And, like I said, to each his own. If Cricket works for you, than great. I even said as much and I'm not ripping on Cricket or trying to tear them down in any way. You, on the other hand, apparently understand the market better than your initial misleading response to me seems to indicate, leading me to believe that was your intent. Thus why I clarified things.
Oh, oops. Looks like they now have a family plan that includes 2 lines and unlimited LTE data for $100/mo now. That's $20/mo less than I've been paying, so I just switched to it. That puts T-Mobile unlimited everything and Cricket with a 20GB/line data cap at the same price after taxes and fees, if you've got 2 lines.
Damn. Sorry about that, Cricket looked like it may have been a viable option for some people, but... well. Just... sorry. And thanks for prompting me to look into that; it's new since I looked last week.
Which doesn't apply here. When I first switched to T-Moble, I was paying less while financing 2 phones for unlimited everything (including unlimited LTE data), than I was paying AT&T for 700 shared minutes and 4GB of data per line. $50/mo, to be precise, or $1200 over 2 years. Plus the $100 paid to AT&T for my phone and $200 for my wife's, bringing the 2 year total AT&T ripoff to $1500. Now that both phones are paid for, the bill is an additional $50/mo lower; mind you, we paid $650 apiece for the phones, but there were cheaper options if we wanted them; that's not relevant here, though, since you have to buy your phone on Cricket, as well. That leads me to want to recalculate my savings over AT&T, completely ignoring the cost of the phone.
Well, let's see, and keep in mind this is for 2 lines... AT&T, still $250/mo, whether you bring your own phone or buy from them, this is the cost of service, 700min/mo, 4GB data per line, unlimited texting; mind you, their rates have changed since then, so it may well be cheaper now. T-Mobile, $150/mo for services, unlimited everything, including LTE data. So, really, device cost notwithstanding, AT&T would have cost me $2400 more over the past 2 years that I've been with T-Mobile, had I stayed with them. That's one month's rent, one month's phone bill, and a night out for me and my wife. And, to be honest, unless we were frequent international travelers, or made frequent international calls, there's no way my wife and I could be paying T-Mobile any more than we already do for 2 lines; we have every feature already.
I'm sure you're tempted to argue that I'm comparing AT&T to T-Mobile simply to make a more favorable argument for myself. The reality is, though, that I'm comparing one viable option to another. Cricket doesn't have LTE coverage in my area, while every other provider does. That's an important feature to me, so Cricket holds no value for me at any price; they're not a viable option for me. Now, they may have LTE coverage in your area, or that may not matter to you, in which case, more power to you. But let's go ahead and do the math for 2 lines of unlimited voice, texting, and LTE data on Cricket, anyway. According to their rates chart, they don't offer unlimited. Well, then, let's go with the highest option, 20GB, which is on promo for $60/mo right now, but I see a pattern in their rate options, which allows me to discern that this is probably normally $70/mo. $65 if I trust them to store my payment details, which I don't, so we'll use $70/mo. Times 2, but, oh, they'll give me $10/mo off on the 2nd line. $130/mo for limited LTE, in areas where they actually have LTE coverage, which is *nowhere* that my wife or I would be using our phones. Really, not worth the $20/mo savings; especially as I routinely top 10GB/mo, often topping 30GB, using my phone as a dash cam. Those months, it would be useless to me for 1/3 of the month, or more, as I use maybe 60min/mo; most of my usage is data.
Again, if Cricket works for you, that's great. If their offering truly was viable for more people, more people would use them. I really hate to say it, since it flies in the face of everything I commonly say about people in general, but most people aren't completely stupid, they run through the math on these things (or have a trusted party who does this for them), weigh the pros and cons, and, ultimately, choose what works best for them. The features I'd have to give up to go with Cricket (unlimited LTE... actually, LTE at all) are worth considerably more than $10 per line (e.g. the $20 "savings" I would see with Cricket; and that's *after* T-Mobile adds taxes and fees to the bill) I would save. That I can finance my phone upgrades is simply icing.
