I didn't realise, thanks for pointing that out. Guess I have been hanging out with photographers too much instead of geeks!;-)
Still, I doubt many photographers would go that far. Most fakes are easy to spot by trained eyes anyway; if it looks too good to be true, it usualy is.
And that is what you should do anyway to get the best quality and easiest work flow. Better still, there is no (easy?) way to turn something you edited into a camera RAW file. So when you need evidence that your image is unmanipulated, just show them the RAW version...
Ehrm, these watches aren't going into space. They are for the scientists on the ground controling the unmanned rover missions.
I am sure those guys could do with somethng a bit cheaper than all having watches. They all work on a computer all the time, what's wrong with a simple always-on-top app that shows martian time? This smells like another $1M 0G pen, when the russians made do with a pencil.
You probably encode with the wrong encoder at the wrong bitrate. Faster is not better (Xing, anyone?)
I paid for my Frauhofer Pro codec and encode everything at 256Kbit HQ setting and it's slow. I am an audio buff and I can't tell the difference between that and a CD being played through the same high quality audio card.
Yes, it is bigger than a 128Kbs file, but who gives a damn when you have a 30Gb HD in your MP3 player?
Ghosting is when there is a consisten shaddow of the same image elsehwere in the screen. What you are seeing, I imagine, is on fast moving action or panning, where you are seeing parst of the screen lagging. That would be because of the low bitrate cable (and satelite) operators use these days to cram in more channels, plus analog TV, plus internet...
Yeah, the BBC isn't much of a problem, they know what they are doing and are willing to spend the money. They also have their own multiplex and thus don't rely on anyone elses (in)competence.
The problem is the commercial broadcasters, even the big London stations!
Have you ever listened to digital radio in the UK? I have no idea what these amateurs are thinking. No stations want to spend money on it and to get their signal to the multiplexes they seem to use low bitrate connections.
So what you end up with is the music first comming out of a 256Kbit MP2 radio automation system, then going into a 128Kbit line, only to be decoded and re-encoded in 128Kbit for the DAB multiplex again.
Now if that isn't bad enough, they can't seem to match levels. The signals are heavily processed, just like FM, so it would be easy to make the use maximum modulation without clipping. But many don't; one station will be at 100%, while the next wil be at -12dB, with some others in between.
So terrible encoding artifacts and unmatched levels, yes, DAB in the UK is a great thing. At least with an IBOC system and engineers that care, there is some chance of it sounding OK. Though I have to admit that 96Kbit sounds a bit low and again, thanks to station engineers caring in the US, analog FM will probably sound better in good receiption areas and equipment.
Unless I had what my girlfriend calls "a boys look" at the article, it doesn't actualy say anything about these people switching from downloading to buying, does it?
I never realised this. Does this include promotions of the station's own content? Every time I am in the US I get the feeling there is much more advertsing there then there is here.
Actualy, there is. Here is a quite from the UK's Advertising Association's website: "[On terrestrial commercial stations ITV, C4 and Five] Only seven minutes of each hour, on average, may be given over to advertisements, with the maximum allowed at peak time of seven and a half minutes. On satellite and cable TV the limit is an average of nine minutes per hour over a day"
This means we sometimes get some more than average on very popular one-offs (like the Joe Millionaire finale), but usualy it is bearable. Yet these stations make money. How odd.
It's a never ending circle. Sales/programming sell more ads for more money. The actors, producers and writes say, well, we'd like to see some of that or we'll go elsewhere. So the station gives in and sells more ads to compensate and tells them next seasons episodes will have to be 1 minute shorter.
You may want to drop the "s". I think there is only one goverment in the world retared enough to do something like that...
Bottom line is that TV can be profitable without as many ads as you get in the US. This has been proven in Europe. While many european goverments restrict the time spent for advertising and the kind of advertising they can do, not so in the US. So the stations/networks there have been putting on as much as the market can take and have gotten used to living fat.
This massive Wired article from way back in '96 follows the FLAG cable project around the world an gives a complete history of undersea cables and the technologies used to make, lay and operate the cables.
