I know one of the people involved indirectly, and whatever else they're doing they're not "being antagonistic, and using/. to get some publicity". They knew it was going to be a/. story (inevitably), but just waited for it to appear. No publicity sought.
Having seen the lack of selectiveness in sexual matters exhibited by Bonobo chimps, calling them 'Homos' would seem to work on several levels.
Cheers, Paul
(Disclaimer: This isn't a phrase I like or normally use, just required for the purposes of this joke, until I had to qualify it, when the joke kind of died...)
From the article: "Imagine taking the hand of your grandmother, who was holding the hand of her grandmother and so on down the line. 155 miles out, one of the women would be holding the hand of a chimpanzee."
If you'd met my family you'd know that a line round the block would pretty much get you there.
Re:Ripping from the source a disadvantage? Huh?
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
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· Score: 1
Yeah, it was the best analogy I could come up with at the time!
I agree that if you're starting from scratch, and you know that you'll generally be dealing with the original source, then get the original source! The problem is that they are using an existing codec which (as far as I know) didn't make that assumption.
My understanding is that some simplifications are made based on the assumed input format. An example might be with cut-offs. Most codecs cut off all frequencies above some limit, generally between 16khz and 20khz depending on several factors. As a general rule based on how people here this is a reasonable thing to do, but it's even more valid given that CDs don't carry significant information much above these levels anyway. But the original source may have harmonics above there that a good codec, knowing they are available, might try to retain. (I won't bother with what I think is the valid argument that if I can't hear values above Xkhz, some harmonic above that doesn't affect the 'feel' of the music - this is just an example!)
Sorry I can't provide any more justification - try www.hydrogenaudio.org for more info!
Cheers, Paul
Re:Ripping from the source a disadvantage? Huh?
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
·
· Score: 1
To answer your rhetorical question: No, I wouldn't want the least-filtered signal. I'd want the one the codec was intended for. And the common ones today are intended to compress 44.1KHz or 48Khz.
If you were designing a new car today, wouldn't you want to design it with one that ran on the least-filtered energy source possible? (presumably Solar). Or would you design it for what people would use it with, e.g. gasoline (44.1KHz) or E85 (48Khz)?
Ripping from the source isn't necessarily an advantage. Much (if not all) of the work on such codecs is done to optimize them for ripping from CD or movie soundtrack sources. Something with more information than that (which presumably is the good thing about doing it direct from sources) is supplying a load of information that, at best, the encoder would discard anyway, and at worst might actually confuse it.
All of the music I buy at the moment is on album, rather than singles. I only buy artists I like, instead of songs I like, so I trust that their entire album is worth listening to (give or take). For my current purchasing habits this is clearly a bad deal.
But what this will allow me to do is buy that one song by that band that's really great. $1 a song for an album is too much, but just $1 for that one song is fine (not great, but acceptable). So this could actually expand the music industry's sales by capturing lots of single purchases that wouldn't happen before - for every person who spent $15 on an album for that one good song, there were probably >15 who couldn't see the value, but could for a buck.
But first I have to buy a Mac!
Cheers, Paul
Optical Drive
on
Mini-Box M-100
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Looks tailor-made for a home audio/visual system.
Unfortunately it lacks an optical drive, so its use in that context is limited (but only by money of course, buy an external drive!)
Another limitation is the large magnetic fields SMES (Superconducting Magnetic Electricity Storage) installations create, and not just from a technical point of view. There is almost no research into the effects of prolonged exposure to large magnetic fields on humans, but given the fuss about the 'emanations' from power lines (valid or not) this would probably become a big issue.
On the upside, I can't receive, disrupt, blah blah blah any telecommunications services. My computer, TV or phone can, and it's going to be a sad day when they get their asses hauled into court!