Of course, Cricket becomes a viable option at the 5GB level, where it's actually $30/mo cheaper for 2 lines than T-Mobile, f
You've clearly never been a T-Mobile customer using a new feature as they're in the process of rolling it out. Or, really, any other company doing the same. There's is a huge difference between a lie and a misunderstanding, in that a lie requires intent. It's fairly common for training, and even support systems, not to roll out until after the feature (backwards, in my opinion, but they do it so they can roll the features out faster); I would be willing to wager that this is exactly what happened here, having experienced the same thing when T-Mobile first rolled out Simple Choice, again when they rolled out Jump!, and yet again when they rolled out the CellSpot routers. I pay for unlimited LTE, so DataStash has no bearing on my account, but I would imagine they're rolling it out the same way they've rolled out every other change in the 2 years I've been with them.
They're really not a good provider for anyone who doesn't have at least a little patience. They're used to being the smallest of the "big" players and their customer base has bee growing very quickly since they started Simple Choice, but it seems they're still using the same release procedures that caused headaches during that initial growth period. Should they change? I don't know, it seems to be working for them, honestly. Would many of us be less frustrated with them if they rolled out the support systems and training before the features? Maybe, maybe not; we might be more annoyed that the features take longer to roll out. And there's the rub.
You don't connect the system to the internet, you connect it to a LAN, with one of the clients on that LAN being a VPN endpoint with its own (not via the LAN) internet connection. Nothing on that LAN is on the internet, nothing on the LAN can call out to the internet, and nothing on the LAN can be accessed via the internet, save for the VPN box, which will have a much, much smaller attack surface than . And none of those devices are on the internet; the VPN simply gives you an entrypoint into the LAN via the internet. The implications are subtle, so it's understandable that you would miss them; especially in your haste to rant on teh interbewbz.
80% of CompSec is anticipating how people might use things in ways they were never intended to be used.
People, in that context, means "attackers". That does not mean that tie is spent figuring out what unintended uses end users might come up with. Use as prescribed; if inflammation persists, contact your physician.
This perfectly mirrors my experience. They always eventually sort it out, you just have to be patient and try not to scream at the phone reps; understand that most of them actually do want to help, but they're hamstrung by a back-end system that wasn't designed for the number of users it currently has.
Growing pains. Yes, established players feel them, too.
It goes beyond that, even. With a traditional cell phone contract, your bill doesn't change once you pay off the phone, because you never actually pay off the phone, because you aren't financing it; instead, the plan price is increased to subsidize the phone price, so you actually keep paying for the phone, even after it's been paid for several times over. With the finance agreement, once you pay off the phone, you stop paying for the phone.
You're absolutely right, they're not even the least bit similar. I have no clue how some people can miss that. Personally, I quite liked paying $50/mo less than AT&T, for more services, for the first 18mo I was with T-Mobile, then seeing my bill drop by another $50/mo when both phones on the plan were paid off. I pay less than $150/mo for better service than I used to shell out $250/mo to AT&T for.
You want unlimited data without throttling? They offer it for $30/mo. Otherwise, they don't cut off your data or charge you extra, so yes, it is unlimited usage, even if a portion of it is limited bandwidth.
If one person's bad experience with T-Mobile is news, it must just be that rare for someone to have an experience with them that's actually bad enough to complain about.
I've had a few, but they've always been related to new plans or features that they were still in the midst of rolling out, T-Mobile always ends up coming through with a solution (even if it does take time), and the issues always seem to smooth out once a feature or plan has been fully rolled out and staff has been trained.
Many here have worked with startups and will know quite well what growing pains are. Apparently, the news here is that smaller established companies experience them as well when they suddenly see explosive growth. I'm not sure how that couldn't be obvious to anyone who frequents this site. Can you and I really be the only ones here who get that?
