I don't know what you kids are worrying about. Are you afraid the 'Man' is going to find out that you're a stoner and come steal your stash? Come on, maybe if you put down the weed for a while, your consciousness would retract enough for you to realize that your collection of bongs, porn, pirated music, etc. isn't really that interesting. Yeah, I remember when I was young and thought the CIA/whatever monitored my library activity...But the fact is that one idealistic young slashdotter is just like ten thousand others. You're all just part of the noise.
A single, unified, fixed government standard for DRM is the way to go. Write your Congressman today! It would be awesome -- no more fussing around with every DRM d'jour. Maybe even a new acronym -- CORE -- Crack Once, Read Everything!!
Well consider the military's full repertoire. They could have easily turned Iraq into a parking lot and killed EVERYONE. Or perhaps more realistically, they could have bombed the entire populace into submission, as well as any neighboring countries exhibiting poor border control. Millions could have been killed. Compare this to what they have actually done, and from a percentage standpoint they look a lot more like a defensive force to me.
Given the power and dominance of the US Military, things could be so so much worse. But even with the US current aggressive leadership, its behavior is unbelieveably restrained when viewed in a global or historical context.
During the period of my experience, 8+ years ago, there were as many brands and models of VCRs as ever. At that time certain very popular brands were selling lines with models from 2 or more manufacturers within the same year.
CR could have at least provided some basic information with respect to this, i.e. - "RCA's line for this year is comprised of Samsung-manufactured units on the low end, Hitachi machines in the mid-range, and Matsushita (Panasonic) units on the high-end. Zenith's line, which in previous years was built by JVC, is now being supplied by GoldStar." And with slightly more work, they could have broken down models by manufacturer -- the codes are on the back, they could have just gone to the stores and looked.
If they can't rate something meaningfully, they shouldn't do it. Rating by brand is just not useful. Brands are traded all the time, with little or no guarantee of consistency in the products they represent.
Yep, back when I was in the consumer electronics business, Consumer Reports rated the reliability of VCRs by brand and not by actual manufacturer. They would end up with identical machines (with different brands and facades) at opposite ends of their reliability scale. The information to determine actual manufacturer was readily available, but I guess their evaluation was just too shallow to use it.
If they were worth the money, they could have done some real investigation and testing, and supplied detailed, meaningful results to their readers. Maybe they were too busy making videos of themselves wearing lab coats and pounding on mattresses...
Today Information Week is reporting on a forthcoming service from Slashdot intended to compete with Slashdot. Instead of the freewheeling anything-goes nature of Slashdot, the Slashdot project code named 'dupe' will focus solely on repeating previous stories. At this point though, it appears to be a beta restricted to Slashdotters.
Yeah, Fremont, Seattle's hippie district. So perhaps Craigslist is more what they're aiming at. Maybe MS will give classifieds a haircut and a real job...
My theory is that the Slashdot editors are now using bots to do the bulk of their work. Heck, I'm pretty certain that ScuttleMonkey is nothing but a bot.
Forget science. Nobody likes science. It is the root of every evil from DRM to global warming, and it undermines our religion. Now why don't you quit dreaming at everyone else's expense and go to a third-world country where you can help them to live and multiply even farther beyond what their resources can support. Or maybe just stay home and perfect your society first, perhaps returning it to a 14th century state of bliss.
Shhhh! I hear the footsteps of Doc Ruby and his thralls approaching -- Let the karma whoreing begin!
And if you gave them the chance, the citizens of Seattle would also vote repeatedly to cut off their own food and water supplies to save the environment. Seattle is just another "progressive" urban fantasy land.
BTW: Why don't you "progressives" extend your concept of diversity to include rural people? I guess its like vegans eating bacteria...
That's right, we need to help the Progressives or Conservatives (take your pick) create their Utopia here on Earth first. Only then can we turn our attention and resources to space.
If this was a good strategy, we'd still be in the cave, trying to make cave life better. (Yeah yeah, I know some folks think we should still be in the cave!)
"The system managed to calculate pi to 1 million decimal places in 18.516 seconds" and at 19.428 seconds reduced itself to a "fiery, twisted, mass of molten metal".
I bet more people die from from falling asleep at the wheel each year than have _ever_ died from spaceflight accidents. People are dying, and there isn't much of an outcry over it, unlike the similar situation for drunk driving. Spaceflight, like drunk driving, just happens to be one of the media's chosen story generators.
Yes, "ooga booga" is what we see in the movies. It, aside from preying on our "racist" instincts to elicit the director's desired response, is a caricature of the psychological component of witch doctor treatment, which I would argue is a larger part of their treatment than in so-called "European" practices.
