Except unless MSFT's web initiative... 2.0.... stuff works with Mozilla on a 64-bit Linux desktop, they can count me out.
Part of the reason I use google tools, other than they're free and functional, is that they work well with Mozilla (et al.). I don't use them because I have some fanboy love for Google or because of my really strong hatred for MSFT.
Hey, all the power to you. I just hope one day your infantile rambo behaviour escalates a situation to the point where you, your friends, and all the civilians around you get wasted.:-) Cheers.
Think about it. Most robbers just want the money, they don't want to hurt you. And in the cases where they do, they have the advantage of time. Before you can pull out your gun, aim and fire they've already put 6 rounds into your chest.
As to the the "20ft" rule, I suggest you try this experiment. Close your eyes, put your hands in a relaxed position (not around the holster), open your eyes and shoot as quickly as you can. See how long it takes between "seeing the target" and actually accurately putting a hole in it.
On average it'll take you ~2 seconds or more. Which basically means if I have the element of surprise by pointing a gun at you before you know what's what, you're totally fucked because you won't get a round off in time.
If your defense class didn't teach you this idea, you should ask for your money back. Because you're just going to needlessly escalate a violent situation and get yourself shot.
I'd rather be robbed than robbed and shot. (well of course I'd rather not be either, but if I didn't have a choice about the robbery...)
Only a complete assclown thinks it's brave to wander around with a gun in the guise of protecting yourself at all times. Unless you're actively looking for trouble it won't do you any good. And when the mugger/robber/etc does drop you like a sack of potatos, they'll just steal your gun and have yet another to hurt people with.
Yeah, except by packing heat all it means are that the criminals will start packing heat too, omg like what is happening in the states.
Canada has crime too. But if I want to rob a gas station, I just put on a ski mask, and demand all their money. I don't need a gun since the clerk will either hand me the money or try and beat the shit out of me with their own hands. But in the states, the same low paid clerk is likely packing heat, so I'll shoot first then take the money.
Any self-defense class will teach you that once someone enters 20ft of you your firearm is pointless since it'll take more time to pull it out then them to shoot you (provided you're taken off guard). So if I'm going to mug you while walking out to your car, your gun, even in a holster on your hip, is likely not to do you any good.
Cops were guns because they often ENTER situations where they need them. You can easily mug a cop and get their gun from them, or worse yet, shoot them unprovoked. Once you break the 2 second (20 ft) barrier, you're fucked.
Note: Again disclaimer: I don't pack heat or have any intentions of doing anything violent. Just trying to bring some reality to the discussion. As much as I like firing weapons too, I'm not crazy enough to carry in the name of defense.
If you really want to avoid being victimized just be smarter. Don't carry a lot of cash, don't showboat your expensive loot, don't leave doors unlocked, etc, etc, etc...
Um, there have been enough random shootings, snipings, etc that it's not out of the realm of plausible.
I've heard (dunno how true it is but I can believe it) that a non-trivial fraction of all gun shootings involve the victim being shot with their own gun (when they own a gun that is).
I can believe it because
1. Kids get hold of guns 2. Thiefs find them 3. Most people who carry guns (conceal carry...) aren't really trained on how to use them anyways.
The point is though, above all, society works because society works. You're not "safer" because you have a gun, because eventually everyone will think like you, have guns around raising the occurences of abuse.
And frankly, once you realize that you're alive because nobody has decided to kill you yet, you tend to forget about the "need" to carry a weapon for defense.
The following is *NOT* a threat, I have no intentions on doing anything, just stating facts...
If I, or anyone else for that matter, really wanted you dead. You'd be dead. You must leave the house some time to go to work, shopping, for food, etc. A carefully placed round from a.30 and down you go. All the guns in the world won't save you from that.
What makes society half-useable is people don't usually have the desire or intentions to carry out such actions. You're "guns" don't protect you. Common decency does.
I only used Vonage to call long distance. I used to be part of several hour long teleconference calls a week. Which would have quickly added up over POTS.
I suppose if I actually *received* calls I'd care to have more control over how it worked. But sadly, my social life isn't that happening. And most people just call my cell anyways.
But why would I want a computer dedicated to it? Just another thing that can die. At least the standalone voip boxes rarely [mine never did] crash or hang. So the only problem to worry about is the damn modem going down (which fortunately for me only happened when I was in the middle of a business call... oddly enough my ISP offers a competing voip service, I wonder....)
I still think that the MSFT sort are pushing it too far.
