As a Swede living in the US, my opinion is that that is way off. If Sweden was a US state, it would be the poorest, by far. Most Swedes can't even afford a car, while US "poor" complain about having to drive theirs less.
I'd say the bottom 10-20% in the US do have it worse than in Sweden, and the top 50-60% have it better. I hear average income is about 50% higher in the US, and we were talking about the average Joe.
I don't have any good sources to point you to, but my clear impression is that the US, while being a two timing hypocrite whore in the matter, does still have a lot less tariffs than EU. EU doesn't even have it's internal market barriers fully cleared up yet.
One problem is that even if you can correctly identify every single person entering the country, you can't stop any terrorists until they have a known terror record.
Still, this should effectively put a stop to anyone attempting their second suicide bombing! And that's no worse than most of these anti terror programs.
You know how you only get one chance to make a first impression?
The US government has already exploited that chance by forcing all foreign visitors to fill out an insane form on the plane, asking among many, many other mostly bizarre things
Have you ever engaged in genocide, or otherwise ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in the killing of any person because of race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, or political opinion?
Do you plan to practice polygamy in the U.S.?
Do you intend to engage in the U.S. in espionage?
...on top of this, they will now be fingerprinted and mug shot at arrival. I'm sure I don't need to spell out what first impression this will give the average traveller.
Don't know about the megs, but I think a monochrome CCD has better resolution. That way, you can get a green, red and blue version of the exact same pixel. In a three color sensor, those pixels would be next to each other.
The selling argument is that it's almost half the size and weight. That turns it into something I would seriously consider getting, while the old iPod really is too big for me to bother, almost regardless of price.
To a lot of people 4GB is more space than they can ever want to fill up with music they want to hear, so it doesn't really matter if they have 2GB or 13BG too much.
It was a typical Valley product with people from the entire planet working on it. In my expereience the teams are about equal parts Indian, Chinese, European and American.
You're right, the last armed conflict Sweden took part in was back in 1814.
Had they known this back then, an enormus amount of money could have been saved in military expenses, but instead they opted for keeping military in case something happened and as a deterrent.
IMHO, the primary use for a weapon is deterrent, and if you never get to actually fire it that doesn't mean it was wasted money to buy it, but that it has been used perfectly.
todays policitally correct enviornment and would not let the brave souls make the trip
I'm not so sure about that. I can't really think of anything somewhat similar that is politically impossible, but maybe I'm not thinking of the right things.
Todays climate has little problem sending US soldiers to die in Iraq with far less volontariness and pay.
Besides, it doesn't have to be a US operation and US crew.
In the Heinlein book someone else mentioned (requred reading on the subject!), the colonists could outweaponize the arrogant earthlings by simply throwing huge rocks at their cities. If the rock is big enough, it is more destructive than any bomb. And conversely, nuclear bombs are less efficient in a vacuum.
The ultimate controls of lunar life support on earth would have to be on the moon, so they could be serviced when broken.
1. You seem to be saying that "America is not scary with it's nukes, because it saved western Europe in WW2" is a flawless logical statement. I don't see it. Seems to me that America could both be prone to use nuclear weapons and have saved Europe 60 years ago. And that's true even if it didn't actually use nuclear weapons in that very war.
2. Your reading of the original post is really astounding. Do you picture a a rabid drunk beret wearing frenchman stomping a burning US flag as the author? If you read the actual words, they contain none of the "specific points" you claim to argue against.
I think his point was more that any war is nearly unthinkable in Europe, and nuclear war many times more so. Not so for the US who routinely fights several wars a decade, has used these weapons before, and has recently signalled it's looking into tactical nuclear weapon. I suspect the unstated premise is that once a nuclear war starts, however small it may seem, it can easily escalate and end the world.
You may disagree. I know I do. But these are factual statements about the real world, and can not be disproven by claiming that the speaker should be more grateful, even if that may be perfectly true.
