Absolutely.

Slashdot loves this topic, people with shitty speakers, crappy equipment, tone deaf, and with no musical background, likely almost never going to hear a real live orchestra in their life loves anything that puts the audiophiles back in their places.

I used to be in the following camp, I cleaned out the earwax, now I go to orchestras and hear what I'm missing, it only took a 70 dollar investment in some Grado headphones to listen to stuff and go... This sounds really bad, it sounds really weird... (You can't see bitrates on mp3 players, so when I went home I discovered why all my Beatles sounded awful, 128kbps while most everything else is 192 or higher. I could also hear stuff I ripped back in the late ninties with compression artificats ripped at 320, just from advances in technology, the software has improved so much as well

128 to 320kbps doesn't make the vocals or big pounding bass sound better, it makes all the little background sounds and notes become something other than fuzz, it makes the vibrato sharp and crisp, it allows you to distinguish every background vocalist individualy instead of one merged unison. The 'unimportant' bits return.

1/3rd can't tell audio bitrates, *Gasp, Shock* and Half the US population doesn't believe in evolution. The majority of Americans eat predominantly con-agra and kraft chemicals for breakfast lunch and dinner and haven't tasted a fresh vegetable in years and see no problem with it. So this is proof bitrates are garbage? Hell look at the Musical Tastes of the majority of people... Of course you can't hear a difference. Just because mainstream NFL halftime hip-hop and crap-soulless-corp-rock sells better than classical music doesn't make it better music or make me value their opinion.

Hell, lets do a study, 1/3rd of people likely can't tell the difference between IE6 and recent anything else, does that mean browsers are crap? Of course not.

Audiophiles win this round, just because most people have become deaf and numb to quality doesn't mean I have to. This applies to food, knowledge, media, sweeteners, music, video, furniture, computers, operating systems, etc.

You clearly have no idea what kind of people are going to be watching this like a hawk.

Old home bound busybodies with nothing to do focusing particularly on calling the cops on the hippie degenerates and their maryjawana cigarettes and their long hair commie music while keeping a stern eye on any 'Negros' and the darned hooligans in their communities.

People with lives and more sensible moral character will be out doing better things than watching CCTV cameras and tattling on their peers, while major crimes with victims will likely already be reported, minor crimes are really all this has the potential to unearth.

Sadly from my experience with others who I encouraged to read the book, most people find the lower level of the book unsatisfying and confusing. (Deliberately so however) I don't think Douglas Adams fully blossoms until you read it twice, And I know few people who really 'got' his work, that didn't upon finishing the book start it all over again right away.

And no I didn't say people who do less critical thinking are stupider, often they are straight A college bound students.

They gloss pages, look for testable components of books, spark notes the rest, and move on to the next piece of homework in their overwhelming course loads.

Some books are meant to be consumed like a meal, then you move on, other books are meant to unfold in your mind. I think in high school many students, especially many college bound ones are still in the consume it, test it, and forget it mentality, and very few high school English teachers do much to break them of this habit which they will hopefully lose in college once they get exposed to the likes of the authors you mentioned and more, However even in high school units on Existentialism the lessons are surprisingly shallow.

Sadly the creative abstract parts of the brain needed most are the ones that Atrophy from complete disuse sometime after second grade.

Hopefully this OP teacher can use this excellent subject mater to get kids think critically again, particularly the best and brightest, its sad when you see kids running through motions just to maintain a 4.0 for a certain college, wasting a part of their life they should be free to develop.

Adams changed my world view in High-School. Fostered my fascination with Evolution and converted me from agnostic to strong atheism and made me analyze the world in new and interesting ways, His insight is perfect for (some) high school kids to read.

Sadly his humor is largely lost on kids who don't do much critical thinking, I have seen people gloss right over some of the absolute funniest lines in the books without stopping for a second. Many people look for humor in the events of a book, not the words of the book. Douglas' funniest bits were sneaked into very minor bits of exposition, not critical plot points. "The spaceships hung in the air just like bricks don't." The rest of his humor comes from knowing the proper way to deliver his lines, largely requiring at least some exposure to Monty python or other British comedy to know how to read 'Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.' Read the wrong way the humor is lost.

Indeed, everyone including the original article has a strong bias against targetd adds, but lets ask the question in a different way. They asked would you like this concept, the proper method would have been to do a blind trial, show untargeted ads to one group, show targeted ads to another, and quiz them on their annoyance rating, all ads are annoyances, its the tradeoff for free content, some much much more annoying than others. Something tells me the results would be the opposite of this studies findings.

