MMT predicted long ago that the Euro is a horrible idea and would end in disaster. It makes no sense to have a single currency for such a heterogeneous collection as the various Eurozone members. Without fiscal and economic integration, a monetary one makes no sense. A mercantilist economy such as Germany, with its trade surplus driven by wage suppression at home, hoards Euros and beggars its neighbors. The weakest one feels the deepest pain from the Eurozone's cannibalistic process. Say Greece exits. What then? Then the next weakest, be it Spain or Italy or whoever. And so on. The process cannot end while there is a unified currency while economies are mismatched. Different economies need to have different currencies so the floating exchange rate can allow rebalancing.
If you think it's a bug, go somewhere else where government does not have the ability to seriously impact the economy. Oh, wait, no such place! I guess people learned their lesson from the Great Depression, which was greatly exacerbated by having gold-backed currency.
Currency never had intrinsic value. You can't eat gold or silver. Their utilitarian value is miniscule compared to their value as a currency. And that comes purely from shared belief that it is worth something. Kind of like government or central bank issued notes, except the latter are institutionally-backed.
This won't become widespread. In most places, barter is fully taxable, and you can only pay tax to a government in the currency it issues. Indeed, this is the primary purpose of taxation--enforce use of the government-issued currency.
It doesn't make sense unless you want to abolish government, since government needs fiat currency to have serious impact on the economy. This is the case whether you're a fiscalist or a monetarist--different approaches, still economic levers. Even heterodox economics such as the Austrians believe in having some sort of currency and don't go for direct barter (though their ideas are little better).
Gold and silver are of limited utility, since, as you pointed out, you can't pay your taxes with them. Indeed, taxes are the government's method of enforcing usage of the currency it issues. Taxes are not for raising money, as most governments that issue their own currency are not revenue constrained, including the US. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
Your understanding is deeply flawed. I started writing a point-by-point but then realized I'd just be duplicating work that's already done more eloquently and in extensive detail. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
I can also recommend earbuds for portable use. Etymotic ER-4s. On the lower price point, their ER-6, which I used to have until psycho ex ran them over with the car. I compared them to some Shure and Westone stuff and the latter have more bass and more distortion...
Unfortunately, high end audio stores tend to be mostly in big cities. The other downside is that you end up trying a pair of $5000 Stax Omega 3's and then you feel inadequate in anything you actually do purchase lol. PS. Grados are colored as their frequency response is anything but flat. I've heard many Grado headphones, and they all have that signature sound. Some like it, but I prefer minimized distortion. If the source audio is bad, so be it, but I sure don't want the headphones to try to compensate for it anymore than I'd spray on more cologne to hide BO instead of taking a shower. For dynamic headphones, Sennheiser is my recommendation for anything in the $200 to $1000 price range. Below that I'm not sure. Koss Porta Pros are probably remain best in the sub-$50 range. Above $1K, AKG for dynamic headphones, otherwise Stax but for Stax also figure in the high voltage amplifier cost if you don't want to build one yourself which is an extra couple grand.
The HF are OK, but their original quality earbuds, the ER-4s, remain their best product with the lowest distortion. I think Etymotic just wanted to add new products for the sake of adding new products while riding the expanding mobile audio bandwagon.
I used and abused a pair of Sennheiser HD-580 for seven or eight years before I upgraded to electrostatics and they were $250 when new. They were certainly more sturdy than most of the previous sub-$100 headphones I had.
Frequency response is a graph, not a pair of numbers. The numbers tell you absolutely nothing about how flat or distorted it is, and that's critical. A good retailer of headphones such as headphone.com will have both frequency response graphs and harmonic distortion graphs, which you can use to directly compare different brands/models. Summary statistics are not useful given that the ear is highly nonlinear and masks some distortions while it is much more sensitive to others.
