Yes, but if you plug your Gibson into a roaring Marshall stack or Boogie dual rectifier, it's intentionally being distorted insanely much- meaning that suddenly, the brush of a feather across the strings is slamming your head into the wall.
Try it yourself- alternate between live guitar into a good, utterly cranked amp, and the output of your PC with a digital recording of your guitar. I think the odds are that the difference will become huge, because that much distortion drags out the slightest weakness in the sound.
I dunno. The thing is, you only need one person to do the heavy lifting, and then it's in the GPL sphere and can be taken from there when needed.
My own perspective is from pro audio- specifically, mastering. You might say that you wouldn't see open source people do serious stuff in wordlength reduction or mastering processing, except that it wasn't- the person who did serious work in wordlength reduction wasn't 'open source people', it was me. And I suck at coding, am miserable at file handling, but got the basic algorithms down- in the pure GPL sphere. Enough people know about that now that it can't be taken away...
On the basis of this experience I'd suggest that what will happen is not OSS coders _learning_ to do 3d, but instead some iconoclastic 3D coder, possibly one with poor coding skills _outside_ of the central problem, will throw together something that works because _they_ believe in the concept. It's gotta be an insider rather than a coder project meant to meet a goal- but it may still be somewhat 'hobbyist', for instance it might be directly comparable in output quality but not capable of pro-level workflow (that's what bit _me_ with my own project). But there's likely to be something- possibly even soon. Whether you'll hear of it is another story because it'll be done by a person or people who are primarily geeking out on the project because it interests them and meets their immediate needs- publicity comes much later, if at all.
I've done something vaguely like this in the GPLed version of Bungie's Marathon, "Aleph One", by setting up a vast plain with a couple hundred enemy aliens on the other side. You get a whole stockpile of arms and when you wake them up, they charge you en masse.
It's not all that fascinating as there's only 20-50 enemies in your immediate vicinity at any given time. Most of the fun is firing big ol' weapons into _crowds_ of enemies. They can't be projectile-using enemies or you're just hosed instantly;)
That said- there _is_ a coolness factor to this type of gaming. It's very unlike Quake, but I'm told Serious Sam is more prone to hitting you with a fairly large number of enemies.
I had my heart set on it being a twin-turbine personal helicopter:) funny thing is, I had this all worked out to the point where you could damned near build one, all on the basis that Steve Jobs et al wouldn't be fools enough to go ga-ga over a powered scooter.
I'll give 'em this much though: yes, designing cities without cars WILL eventually be necessary. Yes, that will be interesting and challenging and different. But I thought it had to be a lot more exciting, and pulled together loads of detail such as recent developments in titanium production, the capacity of (highly efficient) jet turbines to route their intake and exhaust in very counterintuitive ways, the geometry of a twin-ducted-fan standing platform and how this would be essentially stable and would require hard leaning to get it to move quickly- and even then, wind resistance on the high-mounted fans would mean that the machine would be trying to slow itself at all times, its CG located very low because a human would be standing on the base and their CG would be irrelevant, the orientation of the device would follow the centering effect of the human's weight delivered through the feet...
The only thing even vaguely like this would be the SoloTrek, and just think for a second of how much heavier _that_ monster is than a person- it's really just a mini helicopter, not even the balance issues would apply. As such, so much of its awful power and noise etc. is required simply to lift its own weight, and how much better it would be to use titanium and minimal, balance-oriented controls to make something so feather-light that it's barely heavier than a person, far more capable of urban use...
To top it all off, turbines are ideally suited for just _one_ speed, which is an ideal match for a heli-type device as it would be devoting pretty much every bit of its energy just to hovering, with no engines whatsoever for lateral motion- that would be strictly a matter of leaning in the desired direction like you were in a hang-glider. All this is just _waiting_ to be done, and Kamen has the resources to do it _and_ a background not only in aviation but in helicopters. It seemed so obvious.
I'm in the middle of reading a Robert Heinlein book, the 'Expanded Universe' collection. In it are his reports on visiting the Cold War USSR as a tourist.
