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Comment Re:And 1...2...3... (Score 1) 433

It's not about math, but about honesty. First of all, we "math junkies" don't say there is proof that there is no audible difference. That is useless null hypothesis. What we're saying is that the burden of proof is upon those who claim that they can hear a difference. And the mere statement "I can hear it, it's obvious" is also not in any way sufficient, because the currently used method to assess these kind of perceptual questions are double blind tests. If you're unwilling to conduct an honest and scientific tests you're not necessarily a liar, but at least dishonest.

On the other hand it is well known that the placebo effect exists in medicine, so it is not unexpected that it exists in audio too. The amount of people affetced by placebo in audio seems to increase with age and audio equipment cost. It also seems to be correlated with the aforementioned "dishonest" people.

What people like you hear is that the actual released records sound diferent on CD and Vinyl, and that is because of different mastering practices, especially the fact that CDs can be made much louder because the playback system is not inherently flawed w.r.t high peak amplitudes like a Vinyl turntable.

Comment Re:Sounds Better? (Score 3, Informative) 433

It is well known that differences in audio quality between digital formats (CDs, MP3, FLACs, etc.) to Vinyl are due to different mastering for the respective media. HA has also set up a wiki page regarding misconceptions about Vinyl mastering and Vinyl as a medium. Vinyl is an inherently flawed medium, with problems like wear, necessitating expensive gear and knowledge for playback, and low audio quality compared to digital media. That some people still prefer Vinyl releases shows that they either don't really have good hearing, or that contemporary music is mastered so that a medium with roughly 13 bits of dynamic range is sufficient for even "critical" listeners. That means CD quality audio is simply excessive for that audience. Interestingly enough the same Vinyl crowd will glady buy 24bit/192khz releases, which are even more excessive.

Comment Re:We understand (Score 1) 225

It probably is a nightmare for them. But really the problem is our own society.

It is a problem of society, but not in the way you describe it. It's a problem that people don't act like grown-ups and take responsibility for their decisions.

If I use a service by a company and trust them to upload my private photos to the internet and secure them, and said company is failing to do that and is breaking my trust, I should stop dealing with that company, or take the fight to them. It was my decision to trust that company, now I have to deal with it.

Further, if I decide to upload my private pictures to the internet I should know that something like that can always happen. If something is private I should just save the pictures at home or put them in a physical photo album. It was my decision to use cloud services, now I have to deal with it.

Comment Re:Stop complaining and debating and do something (Score 1) 1134

When a girl gets put into a easier math class because she is a girl, that's a problem.

I have never met any girl which was sent to an easier class. Quite the opposite, most girls (and so did most boys, actually) during my school day tended to say "math is hard" and chose to avoid the higher level classes. It's not the society's job to question that decision by a person, nor is there anything wrong with it. People decided they didn't want to do math at a higher level, so it's fine. It's time to treat grown-up people as grown-ups and accept and tolerate their decisions without using them to further some social engineering goals.

When a women can't get a promotion in the gaming industry because 'women don't game' that's a problem.

There are women in prestigious designer jobs, and they got there by hard work, effort and dedication, not because of their boobs. And you know what? I don't care about the gender of the person who created the game(s) I play, and I guess most gamers don't even know the gender of the members of the development team. So why exactly do you want and need more women in gaming development? What is the ulterior motive? Why do you care so much about the gender of game designers? Why don't you just let people who want to become game designers become it and let the others live as they want? Stop making this a gender thing and let people choose jobs because they're skilled and dedicated, not because they have a certain flavour of genitals. It's really that simple.

When a women is trying to point this out and then has her personal life dragged into the public and is threatened with rape and death, that's a fucking problem.

I agree. Those are criminal offenses, and should be treated as such. People who are on the internet and publish things can get attacked for it, and we have laws to deal with it. I fail to see how there is a bigger problem with the "gamer society" in general. Some absent-minded idiots did an idiotic thing. That's it. It's still valid to criticize the feminist faction and not accept that every critic is a supposed misogynist, or object that the videos by Sarkeesian are ridiculously skwed and one-sided. It's an opinion, and I'm not a "women-hater" because I don't agree with what she shows in her videos.

And guess what? IN those situations society needs to make an effort to level the playing field.

It gets down to the very simple fact that feminists and all the other social engineering types are NOT working to even out the playing field or the rules of the game, but to manipulate the result.

Comment Stop paying for DRM and lawyers (Score 1) 363

I wonder if the costs for implementing DRM, polishing the bad publicity and paying all those lawyers is really in the same order of magnitude as the "damages" by some people enjoying BBC content. And the only damage I see is that those alleged "pirates" are using BBCs bandwidth to stream the content. They wouldn't (because they couldn't) be customers of the BBC anyway.

Comment Stop complaining and debating and do something (Score 1) 1134

It's easy to complain, but difficult to do something yourself. Wouldn't it be nice instead of signing "open letters" or some other meaningless paperwork that developers and their supporters actually create the games they dream about? If there is the supposed conscience of the inclusion issues, I'm sure there is a market for their games, too. What's stopping them from developing them? And please act like a democratic and tolerant citizen and not tell the other part of the gaming community which games they are allowed to like or don't like, or developers which games they are allowed to develop.

Comment Re:Ah the Germans, they're really bad at this! (Score 3, Insightful) 176

I don't know where you got your numbers, but here's what is on Wikipedia for CO2 And GWh generated. Let's at least compare the same year for each country.

  • US: CO2 6,750,000 / 4,256,100 GWh=1.59 tons of CO2 per GWh
  • Germany: CO2-810,000 / 617,600 GWh=1.31 tons of CO2 per GWh

It's certainly better than the US, but considering this big push the Germany is in for clean energy and the US is only half-ass moving in that direction, I'm a little surprised it is as close as it is.

This is because Germany now uses coal power plants instead of nuclear plants to produce the necessary electricity.

France is on the better side of this by far at: CO2-370,000 / 560,500 GWh=0.66 tons of CO2 per GWh

How surprising, nuclear energy is green energy.

Submission + - The Streisand Effect: A Florida journalist's smear and censor campaign backfires (popehat.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: A tragic death, freedom of speech, libel, defamation, legal threats, unethical journalism, reddit's /r/bicycling, and The Streisand effect. A South Florida "journalist" is called out for running a smear story, doubles down on his position, publicly attacks commenters and reddit, and threatens legal action when a disturbing conflict of interest is exposed.

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