He didn't call Apple users clueless, he called this Apple user clueless. Judging by the unreadable website, the fact that the lies were apparent misunderstandings, and were about data usage, not a data plan, I'd say he was spot on, and I don't think he made that assessment right off the bat, either; though it does appear that you made your assumption in that manner, without taking into account the evidence of cluelessness.
Let's take it a bit farther, shall we? Assume all 10 are actually lies, they're not about the data plan, at all; they're about the data usage. I'm willing to bet that T-Mobile was completely up-front honest about the data plan, as their marketing materials are all pretty clearly written and it would take a complete idiot of a sales rep and a complete idiot of a customer to get those details wrong.
How about "Four Misinterpretations of My T-Mobile Data Usage, Repeated to Look Like Ten"?
They may be aging, but any machine that was high-end 4 years ago is still adequate today. And what of the owners of 17" models? I'm so glad I was able to self-repair mine, because Apple does not offer a viable replacement for these machines. Period.
Of course, before I attempted the repair, I did run out and buy a new Retina model, since I needed a working machine within the hour (and I'm a 5min walk from an Apple store, so that's actually doable for me). While it is, in many ways, a better machine than the 17" MBP it now works alongside, there are many areas where it is also inferior. A mid-range MacBook Pro right now would mean a 15" 1440x900 display, dual-core i5 with integrated graphics, 8GB of RAM, and 500GB HDD; that is *not* a viable replacement for a 17" 1920x1200 display, quad-core i7 (of *any* generation), dedicated graphics, 16GB of RAM, and 750GB HDD, and such a replacement program would certainly lose Apple a *lot* of future business.
Mine failed at the end of last month and I repaired it (myself) a couple weeks ago. You know, I have mixed feeling about this. I mean, I can do the repair in an hour if it fails again, which is much better than Apple's 2+ weeks turnaround; on the other hand, I shouldn't have to.
But, you've got to admit, for all the sleaze, the *assembly quality* (not build quality, as that includes the use of components that don't fall over on themselves) of Apple hardware is top-notch. Given that everyone in the consumer market is using components that fall over on themselves, and they're all sleazy, that actualy does put Apple head and shoulders above the rest. Still, nothing they should be bragging about.
Hey, now, I bought a lemon of a Compaq once. They sent me a new HDD, now questions asked, when that failed. Then a new battery. Then a shipping-prepaid box to send it in for a new CPU. Of course, they shipped it back with the media buttons nonfunctional and most of the case screws missing, but they made that right by sending out a replacement HP (not Compaq) laptop that was comparably positioned, in the HP lineup at the time, relative to the Compaq's position in that lineup at the time of purchase. In other words a hefty upgrade, given that the CPU failure occurred in the last week of warranty.
Of course, the HP was one of the models with GPU issues and it died a week out of warranty, so, there's that. I ended up junking the system before they issued the recall, so yeah, I guess, fuck HP.
GIGO. Maybe you're getting garbage out either way, but think about it; you're taking a microvolt-level signal from the DAC and amplifying it to millivolts (for headphones) or more (for speakers); that's, at a minimum, a factor of 1000. The less garbage you put in, the less garbage you get out. It might not be a miracle cure for crap sound quality, but it certainly can be an improvement for someone who has $99 this month and $160 next month, but may never be able to save up for actual decent hardware or, maybe, whose ears can't quite pick out the distortion from the shitty DAC, but can hear the switching noise introduced by a shit SD card. For the latter, it really would be night and day.
A bit more background: The distortion introduced by the DAC will be somehow related to the input provided to the DAC. That is, it will be mathematically derived from the sound it is supposed to be creating anyway. The brain can (and often does) work to mask that so you don't notice it unless you're really *really* looking for it. MP3 compression pretty much works on that same principle, and most here would say that, while it's not perfect, it's more than adequate for the vast majority of listening environments. Switching noise, on the other hand, is related to what the device is doing at a given moment; if it ends up in the audible range, it's a second audio stream that your ears are picking up, which your brain *will* try and process. There is no masking applied by your auditory system that can allow you to just ignore that, under any circumstance.