Your advice is apparently EXACTLY what you had to do to not be blatantly lied to and jerked around as a tourist to the Cold War USSR (i.e. around 1960). Having read his articles ("'Pravda' means 'Truth'" and "Inside Intourist"), I can also expand on your advice in a useful manner:
Feign losing your temper, but do not actually do so. Don't lose control, remain in control at all times, but behave as if you are losing your temper. Don't allow yourself to be moved away from the front desk/cash register, you must block other customers until you are satisfied and get what you want. If you allow yourself to be moved so you're not in the way, you lose: you're off the game board and can expect to be lied to at length in some nice little office but you won't get what you wanted because you're no longer causing a problem, just an inconvenience.
Also, try to remember that the first line of defense against you are likely poorer than you are- they're helpless functionaries, cash register operators with no influence whatsoever, and they don't personally deserve your anger, they are just part of a system designed to rip you off. This is another good reason to feign anger rather than let yourself really be angry- it's not right to take out real anger on these people, they have no power at all and will probably have a horrible day as a result of your feigning outrage and anger. Unfortunately you have to go through them to get to a higher level where you might possibly get close to what you want, or what you legitimately paid for.
Now... having relayed this good advice from Mr. Heinlein, I have one question.
How the hell is it that we, in the USA, are reduced to using techniques Heinlein was driven to using in the freaking Soviet Union under Leninist Communism, just to avoid being ripped off and cheated?
He was convinced the USA would collapse before 2000. I'm not so sure he was wrong... and I'm damned glad he didn't live to see this.
I'll go for B. Seems like deregulation and free market capitalism is of, shall we say, limited usefulness in this area?
Man... 45% of cable modem subscribers? I hadn't realised it was quite this big.
Correct me if I am wrong, but weren't these guys supposed to be competing heroically with each other in good free market fashion to benefit the consumer, rather than killing each other off and then dying like dinosaurs? Counting the dead services barely six hours before 45% of the US cable market goes dark, I kinda wonder if that deregulated free market stuff really works.
If anyone else had DONE this to us it'd be a freaking act of war (news flash! bin laden kills 45% of America's cable modem infrastructure in a suicide attack!) but because it was done by free market capitalism we're supposed to nod and go 'well done'? riiiiiight.
I'd say we best be careful at this point, or maybe next year our regular PHONE companies and power utilities will be the ones plunging 45% of the country into darkness- not from terrorist attack, but because they fought in the 'free' market, screwed up, and lost... Imagine this happening to electric power and not cable modem service. It's not unthinkable, all it requires is a certain amount of corporate stupidity, big debt, and a downward spiral. See 'Dilbert' for more details...
Fascinating way you have of saying 'taking somebody else's work'!
It's amazing how metaphor, imagery and the English language work. There you are, painting a word picture of something being 'touched' by the GPL (ooo, scary, like a zombie reaching out a rotting arm? And 'touching' healthy code and infecting it with zombie germs?) where what you're really talking about is taking somebody else's code. It's YOU taking the code. It's like you are STEALING the code, if you don't intend to honor the agreement. You are taking something that isn't yours- otherwise, the license would not even apply!
How about an alternate metaphor? "The GPL is a car alarm: if you STEAL SOMETHING protected by it, it goes off and you're hosed." How about that?
The only trouble with this way of thinking, is that it entirely sidesteps and negates the very concept of a commons. If each of us must maximise our returns on our individual contributions, we all are entrepreneurs all right- and we all stand very alone.
One might suggest that if a commons did not exist somebody would have to invent one.
Why on earth would the FSF be expected to advocate the 'freedom to choose whatever license you want'... something which is not only a given, but also contrary to the goals of the FSF?
When you have a quote by them saying, "and so we will do this, this and this to make all other licenses illegal" THEN I will listen.
As it is, you seem to be expecting the FSF to advocate things it totally does not believe in, and this is foolish. What possible reason could the FSF have for publically stating 'we advocate people using proprietary licenses if they want'? That is YOUR PROBLEM if you want to do that. You don't need their permission and are certainly not going to get their blessing- why even behave like you expect them to approve of this?
