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User: sound+vision

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  1. Re:I thought that was Nintendo's failure... on Is Sega the Next Atari? · · Score: 1

    I don't think piracy was that big of a factor. Sure, it required no modding... but it did require you to downloaded several hundred megabytes per game. The Dreamcast was released in 1999, so that means over dialup. I'm too lazy to do the math, but my guess-o-meter says you would have to tie up your phone line for the better part of a week to complete 1 game download. And hope you don't get disconnected, because then you have to start over...

  2. Spliffs are better before dinner, to enhance the meal. Of course, you can always smoke before AND after, that's usually what I do.

  3. Re:Say... on Humans' Big Brains Linked To a Small Stretch of DNA · · Score: 2

    I was thinking more about people who have a natural aptitude for logic, critical thought, and independent study, but hard knocks often come into the picture too.

    In the end it's about judging people on their merits, not their background or some rubber-stamped credentials.

  4. Re:Oomph. on Intel Core M Enables Lower Cost Ultrabooks; Asus UX305 Tested · · Score: 1
    Seems the price has jumped. When I bought my Asus *book (eeepc 1000he) it was $350. So I thought, hey, this new model must be way more capable right? Yet in the article it's stated:

    ...it’s targeting users who want a very portable machine for everyday computing tasks such as browsing the web, editing documents, listening to music, etc, that also crave long battery life and a sleek form factor.

    Golly Gee Willikers, that's exactly why I bought the eeepc. And it still worked for those purposes in 2014. And I'd still be using it in 2015 too if WinXP got updates or there weren't Linux driver issues. (This model did not ship with Linux.) Hell, I did more than web surfing on it - it made a sweet portable SNES emulator, as well as something to watch movies on. I even did some basic video editing on it if you can believe it or not - although admittedly, processing effects and encoding took a while.

    Given the hardware advances in the 6 years since the 1000HE was released, I find it hard to believe Asus can't put out a computer that serves the same purpose for the same amount of money. Or less money.

    Perhaps it's just over-spec'd for the stated purpose. 8 GB and 1920x1080 for web surfing and document editing? My gaming rig runs on 4 GB and 1440x900.

  5. Re:Look around you on Humans' Big Brains Linked To a Small Stretch of DNA · · Score: 2

    There are plenty of smart people who have never had to do a "thesis", if you mean a project to cap off a university degree. Conversely, there are plenty of dumb people who have degrees. That number is only going up from grade inflation and degree devaluation as the idea that everyone needs to go to college permeates deeper into society. An idea fed, in part, by comments like yours.

  6. Re:its all about the $$$ on Chicago's Red Light Cameras Now a Point of Contention for Mayoral Candidates · · Score: 3, Funny

    Instead of pulling this traffic light crap (which can increase accidents), they could just legalize marijuana... seems to be bringing in quite a bit for Colorado, in spite of the industry not being fully developed, and the banking problems the industry still has from the federal prohibition.

  7. Re:Is this new? on Crystal Pattern Matching Recovers Obliterated Serial Numbers From Metal · · Score: 2

    It looks like this is a more advanced method to accomplish the same thing. Meaning that recovering sanded serial numbers is not new, but this particular way of doing it is.

  8. Re:Good. on A123 Sues Apple For Poaching Employees · · Score: 1

    If you're working at some Silicon Valley tech firm, you're well off by any measure. The wage stagnation for people making $7.25/hr is the real issue in this country.

  9. Re:OMNI on The Science of a Bottomless Pit · · Score: 1

    And yet, this article estimates it at more like 24 hours. It does make a lot of assumptions though - maybe the older article made a different set of assumptions.

  10. Re:'Programmer' working with live data? on Scotland's Police Lose Data Because of Programmer's Error · · Score: 2

    Yeah, someone working in the police force there is either very incompetent or very shady. I think the latter is more likely. It's not 1990, this sort of data will be backed up unless someone specifically decides not to.

  11. Re:And they'll check their own backyard too ? on US To Monitor Air Quality In India and Other Countries · · Score: 3

    There are already equivalent or better levels of monitoring within the US. Now they're monitoring places that don't have the capacity or will to monitor themselves.

  12. Re:Yay on BBC Radio Drops WMA For MPEG-DASH · · Score: 1

    I'm well aware of iTunes, I actually use its AAC encoder on a regular basis. By "in the wild" I mean music that get distributed person-to-person, like on torrent sites. Where the uploader has a choice of formats to use. Not Apple's walled garden. My suspicion is that a good deal of AAC uploads you see on torrent sites do in fact originate from iTunes, and that we'd see a lot more of them if it weren't for things like Apple embedding your username in the file. I'm actually not sure if they still do that, but stuff like that hangs heavy on the memory.