Sure, I wouldn't expect all computer users to be C experts, but they should understand the basics of a file system (e,g. files, permissions, directories, symlinks, etc) so they can properly interpret what they are looking at and doing. Not running as root is another good start, KNOWING WHY you shouldn't is better:-)
Once you beat the "oh I can't learn this" stubborness from most people you'll find that they can be taught the basics fairly easily. It's getting over the initial "I'm a tard, or I think I am, obviously I need MSFT, so don't try to teach me these "directories" cuz it's hard."
Of course, I'd settle for people learning to interpret NNTP headers, that way at least when my pet-troll from sci.crypt joe-job's me I don't get calls from random people at 11pm at night about some kiddie porn "that I posted" to usenet....
That's the myth though. Linux isn't hard to use with a modicum of training. Remember that back in the day kids were learning how to use MS-DOS, cd? dir? move? del? wtf no gui?
Society has somehow forgotten that people were using computers just fine 25 years ago without the need for shiny GUI running as root.
At least in Apples respect they have merged their nice GUI and applications with a well tuned Kernel and userland. My only gripe (other than the cost) is the crappy 4.0.1 GCC that comes standard with OSX.
Microsoft feeds on perpetuating the myth that everyone is stupid and can't figure these "computer thingies out." And that they need Vista to solve all their problems, like how to move files from one directory to another, or download pictures off a USB camera...
I just re-opened my yahoo account. I'd say a good 35% of the screen is ads, all over the place, along the left, in the message pane, along the right, the top, ads ads ads.
Compare that to google with it's adsense ads. Small, unobtrusive, text ads....
Whether Yahoo prefers IE or not [btw the BETA client works just fine in Seamonkey..] is moot compared to the horrible placement of all the ads...
Technically speaking, the ringing is a function of the decoder:-)
That said, MP3 isn't JPEG. It does mask (cut off) but it's based on the psychoacoustic modelling not blind zig-zag quantization (e.g., JPEG).
So while there is a loss of information from encoding to encoding, the 0th and 1st order effects are very minimal if you use a decent bitrate.
In fact, if the MP3 codec uses a lossless MDCT (e.g. through lifting, see for instance the binDCTs of yesteryear) there are no higher order effects other than going from the initial to the first encoding. So it's entirely possible to make a lossy codec which loses NO information through further encodings (though what would be the purpose?).
In general, if you transcode a high quality mp3 you won't "lose quality" in the sense that "you can hear it" so it's really "not something to worry about."
Think about it
1. Play the CD, hey that sounds great 2. Encode to MP3, hey that still sounds just as great 3. ??? 4. Reencode to new codec, hey OMG IT SOUNDS HORRIBLE!!!!!
What the hell is step #3 (and it's not profit...)?
Yes, there will be a quality diff between #4 and #1, but it'll be the same miniscule PSNR loss as from #1 to #2. So unless you transcode a dozen times or something it won't really hurt you.
It's elitism. It's the same folk who claim that anything less than 300FPS is "sore on their eyes" and that they can identify each pixel on a 1920x1600 screen at 85Hz, etc...
My friend who is the audiophile claims that "I have a lot of storage so who cares" except now his 2TiB RAID is getting more and more full. I imagine within a year he'll be hosed for space. He could cram ~5x more audio if he just compressed them but whatever, to each their own.
Oddly enough compressed videos (that he gets off P2P) is "just fine."
Well without DRM you'd be free to decode the high bitrate MP3 and then re-encode it.
Personally I can't normally hear the diff between 128 and the CD but there are some tracks where I can, so I univerally use 192kbit with q=0 [q=0 because I have a fast CPU and I don't care if it gives me 0.000000001% better quality]. It also means that if I have to recompress to say OGG or something in the future I stand to have fewer encoding artifacts.
I don't think downloads should be at anything less than 192kbit/sec MP3 (similar rate for MP4/WMA). Mostly because if I'm going to pay for a track I want to guarantee that the PSNR is decent (and that any inherant crappyness is due to the poor lyrics or talentless musicians:-))
Who says YOU have to use software that doesn't grant you proper freedoms?
I think we have to draw a line on what exactly needs the PROTECTION of the GPL. Kernel, gcc, binutils, coreutils, similaretc...., == YES.
Random user library/util == NO.
If some person sells a C compiler for GNU/Linux, does it matter if it's proprietary? Hells no. I have GCC. Now if GCC went proprietary that would suck. I think GCC needs the protection of the GPL license.
If someone downloads my [say crypto] library and makes a chat program or something with it that is proprietary. Am I really falling to the vendor lockin that the GPL was meant to prevent? No. I don't have to use their chat program, and more to the point, I'm free to write my own using my free library.