It sounds like you're being confused by dithering:)
Indeed you have to add 'random noise' or at least SOMETHING to decorrelate the quantization distortion. Done properly this allows you to return SIGNALS well below what one would consider the theoretical limit of digital- for instance, in a heavily noise shaped dither I did that hit -160 db at the very lowest frequencies, I was able to test this and return a measurable result for a tone at -156 db beneath digital full scale, using only 16 bits. This is normal and proper use of 'noise' to resolve signals below the quantization threshold, and you can look at it as a statistical thing- it becomes possible to 'average' a signal voltage that in practice falls between quantization values, as long as it's bandlimited and you don't expect to be able to do it at near-Nyquist frequencies.
However, if you add noise _after_ quantization, the damage has already been done and it doesn't matter how much other noise you add- it won't help. It can only decorrelate quantization errors if the noise is put in before quantization- and the only way you can get a 12 or 16 bit recording to sound like 'analog' (I assume we're not talking telephone answering machines here?) is to address the quantization problem- and dither, and ideally do noise shaping as well.
So... I'm claiming in turn that yes you can bring digital sound closer to analog, but the function of the noise _must_ be prior to quantization, and it is not 'degrading' the sound unless you think strictly about sample-to-sample accuracy. As soon as you start to consider bandlimited sound the random noise takes on its additional importance as a method for statistically approximating signal values of higher resolution than the direct quantized values.
And, if you put random noise on the digital sound _after_ you quantize, you just lose- it's not going to sound anything like analog, it will just be worst of both worlds- correlated noise _plus_ worse noise floor. You don't get anything close to analog-like behavior by just adding extraneous noise, even though analog does contain extraneous noise. You have to get the linearity right first, otherwise you're wasting your time...
Erm- you're not taking resolution domain into consideration, and you're not taking the extraordinary steepness of the 22.05K filter into consideration. 48K would have been a little better, something like 80K with a simpler, gentler filter stage better still. But we're stuck with 44.1- make the best of it.
Yeah, but try to _compare_ a vinyl record with the 12 bit recording that you think is comparable to it. I will give you this: you'll need to be using some sort of acoustic sound somewhere in the recording, preferably with some room or hall ambience. That's not hard, though- and in practice, the record will seriously humiliate the 12 bit digital recording.
It'll be more difficult to humilate a 16 bit recording, and still more difficult to humiliate one reduced to 16 bit from higher resolution using advanced wordlength reduction technology (like any of the high energy noise shapers that produce a noise floor dip around 3K). But you're not claiming that: you're claiming vinyl is comparable to 12 bits of digital. Only on paper, mangu my friend- that assertion can be made to seriously fall apart in practice.
You would not believe how difficult it is to get a CD to perform comparably with even an ordinary vinyl record in the resolution domain. Take it from somebody who writes (open source) digital audio dithering software: the resolution domain is potentially a horrible weakness in CDs. It CAN be overcome with exceptional dithering and careful handling of the digital signal throughout, but it usually is not.
What you're hearing when you hear CD as 'purer' is really the drying up of low level detail, particularly in the 3K area where the human ear is most sensitive. Vinyl has high but frequency-localized noise levels and is quite capable of higher resolution performance AT 3K, where the ear is particularly sensitive.
A CD really done properly doesn't sound 'pure'. It sounds convincing, and juicy/reverberant/lively/etc depending on the source material. Real world sounds don't sound 'pure' in the way that CDs do- that is a side-effect of a noise floor that is very different in character from analog noise.
I could set you up with either a master that was indistinguishable from even 128K mp3, or one where you could tell it from even 320K blind every time.
For the latter- do a minimalist recording in a good hall, and listen specifically for soundstage depth. ATH level and psy model go straight for the reverberant field and throw most of it away. If ATH level's not up to the task you get a very shallow soundstage or a total drying up of reverberant information. If psy model is in effect you get twice as much of this, and it's got a weird unnatural quality. It's brutally hard to get soundstage depth out of an mp3, because if you have ATH threshold TOO low, the whole mp3 is used up trying to encode reverb information and sounds horrible and muddy.
For the one you can't tell between a 128K mp3- well, you could just do a lot of digital gain tweaking all on 16 bit busses for the maximum quantization error and coarsening of the sound, but if you think about it, it would be even more effective to just make the WAV the decompressed version of a 32K mp3;)
Actually this tends to confirm a theory I have- the coolest/healthiest/sanest people out there are those who HAVE to be, because they learned the hard way. I think Wil definitely illustrates this- if you get heavy into being not only a Hollywood teenager, but are also saddled with being Wesley Crusher, you'll get off to a really bad start- and then, unlike most people, you have to _really_ grow up.
