The idea is not that you couldn't synthesize an adequate waveform for a tone exactly half the frequency... it's that you can't properly record it. If you have a sine wave that is 23.99kHz and you sample at 48kHz, you will get those alternating impulses like I mentioned, but their envelope will be modulated at 10Hz! So yes, you can perfectly represent a 24kHz tone with 48kHz sampling, but if your sampling is not perfectly synchronized with the peaks and troughs of the sine wave, you will not be able to accurately capture those high-frequency variations!
But it's also fair to say that modern Christianity seems to be a lot less violent then modern Islam.
First: than. It's a pet peeve.
Second: I don't think that is fair. The US, a primarily Christian nation (79.8% in 2001), attacked Iraq and Afghanistan in the years following 9/11 for what I believe are religious reasons. I don't mean that we attacked them simply because of their religion. I mean that I think we did not avoid attacking them, as we might have for other Christian countries, because of their primarily Islamic makeup. Had Germany or the UK been found as the base for these terrorists, would we have attacked them? Surely such a discrepancy could also be caused by the difference in economic position and alliance, but I believe that the American public would not have been as receptive to a war on another primarily Christian country. Thus, I claim that the recent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing anywhere between 75 thousand and 1.2 million Iraqis and no doubt wounding countless others, is primarily Christian in origin. I don't have any figures for the death tolls caused by recent Islamic violence, but I assume that they do not significantly overshadow those for the Iraq war.
So - sure, there is lots of blame, and I wish that we could resolve this conflict without violence. But as the primary religion of a nation that has caused or been part of a heck of a lot of violence in recent years, Christianity is not doing so hot in upholding its "turn the other cheek" philosophy.
The Nyquist rate is meant as a lower limit for sampling rate, NOT a suggested value! If you sample a 24kHz tone at 48kHz, you get a series of alternating impulses. Ie: 1, -1, 1, -1, 1, -1, etc. That is not an adequate waveform! Ideally, you would want at least four to six points per waveform at the highest frequency you want to sample. Granted, the average listener cannot hear tones above 17kHz, but even at that frequency you would want to sample at least ~70kHz.
Of course, that's from a signals perspective... what really matters here is the signal reproduction, of which the main limiting component in many systems is the speakers. It's probable that even if you could sample a 20kHz signal adequately, the average user's speakers could not play it at the appropriate amplitude anyway.
It just frustrates me that the industry would have to choose the sampling details in order to minimize file size so strongly. It seems that with the current cost of digital storage, they should be able to put the 192kHz/24-bit masters on a server that could transcode them down to any reasonable format requested by users on an individual basis. They could even cache those transcodes, the same way that MP3Sparks does. It kills me that the record industry is going into the future kicking and screaming as it is.
I just don't understand the human race one bit. From all I can tell, it does seem like most governments, especially ours as of late, tend to progress toward the authoritarian. Is this hunger for power just insatiable to those running our government? Does seeking power at all costs convey some evolutionary advantage? It must, in order to be such a common trait among humans. Or is it simply that those in power got there because of that self-same lust? Is power-seeking a positive feedback loop?
It seems to me that the only way to combat obsessive power-seeking is to create a system that imposes limits on that loop. I guess the founding fathers realized that when they created the system of checks and balances, but it seems like the insulation in that wiring has been gradually eroding over the past 100 years. My only hope is that, sooner or later, something's gonna hit that switch on the sense amp, and the balance of power is going to slide back down to Vm.
Honestly, maybe that's the key to a successful government. Written into the constitution: every 20 years, the entire government will be randomly chosen from the country's educated populace. After that, elections will be held every 2 or 4 years as necessary until the next 20-year reset. Or maybe I just wish I could get in there and shake things up a bit.
Good point. Another important point to recognize is that while ordinary influenza may kill more people in sheer numbers per year, it is likely that avian flu could kill a larger fraction of those who contract it. Thus, while avian flu might only kill 10 people this year, that could be 10 out of 20 cases, whereas ordinary flu might kill 250 out of hundreds of thousands. If avian flu did turn out to have that sort of survival ratio and the ability to spread at a pandemic rate, we could have a real problem on our hands. I think the concern over bird flu is partially just media hype, but also partially valid. It's not a real problem yet, but if it made that leap from avian flu to primarily human flu, we would be caught woefully unprepared.