Are you on drugs? Audio frequency EM waves have zero biological effect. Zero. Not to mention the power lines in your house emit a shitload more of audio frequency (60 Hz) EM waves due to the far larger current that runs through them vs headphone coils and more than makes up for the increased distance between you and a wall.
Etymotic ER-4S remain the best earbuds. I've tried the similarly priced ($300+) Shure and Weston stuff and they just add more bass and give up low distortion.
Unless you poorly review the product of one of the site's many sponsors, and then when a critical mass of this has accrued, posts, entire threads, and/or users are "disappeared", which Jude (site owner) freely admitted in the sponsors-only forum.
I know Jude personally (the guy that runs the site), and I can tell you that threads get deleted if they criticize any of the products of companies sponsoring the site. And there's quite a few of those.
It's a very biased site as a result of persistent and biased moderation (not the users themselves). The old headwize used to be much better; at this point, one is best to refer to diyaudio.com (no commercial conflict of interest) and also the measurements and recommendations at headphone.com (commercial, but have managed to be very objective from what I can tell; plus I tend to look at the measurements more anyway).
You're talking about war and genocide. I was discussing serial killers. I assumed this can be explained by you forgetting your morning coffee, else it would make an implication of fallibility of those with sub-200K slashdot IDs that is too great to ever find acceptance on this site.
For that price point ($40), the Koss Porta Pro remain the kings, as another poster pointed out. I'm saying this as someone that's auditioned everything from the shittiest do-it-yourself headphones I made to $5K electrostatic headphones.
I've heard essentially every Grado headphone that has been available at headphone.com over the years. And they are all--without exception--colored. They are for people that like that particular sound. For an all-around great headphone at mid-price level, Sennheisers can't be beat. The HD-580 were my mainstay for years, until I recently went all in and got Stax Omega 3s.
Slashdot Mirror
MMT predicted long ago that the Euro is a horrible idea and would end in disaster. It makes no sense to have a single currency for such a heterogeneous collection as the various Eurozone members. Without fiscal and economic integration, a monetary one makes no sense. A mercantilist economy such as Germany, with its trade surplus driven by wage suppression at home, hoards Euros and beggars its neighbors. The weakest one feels the deepest pain from the Eurozone's cannibalistic process. Say Greece exits. What then? Then the next weakest, be it Spain or Italy or whoever. And so on. The process cannot end while there is a unified currency while economies are mismatched. Different economies need to have different currencies so the floating exchange rate can allow rebalancing.
If you think it's a bug, go somewhere else where government does not have the ability to seriously impact the economy. Oh, wait, no such place! I guess people learned their lesson from the Great Depression, which was greatly exacerbated by having gold-backed currency.
Currency never had intrinsic value. You can't eat gold or silver. Their utilitarian value is miniscule compared to their value as a currency. And that comes purely from shared belief that it is worth something. Kind of like government or central bank issued notes, except the latter are institutionally-backed.
Why was parent modded down? Dry sex and the increased risk of AIDS is well documented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_sex
I LOLed in real life. That is, because I was assuming you were being sarcastic. If you were serious, I will probably cry.
This won't become widespread. In most places, barter is fully taxable, and you can only pay tax to a government in the currency it issues. Indeed, this is the primary purpose of taxation--enforce use of the government-issued currency.
It doesn't make sense unless you want to abolish government, since government needs fiat currency to have serious impact on the economy. This is the case whether you're a fiscalist or a monetarist--different approaches, still economic levers. Even heterodox economics such as the Austrians believe in having some sort of currency and don't go for direct barter (though their ideas are little better).
Gold and silver are of limited utility, since, as you pointed out, you can't pay your taxes with them. Indeed, taxes are the government's method of enforcing usage of the currency it issues. Taxes are not for raising money, as most governments that issue their own currency are not revenue constrained, including the US. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
Your understanding is deeply flawed. I started writing a point-by-point but then realized I'd just be duplicating work that's already done more eloquently and in extensive detail. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
I can also recommend earbuds for portable use. Etymotic ER-4s. On the lower price point, their ER-6, which I used to have until psycho ex ran them over with the car. I compared them to some Shure and Westone stuff and the latter have more bass and more distortion...