That's my theory, anyway, for explaining how Wil Wheaton turned out to be one of the cooler humans I've ever seen. Keep it up my ex-starfleet friend:)
"Anyway, I don't care what term you want to use to refer to Stallman's philosphy, but I think a good summation would be: "People with lots of money and cool stuff are dicks. Let's take it from them and give it to people who don't have it, whether they've ever lifted a finger or not.""
Ye gods. Are you completely insane? I would humbly suggest that a better summation would be: "Let's set things up so that a group of people pledged to share THEIR RESOURCES can share them, but people not willing to commit to that can't have any. And let's hope everybody eventually agrees to join the pool of sharers, if necessary by out-competing NON-sharers and killing their markets by releasing alternatives that WE come up with. Serve 'em right."
Or would you prefer corporate welfare and propping up proprietary software that way?
What he's saying is: you obviously have complete and total liberty to do what you like with software YOU write. But if you don't choose a free license, other developers should not cooperate with you, and people shouldn't encourage you by buying your software.
Harsh judgements, but I agree with much of this. Do you think it will ever be possible to force people to mindlessly share their ideas with others? Greed and the desire to hoard stuff (like information or a good idea) is innate to the human being. That's fine- but people like that need to be on their OWN with it, they can damned well do everything themselves without any support from others.
If you insist on exercising a 'right' to refuse to cooperate, what possible excuse do you have for expecting a 'right' to benefit from the community?
What RMS primarily wants, and I'm very much in agreement, is this: if you insist on digging your own grave, you WILL damned well lay in it, instead of expecting to be given other people's work for nothing, and the support of consumers despite your giving them a bad deal and taking power away from them.
If you're not a developer, this isn't really your fight, but it's even more foolish for you to throw a fit, because you're acting as if RMS's fondest dreams are actually feasible. That's not so- you will ALWAYS have a chance to use proprietary software and get locked into it, even, if that's what you want. What RMS represents is a counter-influence to the proprietary guys- plenty of whom would be delighted if code sharing and open source was literally illegal. Hey, less competition...
Who cares if it is in itself a viable business model?
It's more akin to 'assembling a tool kit that can be guaranteed to be there when needed, at no extra expense or rental expense or repossession'
What you DO WITH the tool kit is what earns you money. And having ownership and complete control over your tools (even if you got them from someone else) is your insurance against being extorted.
I quite agree that extortion is an effective 'business model', but getting immunized against _yourself_ getting extorted is a vital PART of a business model, and this you seem unable to see.
Slashdot Mirror
Try it yourself- alternate between live guitar into a good, utterly cranked amp, and the output of your PC with a digital recording of your guitar. I think the odds are that the difference will become huge, because that much distortion drags out the slightest weakness in the sound.
My own perspective is from pro audio- specifically, mastering. You might say that you wouldn't see open source people do serious stuff in wordlength reduction or mastering processing, except that it wasn't- the person who did serious work in wordlength reduction wasn't 'open source people', it was me. And I suck at coding, am miserable at file handling, but got the basic algorithms down- in the pure GPL sphere. Enough people know about that now that it can't be taken away...
On the basis of this experience I'd suggest that what will happen is not OSS coders _learning_ to do 3d, but instead some iconoclastic 3D coder, possibly one with poor coding skills _outside_ of the central problem, will throw together something that works because _they_ believe in the concept. It's gotta be an insider rather than a coder project meant to meet a goal- but it may still be somewhat 'hobbyist', for instance it might be directly comparable in output quality but not capable of pro-level workflow (that's what bit _me_ with my own project). But there's likely to be something- possibly even soon. Whether you'll hear of it is another story because it'll be done by a person or people who are primarily geeking out on the project because it interests them and meets their immediate needs- publicity comes much later, if at all.
It's not all that fascinating as there's only 20-50 enemies in your immediate vicinity at any given time. Most of the fun is firing big ol' weapons into _crowds_ of enemies. They can't be projectile-using enemies or you're just hosed instantly ;)
That said- there _is_ a coolness factor to this type of gaming. It's very unlike Quake, but I'm told Serious Sam is more prone to hitting you with a fairly large number of enemies.
