I realize that, but like you said, CD's were designed to match what we can hear. 44.1Khz 16 bit is enough to cover that. When studios use 96Khz and 24 or 32 bit encoding, they do it so that when they mix, edit, and do their magic they still have enough resolution to get a good 44.1Khz 16 bit master once all is said and done.
While you can get a good reproduction of sound using VBR 256 you still lose fidelity compared to CD if the master is 44.1Khz 16-bit. I haven't seen anywhere that iTunes store uses "better than CD" masters but I don't doubt you here. Even using the latest LAME encoding or AAC, 128kbit still sounds like junk to me. It doesn't el ven take a professional studio to hear the distortion, an average car stereo will reveal it.
There may be a time in the future when you can obtain digitally compressed downloads that offer higher fidelity than a CD, and they might be worth looking into at that point (as long as there's no DRM, of course) but until then I won't buy any of them.
But that's pretty much true for any data you want to keep. You have to keep making copies to newer hardware or else risk the lose of your data when that hardware eventually fails. And, I hope you use the term "every few years" loosely. Like, every 10 years sounds better to me.
None exists probably because there's generally no audible difference. A simple mixer would probably do the trick. Besides the pops and crackles of vinyl, most people couldn't tell the difference. It's in their minds. But yea, I think a filter that adds "fake" pops and crackles would be a neat thing. I don't think I'd use it much, but it would be fun every once in a while. As for the warmness, a filter that removes a little bit of the "sparkle" would probably do the trick. Digital music tends to have better sounding high pitches, so reducing those would probably provide the sound you want. It's probably got more to do with the playback gear than the actual vinyl disc. If you could somehow pipe the output of the CD player through the electronics of the record player you'd end up with the sound.
Actually, you're not far off on the film comment (even though it was meant to be a mockery.) I've heard time and time again that 35mm film is somehow better than high definition video. It's not true. When you compare an uncompressed digital movie-frame (even at 1080p) to anamorphic 35mm film, where all the rest of the camera is spec'd the same, the HD footage will be of higher quality. Film has practical limitations on quality, and there reaches a point where you simply can't get any more quality out of it. But you'll still hear people gawk at how somehow the noise and "feel" (so arbitrary..) of film is better.
PS. Try to reduce your reliance on phrases such as "trust me" - it immediately makes people not trust your opinion.
Wait, so those CD's I have from 1992 that still play fine, the ones I don't scratch because I actually take care of my shit, actually don't play fine? I must have imagined listening to some of my old music last weekend. Latent acid trip, perhaps? It must have been, because the shelf life is long past... And if you want to talk about recordable media, those CD-R's I burned in 1996 still work great too.
So, in summary. Optical media can last a lot longer than you claim if you 1) Don't leave them out in the sun 2) Don't rub sand paper on them and 3) Don't live in an imaginary world of CD's from 2003 being no good. In addition to that, magnetic media can last a lot longer if you 1) Don't leave them out in the sun 2) Don't rub sand paper on them and 3) Don't leave them next to magnets.
I get your overall point but you can make your point without making obviously bullshit claims.
If you use analog mixers, analog recording studios, and analog duplication processes, that MIGHT come close to being true. Unfortunately for you, there's actual REAL limitations on the human ear, the vinyl medium itself.. And that everyone uses digital equipment now. Your vinyl copies are analog representations of digital data.
People have been trying to sell me on "they sound better" forever. It's bull. A CD can accurately store (slightly) more dynamic range than our ears are capable of hearing. Anyone that claims vinyl sounds better actually prefers the slightly distorted sound that they tend to produce. Some people actually think that Vinyl can reproduce sound that we can't hear, yet we can "feel" and that's why it's better. Crazyness.
I prefer accurate reproduction. Which, actually, is why I believe CD's may be the last good medium for delivering music. I might sound like a snob by saying it, but I won't ever pay for lossy compressed music, ever. Not when CD's with no compression and much higher fidelity had already been available for two decades. Sound quality is supposed to advance, not the other way around.
Vinyl is cool, and has it's place, but better than a CD? Naa.