My experience with engineers is that they are much less likely to deal with psychological considerations than even "European" doctors. While the brain is physically linked with the body and has a measurable influence on it, any direct effect from the brain on an engineered item like a bridge is significantly less established. To say there are differences does not insult the doctors (any of them) or "deify" the engineers. Getting (willfully) involved with "less measurable" things is just more out of character for engineers - hence my reaction to this article.
There was no objective "before" and "after" comparison of the modifications in the article, no pictures or measurements showing that the audio reproduction was improved - that it was actually now closer to the encoded signal on the disc, let alone to the master recording. The author simply provides his own highly subjective evaluation of the results. The "reality" of this is indeed debatable. Did you see the author's description? "Robert McNeice is a business and information-technology consultant for the financial services industry. He is an audiophile and occasional tweaker." This is not even an EE relating an esoteric reality to the layperson. Aside from isolated talk of component specs and the generally expected effects of changing them, there is hardly anything resembling EE here.
A meaningful article could have been written based on real measurements and engineering - but that probably would have been too esoteric and never would have made Slashdot. Your expectations from this article should be no greater than they were for my initial post - they both appeal to popular notions and both make use of technically poor content. My post delivered the point that this article is questionable, albeit with some collateral damage to witch doctors, but hopefully it saved a few people from spending a few hundred dollars on something which may sound: a) the same b) worse c) better, but no better than if they had fiddled with their equalizer d) better because it "should be" e) actually better Basically, a 20% chance of getting an objective return on their investment.
I was referring more to the "ooga booga" side of witchdoctoring, as I am aware and respectful of the natural origins of many of our drugs. My apologies to the "witch pharmacists".
My initial thought was that the IEEE should have rejected an article where the value of the circuit(s) described was physically discernable only by rare individuals, and even psychologically discernable only by a slightly larger group. I grasped quickly for an analogous situation involving a medical journal and a relatively subjective practice of medicine.
In retrospect, it's a more complex situation, and I'll agree that the post was technically poor, but it appears most folks got the point anyway. But hey, this is Slashdot - where an early post/thread always triumphs over a good one!
Wow, an audiophile article from the IEEE. Next thing you know, we'll have witch doctors contributing to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what you kids are worrying about. Are you afraid the 'Man' is going to find out that you're a stoner and come steal your stash? Come on, maybe if you put down the weed for a while, your consciousness would retract enough for you to realize that your collection of bongs, porn, pirated music, etc. isn't really that interesting. Yeah, I remember when I was young and thought the CIA/whatever monitored my library activity...But the fact is that one idealistic young slashdotter is just like ten thousand others. You're all just part of the noise.
A single, unified, fixed government standard for DRM is the way to go. Write your Congressman today! It would be awesome -- no more fussing around with every DRM d'jour. Maybe even a new acronym -- CORE -- Crack Once, Read Everything!!
I bet Larry ends up sharing a bed roll and and a bottle of Thunderbird with Doug Lenat.
Ah, a great retort if I had been arguing for the necessity of the war. Nice try...
Well consider the military's full repertoire. They could have easily turned Iraq into a parking lot and killed EVERYONE. Or perhaps more realistically, they could have bombed the entire populace into submission, as well as any neighboring countries exhibiting poor border control. Millions could have been killed. Compare this to what they have actually done, and from a percentage standpoint they look a lot more like a defensive force to me.
Given the power and dominance of the US Military, things could be so so much worse. But even with the US current aggressive leadership, its behavior is unbelieveably restrained when viewed in a global or historical context.
Yeah, I think he meant stagnant, but stagnet has so many intriguing possibilities as a word...
Fire-what?
What-Fox?
What-what?
During the period of my experience, 8+ years ago, there were as many brands and models of VCRs as ever. At that time certain very popular brands were selling lines with models from 2 or more manufacturers within the same year.
CR could have at least provided some basic information with respect to this, i.e. - "RCA's line for this year is comprised of Samsung-manufactured units on the low end, Hitachi machines in the mid-range, and Matsushita (Panasonic) units on the high-end. Zenith's line, which in previous years was built by JVC, is now being supplied by GoldStar." And with slightly more work, they could have broken down models by manufacturer -- the codes are on the back, they could have just gone to the stores and looked.
If they can't rate something meaningfully, they shouldn't do it. Rating by brand is just not useful. Brands are traded all the time, with little or no guarantee of consistency in the products they represent.
Yep, back when I was in the consumer electronics business, Consumer Reports rated the reliability of VCRs by brand and not by actual manufacturer. They would end up with identical machines (with different brands and facades) at opposite ends of their reliability scale. The information to determine actual manufacturer was readily available, but I guess their evaluation was just too shallow to use it.
If they were worth the money, they could have done some real investigation and testing, and supplied detailed, meaningful results to their readers. Maybe they were too busy making videos of themselves wearing lab coats and pounding on mattresses...