Actually, I may have misspoken about that last bit. I'm pretty sure you can ignore it when you're dead but, then, you probably aren't heading much of the actual music, either. So yeah, for an actual living, breathing, person with working ears, there's a massive difference between distortion and switching noise. Draw down the power supply at an audible rate by doing some operation that starts and stops switching less than 22.1k times per second and *someone* will hear it. If the load is heavy enough or the power supply or batteries are weak enough, you may even be able to unplug the headphones and hear the components, themselves.
Signal cables on the elevators, power cables on the ground, or on a separate set of elevators. It actually does make a difference; however, a cheaper solution (and one that I use) is to put hooks or screws (screws are often more convenient) in the wall to hang the cables off of. You can commonly bundle all of your power cables together, then all of your twisted pair, then separate out other cables based on signal level (e.g. all the line-level, which should be shielded, go together, and speaker cables really only need be separated if you're gonna get REALLY anal about it, but the truth is *nobody* is going to hear the difference).
Twisted pair is pretty resilient and can probably be bundled alongside most power cables without introducing noise; the same applies to a well-shielded signal cable, or even a speaker cable, in most installations (e.g. your home). But, there's something to be said for separating them, should an amp short out and melt its power cable. Sending 120 or 240 down your ethernet or line-level cables probably won't make your equipment happy, and I'm sure your speakers wouldn't be all too thrilled about having raw 124 or 240 fed to them, either.
So yes, those elevators do solve an actual problem. They're not the best solution (hooks and/or screws are cheaper and at least as effective, probably more so, while taking up less floorspace), but they are a solution. For suckers.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, no, what I actually meant to post was
and you're an asshole.
And, like I said, to each his own. If Cricket works for you, than great. I even said as much and I'm not ripping on Cricket or trying to tear them down in any way. You, on the other hand, apparently understand the market better than your initial misleading response to me seems to indicate, leading me to believe that was your intent. Thus why I clarified things.
I think you're getting the current Cricket, a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T, confused with the old Cricket (a regional CDMA carrier).
No, you simply misunderstood. Was your phone free? No, you had to buy one. I said "on", as in "with", not "from".
Oh, oops. Looks like they now have a family plan that includes 2 lines and unlimited LTE data for $100/mo now. That's $20/mo less than I've been paying, so I just switched to it. That puts T-Mobile unlimited everything and Cricket with a 20GB/line data cap at the same price after taxes and fees, if you've got 2 lines.
Damn. Sorry about that, Cricket looked like it may have been a viable option for some people, but... well. Just... sorry. And thanks for prompting me to look into that; it's new since I looked last week.
the typical contract subsidy is $450
Which doesn't apply here. When I first switched to T-Moble, I was paying less while financing 2 phones for unlimited everything (including unlimited LTE data), than I was paying AT&T for 700 shared minutes and 4GB of data per line. $50/mo, to be precise, or $1200 over 2 years. Plus the $100 paid to AT&T for my phone and $200 for my wife's, bringing the 2 year total AT&T ripoff to $1500. Now that both phones are paid for, the bill is an additional $50/mo lower; mind you, we paid $650 apiece for the phones, but there were cheaper options if we wanted them; that's not relevant here, though, since you have to buy your phone on Cricket, as well. That leads me to want to recalculate my savings over AT&T, completely ignoring the cost of the phone.
Well, let's see, and keep in mind this is for 2 lines... AT&T, still $250/mo, whether you bring your own phone or buy from them, this is the cost of service, 700min/mo, 4GB data per line, unlimited texting; mind you, their rates have changed since then, so it may well be cheaper now. T-Mobile, $150/mo for services, unlimited everything, including LTE data. So, really, device cost notwithstanding, AT&T would have cost me $2400 more over the past 2 years that I've been with T-Mobile, had I stayed with them. That's one month's rent, one month's phone bill, and a night out for me and my wife. And, to be honest, unless we were frequent international travelers, or made frequent international calls, there's no way my wife and I could be paying T-Mobile any more than we already do for 2 lines; we have every feature already.