I don't think there is enough slack to pull them up. They cut them on the sea floor, then drag up one end, atach a new piece, lower it, pick up the other end, connect that to the same piece's other end and lower the whole thing down. Then, ofcourse, you end up with a big loop on the ocean floor.
Don't they realize that Google wasn't created for them? Rather, it is created for surfers. There is one surefire way to get noted on Google if your business depends on it: advertise. You get what you pay for.
They didn't pull it off because they tried to reach too high. JFK decided that only matching the brits wasn't good enough, they needed an ass kicking and for that the US SST had to go Mach 3. The problem with Mach 3 is that the friction makes for temperatures too high for anything more affordable than Titanium. Hence, it failed. Had Boeing shot for Mach 2, I am sure it would have been built.
That's the theory, I am not sure if I agree. I just ran sa-learn (SpamAssassin) on my "Spam False Negative" mailbox filled with about 1000. After a few minutes crunching it came back with: "Learned from 1 message". Great result.
The point is that at the _sending_ ISP level, millions of messages can be stopped in their tracks in one go by cutting off the abuser after too much mail/spam traffic is being recieved.
I have a baysian filter and it works fine. That doesn't change the fact that 95% of mail that reaches my mail server is spam. Which isn't that bad as it only handles 200 messages a day. Now translate that into the internet at large and clearly the picture changes.
I am in favour of a network providers providing spam _detection_ by simply intercepting any port 25 connection from a connection and running it through their own mail servers, which do baysian and traffic analysis and contact/cut-off the client if it is spam.
Wow, you have a chip on your shoulder, don't you? I never said the iPod is a _bad_ player, just that it is no longer by default better than any competitors. Both have their merrits.
As for the audiophile aricle you refer to, they haven't tested any other players there, have they? So how can you state other players aren't equal or better? (did I mention they were playing 16/44.1 AIFFs, and not any compressed files?)
Speaking of "uninformed oaf", baterry life does go down when using higher bitrates. (which is what I was refering to, RTFA) I had an MP3 life before a portable and I am not going to re-encode my entire library in a non-standard format that some people say to be just as good. (a claim I heard many times but never actualy delivered, mind me playing safe?)
Seriously, have you ever held, listened to and used a Creative Zen NX? I _have_ tested both and decided they were a close match. For my use (I travel a lot) the longer battery life, smart volume (great for noisy planes and trains, or offices) and considerably lower price simply won out. I haven't fully tested the audio quality of the iPod (nor the Zen before I bought it, but several reviewers who knew their stuff described it as better than the iPod, so I took my chances), but the Zen sounds better than any portable I ever owned, which includes expensive CD players and MiniDisc, so I don't see the iPod being capable of much more, if any more at all.
So maybe you should rethink the troll comment you made. If you feel so secure about your iPod, why the rant in the first place? I could make the same comment about you as you did as me...
I hear it in all and every style, though some more than other; piano/string/vocals ballads for instance are terrible, because there is so little information anyway, the encoder has to throw away the important stuff to make the bitrate. But at 256Kb (Fraunhofer pro codec) and through my pro audio card at home, I have to admit to not being able to hear the difference between original CD and MP3, for which I have done blind tests. At 192K it was hit and miss and at 128, I spotted the MP3 every time. Memory is cheap these days, so 256K it is.
About the walkman style headphones: it all depends on the headphones! I use Sony MDR-G72s, which are actualy really good and it's easy to spot the difference. I have a handfull of downloaded files in my collection (the rest is all own stuff), usualy at 128Kb and they sound terrible compared to. I guess it also doesn't help that many dumbos think that faster MP3 encoders = better. (Xing comes to mind, shudder)
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I didn't realise, thanks for pointing that out. Guess I have been hanging out with photographers too much instead of geeks! ;-)
Still, I doubt many photographers would go that far. Most fakes are easy to spot by trained eyes anyway; if it looks too good to be true, it usualy is.
And that is what you should do anyway to get the best quality and easiest work flow. Better still, there is no (easy?) way to turn something you edited into a camera RAW file. So when you need evidence that your image is unmanipulated, just show them the RAW version...