I had my heart set on it being a twin-turbine personal helicopter :) funny thing is, I had this all worked out to the point where you could damned near build one, all on the basis that Steve Jobs et al wouldn't be fools enough to go ga-ga over a powered scooter.
I'll give 'em this much though: yes, designing cities without cars WILL eventually be necessary. Yes, that will be interesting and challenging and different. But I thought it had to be a lot more exciting, and pulled together loads of detail such as recent developments in titanium production, the capacity of (highly efficient) jet turbines to route their intake and exhaust in very counterintuitive ways, the geometry of a twin-ducted-fan standing platform and how this would be essentially stable and would require hard leaning to get it to move quickly- and even then, wind resistance on the high-mounted fans would mean that the machine would be trying to slow itself at all times, its CG located very low because a human would be standing on the base and their CG would be irrelevant, the orientation of the device would follow the centering effect of the human's weight delivered through the feet...
The only thing even vaguely like this would be the SoloTrek, and just think for a second of how much heavier _that_ monster is than a person- it's really just a mini helicopter, not even the balance issues would apply. As such, so much of its awful power and noise etc. is required simply to lift its own weight, and how much better it would be to use titanium and minimal, balance-oriented controls to make something so feather-light that it's barely heavier than a person, far more capable of urban use...
To top it all off, turbines are ideally suited for just _one_ speed, which is an ideal match for a heli-type device as it would be devoting pretty much every bit of its energy just to hovering, with no engines whatsoever for lateral motion- that would be strictly a matter of leaning in the desired direction like you were in a hang-glider. All this is just _waiting_ to be done, and Kamen has the resources to do it _and_ a background not only in aviation but in helicopters. It seemed so obvious.
Oh well...
Unfortunately you'd only get excited over 'ponygirls' ;)
I will never look at the words "CowboyNeal" quite the same way again....
I guess 'sponsor' can mean many things...
I'm in the middle of reading a Robert Heinlein book, the 'Expanded Universe' collection. In it are his reports on visiting the Cold War USSR as a tourist.
Your advice is apparently EXACTLY what you had to do to not be blatantly lied to and jerked around as a tourist to the Cold War USSR (i.e. around 1960). Having read his articles ("'Pravda' means 'Truth'" and "Inside Intourist"), I can also expand on your advice in a useful manner:
Feign losing your temper, but do not actually do so. Don't lose control, remain in control at all times, but behave as if you are losing your temper. Don't allow yourself to be moved away from the front desk/cash register, you must block other customers until you are satisfied and get what you want. If you allow yourself to be moved so you're not in the way, you lose: you're off the game board and can expect to be lied to at length in some nice little office but you won't get what you wanted because you're no longer causing a problem, just an inconvenience.
Also, try to remember that the first line of defense against you are likely poorer than you are- they're helpless functionaries, cash register operators with no influence whatsoever, and they don't personally deserve your anger, they are just part of a system designed to rip you off. This is another good reason to feign anger rather than let yourself really be angry- it's not right to take out real anger on these people, they have no power at all and will probably have a horrible day as a result of your feigning outrage and anger. Unfortunately you have to go through them to get to a higher level where you might possibly get close to what you want, or what you legitimately paid for.
Now... having relayed this good advice from Mr. Heinlein, I have one question.
How the hell is it that we, in the USA, are reduced to using techniques Heinlein was driven to using in the freaking Soviet Union under Leninist Communism, just to avoid being ripped off and cheated?
He was convinced the USA would collapse before 2000. I'm not so sure he was wrong... and I'm damned glad he didn't live to see this.
Man... 45% of cable modem subscribers? I hadn't realised it was quite this big.
Correct me if I am wrong, but weren't these guys supposed to be competing heroically with each other in good free market fashion to benefit the consumer, rather than killing each other off and then dying like dinosaurs? Counting the dead services barely six hours before 45% of the US cable market goes dark, I kinda wonder if that deregulated free market stuff really works.
If anyone else had DONE this to us it'd be a freaking act of war (news flash! bin laden kills 45% of America's cable modem infrastructure in a suicide attack!) but because it was done by free market capitalism we're supposed to nod and go 'well done'? riiiiiight.