This is mildly off-topic, but I think interesting nonetheless, so I'll present it: When I read your post I found myself staring at the words "in my glove box", trying to figure whether a GLove box had anything to do with a GMail one. This degree of perceptual priming speaks volumes about Google's growing technological hegemony. While I applaud Google for time and again winning public approval and attention by simply creating great free services with a business model that doesn't detract from their services' form or function, I'm scared about the amount of control (and responsibility) this type of information monopoly affords.
On the other hand, like a moth to a flame, I find myself very intrigued by the prospect of a free phone, and await its public arrival with giddy anticipation. That I might even be able to write or download custom applications for my free phone is the icing on the cake. But are we really getting this phone for free? Or are we just paying with our privacy rather than our money?
We're not talking about human well-being though. We're talking about sheer bottom-line productivity. But on a side note, the good part about capitalism in a large, innovative country like the USA is that it's dynamics are so complicated that rarely does the system stay in a local minimum for very long. In addition, there are so many degrees of freedom (no pun intended) of the various markets that the chance that all variables would reach a local minimum is very small. Thus, the system, like a dimpled, vibrating surface with a number of small beads, will reach ever better minima. That is, until a famine or drought hits, etc. But in stable conditions, (our) capitalism for the most part has a good set of feedback loops that keep the system in a dynamic equilibrium.
The beauty of capitalism is its relationship with evolution... in capitalism, only the most resilient business models will survive over the long term. Hopefully that will result in the survival and growth of companies that have intelligent management and competent staff (cough, cough, Google etc). Unfortunately, for every company that survives long-term, there will probably be five or ten that burn themselves out through incompetence. The trick is to find a job with a company that has a chance for long-term survival. Either that or join a budding supernova, IPO, cash out, and run away before the implosion hits.
the cable companies have been running anti-neutrality ads trying to convince the public that the average consumer will be the one footing the bill for net neutrality.
I don't understand the big deal behind this... the average consumer should foot the bill. And the part that frustrates me the most is that the average consumer ALREADY foots the bill. And the average consumer will CONTINUE to foot the bill, even if the net becomes non-neutral. If we're paying so much for our internet connections, we as consumers should have the right to receive whatever content we want. Could you imagine if the telecoms did this for phone service? If telemarketers could pay to be heard loud and clear, but your grandma in Minneapolis could only come through softly in fits and starts? Nobody would stand for it, because the implications are so obvious. That's why it's great that these musicians pushing this issue in front of the public eye. If we want the internet to remain neutral, we have to educate the public about the implications of a non-neutral internet. Even if legislation is not successful, a public outcry (read: boycott) can work wonders with corporations who rely on consumer interest for their survival. Telecoms would love to make an extra buck by charging content providers to carry their bits, but they won't do it if they fear a public backlash.
If we had a competent/non-nepotistic government, I'd want them to run our networks so we could ensure fairness to all through legislation. I doubt that could ever happen, so we'll just have to use consumer pressure on the capitalist corporations to grab them by their bottom line and squeeze until they comply.
Is there any reason to ban incandescent lights besides their low efficiency? If not, it seems Australia's proposal is much more precise in direction. Might it be possible to create a dramatically more efficient incandescent with new materials? And would California's plan stifle this?
Indeed... my band's website is MindAtLarge.net, but our fans (and grandparents) find themselves very confused when they arrive at MindAtLarge.com, a ridiculous porn site. I can't imagine how the parkers decided to first register the domain MindAtLarge.com, but there's no way in hell I'm paying them $250 for the domain. I guess it encourages people to be more precise with their spellings... or perhaps they know something about our fans that we don't.
Indeed. I think it would be great to have a screen with adjustable transparency embedded in the lenses. I'm sure that with current technology, we are near to such a feat.
The default theme is the user's introduction to the browser. It should have the look and feel of his native GUI.
Perhaps. Are there any other browsers that do this? I don't know if I've ever seen one...
I have some news for you: it's supposed to be a basic [RSS] implementation that gives you the bare essentials. If you want one with bells and whistles, go get an extension that suits your needs better.
IE7 has raised the bar a little higher than this.
I suppose they have in a sense, but they're also forcing every user, whether novice or advanced, to download a more complex newsreader whether or not they'll ever use it. I for one use Google Reader - thus, I would likely never use the newsreader of either program. I'm assuming that IE7's news reader has a significantly larger memory footprint than Firefox's. I'd much rather have the option to easily download a more complex newsreader than be stuck wasting my valuable system memory on technology that I'll never use.