I've quit caffeine twice (make your own joke). Cold turkey both times. As addictions go it's probably one of the easiest to beat. I get two days of pretty serious headaches, and feel kinda "off" for three more, and then it's done.
And it's so worth it. I sleep better, I'm less tense, and my days don't revolve around getting my next fix.
A lot of people are asserting that the Original->AAC->CD->MP3 conversion produces crappy resutls, since all steps are somewhat lossy. But unless we know how lossy, that philosophical point is really meaningless.
Obviously, it would be much better have the music go through 3 steps that each make the sound 0.1% worse than one that takes out 5%. So the number of steps really doesn't say anything about real sound quality.
Has anyone done a serious measurment of how much worse sound gets in the different steps? Or is everyone just talking about stuff they have no real knowledge about? Surely that couldn't happen at Slashdot??
When the audio is converted from a raw PCM format (the way it's stored on the CD) to AAC, a lot of quality is lost.
But the iTunes store tracks are not converted from the CD edition tracks, but from the master tapes themselves. This makes it perfectly possible that the AAC tracks are better quality than the CD versions.
We could also debate whether "a lot" of quailty would be lost in the step that is not performed, but I'll leave that for now.
The reason many people, including myself, will not buy music online until it is offered in a lossless format is because we want the music as it was on the CD with nothing removed!
Just like milk does not come from the grocery store, music does not come from CDs. The CD format is perfectly good for pretty much any purpose, but it's certainly not perfectly lossless, and has audible defects compared to the sound it's trying to replicate.
When India became independent, socialism was the hip ideology that seemed to be the obvious way of the future. So India closed its borders to trade and built a planned economy. The resulting vast poverty was, in hindsight, an inevitable consequence.
Meanwhile, the US stubbornly stuck to a free enterprise system, and very free trade. Not coincidentally, it became the by far richest and most powerful country in the history of world.
Now India is opening up its economy a bit, and some of its people are starting to make a bit of a nicer living. And this causes Americans to complain bitterly about their supposed poverty and pain, and demand the same policies that made India the economic basket case it is.
Funny stuff.
For some reason everyone thinks they're an expert on economics. Proud science nerds have no problem spouting off theories disproven centuries ago in a field they have never studied. It's as if the astronomy debate was dominated by the competing astrology and ptolemyian factions, with the science based astronomers futilely trying to point out the data from their telescopes and space probes to the scorn of a distrustful public.
I think people are starting to see what globalization is all about -- screwing the little guy.
I find your definition of "little guy" offensive.
To me, the little guy in the scenario is not the American who may have to pick a less fancy second car, but the Indian who can finally afford food and maybe even some kind of education and health care for his kids. He is also the biggest winner of the story.
The only way I can make sense of the quote above is if you don't consider Indians "people" or "guys".
Call me simple and old fashioned, but if the music sounds good, that is actually quite enough for me.
When you converting WAV -> AAC -> WAV -> MP3/OGG...
The iTunes AAC tracks are not ripped from the CD versions, but produced from the same master recordings as the CDs. This removes a step from your assumed chain, and makes it at least theoretically possible that the AAC track is better than the CD version.
... you will have much less quality compared to direct WAV -> MP3/OGG conversion, since all compression methods used are lossy.
Where does the "much" come from? A lossy compression may lose 0.01% of the quality. Even if it's done in 5 steps, you still will have 99.95% left.
To get back to the original point, since you can easily burn a CD from your iTunes tracks, logic dictates that you can use them in any way you can use CD tracks.
Slashdot Mirror
As a Swede living in the US, my opinion is that that is way off. If Sweden was a US state, it would be the poorest, by far. Most Swedes can't even afford a car, while US "poor" complain about having to drive theirs less.
I'd say the bottom 10-20% in the US do have it worse than in Sweden, and the top 50-60% have it better. I hear average income is about 50% higher in the US, and we were talking about the average Joe.
I don't have any good sources to point you to, but my clear impression is that the US, while being a two timing hypocrite whore in the matter, does still have a lot less tariffs than EU. EU doesn't even have it's internal market barriers fully cleared up yet.