Between PCs vs Macs, and AMD vs Intel, we need a new way of measuring performance that doesn't get tied up in facts and speeds. Might I suggest the Decimal Unit Performance Estimate (DUPE), based on how much you can get done:
1 - Nothing (aka "Jack", "Sod all", "Bugger all") 2 - Something, but barely 3 - Enough to stay awake 4 - Enough to stay employed 5 - Enough to make an actual contribution 6 - Enough to achieve, oh, what's it called, oh yes "job satisfaction" (avoided obvious orgasm joke) 7 - Loads 8 - Loads and loads 9 - Shedloads 10 - Absolute Shedloads
The reader is left to assign the ranking to each system.
I'd like somewhat faster access, but I'm not willing to pay for broadband. 128k down / 64k up and always on would be fine for my use, and I'd even be OK with a (reasonable) download cap, for say $25-$30 per month. Full-on broadband is a great service, but $50 per month is more than I can justify (to myself, let alone my wife) no matter how fast it is.
Reminds me of a thing I saw on the BBC programme "Tomorrow's World" years ago. They had a foam that contracted when compressed. So if you had a small cube of it and squeezed it between your fingers, instead of bulging out () it would bulge in )(
I remember them saying what an impressive invention it was, and, um, if anyone had any ideas on how it could be used could you let us know please.:)
"At first glance, cities in the United States like San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh have all gone through 10-20 years spells of nastiness, but have been fairly stable cities at the macro level for a hundred years."
Unfortunately San Francisco can't really be considered stable on the "ohmygodit'sthebigonewe'reallgonnadie" level.
I was amazed at the construction techniques when I came to the US (from England). Houses were bigger/cheaper, but at the cost of having to replace the roof every 25 years, the siding every 50(?) and paint it every 5-10, and an acceptance that houses were transient. In contrast one house I bought in the UK had listed on the inspector's report "May need repointing (a minor procedure) during the life of the mortgage" (25 years), and that was considered unusual.
The article claiming that it won't hurt sales online bases that conclusion on the fact that only 9% of people consider sales taxes. This misses out the fact that the majority of people *do* consider the price, and in a shocking revelation it turns out that you have to, like, *pay* the sales tax.
This is like saying that increasing profit margins won't hurt sales, because consumers don't consider profit margins when purchasing.
Yes, the internet can be more convenient, and so at times has an advantage over the physical stores, but if I have to pay the same total price at Target or Target.com, plus postage at the.com, most of the time I'll go to the store.
{related story} I moved to the US four years ago from England, and was amazed at the problems I had convincing the car dealers to tell me how much a car would actually cost (including taxes, license etc.) as opposed to how much they charged. I DON'T CARE how much some abstract component of the transaction costs, I care how much I have to pay!
1. It transfers footage at a faster rate in part because it captures less data. Whatever use I'm going to make of my images (moving or still) I like to start off with as much information as possible and discard as appropriate. That's why DV wins over MPEG4 for capture.
2. I spent a long time trying to work out an economical way of storing my DV stuff in high quality formats. I could get a DVD burner, but that's kind off expensive. CD work work, but really fiddly to store a lot of data, and CDs can be prone to decay. Maybe firewire hard drives. but that's not cheap either. Then stupid me realised I could just dump the stuff back on to the tape it came from, suitably edited! $6 for an hour of high quality video, which beats anything the Samsung can offer.
3. If I fill up my tape in mid event I can swap it for a new one within a minute. Harder to do with a HD.
But if you go back to when Aerosmith started there were dozens or even hundreds of Spears-like artists who didn't make it past a year or two. We don't know which bands from today will last - I doubt many people expected Kylie Minogue to still be around 15 years after she started, and still be vaguely credible, ditto Madonna.
I think I'm relatively Net-savvy, but I don't have the facilities to run my own filters as I use a commercial webmail service. Remember that Net-Savvy isn't the same as sysadmin.
Slashdot Mirror
I know one of the people involved indirectly, and whatever else they're doing they're not "being antagonistic, and using /. to get some publicity". They knew it was going to be a /. story (inevitably), but just waited for it to appear. No publicity sought.
Cheers, Paul
Having seen the lack of selectiveness in sexual matters exhibited by Bonobo chimps, calling them 'Homos' would seem to work on several levels.
