Yes, I've noticed that as I've gotten older. Until I was in my late 40's I never cared much about bass, (the instrument, not the frequency range), in most songs. I heard it, but I felt the song would have been pretty much the same without it. Now, I delight in a good bass line - there's a lot going on there that I simply never heard before. I'm also much, much better at picking out the words a vocalist is singing - lyrics are more meaningful now, because I can hear more of what's being said.

I've always loved listening to music; had lots of records and CD's, built and modded my own equipment, did listening comparisons between the same CD pressed in different countries, etc. But in mid-life, the depth of my appreciation for music has grown considerably, and I hear so much more detail in it than I used to.

There is a fundamental problem with your argument, and that is the failure to take into account the nature and type of the distortion. It's not your fault - you share the misconception with most audio engineers, (who ought to know better), that THD figures correlate well with listening tests.

Quoting from my own comment in an earlier Slashdot story:

"THD measurements are taken as the ratio of the total power of all harmonics to the power of the fundamental, with no weighting of any kind applied. The trouble is, human hearing doesn't respond to harmonic distortions in this linear fashion - our ears find higher order harmonic distortions much more apparent and objectionable. This deficiency was noted by prominent BBC engineers D.E.L. Shorter and Norman Crowhurst in the 40's and 50's, when they proposed weighting harmonics by the square or the cube of the order; but their voices were drowned out by market forces that wanted a simple, flattering figure of merit that made the newer, more powerful pentode-based amps, (with lots of negative feedback), look better on paper than their lower-powered triode predecessors. The market won out over scientific and technical accuracy, (it usually does), and today engineers the world over, ignorant of this history, mistakenly believe that low THD is the gold standard for measuring and defining audio amplifier quality. (For a good technical analysis of distortion and the sound of an amplifier, see Lynn Olson's excellent investigation)."

Yes, speakers are hugely non-linear - but their non-linearity doesn't make distortions earlier in the reproduction chain inaudible, even though those distortions can be several orders of magnitude smaller. And that applies to all earlier distortions, whether they originate in an amplifier, a DAC, the digital encoding, or the recording equipment itself. Also, an amplifier with 1% THD can sound much better than one with 0.001% THD, not because the distortion in the 'poorer' amp sounds good, but because the distortion in the supposedly 'blameless' amplifier sounds bad. Then there are Intermodulation Distortion and Transient Intermodulation Distortion, which are difficult to measure thoroughly and seldom appear in amplifier specs, yet are often audible.

Audio quality isn't nearly as simple as THD figures imply, nor as simplistic as most manufacturers of audio equipment would have you believe.

I guess we have to give the money back now, and pretend our hand ended up in your pocket by accident. You believe us, right?

In an earlier day, I'm sure pretty much the same could have been said of telephones and telephone books, and before that libraries, or even public roads and streets. If it's societal infrastructure and it's used to contact/connect with other people or access information, it's gonna be used A LOT in the commission of crimes.

I'm all for foiling identity thieves and the like, and I realize that cybercrime is a real threat to all of us. However this story should also be recognized as one that serves the best interests of those who are in power and want to remain there, to the point where it might be considered propaganda. Count on it, and others like it, being used as justification for further encroachments on freedom.

...'Escape from New York'. Then 'Escape from LA'. Is Miami next?

Where is Snake Plissken when we need him?

If this technology is realized and becomes cheap, any bets on whether or not it becomes the standard for consumer electronics?

After all, it's the ultimate kill switch. Whether it's government agencies looking to disable citizens' tech devices for whatever spurious 'justification' they make up, or corporations arbitrarily and absolutely enforcing 'planned obsolescence', I predict that very bad things will be done with this if it ever becomes sufficiently cost-effective to be mass-produced.

Mod parent up.

Too bad it's not possible to mod the summary down - it reads more like an advert than a news piece.

Firmware update, anyone? Or, how about any of several other ways to introduce backdoors and other security holes after the fact, perhaps even using purpose-built hardware 'features' that aren't detectable prior to remote activation?

Note that I'm not specifically China-bashing here - I don't trust Cisco and the like either, and if I was a patriotic Chinese citizen I sure AS HELL wouldn't trust them. Bottom line: governments and corporations spy, because information is power. They WILL attempt to gather information covertly, and will exploit any opportunity to do so.

India is simply being prudent.