A quick look at the graph shows that they stop at 128kbps, which would mean it's a great codec for high-quality real-time audio telephony rather than as a codec to span the spectrum of low end real time to lossless audio.
The reason the graph stops at 128 kb/s is that things become uninteresting at that point -- because nobody's able to actually tell the difference. With VBR, we've never had anyone report audio not being transparent above 200 kb/s. There's a reason people don't want to organize listening tests at 128 kb/s and (especially) above. It's indeed the case that we don't support lossless. That one is already covered very well by FLAC and there was no point adding completely different algorithms to handle that. Otherwise, Opus can replace MP3/AAC/Vorbis at rates above 128 kb/s too.
Bitrates below 16 kb/s are irrelevant on the Internet. Just the overhead (IP+UDP+RTP headers) of sending packets every 20 ms is 16 kb/s. At that point, you might as well transmit some real quality.
The question isn't just about whether some activity is wasteful in any way (everything is to some degree), but just how much. It would take 2-3 tons of corn just to power my car for one year (and I don't drive that much). That's a lot more than what it takes to produce the meat I eat in one year.
Xlib has been around for decades. GTK has been around for decades. KDE has been around for decades. QT has been around for decades.
Xlib is a good example of compatibility (thought you never want to code to this library directly). I can't speak for QT/KDE, but GTK/Gnome definitely broke compatible quite badly in the past. I'm no longer developing for gnome (mostly because of that), so I can't speak for gnome3, but the transition from gtk1/gnome1 to gtk2/gnome2 was absolutely terrible in terms of compatibility. The API for many gtk2 widgets changed, while gnome2 actually removed entire chunks from their API. It took quite a bit of effort to update code. Not only that but even during the gnome2 cycles, APIs would just come and go. "If you want to do X, use this library" "No actually, we have something better to do X". "Nevermind what we just said, we've deprecated all of them, you should use this new one, promised".
having Congress order you to install thermostats in your home which they can turn-off at any point (like on a hot day when the power grid is overloading... goodbye A/C).
This is probably a bad example. Aside from the issue of who controls the thermostat (should be the power company, under strict regulations), having your AC throttled a bit is certainly much better than the entire grid going down and having *no* AC.
... and it's not "sexual harassment". It's "sexual assault"
Totally agree. It seems to me like you don't even need any specific policy to deal with that. You just expel the guy and make sure he's charged. It's not like conferences need "no stabbing" policies...
This work has been going on at the IETF for about two years now. Skype itself has contributed to the effort (before they were bought), and so did CISCO, Ericsson, and many others. There was always someone from Microsoft in the room too.
I have a Dell D820 laptop that's been running with 90%+ up-time for the past 6 years. Same for a slightly older D600, which started misbehaving only at ~6 years. Apple certainly doesn't have a monopoly on hardware that lasts 5+ years and Dell certainly isn't known to build the toughest hardware out there.
The gnome tools I use are for things XFCE hasn't implemented yet. You can't blame a project because it hasn't implemented something yet. What I blame gnome for is throwing away stuff that used to work.
As a general statement, if they had kept up their research with their own processors, instead of trying to catch a ride on the Itanic they would have kept ahead on capability for quite a while longer.
Itanic might have been a mistake, but there's no way SPARC/MIPS/Alpha could have stayed way ahead of Intel given the huge volumes Intel ended up getting in the late 90s. A large fraction of the cost of CPUs is the cost of the R&D and the fabs. Those got more and more expensive from one generation to the next and the only way Intel was able to keep up was because of the boom in the PC market at that time.
What I mainly think is that if Monsanto wants their crops to be considered as their property, a farmer should be able to sue to "get your property off my field".
To do the research behind GM seed/food is actually a great thing; they've proven to be safe, often more nutritious, and grow with less pesticides and run-off into the ecosystem. In short, GM foods are great.
Except that they're only more pest resistant for the few years it takes bugs to adapt. Past that point, the farmers using this GM crop are no better than they were with non-GM, except that the super-bugs now attacking the non-GM crops even more than before. In the long term, everyone loses.