Considering that manned missions to Mars haven't been attempted and much of the technical details are still yet to be worked out, you can't say how much it would cost to do it. While I do support efforts to get humanity exploring space, I don't appreciate your weak attempt to bash the (broken) US foreign policy. There's better places for things like that.
ps. The government doesn't "make" money - they TAKE it. From you.
It's possible it could. A watermark doesn't have to be a series of 1's and 0's. It could be spread out over the file, it could be integrated into the music itself (undetectable to the ear, of course) and could potentially survive such a conversion.
I don't like the idea of Watermarking, though, but in the end every system will be broken and it would really suck if someone spoofed your watermark and spread a bunch of music that was supposed to be assigned to you. But, it's at least a step in the right direction (which is no protection at all) and at least it allows one to put your own music on any device you own, regardless of whether it supports MegaCorp's version of protection.
Yea, Rush Hour is really a necessity. It adds a whole new dynamic to the game - not only does it allow for much more transportation, it lets you click any road, building, or station and see what's going on. It helps you deal with the problems like "Building abandoned due to high commute time." With Rush Hour you can actually click to see where people are driving and what types of transportation they're using. You can then adjust your transportation system accordingly or build more zones appropriate to what's required.
You can switch to Zone view and you'll see bus stops, subways, etc but not buildings, and you can also view different types of buildings and they get highlighted. For instance, you can click Health and all the hospitals show up bright green on the map.
SC4 is a challenging game and if they had made it easy to get money it wouldn't be. Besides, it's not entirely difficult to make money, and the regions help with that a lot. But, if you still find it too hard, there's some great mods that help out. One fixes the toll booths, giving them the proper capacity (and therefore more money) and another one increases the capacity of industrial buildings.
The hardest part of SC4 is the first city. Once you have a viable first city, it's easier to expand on it into other cities in your region.
I think SC4 is the best Sim City game that's ever existed. The attention to detail, the expansive regions, and the Rush Hour pack make this game unmatched in the genre.
Don't even bother with that abomination called SimCity Societies. It's got the name, but it has nothing to do with Sim City. It's not even good on it's own, if you have no expectations of playing a Sim City game.
As long as you eat your ice cream within a couple few weeks, you're good to go. I guess this is really only good for manufacturing and distributing - they can hold on to larger stores of ice cream since it won't go bad in a warehouse.
Personally, I'd rather keep my ice cream as simple as possible. You never know what all these odd chemicals can do to your body in the long term.
Flash might suck for some reasons, but for Video.. Well, I didn't love the idea of using Flash for video, but there's a reason it got so popular.
Internet streaming video any other way was a DISASTER, and still is. Half the sites that use Windows Media fail because they don't work through proxy servers, or there's some firewall issue, or whatever. Other sites use Real, and hardly anyone had RealPlayer - and some didn't want that Ad-ware crap. Yet more still used Quicktime, with the same problem as Real with installed base, and unreliability (not in the software itself, but the ability to successfully video an internet video.)
Flash virtually solved all those issues in one fell swoop. If you have a recent version of Flash (almost all systems do) and you can get to the web server, you can watch the video. No magic media protocols or difficult streaming server requirements.
PS. I never had a problem with Flash on my Hackintosh Tiger box. It's just an Opteron 165 (2.2Ghz) nothing fancy.
It worked against him. It seems as if the front-runners always get screwed because people think "Well, I don't have to vote today then, because my choice will win anyways" and the competition will say "Crap! I better get my ass to the polls to support my guy/gal before they lose!"
It happened to Hilary, it happened to Obama. It's still very much in the air IMO. But personally, I'd be okay with either Hilary or Obama, but I think Hilary has a better chance of winning the general election.
It probably depends on the area, like Cox. Cox has bought up a bunch of smaller cable companies across the country, and they're all run pretty much independently. The tech support people often have to use different sets of tools depending on the network you're a part of. Also, they increase speeds and reduce funny business when they're in areas with more competition. NYC is obviously fairly competitive.
My friend has Comcast in Massachusetts and it's actually OK. They don't block any incoming or outgoing network ports. His Bittorrent traffic seems OK. They're still bitches about the upstream, though. He paid extra to get extra speed, and it's still only 768Kbit upstream. My Cox cable modem is faster, and I get 2Mbit upstream, but I have all sorts of blocked ports (53 UDP, 21, 23, 80, 443, 25 in and out, etc..)
