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User: hedwards

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  1. Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? on Young People Prefer "Sizzle Sounds" of MP3 Format · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's one possibility, another is that there's a huge incidence of hearing damage in young people. Mostly from playing music too loud or listening through ill fitting iPod earbuds. Or listening to music that's too loud and through ill fitting earbuds.

    A couple years back I tried listening to some of my oldest MP3 files and they sounded terrible, at 128. These days I listen pretty much just using the typical Lame preset. I think that comes out at a bit rate of 192kbps variable and basically identical to the original for most purposes.

    The other possibility is that people listen through crap equipment which really can't properly convey the encoding. I know when I moved up to my Shure e2c and Sennheiser HD 477 that suddenly higher compression rate files were unbearable to listen to. I'd guess with really good equipment like Grados that it would be even more pronounced.

  2. Re:indeed on National Ignition Facility Fires 192-Beam Pulse · · Score: 1

    Indeed, and I can get you some cabbage for only $100 a bag.

  3. Re:Captain Obvious descends on How Vista Mistakes Changed Windows 7 Development · · Score: 1

    I wish people would stop bashing Vista. I know it's cool to bash Vista, but it's really not bad at all, MS has released far, far worse over the years. Remember Win 95 or Win ME? Those were legitimate dogs.

    Crashed constantly, sluggish, not easy to work with at all. I've been bothered to fix my parent's computer only a tiny, tiny, miniscule number of times compared with the huge number of times for either of those two releases.

  4. Re:release date on How Vista Mistakes Changed Windows 7 Development · · Score: 2, Insightful

    OSX 10.6 counts as a new OS release? Isn't that a bit like saying that Win 98SE was a new version of Windows? Yes technically they are, but it's hardly a rewrite or necessarily a must have update.

    I'm hardly a fan of Windows, but that's kind of a odd standard to apply. MS could definitely keep up if they were making such minimal updates and charging for them.

  5. Re:Misleading headline, and ActiveX on IE8 May Be End of the Line For Internet Explorer · · Score: 1

    Mainly because it's difficult to explain.

    It's for things like Windows update and web interfaces that need to directly interact with the OS. I'm not sure that it's such a wise idea, but it allowed a more sophisticated set of web sites than were possible at the time. Most being limited to running in a browser or on the server, not on the OS itself.

    It turned out to be a huge security nightmare, but that's more or less what happens when you expose an API that much to the net.

    That's probably not quite right, but I'm not really sure how better to explain.

  6. Re:Multiple security layers on Self-Encrypting Hard Drives and the New Security · · Score: 1

    Except for the first clause of your second sentence. It's pretty much guaranteed that there'll be critical bugs or back doors. And more likely than not it'll be cracked soon after release leading to other problems.

  7. Re:Not just - or primarily - games that this affec on Does a Game Have To Fail To Get a Real Ending? · · Score: 1

    Well, Fallout 3 definitely has an end. And a lot of people are pissed about that. Finish the main quest and you're done. Yes you can load a save from before finishing, but you don't get to play around at all wiping out the last mutants as the world starts to clear of radiation.

    But OTOH, if they want to do a fallout 4 it wouldn't be that hard to right a story set another couple hundred years in the future when some other calamity has destroyed things.

    Probably the better question would by, "is there any point to actually providing a proper ending" the answer is not unless you're providing a proper game. It's pointless to render an awesome ending when the game play up to that point results in few people making it that far.

  8. Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want on Sony Makes It Hard To Develop For the PS3 On Purpose · · Score: 1

    Um, your bigotry is showing. He's Osama bin Ladin, Obama is the black man that's now running the executive branch.

    But on the other hand, why bother to think things through when you can just be a racist jerk and place the blame on the Democratic party. I mean because hey, it's not like the Republican party armed Bin Ladin, oh wait, you say that the CIA under Reagan armed him.

    Of course this'll get modded down as well, because clearly suggesting that a Republican was incompetent at foreign affairs is tantamount to heresy.

  9. Re:Let them fry! on Uproar Over Netflix's New Instant Viewer · · Score: 1

    They didn't can the multiple cue feature. After they took their lumps, the planned removal was canceled, and nobody was deprived.

