sohare - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Currently under "Cliche Movie Plot" (CPM) testi (Score 1) 308

by sohare on Monday August 11, 2008 @03:51PM (#24559471) Attached to: Scientists Closer To Invisibility Cloak

I know everyone is making with the jokes,but I for one really don't like the idea of this. Yet again,we have scientists seeing if they CAN do something,rather than if they SHOULD do something.

Why do people always assume that scientists ignore ethics when conducting their research? If you exclude the extremely vocal nutjobs, most debate about the ethics of science comes from the practitioners. It's rare that ethics are never considered. Granted, there have been some botches in the past, but outside forces should never be the regulators of science. (Look at how the US dropped the ball on stem cell research).

Sneaking Past Heavy-Handed Audio Compression on YouTube 234

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 27, 2008 @03:22PM from the sine-language-for-the-hearing dept.

niceone writes "Recently YouTube seems to have started applying extreme compression to the audio of uploaded clips. This is the type of compressions used by radio stations to make everything louder, but in this case applied extremely badly. In quiet passages, breathing and shuffling become overpoweringly loud. A gently plucked guitar chord becomes a distorted thud. Listen to an example here. And here's what it could sound like — still not perfect, but a whole lot better. The fixed version is thanks to a workaround proposed by Sopranoguitar — the idea is to turn down the audio and mix in a high frequency sine wave (I used 19kHz). The sine wave fools YouTube's compressor into thinking that the file is at a uniform level (and does not need the volume changing at all) but is filtered out by the encoding process (so, no need to worry about deafening any dogs)."

Quick Review of Penny Arcade Game 68

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Thursday June 05, 2008 @05:11PM from the wonder-how-they-would-rate-their-own-game dept.

Now that it has been in general circulation for a while, Kotaku has a nice simple review of the good, the bad, and the ugly in the new Penny Arcade game, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. "When you've been making fun of the video game industry as long as Penny Arcade's Jerry 'Tycho' Holkins and Mike 'Gabe' Krahulik have been, deciding to create your own game is one ballsy move. You have to know that every review site you've ever trashed and every developer you've viciously sodomized with your barbed wit is watching your every move, desperate to see you stumble so they can get in a few licks."

Perpetual Energy Machine Getting Lots of Attention 965

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @02:46PM from the swimming-in-snake-oil dept.

Many users have written to tell us about a magnetic machine promising "infinite clean energy". Engadget has the first picture of the device and is reporting that the announcement (along with a short video) of this supposed device will be released later tonight. "CEO Sean McCarthy tells SilconRepublic how it works. Namely, the time variance in magnetic fields allows the Orbo platform to 'consistently produce power, going against the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.' He goes on to say 'It's too good to be true but it is true. It will have such an impact on everything we do. The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real.'" In my experience if something seems too good to be true it generally is. I wouldn't get your hopes up.

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