That's a new low, my friend. I generally don't mind the grammar Nazi thing, but this is really sad.
So, just to stoop to your level:
1) "Aw" isn't a word. "Aww" isn't either, but at least it's more accepted. 2) Neither is "mmmkay." 3) Feel free to use a single period at the end of a sentence. 4) "I got nothin'" should read "I have nothing."
UAC is a step in the right direction but it shows how deeply flawed Windows is. You need to be an administrator to do far too many things. While a MacOS or a Linux installation will prompt you for your password when you install software or change core operation system behaviors (boot disk stuff, system tools, etc) Windows requires that you be an administrator to change your time zone or Desktop resolution.
All that, and because Microsoft wants to (rightfully so, in their position) support as many older apps as possible, you see the UAC a lot more than you should if said application was written with user-mode-only in mind.
For Microsoft to truly fix Windows, it would probably break a lot of stuff. Personally, I don't think it would be a bad idea. Like Apple, they could sandbox any older apps, and the "new" Windows could be a lot better. But it would not be smooth. They've painted themselves into a pretty corner, that's for sure. The reason they did it, was because they could. Everyone was going to run Windows anyways.
Yes, it's the super complicated SlashDot moderation system designed specifically to baffle the weak minded. Although some chimps have been known to figure it out, it apparently still has some effectiveness.
Generally speaking, enterprise IT systems will never use a USB hard drive to do backups or archiving. Small, lightweight, write-once media sound a whole lot more appropriate.
$4k is nothing. Do you know how much your average LTO tape drive is these days?
Besides, if the media is really $30 each, your hard drive cost advantage evaporates extremely fast. (as a foot-note, tapes are significantly more expensive.)
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I realize that, but like you said, CD's were designed to match what we can hear. 44.1Khz 16 bit is enough to cover that. When studios use 96Khz and 24 or 32 bit encoding, they do it so that when they mix, edit, and do their magic they still have enough resolution to get a good 44.1Khz 16 bit master once all is said and done.
While you can get a good reproduction of sound using VBR 256 you still lose fidelity compared to CD if the master is 44.1Khz 16-bit. I haven't seen anywhere that iTunes store uses "better than CD" masters but I don't doubt you here. Even using the latest LAME encoding or AAC, 128kbit still sounds like junk to me. It doesn't el ven take a professional studio to hear the distortion, an average car stereo will reveal it.
There may be a time in the future when you can obtain digitally compressed downloads that offer higher fidelity than a CD, and they might be worth looking into at that point (as long as there's no DRM, of course) but until then I won't buy any of them.
But that's pretty much true for any data you want to keep. You have to keep making copies to newer hardware or else risk the lose of your data when that hardware eventually fails. And, I hope you use the term "every few years" loosely. Like, every 10 years sounds better to me.
None exists probably because there's generally no audible difference. A simple mixer would probably do the trick. Besides the pops and crackles of vinyl, most people couldn't tell the difference. It's in their minds. But yea, I think a filter that adds "fake" pops and crackles would be a neat thing. I don't think I'd use it much, but it would be fun every once in a while. As for the warmness, a filter that removes a little bit of the "sparkle" would probably do the trick. Digital music tends to have better sounding high pitches, so reducing those would probably provide the sound you want. It's probably got more to do with the playback gear than the actual vinyl disc. If you could somehow pipe the output of the CD player through the electronics of the record player you'd end up with the sound.
Actually, you're not far off on the film comment (even though it was meant to be a mockery.) I've heard time and time again that 35mm film is somehow better than high definition video. It's not true. When you compare an uncompressed digital movie-frame (even at 1080p) to anamorphic 35mm film, where all the rest of the camera is spec'd the same, the HD footage will be of higher quality. Film has practical limitations on quality, and there reaches a point where you simply can't get any more quality out of it. But you'll still hear people gawk at how somehow the noise and "feel" (so arbitrary..) of film is better.
PS. Try to reduce your reliance on phrases such as "trust me" - it immediately makes people not trust your opinion.