One problem is that even if you can correctly identify every single person entering the country, you can't stop any terrorists until they have a known terror record.
Still, this should effectively put a stop to anyone attempting their second suicide bombing! And that's no worse than most of these anti terror programs.
The US government has already exploited that chance by forcing all foreign visitors to fill out an insane form on the plane, asking among many, many other mostly bizarre things
Don't know about the megs, but I think a monochrome CCD has better resolution. That way, you can get a green, red and blue version of the exact same pixel. In a three color sensor, those pixels would be next to each other.
If you do the math it's 59% of the volume and 64% of the weight (giving it a 9% higher density).
If this qualifies as "almost half" or not is up to individual taste.
I need alittle help. Who can tell me where in Utah this picture was faked by the liberal space establishment?
If we work together we can beat the system!!
The selling argument is that it's almost half the size and weight. That turns it into something I would seriously consider getting, while the old iPod really is too big for me to bother, almost regardless of price.
To a lot of people 4GB is more space than they can ever want to fill up with music they want to hear, so it doesn't really matter if they have 2GB or 13BG too much.
An empirical counterproof:
A. The US is the most free trade country in the world, at least among major countries.
B. The average American Joe is better off than any other country's.
If A and B are true, it disproves what you say is "apprently happening". Remember, appearences can be very misleading.
Hotmail was created in Silicon Valley. Here's an article about it.
It was a typical Valley product with people from the entire planet working on it. In my expereience the teams are about equal parts Indian, Chinese, European and American.
You're right, the last armed conflict Sweden took part in was back in 1814.
Had they known this back then, an enormus amount of money could have been saved in military expenses, but instead they opted for keeping military in case something happened and as a deterrent.
IMHO, the primary use for a weapon is deterrent, and if you never get to actually fire it that doesn't mean it was wasted money to buy it, but that it has been used perfectly.
todays policitally correct enviornment and would not let the brave souls make the trip
I'm not so sure about that. I can't really think of anything somewhat similar that is politically impossible, but maybe I'm not thinking of the right things.
Todays climate has little problem sending US soldiers to die in Iraq with far less volontariness and pay.
Besides, it doesn't have to be a US operation and US crew.
In the Heinlein book someone else mentioned (requred reading on the subject!), the colonists could outweaponize the arrogant earthlings by simply throwing huge rocks at their cities. If the rock is big enough, it is more destructive than any bomb. And conversely, nuclear bombs are less efficient in a vacuum.
The ultimate controls of lunar life support on earth would have to be on the moon, so they could be serviced when broken.
This is like people who claim a really warm day proves global warming, or a real cold one disproves it.
It's just one probe. It doesn't prove American superiority any more than their last 2 (or is it more?) failed Mars probes proved American inferiority.
We could also get into how Beagle was done on something like 1/10 of the budget of Spirit. But it's not important.
This will not help dispel the "Macs are more expensive" myth...
1. You seem to be saying that "America is not scary with it's nukes, because it saved western Europe in WW2" is a flawless logical statement. I don't see it. Seems to me that America could both be prone to use nuclear weapons and have saved Europe 60 years ago. And that's true even if it didn't actually use nuclear weapons in that very war.
2. Your reading of the original post is really astounding. Do you picture a a rabid drunk beret wearing frenchman stomping a burning US flag as the author? If you read the actual words, they contain none of the "specific points" you claim to argue against.
I think his point was more that any war is nearly unthinkable in Europe, and nuclear war many times more so. Not so for the US who routinely fights several wars a decade, has used these weapons before, and has recently signalled it's looking into tactical nuclear weapon. I suspect the unstated premise is that once a nuclear war starts, however small it may seem, it can easily escalate and end the world.
You may disagree. I know I do. But these are factual statements about the real world, and can not be disproven by claiming that the speaker should be more grateful, even if that may be perfectly true.