I think that Firefox's audience is composed of more power-users than IE7's, and thus the developers assume that users will simply download extensions that afford the features that they need. In my opinion, the Firefox team should focus on improving memory management and adding useful new features. Their kingdom was built on great features and word-of-mouth momentum. They've already got a big audience now, and there are some demographics they'll just never reach. Powerful yet simple features are what Firefox needs to stay ahead of the curve, and I wish them best of luck.
Seriously? I'm pretty sure most iRiver players have supported OGG for years... I know that my iHP 120 (now the H10) has supported ogg natively since I got it (at least three years ago), although I've now upgraded to RockBox which works more or less flawlessly on it. iRiver products may not be super-mainstream, but they're fairly open, especially after adding RockBox, and they just work.
Computer science is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from hard mathematics. What would happen to the field of mathematics if mathematicians started patenting their novel analysis methods?
I'm not sure about Denmark, but Sweden and Canada definitely levy a much larger income tax than America does. Sure, you get free healthcare and a very good socio-economic saftey net in those countries, but if you're standing to make a lot of money (and DVD Jon likely is if he doesn't get sued out of it), you don't need to worry about healthcare or welfare. He's finally going into software for the money, and he wants to keep as much of what he makes as he can.
So why don't more people use systems like Lulu.com that allow users to create their own content, sell it online, or even get it bound as real books on demand? Why do they need to get involved in huge publishing deals?
It seems that even just building a blog and syndicating some Google ads down the side would make as much money for the same readership as publishing a book.
will they ban breasts, since they contain liquids, or will children be able to drink the natural way without restriction?
That actually leads to a very interesting question. Could terrorists who plan to commit suicide anyway implant a portion of, for example, C-4 in their stomach cavity? With a small enough detonator, the setup would be undetectable by current methods. Will we have to start imaging people themselves? Or, as suggested in many other comments to this article, will we realize that we need to fight this war with diplomacy and social change rather than high-technology and mass murder?
Slashdot Mirror
The idea is not that you couldn't synthesize an adequate waveform for a tone exactly half the frequency... it's that you can't properly record it. If you have a sine wave that is 23.99kHz and you sample at 48kHz, you will get those alternating impulses like I mentioned, but their envelope will be modulated at 10Hz! So yes, you can perfectly represent a 24kHz tone with 48kHz sampling, but if your sampling is not perfectly synchronized with the peaks and troughs of the sine wave, you will not be able to accurately capture those high-frequency variations!
But it's also fair to say that modern Christianity seems to be a lot less violent then modern Islam.
First: than. It's a pet peeve.
Second: I don't think that is fair. The US, a primarily Christian nation (79.8% in 2001), attacked Iraq and Afghanistan in the years following 9/11 for what I believe are religious reasons. I don't mean that we attacked them simply because of their religion. I mean that I think we did not avoid attacking them, as we might have for other Christian countries, because of their primarily Islamic makeup. Had Germany or the UK been found as the base for these terrorists, would we have attacked them? Surely such a discrepancy could also be caused by the difference in economic position and alliance, but I believe that the American public would not have been as receptive to a war on another primarily Christian country. Thus, I claim that the recent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing anywhere between 75 thousand and 1.2 million Iraqis and no doubt wounding countless others, is primarily Christian in origin. I don't have any figures for the death tolls caused by recent Islamic violence, but I assume that they do not significantly overshadow those for the Iraq war.
So - sure, there is lots of blame, and I wish that we could resolve this conflict without violence. But as the primary religion of a nation that has caused or been part of a heck of a lot of violence in recent years, Christianity is not doing so hot in upholding its "turn the other cheek" philosophy.
The Nyquist rate is meant as a lower limit for sampling rate, NOT a suggested value! If you sample a 24kHz tone at 48kHz, you get a series of alternating impulses. Ie: 1, -1, 1, -1, 1, -1, etc. That is not an adequate waveform! Ideally, you would want at least four to six points per waveform at the highest frequency you want to sample. Granted, the average listener cannot hear tones above 17kHz, but even at that frequency you would want to sample at least ~70kHz. Of course, that's from a signals perspective... what really matters here is the signal reproduction, of which the main limiting component in many systems is the speakers. It's probable that even if you could sample a 20kHz signal adequately, the average user's speakers could not play it at the appropriate amplitude anyway. It just frustrates me that the industry would have to choose the sampling details in order to minimize file size so strongly. It seems that with the current cost of digital storage, they should be able to put the 192kHz/24-bit masters on a server that could transcode them down to any reasonable format requested by users on an individual basis. They could even cache those transcodes, the same way that MP3Sparks does. It kills me that the record industry is going into the future kicking and screaming as it is.