Wait, so those CD's I have from 1992 that still play fine, the ones I don't scratch because I actually take care of my shit, actually don't play fine? I must have imagined listening to some of my old music last weekend. Latent acid trip, perhaps? It must have been, because the shelf life is long past... And if you want to talk about recordable media, those CD-R's I burned in 1996 still work great too.
So, in summary. Optical media can last a lot longer than you claim if you 1) Don't leave them out in the sun 2) Don't rub sand paper on them and 3) Don't live in an imaginary world of CD's from 2003 being no good.
In addition to that, magnetic media can last a lot longer if you 1) Don't leave them out in the sun 2) Don't rub sand paper on them and 3) Don't leave them next to magnets.
I get your overall point but you can make your point without making obviously bullshit claims.
If you use analog mixers, analog recording studios, and analog duplication processes, that MIGHT come close to being true. Unfortunately for you, there's actual REAL limitations on the human ear, the vinyl medium itself.. And that everyone uses digital equipment now. Your vinyl copies are analog representations of digital data.
Hmm, I don't know about "almost all." I'd say "all."
People have been trying to sell me on "they sound better" forever. It's bull. A CD can accurately store (slightly) more dynamic range than our ears are capable of hearing. Anyone that claims vinyl sounds better actually prefers the slightly distorted sound that they tend to produce. Some people actually think that Vinyl can reproduce sound that we can't hear, yet we can "feel" and that's why it's better. Crazyness.
I prefer accurate reproduction. Which, actually, is why I believe CD's may be the last good medium for delivering music. I might sound like a snob by saying it, but I won't ever pay for lossy compressed music, ever. Not when CD's with no compression and much higher fidelity had already been available for two decades. Sound quality is supposed to advance, not the other way around.
Vinyl is cool, and has it's place, but better than a CD? Naa.
Considering that manned missions to Mars haven't been attempted and much of the technical details are still yet to be worked out, you can't say how much it would cost to do it. While I do support efforts to get humanity exploring space, I don't appreciate your weak attempt to bash the (broken) US foreign policy. There's better places for things like that.
ps. The government doesn't "make" money - they TAKE it. From you.
It's possible it could. A watermark doesn't have to be a series of 1's and 0's. It could be spread out over the file, it could be integrated into the music itself (undetectable to the ear, of course) and could potentially survive such a conversion.
I don't like the idea of Watermarking, though, but in the end every system will be broken and it would really suck if someone spoofed your watermark and spread a bunch of music that was supposed to be assigned to you. But, it's at least a step in the right direction (which is no protection at all) and at least it allows one to put your own music on any device you own, regardless of whether it supports MegaCorp's version of protection.
Yea, Rush Hour is really a necessity. It adds a whole new dynamic to the game - not only does it allow for much more transportation, it lets you click any road, building, or station and see what's going on. It helps you deal with the problems like "Building abandoned due to high commute time." With Rush Hour you can actually click to see where people are driving and what types of transportation they're using. You can then adjust your transportation system accordingly or build more zones appropriate to what's required.
SC4 is mesmerizing. It's an amazing game.
You can switch to Zone view and you'll see bus stops, subways, etc but not buildings, and you can also view different types of buildings and they get highlighted. For instance, you can click Health and all the hospitals show up bright green on the map.
I never found it to be a big problem.
You can't rotate the camera in SC4.
SC4 is a challenging game and if they had made it easy to get money it wouldn't be. Besides, it's not entirely difficult to make money, and the regions help with that a lot. But, if you still find it too hard, there's some great mods that help out. One fixes the toll booths, giving them the proper capacity (and therefore more money) and another one increases the capacity of industrial buildings.
The hardest part of SC4 is the first city. Once you have a viable first city, it's easier to expand on it into other cities in your region.
I think SC4 is the best Sim City game that's ever existed. The attention to detail, the expansive regions, and the Rush Hour pack make this game unmatched in the genre.
Don't even bother with that abomination called SimCity Societies. It's got the name, but it has nothing to do with Sim City. It's not even good on it's own, if you have no expectations of playing a Sim City game.
I wouldn't get too upset about it. These read like Playboy Magazine sex experience stories. Most of them are bullshit and didn't happen. If not all.
They're just e-mail chain letters with a web site.
As long as you eat your ice cream within a couple few weeks, you're good to go. I guess this is really only good for manufacturing and distributing - they can hold on to larger stores of ice cream since it won't go bad in a warehouse.