Actually, it seems like with the same logic as what Monsanto is using, the guys who recently created the mutant bird flu could just patent it, let it out, and then sue everyone who gets sick for patent infringement.
Both gnome and KDE have by now proven that if you use them, you *will* get screwed. Because as soon as you'll feel comfortable using any of them, they'll just stop supporting it and try getting you to switch to the new version that's awful and not what you wanted. They'll tell you "it's an just an early release, it'll get better". And indeed, it'll get better... and once it's good enough, they'll throw it all away again. I've learned my lesson and I'm now using XFCE, which I'm hoping will not go the way of gnome/KDE. I still need a few gnome config utils to get XFCE to do what I want, but I'm happy for now.
Well, studies have shown that dead kids are far less likely to develop autism. So I guess vaccines in some way increase the risk your kid will grow old enough to develop autism.
You know what? You're already being ripped off. When you buy this $1.95 item with 5% tax, the total is $2.0475 and the evil merchant rounds it up to $2.05, depriving you of a quarter of a cent. We have to bring the quarter cent back (yes I'm aware such a thing never existed)!
That looks nice except for the fact that it might be a health hazard. The abstract doesn't say what the nanowires are made of, but things like carbon nanotubes are AFAIK just as bad as asbestos.
I would say that theoretically, 44 kHz is enough, but in practice the filtering is a bit of a PITA. WIth 48 kHz, you can use shorter filters and it's much easier to convert to-from other widely used sampling rates (e.g. 8 kHz and 16 kHz for telephony/VoIP). Otherwise, I fully agree that 192 kHz is totally stupid.
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See the "listening tests" part of our comparison page. These are all tests that were performed by other folks, independently from us.
A quick look at the graph shows that they stop at 128kbps, which would mean it's a great codec for high-quality real-time audio telephony rather than as a codec to span the spectrum of low end real time to lossless audio.
The reason the graph stops at 128 kb/s is that things become uninteresting at that point -- because nobody's able to actually tell the difference. With VBR, we've never had anyone report audio not being transparent above 200 kb/s. There's a reason people don't want to organize listening tests at 128 kb/s and (especially) above. It's indeed the case that we don't support lossless. That one is already covered very well by FLAC and there was no point adding completely different algorithms to handle that. Otherwise, Opus can replace MP3/AAC/Vorbis at rates above 128 kb/s too.
the standard does not specify a recommended container format
See the Opus Ogg mapping for more details. Of course, if people want to use other containers, we're not a container police.
Support for more than 2 channels is done at the container level, although the Opus format already has the framing planned. See http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-terriberry-oggopus for more details.
Bitrates below 16 kb/s are irrelevant on the Internet. Just the overhead (IP+UDP+RTP headers) of sending packets every 20 ms is 16 kb/s. At that point, you might as well transmit some real quality.
As soon as worldwide fuel consumption drops to 10% of what it is today, I'll be fine with corn ethanol.
The question isn't just about whether some activity is wasteful in any way (everything is to some degree), but just how much. It would take 2-3 tons of corn just to power my car for one year (and I don't drive that much). That's a lot more than what it takes to produce the meat I eat in one year.
Xlib has been around for decades. GTK has been around for decades. KDE has been around for decades. QT has been around for decades.
Xlib is a good example of compatibility (thought you never want to code to this library directly). I can't speak for QT/KDE, but GTK/Gnome definitely broke compatible quite badly in the past. I'm no longer developing for gnome (mostly because of that), so I can't speak for gnome3, but the transition from gtk1/gnome1 to gtk2/gnome2 was absolutely terrible in terms of compatibility. The API for many gtk2 widgets changed, while gnome2 actually removed entire chunks from their API. It took quite a bit of effort to update code. Not only that but even during the gnome2 cycles, APIs would just come and go. "If you want to do X, use this library" "No actually, we have something better to do X". "Nevermind what we just said, we've deprecated all of them, you should use this new one, promised".
having Congress order you to install thermostats in your home which they can turn-off at any point (like on a hot day when the power grid is overloading... goodbye A/C).
