To: Anonymous Coward
Come off it, this is an article aimed at the typical user, not techies/audiophiles. Why should the general public know details of audio compression schemes?
Typical user? Then why the bru-ha-ha over 128 vs 256kbps MP3/AAC etcetera? This is Slashdot! Your so called 'average user' wouldn't find this site to begin with unless hand-held here. And Why should the general public know the details? Good point. Which is why Apple probably only mentions the 128kbps (AAC) format that they use, in passing. It makes 'joe schmoe' feel good because he's got some 'techy' term to banter around, and for those of us with enough brain cells to rub together and keep warm at night, we have what's known as *informed choice*. The ability to find and get the data for ourselves, turn it into information and make a judegement on whether or not to use their services!
So when the masses decide (from reading these ramblings, after they've been printed out and someone with an itch to scratch tells them it means *bad*) to take up their pitch forks and storm 'ol Cupertino... are you going to be the one to point them in the right direction?
I am no rocket scientist, but i believe the *theoretical* limit, if one could choose to line up the planets as they wished, would be an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. The real limit here would be the materials tolerance of the object used. Imagine holding on to an old merry-go-round, while you're friends spin it. How long could you hold on? How long would your arms stay in their sockets? Now imagine trying to get the massive gravitational effect of jupiter to work for you, and hope the nearest part of your spacecraft (using the arms metaphor) can hang on while it's whipped around for more speed...
It's a simplified effect of trying to accelerate using the event horizon of a black hole. The black hole can stand in for the multiple spins around the solar system trying to gain speed, if we attempt to just spin partway around the black hole.
Hope that clears some of it up.
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To: Anonymous Coward
Come off it, this is an article aimed at the typical user, not techies/audiophiles. Why should the general public know details of audio compression schemes?
Typical user? Then why the bru-ha-ha over 128 vs 256kbps MP3/AAC etcetera? This is Slashdot! Your so called 'average user' wouldn't find this site to begin with unless hand-held here. And Why should the general public know the details? Good point. Which is why Apple probably only mentions the 128kbps (AAC) format that they use, in passing. It makes 'joe schmoe' feel good because he's got some 'techy' term to banter around, and for those of us with enough brain cells to rub together and keep warm at night, we have what's known as *informed choice*. The ability to find and get the data for ourselves, turn it into information and make a judegement on whether or not to use their services! So when the masses decide (from reading these ramblings, after they've been printed out and someone with an itch to scratch tells them it means *bad*) to take up their pitch forks and storm 'ol Cupertino... are you going to be the one to point them in the right direction?
I am no rocket scientist, but i believe the *theoretical* limit, if one could choose to line up the planets as they wished, would be an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. The real limit here would be the materials tolerance of the object used. Imagine holding on to an old merry-go-round, while you're friends spin it. How long could you hold on? How long would your arms stay in their sockets? Now imagine trying to get the massive gravitational effect of jupiter to work for you, and hope the nearest part of your spacecraft (using the arms metaphor) can hang on while it's whipped around for more speed... It's a simplified effect of trying to accelerate using the event horizon of a black hole. The black hole can stand in for the multiple spins around the solar system trying to gain speed, if we attempt to just spin partway around the black hole. Hope that clears some of it up.