    But, really it's largely moot since the quality available via the Roku or 360 is better anyways. Even before this downgrade.

    Aside from that, anybody that expects a subscription service of this sort to be both inexpensive and free of DRM really needs to consider how exactly the movies are produced. Somebody has to pay for the content otherwise it won't exist. Netflix isn't selling the content, it's selling access to the content. Removing the restrictions would require them to charge a huge monthly fee.

  10. Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want on Sony Makes It Hard To Develop For the PS3 On Purpose · · Score: 1

    Not quite, unless I'm missing something, you don't technically need the hard drive in order to use the 360, but with the PS3 you've got no choice at all.

    Meaning that for people willing to make due, they have indeed spent less money. Perhaps it's a good buy to get the disk, but it is a choice, and it does mean that a person can by the 360, then save up for the disk later. Making it more accessible to less well off individuals.

  11. Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want on Sony Makes It Hard To Develop For the PS3 On Purpose · · Score: 1

    I don't agree, you can't compare a general purpose PC to a mostly single use Xbox. Xboxes are designed primarily for gaming and a few other low intensity processes. Whereas a PC can be used for a number of other things.

    Designers of a console typically give up flexibility for efficiency. Often times this leads them to be much more difficult to program for. It needs to be done in a lower level way. Write directly to the register controlling a specific pixel and the hardware handles the doing often same for sound.

    A good console will keep the complexities reasonable, but by being so much closer to the hardware you can use every bit on the storage card and reduce unnecessary overhead. Thus requiring somewhat less memory to accomplish similar tasks.

    Not to suggest that it's perfect, just that you're not making a fair analogy.

  12. Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want on Sony Makes It Hard To Develop For the PS3 On Purpose · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Um, Clinton wasn't responsible for Iraq. That would be HW, had he disarmed the Iraqi military and deposed Saddam at that point, we wouldn't have had to go in later on. Yes, it's debatable as to whether or not we really needed to do so now, but it wouldn't have been an option.

    But, take another step back, and HW wasn't really responsible because the US had already armed and supported him from about '81 on. Perhaps we should just be honest and admit that President Reagan fucked up big time on this one.

    Saddam was largely armed and backed by the US when he came to power, perhaps blaming that administration for screwing up makes more sense than blaming Clinton.

  13. Re:Is it any better? on Creating 3D Environments Without Polygons · · Score: 0

    Real life graphics are not photorealistic. Photography does not now nor will it ever be capable of delivering a scene as a person sees it. By projecting the 3d image onto a flat page you've distorted the hell out of it.

    The control of the aperture, focal length, focus and exposure are where the photo gets its meaning from. Coincidentally, all of those are necessary in order to get any image at all onto film.

    If you can suggest a way of doing this without distorting it greatly, you're probably eligible for a Nobel in Mathematics or Physics.

  14. Re:Well, duh. on How To Be A Geek Goddess · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, that's a fallacy of composition, if I'm looking at it correctly. There isn't anything, at present, which requires an educated professional to be really good with computers. To an extent that you'd probably be shocked.

    I've been using computers for decades now and I still get talked down to in a somewhat condescending fashion. I don't bother to argue, because realistically, I'm more or less a one off for most IT workers. The standard worker they talk to is roughly as good with computers as a ham sandwich. Even after factoring in for a possibly super evolved form of mayo that may have grown on it.

  15. Re:Well, duh. on How To Be A Geek Goddess · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Which is a good thing for those in power, because if all the people in minority groups actually helped each other out, there's a lot more of us than them.

  16. Re:Definitely bring it to HR on How To Handle Corporate Blackmail? · · Score: 1

    I don't believe that the attorney general is able to help in these sorts of situations, or at least I don't think they can in WA. Typically you're required to get your own attorney.

    Or at least that's my understanding of that, I'd kind of like to be wrong.

  17. Re:Clarity needed on UK Government Boosts Open Source Adoption · · Score: 1

    So, in other words it'd be a cost savings over the hundreds of thousands necessary to retrain workers to use newer versions of MS Office.