I'm sure you're tempted to argue that I'm comparing AT&T to T-Mobile simply to make a more favorable argument for myself. The reality is, though, that I'm comparing one viable option to another. Cricket doesn't have LTE coverage in my area, while every other provider does. That's an important feature to me, so Cricket holds no value for me at any price; they're not a viable option for me. Now, they may have LTE coverage in your area, or that may not matter to you, in which case, more power to you. But let's go ahead and do the math for 2 lines of unlimited voice, texting, and LTE data on Cricket, anyway. According to their rates chart, they don't offer unlimited. Well, then, let's go with the highest option, 20GB, which is on promo for $60/mo right now, but I see a pattern in their rate options, which allows me to discern that this is probably normally $70/mo. $65 if I trust them to store my payment details, which I don't, so we'll use $70/mo. Times 2, but, oh, they'll give me $10/mo off on the 2nd line. $130/mo for limited LTE, in areas where they actually have LTE coverage, which is *nowhere* that my wife or I would be using our phones. Really, not worth the $20/mo savings; especially as I routinely top 10GB/mo, often topping 30GB, using my phone as a dash cam. Those months, it would be useless to me for 1/3 of the month, or more, as I use maybe 60min/mo; most of my usage is data.
Again, if Cricket works for you, that's great. If their offering truly was viable for more people, more people would use them. I really hate to say it, since it flies in the face of everything I commonly say about people in general, but most people aren't completely stupid, they run through the math on these things (or have a trusted party who does this for them), weigh the pros and cons, and, ultimately, choose what works best for them. The features I'd have to give up to go with Cricket (unlimited LTE... actually, LTE at all) are worth considerably more than $10 per line (e.g. the $20 "savings" I would see with Cricket; and that's *after* T-Mobile adds taxes and fees to the bill) I would save. That I can finance my phone upgrades is simply icing.
Of course, Cricket becomes a viable option at the 5GB level, where it's actually $30/mo cheaper for 2 lines than T-Mobile, f
Says the AC contributing nothing to the conversation but personal insults. Bravo.
You've clearly never been a T-Mobile customer using a new feature as they're in the process of rolling it out. Or, really, any other company doing the same. There's is a huge difference between a lie and a misunderstanding, in that a lie requires intent. It's fairly common for training, and even support systems, not to roll out until after the feature (backwards, in my opinion, but they do it so they can roll the features out faster); I would be willing to wager that this is exactly what happened here, having experienced the same thing when T-Mobile first rolled out Simple Choice, again when they rolled out Jump!, and yet again when they rolled out the CellSpot routers. I pay for unlimited LTE, so DataStash has no bearing on my account, but I would imagine they're rolling it out the same way they've rolled out every other change in the 2 years I've been with them.
They're really not a good provider for anyone who doesn't have at least a little patience. They're used to being the smallest of the "big" players and their customer base has bee growing very quickly since they started Simple Choice, but it seems they're still using the same release procedures that caused headaches during that initial growth period. Should they change? I don't know, it seems to be working for them, honestly. Would many of us be less frustrated with them if they rolled out the support systems and training before the features? Maybe, maybe not; we might be more annoyed that the features take longer to roll out. And there's the rub.
Well, of course! They can't see the amount of water and chemicals used in that process, so it must be zero!
You don't connect the system to the internet, you connect it to a LAN, with one of the clients on that LAN being a VPN endpoint with its own (not via the LAN) internet connection. Nothing on that LAN is on the internet, nothing on the LAN can call out to the internet, and nothing on the LAN can be accessed via the internet, save for the VPN box, which will have a much, much smaller attack surface than . And none of those devices are on the internet; the VPN simply gives you an entrypoint into the LAN via the internet. The implications are subtle, so it's understandable that you would miss them; especially in your haste to rant on teh interbewbz.