I'm sure there is a contrived test out there that shows a difference. The trick is, to encode a track at 64, 96, 128, 160 and 192bkit/sec with the high quality setting in LAME. Then sit in front of your stereo, put a blindfold on and listen to the tracks [and the original] in a random order.
Chances are for 99% of your music you can easily tell 64 through 128 from the CD but can't tell the diff between 160 and 192 and the CD, and chances are most of the remaining 1% are indistinguishable from 192kbit.
Why shouldn't they offer lossless encodings at the same price as compressed encodings? Um, this thing called "bandwidth." You should have to pay a premium for your audiophile stupidity so the rest of us don't have to pay for your ignorance.
A properly mixed (re: not super compressed [range wise]) CD has 96dB of SNR in each channel. That's mighty fine given the sensitivity of human hearing isn't that super anyways. SA-CD and DVD-CD can offer a bit more range but honestly the difference is lost on most.
What you really should get all in a knot about is the continously low quality of shite music being promotoed. Payola's a bitch.
I've challenged my local audiophile friend to a blind test several times and he refuses to give it a go [especially since he listens to the audio really loudly which will mask most tones anyways].
192+ kbit mp3 with a decent codec (e.g. lame q=2) sounds just like the original for the music in my collection.
Yes [since I know someone will bring it up], if you plan to remix it... use flac. But that's not what this article is about. It's about downloads for listening not remixing. And even then, uncompress the high bitrate mp3/mp4 to WAV, work with that [or store it as FLAC] and STFU.
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Except unless MSFT's web initiative ... 2.0 .... stuff works with Mozilla on a 64-bit Linux desktop, they can count me out.
Part of the reason I use google tools, other than they're free and functional, is that they work well with Mozilla (et al.). I don't use them because I have some fanboy love for Google or because of my really strong hatred for MSFT.
Tom
Hey, all the power to you. I just hope one day your infantile rambo behaviour escalates a situation to the point where you, your friends, and all the civilians around you get wasted. :-) Cheers.
Tom
Think about it. Most robbers just want the money, they don't want to hurt you. And in the cases where they do, they have the advantage of time. Before you can pull out your gun, aim and fire they've already put 6 rounds into your chest.
As to the the "20ft" rule, I suggest you try this experiment. Close your eyes, put your hands in a relaxed position (not around the holster), open your eyes and shoot as quickly as you can. See how long it takes between "seeing the target" and actually accurately putting a hole in it.
On average it'll take you ~2 seconds or more. Which basically means if I have the element of surprise by pointing a gun at you before you know what's what, you're totally fucked because you won't get a round off in time.
If your defense class didn't teach you this idea, you should ask for your money back. Because you're just going to needlessly escalate a violent situation and get yourself shot.
I'd rather be robbed than robbed and shot. (well of course I'd rather not be either, but if I didn't have a choice about the robbery...)
Only a complete assclown thinks it's brave to wander around with a gun in the guise of protecting yourself at all times. Unless you're actively looking for trouble it won't do you any good. And when the mugger/robber/etc does drop you like a sack of potatos, they'll just steal your gun and have yet another to hurt people with.
Tom
Yeah, except by packing heat all it means are that the criminals will start packing heat too, omg like what is happening in the states.
Canada has crime too. But if I want to rob a gas station, I just put on a ski mask, and demand all their money. I don't need a gun since the clerk will either hand me the money or try and beat the shit out of me with their own hands. But in the states, the same low paid clerk is likely packing heat, so I'll shoot first then take the money.
Any self-defense class will teach you that once someone enters 20ft of you your firearm is pointless since it'll take more time to pull it out then them to shoot you (provided you're taken off guard). So if I'm going to mug you while walking out to your car, your gun, even in a holster on your hip, is likely not to do you any good.
Cops were guns because they often ENTER situations where they need them. You can easily mug a cop and get their gun from them, or worse yet, shoot them unprovoked. Once you break the 2 second (20 ft) barrier, you're fucked.
Note: Again disclaimer: I don't pack heat or have any intentions of doing anything violent. Just trying to bring some reality to the discussion. As much as I like firing weapons too, I'm not crazy enough to carry in the name of defense.
If you really want to avoid being victimized just be smarter. Don't carry a lot of cash, don't showboat your expensive loot, don't leave doors unlocked, etc, etc, etc...
Tom
Um, there have been enough random shootings, snipings, etc that it's not out of the realm of plausible.
I've heard (dunno how true it is but I can believe it) that a non-trivial fraction of all gun shootings involve the victim being shot with their own gun (when they own a gun that is).