Dear Slashdot, are you annoyed at the constant advertising for Trucks and SUVs that make claims about fuel efficiency that hurts your brain? Being pitched the newest speed/caffeine cocktail not yet banned by the FDA marketed as a diet miracle? Bling it, Bling Anything!, BILLY MAYES HERE with Oxycut, you snort it and forget it. Tampons are great, I can go biking in a summer breeze! Coming up next on The Saddest Loser, Watch 10 contestants eat human feces for fifty thousand dollars. Step into fashion at the arbor day week long sale the Savings* are incredible. (*)people who can factor compound percentage discounts need not apply.

Don't you wish instead of seeing 6 commercials this break you could see two, you just have to tell NBC you are a well paid male college educated nerd who makes IT purchasing decisions, enjoys SciFi and Video gaming on PC, Wii and Xbox?

Then you get advertised by Intel, Sun, HP, IBM, Battlestar Galactica on Bluray, Nvidia, New games, etc, etc. If a new blade server comes out, it might be good to let me know. They don't need to advertise the newest smartphone with pop music and Whoopee Goldberg going 'Wow, you can the internet on this!' But instead talk about processing power and ram and what the latest firmware can do and how fast it's GPS can get a positional lock, and that it allows tethering etc.

I spend a Lot of money on gadgets and electronics, the fact that I need to go out looking for new gadgets instead of having them fall into my lap strikes me as odd, people who buy trucks are always informed about the most recent ford truck, but tons of cool devices fall under my radar all the time.

Nerds spend a ton of cash, just on completely different things, we are just smaller than the majority and therefore not economical to advertise in unfocused mainstream media. We aren't the only group like this, but its not hard to see the benefit, I would love it if I could watch TV without my brain hurting realizing that someone out there is persuaded by these advertisements.

Hell have a button that says you are a CEO or high ranking member of a fortune 500, if advertisements on golf and stock shows are any indication there are a ton of advertisers who want to hit people who own giant corporations, so they advertise heavily on shows where they might make up .1% of the viewers in hopes they move their company to Oregon

Most football games didn't start in 2006, so proportionally 20 seconds is far too long. You didn't exaggerate near enough, someone else can do the math though. (I'm real sleepy, but the imaginary football game came down to roughly 45 milliseconds?)

I'm really surprised Netflix didn't offer 2 million dollars to the two winning teams, or at-least some sort of consolation prize, as it was effectively a tie in a culmination of years of work.

These people did so much work even at a million dollars they would have likely earned below minimum wage. Netflix has come a long way since 2006, and this kind of research would have cost many millions, they really can't lose here. Unless the contest took so long the code isn't useful and they have already surpassed 10% in house.

What college stats class is teaching this? This theory is so widespread it has to be coming from somewhere...

Your guide to the "Statistical Theory of Some Guy I know": (Guy I know) X (Population of World) - Random decimals (for a good authoritative level of precision) = Accurate statistic

Now my statistics...

I was one of the first adopters and I love mine. Everyone I know raves about theirs.

Just using it in public places I know I sold 9 netbooks. Anyone who had a netbook in 2008 knows the story, People constantly approaching you saying "Is that a laptop!?" They later buy it and love it. I also gave away 4 as Christmas presents, so far everybody loves them, the only middling review is from my parents who need a bigger screen, Hooked it up to their HDTV and they are thrilled and can watch hulu and netflix.

My personal "guy I know statistics" are 13 times more statistically accurate than yours.

So.... 515,922,549.3377 people Don't like netbooks, and 6,191,070,601.6623 enjoy their netbooks. 1 person in Swaziland is undecided.

The backing of scientists for PR and awareness reasons and complete scientific veracity are two very different things.

SeaQuest featured a talking dolphin as a central character let alone individual episode plot points (I recall a sunken Ghost ship).

Babylon 5 is just ridiculous "Mind War: A rogue telepath with exceptional powers takes refuge on Babylon 5, and two PSI Cops arrive to capture him." their physics were good (JPL's endorsement), the rest of the aliens and interstellar travel is highly unlikely. ...and the Discovery series was more of a semi-documentary than Sci-Fi, there wasn't a fiction story if we are talking about the same program.