People, in that context, means "attackers". That does not mean that tie is spent figuring out what unintended uses end users might come up with. Use as prescribed; if inflammation persists, contact your physician.
Yes, is usually a good indicator that someone was making a "tinfoil hat" joke. Been here long?
This perfectly mirrors my experience. They always eventually sort it out, you just have to be patient and try not to scream at the phone reps; understand that most of them actually do want to help, but they're hamstrung by a back-end system that wasn't designed for the number of users it currently has.
Growing pains. Yes, established players feel them, too.
It's not lay-away, it's financing. The difference being, the merchant holds on to your lay-away purchases until they're paid for.
It goes beyond that, even. With a traditional cell phone contract, your bill doesn't change once you pay off the phone, because you never actually pay off the phone, because you aren't financing it; instead, the plan price is increased to subsidize the phone price, so you actually keep paying for the phone, even after it's been paid for several times over. With the finance agreement, once you pay off the phone, you stop paying for the phone.
You're absolutely right, they're not even the least bit similar. I have no clue how some people can miss that. Personally, I quite liked paying $50/mo less than AT&T, for more services, for the first 18mo I was with T-Mobile, then seeing my bill drop by another $50/mo when both phones on the plan were paid off. I pay less than $150/mo for better service than I used to shell out $250/mo to AT&T for.
You want unlimited data without throttling? They offer it for $30/mo. Otherwise, they don't cut off your data or charge you extra, so yes, it is unlimited usage, even if a portion of it is limited bandwidth.
If one person's bad experience with T-Mobile is news, it must just be that rare for someone to have an experience with them that's actually bad enough to complain about.
I've had a few, but they've always been related to new plans or features that they were still in the midst of rolling out, T-Mobile always ends up coming through with a solution (even if it does take time), and the issues always seem to smooth out once a feature or plan has been fully rolled out and staff has been trained.
Many here have worked with startups and will know quite well what growing pains are. Apparently, the news here is that smaller established companies experience them as well when they suddenly see explosive growth. I'm not sure how that couldn't be obvious to anyone who frequents this site. Can you and I really be the only ones here who get that?
He didn't call Apple users clueless, he called this Apple user clueless. Judging by the unreadable website, the fact that the lies were apparent misunderstandings, and were about data usage, not a data plan, I'd say he was spot on, and I don't think he made that assessment right off the bat, either; though it does appear that you made your assumption in that manner, without taking into account the evidence of cluelessness.
Let's take it a bit farther, shall we? Assume all 10 are actually lies, they're not about the data plan, at all; they're about the data usage. I'm willing to bet that T-Mobile was completely up-front honest about the data plan, as their marketing materials are all pretty clearly written and it would take a complete idiot of a sales rep and a complete idiot of a customer to get those details wrong.
How about "Four Misinterpretations of My T-Mobile Data Usage, Repeated to Look Like Ten"?
How many files? Probably took a minute to transmit the directory structure and file hashes to the NSA.
They may be aging, but any machine that was high-end 4 years ago is still adequate today. And what of the owners of 17" models? I'm so glad I was able to self-repair mine, because Apple does not offer a viable replacement for these machines. Period.
Of course, before I attempted the repair, I did run out and buy a new Retina model, since I needed a working machine within the hour (and I'm a 5min walk from an Apple store, so that's actually doable for me). While it is, in many ways, a better machine than the 17" MBP it now works alongside, there are many areas where it is also inferior. A mid-range MacBook Pro right now would mean a 15" 1440x900 display, dual-core i5 with integrated graphics, 8GB of RAM, and 500GB HDD; that is *not* a viable replacement for a 17" 1920x1200 display, quad-core i7 (of *any* generation), dedicated graphics, 16GB of RAM, and 750GB HDD, and such a replacement program would certainly lose Apple a *lot* of future business.
Where did you get your MBA?
