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Comment Re:5.5k for a Marimba? (Score 1) 137

You'd never get that double blind, because a bad flutist wouldn't have the depth of skill to create the detailed intonations possible with the good flute, and the professional flutist would be able to produce almost as good of sound from the cheap flute (but have to work much, much harder to do so).

My wife replaced her ~$2000 high school and college flute with a ~$25k one a few years after college, when we were both well enough off from our day jobs and she became active in the civic orchestra. She received a degree in flute performance with that $2k flute, but as she put it, a lot of her time was spent "fighting the instrument" to make things sound right; with the professional flute she could spend more time on other things like listening to the rest of the orchestra or reading ahead to be a better sightreader.

Comment Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score 3, Insightful) 275

First off, the F-35 has forced China and Russia to commit a large amount of time and resources to try and counter it's superiority. From an economic standpoint, if you're forcing potential enemies to dedicate time and resources to try and counter your technology, it's a win. Secondly, just because Russia and China are able to develop technology to detect it doesn't mean it's useless. There are numerous other potential uses that don't involve Russian and Chinese radar.

Not if it costs 1000x more to create the technology than it does to counter it. Nor if the money to build it was borrowed in part from that potential enemy.

Comment Re:The problem with American Embargos (Score 1) 254

You were presented with a candidate slate containing Candidate A and Candidate B. You chose to vote for Candidate A, or Candidate B, or not to vote.

In any of the three cases, you were electing a representative that voted on the embargo for you.

Not that I think one is wrong against Russia right now..

Comment Re:That's a garbage lawsuit (Score 3, Insightful) 286

To output full 1080p graphics, this source image is fixed with a "temporal upscale" that fills in gaps with a horizontal interlace made up of pixels from the previous frame.

- so every second line consists of pixels from previous frames, but those are still pixels that are not the same as the ones in the current frame, the output has all of the 1920x1080 pixels in it

So..in other words, they advertised 1080p and are delivering 1080i, but presumably at a 1080p frame rate instead of the usual, faster 1080i rate.

I think you're trying to argue that it's still 1080, and it is, but it's still not what they advertised. No, this guy shouldn't be suing them. The FTC should be fining them for false advertising.

Comment Re:Not exactly, but yes (Score 2) 127

You are incorrect. I am posting from a "Verizon" iPhone which I bought, unlocked , from an Apple store, then popped in a T-Mobile SIM. It works fine.* The Verizon iPhone has all CDMA and GSM frequencies for all three networks (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon).

I bought the Verizon version so that I could use it in Korea. T-Mobile provides free data there but you have to have a CDMA-capable phone. Also, I was new to T-Mobile and if their coverage sucked I liked the ability to move to either AT&T or Verizon.

* T-Mobile recognizes it as an "unknown smart phone" since it doesn't broadcast the correct model number. I get full LTE speed data, voice, text, with graceful downgrades to 4G, 3G, and E, but I can't use iPhone specific features like visual voice mail.

Comment Re: Correction: T-Mobile Android Smartphones (Score 1) 127

They simply disable CDMA in the AT&T/T-Mobile version. The Verizon version has both CDMA and GSM and frequencies for all three carriers.

- posted from a "Verizon" iPhone I bought new contract-free and only ever used with a T-Mobile SIM .

The Sprint version is significantly different.

Comment Re:Requires a very high speed camera (Score 2, Informative) 142

No, you can pick up something higher than Nyquist, as long as you understand your sources of information and noise. It will alias down into the measurable range, and you can extract useful information from the alias. We have a system that operates up to 1 MHz using a 1.8 MHz ADC. When we know the signal is at 1 MHz, we extract the information at 800 kHz and use that.

What the GGP was talking about, though, was finding resonance on the bag where unique 30-Hz-width bands higher frequencies were being naturally modulated to baseband. If you had 100 points on the bag that each modulated a different frequency (30 Hz, 45 Hz, 90 Hz, ... 1500 Hz), you could extract the data from each sub-band separately and reconstruct the original signal. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... and assume the source isn't one 1500 Hz conversation but instead one hundred 15 Hz conversations. And also assume that is one amazing bag of chips.

Comment Re:$7142.85 (Score 3, Insightful) 419

A few laptops gets there.

The scam works better with a large purchase. Banks routinely deny transaction over some amount, forcing the retailer to call for an override code. Apparently the denial for "bad account" look identical to the one for "valid account, but that amount is high so give us a call, okay?"

If his card was denied for a $500 purchase, he'd need to convince the retailer that it was a bug in the system, not just a routine check for a large purchase.

Comment Re:Ban caffeine! (Score 1) 511

I agree with the definition of pot as a gateway drug only because it is mostly harmless but illegal. Anyone taking it is already breaking the law, so why not do so with something else?

Having the law aligned with risk breaks the "gateway" argument; I agree with you that caffeine and alcohol etc. called gateways is ridiculous.

Comment Re:Completly Blindsided. (Score 1) 285

From the article, it sounds like CVUSD isn't an independent organization. The school districts where you live might be structured differently, so this might not be apparent to you.

In Texas, school districts are independent entities (ISDs) with their own taxing authority. The ISD owns the land and runs the schools. Board members are elected.

In Louisiana, where I lived for a while a long time ago, the parishes run the schools. There's a school board, whose members are IIRC appointed by the county commissioners, good ol' boy style. The schools have no tax authority and have to go to the parish for money or infrastructure requests.

It sounds like California organizes school districts more like the latter than the former, though a given county might have multiple districts instead of just one as in Louisiana parishes. The article describes the county limiting bandwidth use by CVUSD, something impossible to happen in Texas as the county has no authority over the ISD.

Likewise, and to your point, the article says that the county encouraged CVUSD to deploy the iPads, and from that CVUSD assumed the county had enough bandwidth to manage this. I guess that means the county is the district's ISP, and the district isn't allowed to change ISPs or contract with a private ISP. And the county IT maybe didn't know the district was going to do this, so they couldn't point it out and try to get a bigger pipe at that level. So they didn't see the problem because bureaucracy.

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