Result #8: Howstuffworks "How Women Work"
Freaky!
The Government of the United States of America is clearly still in beta testing.
I just don't understand the human race one bit. From all I can tell, it does seem like most governments, especially ours as of late, tend to progress toward the authoritarian. Is this hunger for power just insatiable to those running our government? Does seeking power at all costs convey some evolutionary advantage? It must, in order to be such a common trait among humans. Or is it simply that those in power got there because of that self-same lust? Is power-seeking a positive feedback loop?
It seems to me that the only way to combat obsessive power-seeking is to create a system that imposes limits on that loop. I guess the founding fathers realized that when they created the system of checks and balances, but it seems like the insulation in that wiring has been gradually eroding over the past 100 years. My only hope is that, sooner or later, something's gonna hit that switch on the sense amp, and the balance of power is going to slide back down to Vm.
Honestly, maybe that's the key to a successful government. Written into the constitution: every 20 years, the entire government will be randomly chosen from the country's educated populace. After that, elections will be held every 2 or 4 years as necessary until the next 20-year reset. Or maybe I just wish I could get in there and shake things up a bit.
Good point. Another important point to recognize is that while ordinary influenza may kill more people in sheer numbers per year, it is likely that avian flu could kill a larger fraction of those who contract it. Thus, while avian flu might only kill 10 people this year, that could be 10 out of 20 cases, whereas ordinary flu might kill 250 out of hundreds of thousands. If avian flu did turn out to have that sort of survival ratio and the ability to spread at a pandemic rate, we could have a real problem on our hands. I think the concern over bird flu is partially just media hype, but also partially valid. It's not a real problem yet, but if it made that leap from avian flu to primarily human flu, we would be caught woefully unprepared.
An interesting article about the mathematical implications of the electoral college system on voter power: http://www.avagara.com/e_c/reference/00012001.htm
This is mildly off-topic, but I think interesting nonetheless, so I'll present it: When I read your post I found myself staring at the words "in my glove box", trying to figure whether a GLove box had anything to do with a GMail one. This degree of perceptual priming speaks volumes about Google's growing technological hegemony. While I applaud Google for time and again winning public approval and attention by simply creating great free services with a business model that doesn't detract from their services' form or function, I'm scared about the amount of control (and responsibility) this type of information monopoly affords.
On the other hand, like a moth to a flame, I find myself very intrigued by the prospect of a free phone, and await its public arrival with giddy anticipation. That I might even be able to write or download custom applications for my free phone is the icing on the cake. But are we really getting this phone for free? Or are we just paying with our privacy rather than our money?
iPhone, schmiPhone.
http://www.openmoko.com/
Hurry up, neural interfaces and practical, wearable display glasses.
We're not talking about human well-being though. We're talking about sheer bottom-line productivity. But on a side note, the good part about capitalism in a large, innovative country like the USA is that it's dynamics are so complicated that rarely does the system stay in a local minimum for very long. In addition, there are so many degrees of freedom (no pun intended) of the various markets that the chance that all variables would reach a local minimum is very small. Thus, the system, like a dimpled, vibrating surface with a number of small beads, will reach ever better minima. That is, until a famine or drought hits, etc. But in stable conditions, (our) capitalism for the most part has a good set of feedback loops that keep the system in a dynamic equilibrium.
The beauty of capitalism is its relationship with evolution... in capitalism, only the most resilient business models will survive over the long term. Hopefully that will result in the survival and growth of companies that have intelligent management and competent staff (cough, cough, Google etc). Unfortunately, for every company that survives long-term, there will probably be five or ten that burn themselves out through incompetence. The trick is to find a job with a company that has a chance for long-term survival. Either that or join a budding supernova, IPO, cash out, and run away before the implosion hits.
the cable companies have been running anti-neutrality ads trying to convince the public that the average consumer will be the one footing the bill for net neutrality.