I'd say we best be careful at this point, or maybe next year our regular PHONE companies and power utilities will be the ones plunging 45% of the country into darkness- not from terrorist attack, but because they fought in the 'free' market, screwed up, and lost... Imagine this happening to electric power and not cable modem service. It's not unthinkable, all it requires is a certain amount of corporate stupidity, big debt, and a downward spiral. See 'Dilbert' for more details...
You would think more people would figure this sort of thing out...
Fascinating way you have of saying 'taking somebody else's work'!
It's amazing how metaphor, imagery and the English language work. There you are, painting a word picture of something being 'touched' by the GPL (ooo, scary, like a zombie reaching out a rotting arm? And 'touching' healthy code and infecting it with zombie germs?) where what you're really talking about is taking somebody else's code. It's YOU taking the code. It's like you are STEALING the code, if you don't intend to honor the agreement. You are taking something that isn't yours- otherwise, the license would not even apply!
How about an alternate metaphor? "The GPL is a car alarm: if you STEAL SOMETHING protected by it, it goes off and you're hosed." How about that?
The only trouble with this way of thinking, is that it entirely sidesteps and negates the very concept of a commons. If each of us must maximise our returns on our individual contributions, we all are entrepreneurs all right- and we all stand very alone.
One might suggest that if a commons did not exist somebody would have to invent one.
(glances at FSF) ...hey, wait a minute ;)
When you have a quote by them saying, "and so we will do this, this and this to make all other licenses illegal" THEN I will listen.
As it is, you seem to be expecting the FSF to advocate things it totally does not believe in, and this is foolish. What possible reason could the FSF have for publically stating 'we advocate people using proprietary licenses if they want'? That is YOUR PROBLEM if you want to do that. You don't need their permission and are certainly not going to get their blessing- why even behave like you expect them to approve of this?
Indeed you have to add 'random noise' or at least SOMETHING to decorrelate the quantization distortion. Done properly this allows you to return SIGNALS well below what one would consider the theoretical limit of digital- for instance, in a heavily noise shaped dither I did that hit -160 db at the very lowest frequencies, I was able to test this and return a measurable result for a tone at -156 db beneath digital full scale, using only 16 bits. This is normal and proper use of 'noise' to resolve signals below the quantization threshold, and you can look at it as a statistical thing- it becomes possible to 'average' a signal voltage that in practice falls between quantization values, as long as it's bandlimited and you don't expect to be able to do it at near-Nyquist frequencies.
However, if you add noise _after_ quantization, the damage has already been done and it doesn't matter how much other noise you add- it won't help. It can only decorrelate quantization errors if the noise is put in before quantization- and the only way you can get a 12 or 16 bit recording to sound like 'analog' (I assume we're not talking telephone answering machines here?) is to address the quantization problem- and dither, and ideally do noise shaping as well.
So... I'm claiming in turn that yes you can bring digital sound closer to analog, but the function of the noise _must_ be prior to quantization, and it is not 'degrading' the sound unless you think strictly about sample-to-sample accuracy. As soon as you start to consider bandlimited sound the random noise takes on its additional importance as a method for statistically approximating signal values of higher resolution than the direct quantized values.
And, if you put random noise on the digital sound _after_ you quantize, you just lose- it's not going to sound anything like analog, it will just be worst of both worlds- correlated noise _plus_ worse noise floor. You don't get anything close to analog-like behavior by just adding extraneous noise, even though analog does contain extraneous noise. You have to get the linearity right first, otherwise you're wasting your time...
(are we nerdy enough yet? ;) )
Erm- you're not taking resolution domain into consideration, and you're not taking the extraordinary steepness of the 22.05K filter into consideration. 48K would have been a little better, something like 80K with a simpler, gentler filter stage better still. But we're stuck with 44.1- make the best of it.
It'll be more difficult to humilate a 16 bit recording, and still more difficult to humiliate one reduced to 16 bit from higher resolution using advanced wordlength reduction technology (like any of the high energy noise shapers that produce a noise floor dip around 3K). But you're not claiming that: you're claiming vinyl is comparable to 12 bits of digital. Only on paper, mangu my friend- that assertion can be made to seriously fall apart in practice.