    Kidding aside, OOo requires less retraining than that previous upgrade. The one that decided to completely rearrange the interface hiding things in new and entirely unintuitive places. _I_ had a hard time figuring out where everything went, and I hardly ever have that sort of trouble.

  18. Re:Correction! on UK Government Boosts Open Source Adoption · · Score: 1

    Indeed, and unfortunately that is all to common of a problem. Unfortunately costs of using software are quite like MPG ratings. Real world use can and will vary from estimates.

    That's not to say that open source is as over hyped as the plug in hybrids, but it would have been a better idea to fix the regulatory environment so that there's fair competition.

  19. Re:A Hard Lesson Learned on Supreme Court Sides With Rambus Over FTC · · Score: 1

    You're definitely right that it doesn't belong in this particular topic.

    But I do think that it's kind of telling that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) stated "We're running out of rich people in this country."

    If that's the sort of spoiled attitude that the Right is willing to be associated with when people are having serious trouble paying their bills, perhaps there isn't anywhere near enough regulation.

  20. Re:News on AP Considers Making Content Require Payment · · Score: 1

    So, the government pulls the strings on churches and other religious institutions in the US? Because they get tax exemptions and tax-deductible contributions.

    Seems to me that somebody here spends a bit too much time watching Fox News and not quite enough time thinking things through.

  21. Re:News on AP Considers Making Content Require Payment · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's not informative, you really ought to know what you're talking about if you're going to carry on.

    Independent journalism isn't necessarily independent from large media, it's independent from the Government and from the people that it reports on. Which can be difficult when a journalist needs to cover his own paper. But if you honestly believe that an editor can control his reporters, then you've clearly never actually met either. As much as I hate and despise Rupert Murdoch, the reality is that he doesn't interfere with his news operations, they're largely free to do what they want, with the main exception being the punditry.

    Independent journalism under your definition would be all but useless. It costs a lot of money sometimes to bring a story, and there is unfortunately no substitute for actually going abroad when covering foreign news. Having foreign born journalists do it really isn't the same.

  22. Re:Independent journalism?? on AP Considers Making Content Require Payment · · Score: 1

    The BBC is far better than what we've got in most cases. I was listening to their radio program the other day, and the host demanded that the Israeli representative clarify. And he wasn't going to drop it until he got a definitive statement, honest or dishonest on it. In the US we would've let him get away with stating that they were using the same weapons as everybody else leaving the issue of whether or not the weapons were used the same way completely unanswered. This way at least when the investigations are finished we'll have some hope of figuring out how much of it was propaganda.

    That's a goodly portion of why I have such a hard time justify paying for the news. It's not that the Israeli was necessarily being dishonest it's that the lack of specificity made it a meaningless statement. Had the US press gotten after the President early on in his Presidency to explain why we were going to invade Iraq or later on why none of the high ranking officers at abu Ghraib were being prosecuted things might have been somewhat different.

    Having first amendment protections for the press is completely useless if they're not going to use them to clear up those sorts of things.

  23. Re:Slowly backing away from my chair now... on Boy Killed By Exploding Office Chair · · Score: 1

    That's why the make burst proof ones. They do still leak, but when they get a hole they don't burst suddenly, they'll just deflate relatively gently.

  24. Re:No accident on Microsoft Asks For a Refund From Laid-Off Workers [updated] · · Score: 1

    It's the employees responsibility to make sure that the payments are made. I don't know about your contract, but when I got my present job one of the things I agreed to is culpability if the dues didn't get paid.

    Whether or not I signed up for withholding the dues, it's still my responsibility to see to it that the dues are paid on time.

  25. Re:No accident on Microsoft Asks For a Refund From Laid-Off Workers [updated] · · Score: 1

    It's sort of like drugs. People believe that they absolutely must have it, and the only place to get it is from MS. It's been the hallmark of Bill Gates' marketing practice since before DOS, they'd convince people they needed something and that MS was the only place they could get it.

    There is of course the added bonus of dumbing down the interface so that most people really can't use anything else without a whole lot of hand holding. Unfortunately for them, that often times means that new versions are hard for the user base to learn as well.