Cheers, Paul
(Disclaimer: This isn't a phrase I like or normally use, just required for the purposes of this joke, until I had to qualify it, when the joke kind of died...)
From the article: "Imagine taking the hand of your grandmother, who was holding the hand of her grandmother and so on down the line. 155 miles out, one of the women would be holding the hand of a chimpanzee."
If you'd met my family you'd know that a line round the block would pretty much get you there.
Yeah, it was the best analogy I could come up with at the time!
I agree that if you're starting from scratch, and you know that you'll generally be dealing with the original source, then get the original source! The problem is that they are using an existing codec which (as far as I know) didn't make that assumption.
My understanding is that some simplifications are made based on the assumed input format. An example might be with cut-offs. Most codecs cut off all frequencies above some limit, generally between 16khz and 20khz depending on several factors. As a general rule based on how people here this is a reasonable thing to do, but it's even more valid given that CDs don't carry significant information much above these levels anyway. But the original source may have harmonics above there that a good codec, knowing they are available, might try to retain.
(I won't bother with what I think is the valid argument that if I can't hear values above Xkhz, some harmonic above that doesn't affect the 'feel' of the music - this is just an example!)
Sorry I can't provide any more justification - try www.hydrogenaudio.org for more info!
Cheers, Paul
To answer your rhetorical question: No, I wouldn't want the least-filtered signal. I'd want the one the codec was intended for. And the common ones today are intended to compress 44.1KHz or 48Khz.
If you were designing a new car today, wouldn't you want to design it with one that ran on the least-filtered energy source possible? (presumably Solar). Or would you design it for what people would use it with, e.g. gasoline (44.1KHz) or E85 (48Khz)?
Cheers, Paul
Ripping from the source isn't necessarily an advantage. Much (if not all) of the work on such codecs is done to optimize them for ripping from CD or movie soundtrack sources. Something with more information than that (which presumably is the good thing about doing it direct from sources) is supplying a load of information that, at best, the encoder would discard anyway, and at worst might actually confuse it.
Cheers, Paul
All of the music I buy at the moment is on album, rather than singles. I only buy artists I like, instead of songs I like, so I trust that their entire album is worth listening to (give or take). For my current purchasing habits this is clearly a bad deal.
But what this will allow me to do is buy that one song by that band that's really great. $1 a song for an album is too much, but just $1 for that one song is fine (not great, but acceptable). So this could actually expand the music industry's sales by capturing lots of single purchases that wouldn't happen before - for every person who spent $15 on an album for that one good song, there were probably >15 who couldn't see the value, but could for a buck.
But first I have to buy a Mac!
Cheers, Paul
Looks tailor-made for a home audio/visual system.
Unfortunately it lacks an optical drive, so its use in that context is limited (but only by money of course, buy an external drive!)
Which Australian exactly? - I know a guy from Adelaide who doesn't like spam much, maybe it's him.
Another limitation is the large magnetic fields SMES (Superconducting Magnetic Electricity Storage) installations create, and not just from a technical point of view. There is almost no research into the effects of prolonged exposure to large magnetic fields on humans, but given the fuss about the 'emanations' from power lines (valid or not) this would probably become a big issue.
Cheers, Paul
... in Theaters! Only a company as great as MS could make that leap!
Though I wonder if this is the same "-Quality" brand they used when describing 64kbps wma files as CD-Quality?
Promoting the release of independent films onto the "Direct to VCD" market. :)
On the upside, I can't receive, disrupt, blah blah blah any telecommunications services. My computer, TV or phone can, and it's going to be a sad day when they get their asses hauled into court!
Between PCs vs Macs, and AMD vs Intel, we need a new way of measuring performance that doesn't get tied up in facts and speeds. Might I suggest the Decimal Unit Performance Estimate (DUPE), based on how much you can get done:
1 - Nothing (aka "Jack", "Sod all", "Bugger all")
2 - Something, but barely
3 - Enough to stay awake
4 - Enough to stay employed
5 - Enough to make an actual contribution
6 - Enough to achieve, oh, what's it called, oh yes "job satisfaction" (avoided obvious orgasm joke)
7 - Loads
8 - Loads and loads
9 - Shedloads
10 - Absolute Shedloads
The reader is left to assign the ranking to each system.