A friend of mine (whose website I host) is terrible. But at least his pictures of the "rockafella center" get him on the first page of Google! :)
Ehrm, these watches aren't going into space. They are for the scientists on the ground controling the unmanned rover missions.
I am sure those guys could do with somethng a bit cheaper than all having watches. They all work on a computer all the time, what's wrong with a simple always-on-top app that shows martian time? This smells like another $1M 0G pen, when the russians made do with a pencil.
You probably encode with the wrong encoder at the wrong bitrate. Faster is not better (Xing, anyone?)
I paid for my Frauhofer Pro codec and encode everything at 256Kbit HQ setting and it's slow. I am an audio buff and I can't tell the difference between that and a CD being played through the same high quality audio card.
Yes, it is bigger than a 128Kbs file, but who gives a damn when you have a 30Gb HD in your MP3 player?
MP3 is going to be here for a long time.
This guy spoke about re-ripping. Even if 128Kb AAC is equal to 192Kb MP3, decoding and the re-coding in 128Kbit MP3 will certainly not be.
I only have 256Kbit MP3s, ripped only from my own collections. There's just something about owning that CD.
Secondly, the world is bigger than just the US; in the UK, everyone and their brother still sells them like hotcakes.
Ghosting is when there is a consisten shaddow of the same image elsehwere in the screen. What you are seeing, I imagine, is on fast moving action or panning, where you are seeing parst of the screen lagging. That would be because of the low bitrate cable (and satelite) operators use these days to cram in more channels, plus analog TV, plus internet...
Yeah, the BBC isn't much of a problem, they know what they are doing and are willing to spend the money. They also have their own multiplex and thus don't rely on anyone elses (in)competence.
The problem is the commercial broadcasters, even the big London stations!
Have you ever listened to digital radio in the UK? I have no idea what these amateurs are thinking. No stations want to spend money on it and to get their signal to the multiplexes they seem to use low bitrate connections.
So what you end up with is the music first comming out of a 256Kbit MP2 radio automation system, then going into a 128Kbit line, only to be decoded and re-encoded in 128Kbit for the DAB multiplex again.
Now if that isn't bad enough, they can't seem to match levels. The signals are heavily processed, just like FM, so it would be easy to make the use maximum modulation without clipping. But many don't; one station will be at 100%, while the next wil be at -12dB, with some others in between.
So terrible encoding artifacts and unmatched levels, yes, DAB in the UK is a great thing. At least with an IBOC system and engineers that care, there is some chance of it sounding OK. Though I have to admit that 96Kbit sounds a bit low and again, thanks to station engineers caring in the US, analog FM will probably sound better in good receiption areas and equipment.
Two words: multipath distortion. Seen as ghosting on your TV, but also a big problem with radio in both mountainous as urban enviroments.
Unless I had what my girlfriend calls "a boys look" at the article, it doesn't actualy say anything about these people switching from downloading to buying, does it?
Actualy, there is. Here is a quite from the UK's Advertising Association's website: "[On terrestrial commercial stations ITV, C4 and Five] Only seven minutes of each hour, on average, may be given over to advertisements, with the maximum allowed at peak time of seven and a half minutes. On satellite and cable TV the limit is an average of nine minutes per hour over a day"
This means we sometimes get some more than average on very popular one-offs (like the Joe Millionaire finale), but usualy it is bearable. Yet these stations make money. How odd.
It's a never ending circle. Sales/programming sell more ads for more money. The actors, producers and writes say, well, we'd like to see some of that or we'll go elsewhere. So the station gives in and sells more ads to compensate and tells them next seasons episodes will have to be 1 minute shorter.
So it is hard to say who is to blame.
You may want to drop the "s". I think there is only one goverment in the world retared enough to do something like that...
Bottom line is that TV can be profitable without as many ads as you get in the US. This has been proven in Europe. While many european goverments restrict the time spent for advertising and the kind of advertising they can do, not so in the US. So the stations/networks there have been putting on as much as the market can take and have gotten used to living fat.
This massive Wired article from way back in '96 follows the FLAG cable project around the world an gives a complete history of undersea cables and the technologies used to make, lay and operate the cables.