I can believe it because
1. Kids get hold of guns
2. Thiefs find them
3. Most people who carry guns (conceal carry...) aren't really trained on how to use them anyways.
The point is though, above all, society works because society works. You're not "safer" because you have a gun, because eventually everyone will think like you, have guns around raising the occurences of abuse.
And frankly, once you realize that you're alive because nobody has decided to kill you yet, you tend to forget about the "need" to carry a weapon for defense.
Tom
The following is *NOT* a threat, I have no intentions on doing anything, just stating facts...
.30 and down you go. All the guns in the world won't save you from that.
If I, or anyone else for that matter, really wanted you dead. You'd be dead. You must leave the house some time to go to work, shopping, for food, etc. A carefully placed round from a
What makes society half-useable is people don't usually have the desire or intentions to carry out such actions. You're "guns" don't protect you. Common decency does.
Tom
I only used Vonage to call long distance. I used to be part of several hour long teleconference calls a week. Which would have quickly added up over POTS.
I suppose if I actually *received* calls I'd care to have more control over how it worked. But sadly, my social life isn't that happening. And most people just call my cell anyways.
Tom
You can like totally like use templates and such. Like for sure. TeX also supports includes...
... hard ...
\input{preamble.tex}
Dear Mary,
~
Sup?
~
Sincerely,
Tom St Denis
\input{postamble.tex}
Wow
Tom
Real layout/presentation junkies use TeX. The original "Open Document Format."
Tom
I had vonage too, yeah I know how it works.
... oddly enough my ISP offers a competing voip service, I wonder....)
But why would I want a computer dedicated to it? Just another thing that can die. At least the standalone voip boxes rarely [mine never did] crash or hang. So the only problem to worry about is the damn modem going down (which fortunately for me only happened when I was in the middle of a business call
Tom
This is why I buy Gigabyte motherboards.
Also WTF is a phone line? VoIP goes over the net (re: ethernet) not a POTS (otherwise what's the f'ing point?).
Why not integrate a PS3 into it while you're at it?
Tom
I still think that the MSFT sort are pushing it too far.
:-)
Sure, I wouldn't expect all computer users to be C experts, but they should understand the basics of a file system (e,g. files, permissions, directories, symlinks, etc) so they can properly interpret what they are looking at and doing. Not running as root is another good start, KNOWING WHY you shouldn't is better
Once you beat the "oh I can't learn this" stubborness from most people you'll find that they can be taught the basics fairly easily. It's getting over the initial "I'm a tard, or I think I am, obviously I need MSFT, so don't try to teach me these "directories" cuz it's hard."
Of course, I'd settle for people learning to interpret NNTP headers, that way at least when my pet-troll from sci.crypt joe-job's me I don't get calls from random people at 11pm at night about some kiddie porn "that I posted" to usenet....
arrg..
Tom
Not in a problem in a real OS. My default user doesn't have permission to remove directories from /
Tom
That's the myth though. Linux isn't hard to use with a modicum of training. Remember that back in the day kids were learning how to use MS-DOS, cd? dir? move? del? wtf no gui?
Society has somehow forgotten that people were using computers just fine 25 years ago without the need for shiny GUI running as root.
At least in Apples respect they have merged their nice GUI and applications with a well tuned Kernel and userland. My only gripe (other than the cost) is the crappy 4.0.1 GCC that comes standard with OSX.
Microsoft feeds on perpetuating the myth that everyone is stupid and can't figure these "computer thingies out." And that they need Vista to solve all their problems, like how to move files from one directory to another, or download pictures off a USB camera...
Tom
I just re-opened my yahoo account. I'd say a good 35% of the screen is ads, all over the place, along the left, in the message pane, along the right, the top, ads ads ads.
Compare that to google with it's adsense ads. Small, unobtrusive, text ads....
Whether Yahoo prefers IE or not [btw the BETA client works just fine in Seamonkey..] is moot compared to the horrible placement of all the ads...
Tom
Um, say what?
I'd rather just use 24-bit 48KHz if that was a problem.
Of course the SNR required for frequencies over 14KHz is trivial as they're MASKED.
Most of the resolution is required in the lower ranges where they are less masked.
Tom
Technically speaking, the ringing is a function of the decoder :-)
That said, MP3 isn't JPEG. It does mask (cut off) but it's based on the psychoacoustic modelling not blind zig-zag quantization (e.g., JPEG).
So while there is a loss of information from encoding to encoding, the 0th and 1st order effects are very minimal if you use a decent bitrate.