Cheers, Paul
I'd like somewhat faster access, but I'm not willing to pay for broadband. 128k down / 64k up and always on would be fine for my use, and I'd even be OK with a (reasonable) download cap, for say $25-$30 per month. Full-on broadband is a great service, but $50 per month is more than I can justify (to myself, let alone my wife) no matter how fast it is.
Cheers, Paul
Reminds me of a thing I saw on the BBC programme "Tomorrow's World" years ago. They had a foam that contracted when compressed. So if you had a small cube of it and squeezed it between your fingers, instead of bulging out () it would bulge in )(
:)
I remember them saying what an impressive invention it was, and, um, if anyone had any ideas on how it could be used could you let us know please.
You get the once in a lifetime honor of a first post, and you go and ask a meaningful question?!
pfft
"At first glance, cities in the United States like San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh have all gone through 10-20 years spells of nastiness, but have been fairly stable cities at the macro level for a hundred years."
Unfortunately San Francisco can't really be considered stable on the "ohmygodit'sthebigonewe'reallgonnadie" level.
I was amazed at the construction techniques when I came to the US (from England). Houses were bigger/cheaper, but at the cost of having to replace the roof every 25 years, the siding every 50(?) and paint it every 5-10, and an acceptance that houses were transient. In contrast one house I bought in the UK had listed on the inspector's report "May need repointing (a minor procedure) during the life of the mortgage" (25 years), and that was considered unusual.
"Yeah, it's a while off, but then, today seemed a while off to the people of 1903."
And now that they've made it I'm sure they're breathing a sigh of relief through their oxygen masks.
"If you lose your hippocampus you only lose the ability to store new memories,"
/. were just an oversight!
And I thought duplicate stories on
lardass
The article claiming that it won't hurt sales online bases that conclusion on the fact that only 9% of people consider sales taxes. This misses out the fact that the majority of people *do* consider the price, and in a shocking revelation it turns out that you have to, like, *pay* the sales tax.
.com, most of the time I'll go to the store.
This is like saying that increasing profit margins won't hurt sales, because consumers don't consider profit margins when purchasing.
Yes, the internet can be more convenient, and so at times has an advantage over the physical stores, but if I have to pay the same total price at Target or Target.com, plus postage at the
{related story} I moved to the US four years ago from England, and was amazed at the problems I had convincing the car dealers to tell me how much a car would actually cost (including taxes, license etc.) as opposed to how much they charged. I DON'T CARE how much some abstract component of the transaction costs, I care how much I have to pay!
A few objections:
1. It transfers footage at a faster rate in part because it captures less data. Whatever use I'm going to make of my images (moving or still) I like to start off with as much information as possible and discard as appropriate. That's why DV wins over MPEG4 for capture.
2. I spent a long time trying to work out an economical way of storing my DV stuff in high quality formats. I could get a DVD burner, but that's kind off expensive. CD work work, but really fiddly to store a lot of data, and CDs can be prone to decay. Maybe firewire hard drives. but that's not cheap either. Then stupid me realised I could just dump the stuff back on to the tape it came from, suitably edited! $6 for an hour of high quality video, which beats anything the Samsung can offer.
3. If I fill up my tape in mid event I can swap it for a new one within a minute. Harder to do with a HD.
So, interesting tech, but not yet useful I think.
Cheers, Paul
But if you go back to when Aerosmith started there were dozens or even hundreds of Spears-like artists who didn't make it past a year or two. We don't know which bands from today will last - I doubt many people expected Kylie Minogue to still be around 15 years after she started, and still be vaguely credible, ditto Madonna.
I think I'm relatively Net-savvy, but I don't have the facilities to run my own filters as I use a commercial webmail service. Remember that Net-Savvy isn't the same as sysadmin.
Cheers, Paul