I don't think there is enough slack to pull them up. They cut them on the sea floor, then drag up one end, atach a new piece, lower it, pick up the other end, connect that to the same piece's other end and lower the whole thing down. Then, ofcourse, you end up with a big loop on the ocean floor.
And no, you don't simply drive a van to where the cable is broken, dig it up and repair it all in an afternoon's work.
Don't they realize that Google wasn't created for them? Rather, it is created for surfers. There is one surefire way to get noted on Google if your business depends on it: advertise. You get what you pay for.
They didn't pull it off because they tried to reach too high. JFK decided that only matching the brits wasn't good enough, they needed an ass kicking and for that the US SST had to go Mach 3. The problem with Mach 3 is that the friction makes for temperatures too high for anything more affordable than Titanium. Hence, it failed. Had Boeing shot for Mach 2, I am sure it would have been built.
That's the theory, I am not sure if I agree. I just ran sa-learn (SpamAssassin) on my "Spam False Negative" mailbox filled with about 1000. After a few minutes crunching it came back with: "Learned from 1 message". Great result.
The point is that at the _sending_ ISP level, millions of messages can be stopped in their tracks in one go by cutting off the abuser after too much mail/spam traffic is being recieved.
I have a baysian filter and it works fine. That doesn't change the fact that 95% of mail that reaches my mail server is spam. Which isn't that bad as it only handles 200 messages a day. Now translate that into the internet at large and clearly the picture changes.
I am in favour of a network providers providing spam _detection_ by simply intercepting any port 25 connection from a connection and running it through their own mail servers, which do baysian and traffic analysis and contact/cut-off the client if it is spam.
That is how you kill it, at the source.
What they also forgot to mention was that you could daisy chain cards to get even better performance.
At the ISP I worked at I had two Voodoo 2 cards, which, on a lowly PII-350, ran Unreal Tournament with full detail in 1024*768 at a massive framerate!
Wow, you have a chip on your shoulder, don't you? I never said the iPod is a _bad_ player, just that it is no longer by default better than any competitors. Both have their merrits.
As for the audiophile aricle you refer to, they haven't tested any other players there, have they? So how can you state other players aren't equal or better? (did I mention they were playing 16/44.1 AIFFs, and not any compressed files?)
Speaking of "uninformed oaf", baterry life does go down when using higher bitrates. (which is what I was refering to, RTFA) I had an MP3 life before a portable and I am not going to re-encode my entire library in a non-standard format that some people say to be just as good. (a claim I heard many times but never actualy delivered, mind me playing safe?)
Seriously, have you ever held, listened to and used a Creative Zen NX? I _have_ tested both and decided they were a close match. For my use (I travel a lot) the longer battery life, smart volume (great for noisy planes and trains, or offices) and considerably lower price simply won out. I haven't fully tested the audio quality of the iPod (nor the Zen before I bought it, but several reviewers who knew their stuff described it as better than the iPod, so I took my chances), but the Zen sounds better than any portable I ever owned, which includes expensive CD players and MiniDisc, so I don't see the iPod being capable of much more, if any more at all.
So maybe you should rethink the troll comment you made. If you feel so secure about your iPod, why the rant in the first place? I could make the same comment about you as you did as me...
I hear it in all and every style, though some more than other; piano/string/vocals ballads for instance are terrible, because there is so little information anyway, the encoder has to throw away the important stuff to make the bitrate. But at 256Kb (Fraunhofer pro codec) and through my pro audio card at home, I have to admit to not being able to hear the difference between original CD and MP3, for which I have done blind tests. At 192K it was hit and miss and at 128, I spotted the MP3 every time. Memory is cheap these days, so 256K it is.
About the walkman style headphones: it all depends on the headphones! I use Sony MDR-G72s, which are actualy really good and it's easy to spot the difference. I have a handfull of downloaded files in my collection (the rest is all own stuff), usualy at 128Kb and they sound terrible compared to. I guess it also doesn't help that many dumbos think that faster MP3 encoders = better. (Xing comes to mind, shudder)