Personally, I'd rather keep my ice cream as simple as possible. You never know what all these odd chemicals can do to your body in the long term.
Flash might suck for some reasons, but for Video.. Well, I didn't love the idea of using Flash for video, but there's a reason it got so popular.
Internet streaming video any other way was a DISASTER, and still is. Half the sites that use Windows Media fail because they don't work through proxy servers, or there's some firewall issue, or whatever. Other sites use Real, and hardly anyone had RealPlayer - and some didn't want that Ad-ware crap. Yet more still used Quicktime, with the same problem as Real with installed base, and unreliability (not in the software itself, but the ability to successfully video an internet video.)
Flash virtually solved all those issues in one fell swoop. If you have a recent version of Flash (almost all systems do) and you can get to the web server, you can watch the video. No magic media protocols or difficult streaming server requirements.
PS. I never had a problem with Flash on my Hackintosh Tiger box. It's just an Opteron 165 (2.2Ghz) nothing fancy.
The Vista search tool isn't bad, once it has three days to index the files left behind on a clean install of Windows =)
It worked against him. It seems as if the front-runners always get screwed because people think "Well, I don't have to vote today then, because my choice will win anyways" and the competition will say "Crap! I better get my ass to the polls to support my guy/gal before they lose!"
It happened to Hilary, it happened to Obama. It's still very much in the air IMO. But personally, I'd be okay with either Hilary or Obama, but I think Hilary has a better chance of winning the general election.
It probably depends on the area, like Cox. Cox has bought up a bunch of smaller cable companies across the country, and they're all run pretty much independently. The tech support people often have to use different sets of tools depending on the network you're a part of. Also, they increase speeds and reduce funny business when they're in areas with more competition. NYC is obviously fairly competitive.
My friend has Comcast in Massachusetts and it's actually OK. They don't block any incoming or outgoing network ports. His Bittorrent traffic seems OK. They're still bitches about the upstream, though. He paid extra to get extra speed, and it's still only 768Kbit upstream. My Cox cable modem is faster, and I get 2Mbit upstream, but I have all sorts of blocked ports (53 UDP, 21, 23, 80, 443, 25 in and out, etc..)
That's a new low, my friend. I generally don't mind the grammar Nazi thing, but this is really sad.
So, just to stoop to your level:
1) "Aw" isn't a word. "Aww" isn't either, but at least it's more accepted.
2) Neither is "mmmkay."
3) Feel free to use a single period at the end of a sentence.
4) "I got nothin'" should read "I have nothing."
Perhaps Vista sets UTC, I don't know, but up to Windows XP and Windows 2003 R2 it's localtime. Who knows what he's been smoking.
UAC is a step in the right direction but it shows how deeply flawed Windows is. You need to be an administrator to do far too many things. While a MacOS or a Linux installation will prompt you for your password when you install software or change core operation system behaviors (boot disk stuff, system tools, etc) Windows requires that you be an administrator to change your time zone or Desktop resolution.
All that, and because Microsoft wants to (rightfully so, in their position) support as many older apps as possible, you see the UAC a lot more than you should if said application was written with user-mode-only in mind.
For Microsoft to truly fix Windows, it would probably break a lot of stuff. Personally, I don't think it would be a bad idea. Like Apple, they could sandbox any older apps, and the "new" Windows could be a lot better. But it would not be smooth. They've painted themselves into a pretty corner, that's for sure. The reason they did it, was because they could. Everyone was going to run Windows anyways.
Yes, it's the super complicated SlashDot moderation system designed specifically to baffle the weak minded. Although some chimps have been known to figure it out, it apparently still has some effectiveness.
I love the wording, don't you?
"to allow adults to continue to read, hear and see what they want"
Ohh, thanks mister! You're going to ALLOW us to read what we want! Thanks!
Generally speaking, enterprise IT systems will never use a USB hard drive to do backups or archiving. Small, lightweight, write-once media sound a whole lot more appropriate.
$4k is nothing. Do you know how much your average LTO tape drive is these days?
Besides, if the media is really $30 each, your hard drive cost advantage evaporates extremely fast. (as a foot-note, tapes are significantly more expensive.)