I don't understand the big deal behind this... the average consumer should foot the bill. And the part that frustrates me the most is that the average consumer ALREADY foots the bill. And the average consumer will CONTINUE to foot the bill, even if the net becomes non-neutral. If we're paying so much for our internet connections, we as consumers should have the right to receive whatever content we want. Could you imagine if the telecoms did this for phone service? If telemarketers could pay to be heard loud and clear, but your grandma in Minneapolis could only come through softly in fits and starts? Nobody would stand for it, because the implications are so obvious. That's why it's great that these musicians pushing this issue in front of the public eye. If we want the internet to remain neutral, we have to educate the public about the implications of a non-neutral internet. Even if legislation is not successful, a public outcry (read: boycott) can work wonders with corporations who rely on consumer interest for their survival. Telecoms would love to make an extra buck by charging content providers to carry their bits, but they won't do it if they fear a public backlash.
If we had a competent/non-nepotistic government, I'd want them to run our networks so we could ensure fairness to all through legislation. I doubt that could ever happen, so we'll just have to use consumer pressure on the capitalist corporations to grab them by their bottom line and squeeze until they comply.
Is there any reason to ban incandescent lights besides their low efficiency? If not, it seems Australia's proposal is much more precise in direction. Might it be possible to create a dramatically more efficient incandescent with new materials? And would California's plan stifle this?
Indeed... my band's website is MindAtLarge.net, but our fans (and grandparents) find themselves very confused when they arrive at MindAtLarge.com, a ridiculous porn site. I can't imagine how the parkers decided to first register the domain MindAtLarge.com, but there's no way in hell I'm paying them $250 for the domain. I guess it encourages people to be more precise with their spellings... or perhaps they know something about our fans that we don't.
Indeed. I think it would be great to have a screen with adjustable transparency embedded in the lenses. I'm sure that with current technology, we are near to such a feat.
Perhaps. Are there any other browsers that do this? I don't know if I've ever seen one...
I have some news for you: it's supposed to be a basic [RSS] implementation that gives you the bare essentials. If you want one with bells and whistles, go get an extension that suits your needs better.
I suppose they have in a sense, but they're also forcing every user, whether novice or advanced, to download a more complex newsreader whether or not they'll ever use it. I for one use Google Reader - thus, I would likely never use the newsreader of either program. I'm assuming that IE7's news reader has a significantly larger memory footprint than Firefox's. I'd much rather have the option to easily download a more complex newsreader than be stuck wasting my valuable system memory on technology that I'll never use.
I think that Firefox's audience is composed of more power-users than IE7's, and thus the developers assume that users will simply download extensions that afford the features that they need. In my opinion, the Firefox team should focus on improving memory management and adding useful new features. Their kingdom was built on great features and word-of-mouth momentum. They've already got a big audience now, and there are some demographics they'll just never reach. Powerful yet simple features are what Firefox needs to stay ahead of the curve, and I wish them best of luck.
Seriously? I'm pretty sure most iRiver players have supported OGG for years... I know that my iHP 120 (now the H10) has supported ogg natively since I got it (at least three years ago), although I've now upgraded to RockBox which works more or less flawlessly on it. iRiver products may not be super-mainstream, but they're fairly open, especially after adding RockBox, and they just work.
Computer science is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from hard mathematics. What would happen to the field of mathematics if mathematicians started patenting their novel analysis methods?
I'm not sure about Denmark, but Sweden and Canada definitely levy a much larger income tax than America does. Sure, you get free healthcare and a very good socio-economic saftey net in those countries, but if you're standing to make a lot of money (and DVD Jon likely is if he doesn't get sued out of it), you don't need to worry about healthcare or welfare. He's finally going into software for the money, and he wants to keep as much of what he makes as he can.
So why don't more people use systems like Lulu.com that allow users to create their own content, sell it online, or even get it bound as real books on demand? Why do they need to get involved in huge publishing deals?
It seems that even just building a blog and syndicating some Google ads down the side would make as much money for the same readership as publishing a book.
will they ban breasts, since they contain liquids, or will children be able to drink the natural way without restriction?
That actually leads to a very interesting question. Could terrorists who plan to commit suicide anyway implant a portion of, for example, C-4 in their stomach cavity? With a small enough detonator, the setup would be undetectable by current methods. Will we have to start imaging people themselves? Or, as suggested in many other comments to this article, will we realize that we need to fight this war with diplomacy and social change rather than high-technology and mass murder?