Unfortunately, high end audio stores tend to be mostly in big cities. The other downside is that you end up trying a pair of $5000 Stax Omega 3's and then you feel inadequate in anything you actually do purchase lol. PS. Grados are colored as their frequency response is anything but flat. I've heard many Grado headphones, and they all have that signature sound. Some like it, but I prefer minimized distortion. If the source audio is bad, so be it, but I sure don't want the headphones to try to compensate for it anymore than I'd spray on more cologne to hide BO instead of taking a shower. For dynamic headphones, Sennheiser is my recommendation for anything in the $200 to $1000 price range. Below that I'm not sure. Koss Porta Pros are probably remain best in the sub-$50 range. Above $1K, AKG for dynamic headphones, otherwise Stax but for Stax also figure in the high voltage amplifier cost if you don't want to build one yourself which is an extra couple grand.
The HF are OK, but their original quality earbuds, the ER-4s, remain their best product with the lowest distortion. I think Etymotic just wanted to add new products for the sake of adding new products while riding the expanding mobile audio bandwagon.
I used and abused a pair of Sennheiser HD-580 for seven or eight years before I upgraded to electrostatics and they were $250 when new. They were certainly more sturdy than most of the previous sub-$100 headphones I had.
Frequency response is a graph, not a pair of numbers. The numbers tell you absolutely nothing about how flat or distorted it is, and that's critical. A good retailer of headphones such as headphone.com will have both frequency response graphs and harmonic distortion graphs, which you can use to directly compare different brands/models. Summary statistics are not useful given that the ear is highly nonlinear and masks some distortions while it is much more sensitive to others.
Are you on drugs? Audio frequency EM waves have zero biological effect. Zero. Not to mention the power lines in your house emit a shitload more of audio frequency (60 Hz) EM waves due to the far larger current that runs through them vs headphone coils and more than makes up for the increased distance between you and a wall.
Troll much? I've been here a good deal longer than you, and this type of question is nothing new to slashdot.
Etymotic ER-4S remain the best earbuds. I've tried the similarly priced ($300+) Shure and Weston stuff and they just add more bass and give up low distortion.
Unless you poorly review the product of one of the site's many sponsors, and then when a critical mass of this has accrued, posts, entire threads, and/or users are "disappeared", which Jude (site owner) freely admitted in the sponsors-only forum.
I know Jude personally (the guy that runs the site), and I can tell you that threads get deleted if they criticize any of the products of companies sponsoring the site. And there's quite a few of those. It's a very biased site as a result of persistent and biased moderation (not the users themselves). The old headwize used to be much better; at this point, one is best to refer to diyaudio.com (no commercial conflict of interest) and also the measurements and recommendations at headphone.com (commercial, but have managed to be very objective from what I can tell; plus I tend to look at the measurements more anyway).
You're talking about war and genocide. I was discussing serial killers. I assumed this can be explained by you forgetting your morning coffee, else it would make an implication of fallibility of those with sub-200K slashdot IDs that is too great to ever find acceptance on this site.
I'm not Jewish :)
I'm not American :)
Yes, Sennheiser are the best in the mid-price range (sub-$1K), but the OP was asking about $50 headphones, not $500.
For that price point ($40), the Koss Porta Pro remain the kings, as another poster pointed out. I'm saying this as someone that's auditioned everything from the shittiest do-it-yourself headphones I made to $5K electrostatic headphones.
I've heard essentially every Grado headphone that has been available at headphone.com over the years. And they are all--without exception--colored. They are for people that like that particular sound. For an all-around great headphone at mid-price level, Sennheisers can't be beat. The HD-580 were my mainstay for years, until I recently went all in and got Stax Omega 3s.