In fact, if the MP3 codec uses a lossless MDCT (e.g. through lifting, see for instance the binDCTs of yesteryear) there are no higher order effects other than going from the initial to the first encoding. So it's entirely possible to make a lossy codec which loses NO information through further encodings (though what would be the purpose?).
Tom
You mean like 96kHz recordings [not possible with mp3...] ?
Well given that the range of frequencies that are audible is between ~20Hz to around 18-20KHz, you don't really need 96KHz for anything but mixing.
Nyquist theorem much?
Tom
In general, if you transcode a high quality mp3 you won't "lose quality" in the sense that "you can hear it" so it's really "not something to worry about."
Think about it
1. Play the CD, hey that sounds great
2. Encode to MP3, hey that still sounds just as great
3. ???
4. Reencode to new codec, hey OMG IT SOUNDS HORRIBLE!!!!!
What the hell is step #3 (and it's not profit...)?
Yes, there will be a quality diff between #4 and #1, but it'll be the same miniscule PSNR loss as from #1 to #2. So unless you transcode a dozen times or something it won't really hurt you.
Tom
It's elitism. It's the same folk who claim that anything less than 300FPS is "sore on their eyes" and that they can identify each pixel on a 1920x1600 screen at 85Hz, etc...
My friend who is the audiophile claims that "I have a lot of storage so who cares" except now his 2TiB RAID is getting more and more full. I imagine within a year he'll be hosed for space. He could cram ~5x more audio if he just compressed them but whatever, to each their own.
Oddly enough compressed videos (that he gets off P2P) is "just fine."
So maybe audiophiles are just kooky? hehehe...
Tom
Well without DRM you'd be free to decode the high bitrate MP3 and then re-encode it.
:-))
Personally I can't normally hear the diff between 128 and the CD but there are some tracks where I can, so I univerally use 192kbit with q=0 [q=0 because I have a fast CPU and I don't care if it gives me 0.000000001% better quality]. It also means that if I have to recompress to say OGG or something in the future I stand to have fewer encoding artifacts.
I don't think downloads should be at anything less than 192kbit/sec MP3 (similar rate for MP4/WMA). Mostly because if I'm going to pay for a track I want to guarantee that the PSNR is decent (and that any inherant crappyness is due to the poor lyrics or talentless musicians
Tom
Who says YOU have to use software that doesn't grant you proper freedoms?
I think we have to draw a line on what exactly needs the PROTECTION of the GPL. Kernel, gcc, binutils, coreutils, similaretc...., == YES.
Random user library/util == NO.
If some person sells a C compiler for GNU/Linux, does it matter if it's proprietary? Hells no. I have GCC. Now if GCC went proprietary that would suck. I think GCC needs the protection of the GPL license.
If someone downloads my [say crypto] library and makes a chat program or something with it that is proprietary. Am I really falling to the vendor lockin that the GPL was meant to prevent? No. I don't have to use their chat program, and more to the point, I'm free to write my own using my free library.
Tom
I disagree with what you say! Proof? NEVER!
I'm sure there is a contrived test out there that shows a difference. The trick is, to encode a track at 64, 96, 128, 160 and 192bkit/sec with the high quality setting in LAME. Then sit in front of your stereo, put a blindfold on and listen to the tracks [and the original] in a random order.
Chances are for 99% of your music you can easily tell 64 through 128 from the CD but can't tell the diff between 160 and 192 and the CD, and chances are most of the remaining 1% are indistinguishable from 192kbit.
Why shouldn't they offer lossless encodings at the same price as compressed encodings? Um, this thing called "bandwidth." You should have to pay a premium for your audiophile stupidity so the rest of us don't have to pay for your ignorance.
Tom
A properly mixed (re: not super compressed [range wise]) CD has 96dB of SNR in each channel. That's mighty fine given the sensitivity of human hearing isn't that super anyways. SA-CD and DVD-CD can offer a bit more range but honestly the difference is lost on most.
What you really should get all in a knot about is the continously low quality of shite music being promotoed. Payola's a bitch.
Tom
I've challenged my local audiophile friend to a blind test several times and he refuses to give it a go [especially since he listens to the audio really loudly which will mask most tones anyways].
... use flac. But that's not what this article is about. It's about downloads for listening not remixing. And even then, uncompress the high bitrate mp3/mp4 to WAV, work with that [or store it as FLAC] and STFU.
192+ kbit mp3 with a decent codec (e.g. lame q=2) sounds just like the original for the music in my collection.
Yes [since I know someone will bring it up], if you plan to remix it
Tom