if you want, you can modify it but not as a required part of sentence structure. If you want to express the past, you say something like "I RUN BEFORE." Most likely, you can express all of these sentences in two or three characters.
Okay, I'm not Chinese (Japanese actually) so my rules are off (feel free to correct). But the point is, even with less characters, you are saying more words and potentially expressing more ideas.
Posting anonymously since this topic is way past but I think there are some misunderstandings here. But first, let me say that it was not my intention to call your system bad. I could have worded that better and I apologize and I could see it may appear as an insult to your system. It wasn't. For all I know, your system is better than mine. I was just trying to make a point.
By the way, I'm a big fan of recognizing logical fallacy's and like to acknowledge them if they are there because I think they are manipulative. Again, it was not my intention to insult your system to prove that I'm smarter than you. What I was trying to show, however, is that it is VERY EASY to think that there are no differences in CD players. In fact, I believe that very smart, reasonable, prudent and scientifically minded people could be easily led to believe that they are no differences in CD players. If anything, I'd count on many smart people getting this wrong. *I* count myself among the people who have gotten this wrong.
My point is this. You will never hear more than the lowest quality part of your audio chain and FOR MOST PEOPLE, that is not the CD player. I would say a lot of things come before the CD player, most notably the speakers. But saying CD players don't sound different is wrong. I also do not attribute this to bad hearing, though this can be a factor. I believe many people with normal hearing can hear the difference in CD players under the right conditions. This has nothing to do with brains or your ability to afford equipment.
But first of all, let me say that I am a big skeptic of audiophile claims. Like I said, I didn't believe that there were differences in CD players for a long time and I bought accordingly. In fact, for many CD players, I don't think there are appreciable differences and for myself, having this as a hobby for a long time, until recently the CD player wouldn't make much difference because the rest of my system wasn't at that level yet and you may as well just buy for aesthetics.
Second, I CAN'T hear differences in a lot of things that are supposedly audiophile elite. Like I can't hear the differences between cables and, in fact, A/B testing has shown that the experts can't tell the differences between any two decent cables (there was a great article in Widescreen Review where they test many cables and nobody could tell the difference). My guess is that the same goes for speaker wire as long as it's decent.
I also know that level differences can create a perceived difference in sound quality. I warn everybody about this when they go listen to speakers. I also tell everybody to bring their own material and a lot of different kinds. A lot of speakers sound good with only one kind of music but lousy on others. A great speaker will sound good on all music. That said, in most people's price range, you make compromises, but at least you should know what those compromises are.
Anyways, back to topic, you can help eliminate the level difference by dialing the volume up from zero every time which is what I do.
The reason I mentioned room accoustics and speaker placement was not to prove that they make a difference. I know most people interested in audio know this. My point was that most people don't have very good systems set up. Most people I know don't care about speaker placement or room acoustics nor know that they are important. If these people don't even care, I doubt that in their system they will hear a difference. My point here is that unless you've made sure to optimize ALL OF THESE THINGS in advance, which most people don't, one wouldn't hear the difference in a cd player and attribute it to there not being a difference.
Now let me ask you. Have YOU A/B'ed cheap cd players vs high end ones in a high end setup? I doubt it and you have no more basis in THAT fact than I do. But when differences are so huge, I don't need to A/B to have a fair level of confidence. Like I can tell a Ferrari is faster than a stock civic by the seat of my pants (and
Oh come on now. This is such carp that it deserves to be refuted. I can't believe nobody has. Some of your main points are valid but you back it up by saying correctly functioning players all sound the same?
Sure some people induce voodoo into the audiophile world but that doesn't mean there aren't any real world differences. I would bet you that YOU could tell the differences between two CD players (assuming one was very good and one was merely decent) in a GOOD system setup.
All CD players do not sound the same! I repeat. All CD players do not sound the same. And you don't have to be an audiophile to know it.
They will sound the same in a piece of SH*T system. I repeat. They will sound the same in a piece of SH*T system.
I can put my dad and my mom in front of my stereo system and they can tell the difference. They are the first ones to complain that they wouldn't be able to hear a difference so why waste money. Then all of a sudden they are talking about how clear it sounds. Girlfriend was the same.
I could put them up against two decent CD players (one a Marantz Special Edition and one a Toshiba DVD player) and swap them with very good CD players (a Creek CD player or any CD player with my external DAC1), and they could tell the difference on otherwise equal equipment.
Frequency response all equal? Give me a break. There is NO deep bass coming out of the Toshiba DVD and the Marantz (which I had high hopes for) has no clarity. This isn't the kind where you have to strain so hard to hear the differences.
I don't think I can tell the difference between any pair of decent audio cables but I can hear the differences in the CD players. I would never confidently be able to A/B audio cables. I will A/B anybody on my CD players anytime.
Although I can't say for sure that is absolutely frequency response as it might be some other artificat that reduces the bass response. I'm not an audio scientific expert (though pretty well versed) but perhaps it is a bad harmonic that makes the bass appear weaker. Whatever. I HEAR a difference.
Also, frequency response isn't the be all end all. It measures one specific very controlled setup. The Marantz lacks crispness though it can very well not be frequency response. It could be something else. My DAC has a re-timing crystal that removes jitter. Again. I'm not going to try and explain the differences. Merely that there are differences.
The point is this. You CAN hear differences. ANYBODY can hear differences not just the audiophile elite. I was as skeptical as anybody on first blush. In fact, I always thought all CD players sounded the same until I was demo'd a good system.
But only in a good sytem. And people have A/B'd difference successfully in the past. It is a myth that people can't A/B differences for a lot of components. People have. I would suggest a CD player is one of the easier things to A/B differences on (in a decent system).
In regards to a good system, small differences can make or break it. For example:
(a) If I push my Paradigm Reference Studio/60 speakers anywhere near the back wall (like 95% of people have it set up) the image falls flat and I probably would have a hard time hearing the difference.
(b) I recently re-organized my bedroom so that the bed is now in front of the speakers. Unfortunately, while this config is nicer for me layout-wise, the imaging now sucks due to the bed's intrusion on the signal. I might have a hard time hearing the differences now.
I would agree that you, the reader right now, couldn't hear the difference in your system, as it is now. But in a properly controlled good system, I would be shocked (shocked!) that you couldn't hear the difference between a decent CD player and a lousy one.
p.s. I'm the first one to call bull-carp on the guys at Best Buy. The guy was trying to convince me that the digital HDMI/DVI converter from monster was WAY BETTER than the Acoustic Research (I think) one. I would have bet $10,000 against that he could see the difference in A/B testing unless one was defective. It's DIGITAL!