Today Information Week is reporting on a forthcoming service from Slashdot intended to compete with Slashdot. Instead of the freewheeling anything-goes nature of Slashdot, the Slashdot project code named 'dupe' will focus solely on repeating previous stories. At this point though, it appears to be a beta restricted to Slashdotters.
Yeah, Fremont, Seattle's hippie district. So perhaps Craigslist is more what they're aiming at. Maybe MS will give classifieds a haircut and a real job...
My theory is that the Slashdot editors are now using bots to do the bulk of their work. Heck, I'm pretty certain that ScuttleMonkey is nothing but a bot.
Forget science. Nobody likes science. It is the root of every evil from DRM to global warming, and it undermines our religion. Now why don't you quit dreaming at everyone else's expense and go to a third-world country where you can help them to live and multiply even farther beyond what their resources can support. Or maybe just stay home and perfect your society first, perhaps returning it to a 14th century state of bliss.
Shhhh! I hear the footsteps of Doc Ruby and his thralls approaching -- Let the karma whoreing begin!
Erm, Arizona and Indiana are INSIDE "The Elephant" and they don't roll with it. *poof*
Good.
And if you gave them the chance, the citizens of Seattle would also vote repeatedly to cut off their own food and water supplies to save the environment. Seattle is just another "progressive" urban fantasy land.
BTW: Why don't you "progressives" extend your concept of diversity to include rural people? I guess its like vegans eating bacteria...
That's right, we need to help the Progressives or Conservatives (take your pick) create their Utopia here on Earth first. Only then can we turn our attention and resources to space.
If this was a good strategy, we'd still be in the cave, trying to make cave life better. (Yeah yeah, I know some folks think we should still be in the cave!)
"The system managed to calculate pi to 1 million decimal places in 18.516 seconds" and at 19.428 seconds reduced itself to a "fiery, twisted, mass of molten metal".
I bet more people die from from falling asleep at the wheel each year than have _ever_ died from spaceflight accidents. People are dying, and there isn't much of an outcry over it, unlike the similar situation for drunk driving. Spaceflight, like drunk driving, just happens to be one of the media's chosen story generators.
Bomb 20 makes it all worthwhile.
Seventeen feet is good, but get that baby down to ten feet and I'll be able to mount one on an electric car and tour the world!
Yes, "ooga booga" is what we see in the movies. It, aside from preying on our "racist" instincts to elicit the director's desired response, is a caricature of the psychological component of witch doctor treatment, which I would argue is a larger part of their treatment than in so-called "European" practices.
My experience with engineers is that they are much less likely to deal with psychological considerations than even "European" doctors. While the brain is physically linked with the body and has a measurable influence on it, any direct effect from the brain on an engineered item like a bridge is significantly less established. To say there are differences does not insult the doctors (any of them) or "deify" the engineers. Getting (willfully) involved with "less measurable" things is just more out of character for engineers - hence my reaction to this article.
There was no objective "before" and "after" comparison of the modifications in the article, no pictures or measurements showing that the audio reproduction was improved - that it was actually now closer to the encoded signal on the disc, let alone to the master recording. The author simply provides his own highly subjective evaluation of the results. The "reality" of this is indeed debatable. Did you see the author's description? "Robert McNeice is a business and information-technology consultant for the financial services industry. He is an audiophile and occasional tweaker." This is not even an EE relating an esoteric reality to the layperson. Aside from isolated talk of component specs and the generally expected effects of changing them, there is hardly anything resembling EE here.
A meaningful article could have been written based on real measurements and engineering - but that probably would have been too esoteric and never would have made Slashdot. Your expectations from this article should be no greater than they were for my initial post - they both appeal to popular notions and both make use of technically poor content. My post delivered the point that this article is questionable, albeit with some collateral damage to witch doctors, but hopefully it saved a few people from spending a few hundred dollars on something which may sound:
a) the same
b) worse
c) better, but no better than if they had fiddled with their equalizer
d) better because it "should be"
e) actually better
Basically, a 20% chance of getting an objective return on their investment.
I was referring more to the "ooga booga" side of witchdoctoring, as I am aware and respectful of the natural origins of many of our drugs. My apologies to the "witch pharmacists".
My initial thought was that the IEEE should have rejected an article where the value of the circuit(s) described was physically discernable only by rare individuals, and even psychologically discernable only by a slightly larger group. I grasped quickly for an analogous situation involving a medical journal and a relatively subjective practice of medicine.
In retrospect, it's a more complex situation, and I'll agree that the post was technically poor, but it appears most folks got the point anyway. But hey, this is Slashdot - where an early post/thread always triumphs over a good one!
Wow, an audiophile article from the IEEE. Next thing you know, we'll have witch doctors contributing to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Three words: Army of Lamers