What you're hearing when you hear CD as 'purer' is really the drying up of low level detail, particularly in the 3K area where the human ear is most sensitive. Vinyl has high but frequency-localized noise levels and is quite capable of higher resolution performance AT 3K, where the ear is particularly sensitive.
A CD really done properly doesn't sound 'pure'. It sounds convincing, and juicy/reverberant/lively/etc depending on the source material. Real world sounds don't sound 'pure' in the way that CDs do- that is a side-effect of a noise floor that is very different in character from analog noise.
I could set you up with either a master that was indistinguishable from even 128K mp3, or one where you could tell it from even 320K blind every time.
For the latter- do a minimalist recording in a good hall, and listen specifically for soundstage depth. ATH level and psy model go straight for the reverberant field and throw most of it away. If ATH level's not up to the task you get a very shallow soundstage or a total drying up of reverberant information. If psy model is in effect you get twice as much of this, and it's got a weird unnatural quality. It's brutally hard to get soundstage depth out of an mp3, because if you have ATH threshold TOO low, the whole mp3 is used up trying to encode reverb information and sounds horrible and muddy.
For the one you can't tell between a 128K mp3- well, you could just do a lot of digital gain tweaking all on 16 bit busses for the maximum quantization error and coarsening of the sound, but if you think about it, it would be even more effective to just make the WAV the decompressed version of a 32K mp3 ;)
HTH, HAD...
How much bigger and more powerful do YOU want them to be?
Actually this tends to confirm a theory I have- the coolest/healthiest/sanest people out there are those who HAVE to be, because they learned the hard way. I think Wil definitely illustrates this- if you get heavy into being not only a Hollywood teenager, but are also saddled with being Wesley Crusher, you'll get off to a really bad start- and then, unlike most people, you have to _really_ grow up.
That's my theory, anyway, for explaining how Wil Wheaton turned out to be one of the cooler humans I've ever seen. Keep it up my ex-starfleet friend :)
Ye gods. Are you completely insane? I would humbly suggest that a better summation would be: "Let's set things up so that a group of people pledged to share THEIR RESOURCES can share them, but people not willing to commit to that can't have any. And let's hope everybody eventually agrees to join the pool of sharers, if necessary by out-competing NON-sharers and killing their markets by releasing alternatives that WE come up with. Serve 'em right."
Or would you prefer corporate welfare and propping up proprietary software that way?
What he's saying is: you obviously have complete and total liberty to do what you like with software YOU write. But if you don't choose a free license, other developers should not cooperate with you, and people shouldn't encourage you by buying your software.
Harsh judgements, but I agree with much of this. Do you think it will ever be possible to force people to mindlessly share their ideas with others? Greed and the desire to hoard stuff (like information or a good idea) is innate to the human being. That's fine- but people like that need to be on their OWN with it, they can damned well do everything themselves without any support from others.
If you insist on exercising a 'right' to refuse to cooperate, what possible excuse do you have for expecting a 'right' to benefit from the community?
What RMS primarily wants, and I'm very much in agreement, is this: if you insist on digging your own grave, you WILL damned well lay in it, instead of expecting to be given other people's work for nothing, and the support of consumers despite your giving them a bad deal and taking power away from them.
If you're not a developer, this isn't really your fight, but it's even more foolish for you to throw a fit, because you're acting as if RMS's fondest dreams are actually feasible. That's not so- you will ALWAYS have a chance to use proprietary software and get locked into it, even, if that's what you want. What RMS represents is a counter-influence to the proprietary guys- plenty of whom would be delighted if code sharing and open source was literally illegal. Hey, less competition...
The reason all these worms target Microsoft is not because they hold the majority, it's because it's like shooting fish in a barrel...
It's more akin to 'assembling a tool kit that can be guaranteed to be there when needed, at no extra expense or rental expense or repossession'
What you DO WITH the tool kit is what earns you money. And having ownership and complete control over your tools (even if you got them from someone else) is your insurance against being extorted.
I quite agree that extortion is an effective 'business model', but getting immunized against _yourself_ getting extorted is a vital PART of a business model, and this you seem unable to see.
Hey, it says 'life liberty and the pursuit of happiness', not 'consumption, restricting other people, and the pursuit of money', dig it? ;)