I am so tired of this far too frequent "argument".
European: "I think X is true, because of Y".
American: "We saved your ass in WW2. Therefore X is false. QED."
Am I the only person in America who can spot the logical error in this exchange??
I've quit caffeine twice (make your own joke). Cold turkey both times. As addictions go it's probably one of the easiest to beat. I get two days of pretty serious headaches, and feel kinda "off" for three more, and then it's done.
And it's so worth it. I sleep better, I'm less tense, and my days don't revolve around getting my next fix.
Do it!
..., and in politics, we don't plan beyond the next election. If we did, someone else would get elected, and those plans wouldn't matter anyway.
There is no reason to bash the Europeans as a whole as they like to do Americans.
What an odd way to bash Europeans...
A lot of people are asserting that the Original->AAC->CD->MP3 conversion produces crappy resutls, since all steps are somewhat lossy. But unless we know how lossy, that philosophical point is really meaningless.
Obviously, it would be much better have the music go through 3 steps that each make the sound 0.1% worse than one that takes out 5%. So the number of steps really doesn't say anything about real sound quality.
Has anyone done a serious measurment of how much worse sound gets in the different steps? Or is everyone just talking about stuff they have no real knowledge about? Surely that couldn't happen at Slashdot??
When the audio is converted from a raw PCM format (the way it's stored on the CD) to AAC, a lot of quality is lost.
But the iTunes store tracks are not converted from the CD edition tracks, but from the master tapes themselves. This makes it perfectly possible that the AAC tracks are better quality than the CD versions.
We could also debate whether "a lot" of quailty would be lost in the step that is not performed, but I'll leave that for now.
The reason many people, including myself, will not buy music online until it is offered in a lossless format is because we want the music as it was on the CD with nothing removed!
Just like milk does not come from the grocery store, music does not come from CDs. The CD format is perfectly good for pretty much any purpose, but it's certainly not perfectly lossless, and has audible defects compared to the sound it's trying to replicate.
Some historical background.
When India became independent, socialism was the hip ideology that seemed to be the obvious way of the future. So India closed its borders to trade and built a planned economy. The resulting vast poverty was, in hindsight, an inevitable consequence.
Meanwhile, the US stubbornly stuck to a free enterprise system, and very free trade. Not coincidentally, it became the by far richest and most powerful country in the history of world.
Now India is opening up its economy a bit, and some of its people are starting to make a bit of a nicer living. And this causes Americans to complain bitterly about their supposed poverty and pain, and demand the same policies that made India the economic basket case it is.
Funny stuff.
For some reason everyone thinks they're an expert on economics. Proud science nerds have no problem spouting off theories disproven centuries ago in a field they have never studied. It's as if the astronomy debate was dominated by the competing astrology and ptolemyian factions, with the science based astronomers futilely trying to point out the data from their telescopes and space probes to the scorn of a distrustful public.
I think people are starting to see what globalization is all about -- screwing the little guy.
I find your definition of "little guy" offensive.
To me, the little guy in the scenario is not the American who may have to pick a less fancy second car, but the Indian who can finally afford food and maybe even some kind of education and health care for his kids. He is also the biggest winner of the story.
The only way I can make sense of the quote above is if you don't consider Indians "people" or "guys".
I thought the point of media was that they could tell us what's going on in the world. If it's really the other way around, what good are they?
Call me simple and old fashioned, but if the music sounds good, that is actually quite enough for me.
When you converting WAV -> AAC -> WAV -> MP3/OGG...
The iTunes AAC tracks are not ripped from the CD versions, but produced from the same master recordings as the CDs. This removes a step from your assumed chain, and makes it at least theoretically possible that the AAC track is better than the CD version.
Where does the "much" come from? A lossy compression may lose 0.01% of the quality. Even if it's done in 5 steps, you still will have 99.95% left.
To get back to the original point, since you can easily burn a CD from your iTunes tracks, logic dictates that you can use them in any way you can use CD tracks.