Again this doesn't question the quality of the program, just the fact that the science is largely fictional and that is a GOOD thing, real science is boring, we live in the world of real science, its not that exciting of a place, going to another planet is expensive and time consuming, aliens would likely be completely incapable of communicating with us, and for the most part, the universe is pretty damn empty.

SciFi is great because the universe can be whatever it wants to be, however I do appreciate when it stays within the realm of basic sub-light Newtonian physics (Space ships don't need constant propulsion to continue moving)

Something tells me no scientist is going to sign off on Hyperspace travel (Hundreds of lightyears in moments) as you yourself admit, praising Heinlein for excluding it, however this is the basis of Caves of Steel and the Naked Sun and the foundation for being able to tell stories about expatriated earthlings on other planets.

It's a good story, based in Fictional-Science, because traveling for 500 years would have been boring.

However I don't have experience with Heinlein and cannot argue about that one way or another.

Name one _Popular_ Sci-Fi story which contains events entirely within the realm of current scientific understanding, where accredited and respected scientists would sign off their seals of approval endorsing it's scientific veracity.

And no, finding me an obscure book most people have never heard of does not count.

Yes, but he forgot the Hyphen.

It is not Science & Fiction or Science/Fiction (take your pick)

It is Science-Fiction, The Science is Fictional!

You use the premise of fictional science (I can time travel to kill Hitler) and tell an interesting fiction story. The "Science" requirement needs to be something vaguely more sophisticated sounding than "Magic" (in the 50s-70s add an Atomic something, 70-80s add a bunch of wires and exposed grates, LEDs, and grey panels, 90s - present Genetic Engineering/Mutation or Wormholes. The "Science" is merely a conduit to a fictional story.

Also, how do you decide Which half pound of grandma to hack off and put in a tube? And who gets that fine job.

I'm not sure what you are arguing, they put in meters, built garages, and a mall went OUT OF BUSINESS... so how did metering in this situation help matters? From your story it sounds like it hurt business, but you are advocating For meters.

To clarify, I am not advocating for parking anarchy, I suggested parking limits of 1,2,3,4 hours depending on demand, Special pickup and dropoff zones of 15 minutes, all enforced by a parking enforcer with chalk and a revenue system based on tickets in liu of metered parking.

Metered parking keeps people away, ticketed parking is usually not a problem as most customers don't stay for two hours, it isn't a concern, and spots keep turning over. Ticket based parking isn't any more expensive because you already need someone to check the meters and make most of the money on tickets already, just without the arbitrary quarters which don't really create much revenue anyways.

Yes that usually works, any place where it is an option our google listings make sure to mention "Free parking for two hours in public lot located 1/4th a mile east."

That definitely takes the sting off and people take advantage of it, so long as people googling can see there is an option for free parking they will be more likely to come.

We realize that the 1-2 dollars of a meter is a tiny fee, compared to the gas they spent to get here, but there is something psychological which makes a nickle for the meter sting more than anything else, which is why we try to foot the bill in any way we can, because a customer worth hundreds of dollars is worth 50 cents or at worst a 20 dollar ticket.

Some other people downtown like salons and dentists (who are also working to get the meters removed) offer to feed the meters for you while you wait, so long as you inform them where your car is parked and what car it is. Its a hassle, but again downtowns are fighting to survive, and the supercentermegamallcomplex is running strong as ever, with frankly a lot of benefits including convenient parking.

Many businesses hate parking meters, it doesn't help their store, but it definitely keeps people from ever parking as they head off to a big box so they don't need to deal with the crap of a city nickel and diming them, as they have to consider a constantly running down meter, and the cost of even looking at one of our stores is higher than our competitor due to the meter, as well as the downtown it out of the way compared to a mall shopping plaza.

Many businesses including my own offer to pay for your ticket if you get one when you are in the store, its about the only thing we can do besides lobby the city to get them removed, which has been successful at some stores and has improved business. In other places we have a jar of nickels which we give away free for the meter (Nickels work best so people don't take too many) Meters cost us thousands of dollars a day and probably make the city 20 bucks after the cost of collections.

The real solution to the issues you presented are parking enforcers chalking tires, and towing cars that are parked for hours, a meter could actually keep a broken car on a street if people kept feeding it, (I have seen it) a chalker can just know its the same car that has been there all day and get it towed. It is just as effective at keeping spaces moving, but doesn't keep customers away. If there is a broken car in front of a store, you call the police and it gets removed.