This is probably a bad example. Aside from the issue of who controls the thermostat (should be the power company, under strict regulations), having your AC throttled a bit is certainly much better than the entire grid going down and having *no* AC.
... and it's not "sexual harassment". It's "sexual assault"
Totally agree. It seems to me like you don't even need any specific policy to deal with that. You just expel the guy and make sure he's charged. It's not like conferences need "no stabbing" policies...
This work has been going on at the IETF for about two years now. Skype itself has contributed to the effort (before they were bought), and so did CISCO, Ericsson, and many others. There was always someone from Microsoft in the room too.
I have a Dell D820 laptop that's been running with 90%+ up-time for the past 6 years. Same for a slightly older D600, which started misbehaving only at ~6 years. Apple certainly doesn't have a monopoly on hardware that lasts 5+ years and Dell certainly isn't known to build the toughest hardware out there.
The gnome tools I use are for things XFCE hasn't implemented yet. You can't blame a project because it hasn't implemented something yet. What I blame gnome for is throwing away stuff that used to work.
As a general statement, if they had kept up their research with their own processors, instead of trying to catch a ride on the Itanic they would have kept ahead on capability for quite a while longer.
Itanic might have been a mistake, but there's no way SPARC/MIPS/Alpha could have stayed way ahead of Intel given the huge volumes Intel ended up getting in the late 90s. A large fraction of the cost of CPUs is the cost of the R&D and the fabs. Those got more and more expensive from one generation to the next and the only way Intel was able to keep up was because of the boom in the PC market at that time.
What I mainly think is that if Monsanto wants their crops to be considered as their property, a farmer should be able to sue to "get your property off my field".
You forget the part where any country trying to oppose import of Monsanto GM stuff gets sued over WTO deals and whatnot.
To do the research behind GM seed/food is actually a great thing; they've proven to be safe, often more nutritious, and grow with less pesticides and run-off into the ecosystem. In short, GM foods are great.
Except that they're only more pest resistant for the few years it takes bugs to adapt. Past that point, the farmers using this GM crop are no better than they were with non-GM, except that the super-bugs now attacking the non-GM crops even more than before. In the long term, everyone loses.
Actually, it seems like with the same logic as what Monsanto is using, the guys who recently created the mutant bird flu could just patent it, let it out, and then sue everyone who gets sick for patent infringement.
Both gnome and KDE have by now proven that if you use them, you *will* get screwed. Because as soon as you'll feel comfortable using any of them, they'll just stop supporting it and try getting you to switch to the new version that's awful and not what you wanted. They'll tell you "it's an just an early release, it'll get better". And indeed, it'll get better... and once it's good enough, they'll throw it all away again. I've learned my lesson and I'm now using XFCE, which I'm hoping will not go the way of gnome/KDE. I still need a few gnome config utils to get XFCE to do what I want, but I'm happy for now.
They'll just make sure it's obsolete in 3-5 years.
And if you do that and you're not in neutral, then engine will start running again (who needs a starter when you have speed).
Well, studies have shown that dead kids are far less likely to develop autism. So I guess vaccines in some way increase the risk your kid will grow old enough to develop autism.
You know what? You're already being ripped off. When you buy this $1.95 item with 5% tax, the total is $2.0475 and the evil merchant rounds it up to $2.05, depriving you of a quarter of a cent. We have to bring the quarter cent back (yes I'm aware such a thing never existed)!
That looks nice except for the fact that it might be a health hazard. The abstract doesn't say what the nanowires are made of, but things like carbon nanotubes are AFAIK just as bad as asbestos.
I would say that theoretically, 44 kHz is enough, but in practice the filtering is a bit of a PITA. WIth 48 kHz, you can use shorter filters and it's much easier to convert to-from other widely used sampling rates (e.g. 8 kHz and 16 kHz for telephony/VoIP). Otherwise, I fully agree that 192 kHz is totally stupid.