Mine failed at the end of last month and I repaired it (myself) a couple weeks ago. You know, I have mixed feeling about this. I mean, I can do the repair in an hour if it fails again, which is much better than Apple's 2+ weeks turnaround; on the other hand, I shouldn't have to.
But, you've got to admit, for all the sleaze, the *assembly quality* (not build quality, as that includes the use of components that don't fall over on themselves) of Apple hardware is top-notch. Given that everyone in the consumer market is using components that fall over on themselves, and they're all sleazy, that actualy does put Apple head and shoulders above the rest. Still, nothing they should be bragging about.
Hey, now, I bought a lemon of a Compaq once. They sent me a new HDD, now questions asked, when that failed. Then a new battery. Then a shipping-prepaid box to send it in for a new CPU. Of course, they shipped it back with the media buttons nonfunctional and most of the case screws missing, but they made that right by sending out a replacement HP (not Compaq) laptop that was comparably positioned, in the HP lineup at the time, relative to the Compaq's position in that lineup at the time of purchase. In other words a hefty upgrade, given that the CPU failure occurred in the last week of warranty.
Of course, the HP was one of the models with GPU issues and it died a week out of warranty, so, there's that. I ended up junking the system before they issued the recall, so yeah, I guess, fuck HP.
GIGO. Maybe you're getting garbage out either way, but think about it; you're taking a microvolt-level signal from the DAC and amplifying it to millivolts (for headphones) or more (for speakers); that's, at a minimum, a factor of 1000. The less garbage you put in, the less garbage you get out. It might not be a miracle cure for crap sound quality, but it certainly can be an improvement for someone who has $99 this month and $160 next month, but may never be able to save up for actual decent hardware or, maybe, whose ears can't quite pick out the distortion from the shitty DAC, but can hear the switching noise introduced by a shit SD card. For the latter, it really would be night and day.
A bit more background: The distortion introduced by the DAC will be somehow related to the input provided to the DAC. That is, it will be mathematically derived from the sound it is supposed to be creating anyway. The brain can (and often does) work to mask that so you don't notice it unless you're really *really* looking for it. MP3 compression pretty much works on that same principle, and most here would say that, while it's not perfect, it's more than adequate for the vast majority of listening environments. Switching noise, on the other hand, is related to what the device is doing at a given moment; if it ends up in the audible range, it's a second audio stream that your ears are picking up, which your brain *will* try and process. There is no masking applied by your auditory system that can allow you to just ignore that, under any circumstance.
Actually, I may have misspoken about that last bit. I'm pretty sure you can ignore it when you're dead but, then, you probably aren't heading much of the actual music, either. So yeah, for an actual living, breathing, person with working ears, there's a massive difference between distortion and switching noise. Draw down the power supply at an audible rate by doing some operation that starts and stops switching less than 22.1k times per second and *someone* will hear it. If the load is heavy enough or the power supply or batteries are weak enough, you may even be able to unplug the headphones and hear the components, themselves.
Signal cables on the elevators, power cables on the ground, or on a separate set of elevators. It actually does make a difference; however, a cheaper solution (and one that I use) is to put hooks or screws (screws are often more convenient) in the wall to hang the cables off of. You can commonly bundle all of your power cables together, then all of your twisted pair, then separate out other cables based on signal level (e.g. all the line-level, which should be shielded, go together, and speaker cables really only need be separated if you're gonna get REALLY anal about it, but the truth is *nobody* is going to hear the difference).
Twisted pair is pretty resilient and can probably be bundled alongside most power cables without introducing noise; the same applies to a well-shielded signal cable, or even a speaker cable, in most installations (e.g. your home). But, there's something to be said for separating them, should an amp short out and melt its power cable. Sending 120 or 240 down your ethernet or line-level cables probably won't make your equipment happy, and I'm sure your speakers wouldn't be all too thrilled about having raw 124 or 240 fed to them, either.
So yes, those elevators do solve an actual problem. They're not the best solution (hooks and/or screws are cheaper and at least as effective, probably more so, while taking up less floorspace), but they are a solution. For suckers.