  13. Re:Bad format in the first place on BBC Radio Drops WMA For MPEG-DASH · · Score: 1

    The only good AAC encoders (Apple, Fraunhaufer, and debatably Nero) are proprietary. There are open-source encoders, but the quality is so poor that they aren't worth using.
    This doesn't even take into account licensing/patent issues, which I believe come into play as well.

  14. Re:Yay on BBC Radio Drops WMA For MPEG-DASH · · Score: 1

    There never really was a "format war" as far as codecs go. Or if there is a war, it's ongoing.

    In the 90s when music over the internet became a thing, MP3 was the only game in town. MP2 existed, but it was less efficient. At that time there was no such thing as "hardware support" so users were free to pick the most efficient format.

    By the early-mid 2000s, there were several formats beating MP3 in listening tests. Musepack, Vorbis, AAC. You don't see many of those "in the wild" now, but I certainly see more today than I did in 2005, putting them on a slow upward trajectory. Once disk space and bandwidth come down a couple ticks in price, there will be no reason not to go FLAC which will make lossy compression irrelevant as you can transcode to whatever you want/need.

  15. Re:Extradition? on Russian Man Extradited To US For Heartland, Dow Jones Cyberattacks · · Score: 1

    IIRC the number of accounts reached 7 digits around 2006, meaning he's probably been here 7 or 8 years.

  16. Re:But, but, you're using logic and science on Federal Study: Marijuana Use Doesn't Increase Auto Crash Rates · · Score: 2

    And then there are those of us who blaze it up *on* the freeway :D

  17. Re:MH370 on Will Submarines Soon Become As Obsolete As the Battleship? · · Score: 2

    Presumably MH370 is no longer doing things like communicating, running engines, maneuvering, hosting a crowd of living people, etc - the things that can get you noticed.

  18. Re:It succeeeded due to it's copyright infringment on The Revolution Wasn't Televised: the Early Days of YouTube · · Score: 1

    Gitmo was in full swing years before YouTube came online.

  19. Re:If Apple made a car... on Apple Hiring Automotive Experts · · Score: 1

    My computer works more like a space heater.

  20. Re:Trotsky was right! on Apple Hiring Automotive Experts · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That is how communism has been applied historically - Russia, China, a few other smaller players. Communism isn't about concentrating wealth. The particular groups that took power in those countries are about concentrating wealth. They just happened to be using communist imagery and rhetoric.

    What's interesting is that your picture of a wrecked communist country is very similar to how American "capitalism" is playing out.

  21. Re:If he actually did all that... on Ross Ulbricht Found Guilty On All 7 Counts In Silk Road Trial · · Score: 1

    Witnesses send in tips to law enforcement, or testify at trial. They don't blackmail in an attempt to extort money. The LEO agents involved in this were posing as criminals, not innocent citizens who witnessed a crime.

  22. Re:If he actually did all that... on Ross Ulbricht Found Guilty On All 7 Counts In Silk Road Trial · · Score: 1

    That sort of thing was covered in my "shooting the store clerk" example, which I painted unacceptable. These hypothetical 5 people were not "witnesses" to anything, they claimed to have compromised the SR site and were attempting to use that leverage to extort money from Ross.

    To fix your analogy, it would be more like your neighbor breaking into your files and getting evidence you owe the IRS $50k, then threatening to inform the IRS unless you coughed up $10k to buy their silence. Except if the IRS dealt out murder and life sentences, not fines.

  23. Re:Goodbye on Radioshack Declares Bankruptcy · · Score: 1

    I'm using "Optimus" branded RadioShack speakers as we speak, which are 20+ years old. They still work, and they're still the best speakers in the house. I have never personally been to Radioshack for anything more than cables, but the legend lives on...

  24. Re:Not statistically significant on The Poem That Passed the Turing Test · · Score: 1

    You don't ask someone to write a poem during an interrogation. I can't imagine any conversation where you'd ask someone to write a poem, except a scenario where you're commissioning an artist and you give X number of days to come up with the commission. Answers in a conversation come in seconds, not days.

  25. Re:More proof on Music Doesn't Feature In the Pirate Bay's Top 100 Biggest Torrents · · Score: 1

    iTunes sells music in AAC format at 256 kb/s, YouTube has 100 kb/s AAC allocated to audio, even on the highest quality settings. Additionally, the majority of stuff uploaded to YouTube has already gone through at least 1 round of lossy compression before Google even gets it, which compounds encoding artifacts.