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Comment Re: cd quality sucks -- DVD Audio doesn't (Score 1) 312

There used to be DVD-Audio which was way, way better than CD quality but ever since iTunes all music quality has gone to shit.

DVD Audio is still around.

DVD-Audio authoring software is available for various OS platforms:

For Linux (and BSD and Solaris),
http://dvd-audio.sourceforge.net/

For Mac OS
Burn - open source, free
still running on PPC Macs from OS X 10.3.9, also on Intel Macs, a 64bit-version available, too:
http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html

Minnetonka Disc Welder - commercial
http://www.minnetonkaaudio.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70&Itemid=93&lang=en

For Windows
Minnetonka Disc Welder - commercial
http://www.minnetonkaaudio.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70&Itemid=93&lang=en
DVD-Audio Solo - commercial
http://www.cirlinca.com/

You'll also need a DVD recorder capable of DVD-Audio and a respective player.
For PCs, LG Electronics and Pioneer used to have such hardware.

Comment Re:Hey, the pirates can help (Score 1) 312

Hmm? Apple was the one that pushed for and now only sells DRM free music.

That was only after a couple of years when Apple had been the biggest online seller of DRM-ridden music, worldwide. They sold nearly a billion of DRM'ed music files.

Apple has been the "Sheriff of Nottingham" in terms of DRM for years before they started to be a kind of "Robin Hood" against DRM, so to speak.

Also, as far as I know, this heroic anti-DRM attitude in the iTunes Store still doesn't apply to the movie/video/TV-show content.

Comment Re:Could these be some of the Dark Matter? (Score 1) 73

AFAIK, "dark matter" is supposed to be "exotic matter" so buckyball structures don't belong here.

Also, AFAIRC, it is called "dark" in the sense that it does not interact with light (photons) at all.
It doesn't reflect light, it doesn't absorb certain frequencies of light, either.

So spectrography (or is it spectroscopy?) - which has been used for the detection of the buckies mentioned in the article - wouldn't be of any help to detect dark matter, let alone analyze its internal structure.

Comment Re:Printer? (Score 1) 267

"I was uneasy when I first noticed that Apple had taken ownership of CUPS, and in this case my experience is that that disquiet is justified."

  As a Gnu/Linux and Mac OS X user (with an ever growing tendency towards Linux and FOSS) I have been looking forward to this moment as well.

Now that Apple's decided to fork CUPS eventually, we don't have to be too interested in what their fork's fate will be in the future, do we?

Little Red Riding Hood will come to our rescue here
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-January/161306.html

and so will
http://www.openprinting.org/

Comment Re:Good luck and I want the 13th ride up (Score 2) 488

"What I wonder is how they would get the cable up there."

They'd rather try to get the cable down here, I presume.

That means, they might prefer to manufacture two cables up there in geo-stationary orbit, then lowering one end of cable #1 down to earth's surface (this might still be a challenging task, though), sending one end of cable #2 even farther outwards, for use with the counterweight.

Comment "The first phase ... could be functional by 2026." (Score 1) 329

"2026" and nevertheless "could be"?

So Her Majesty's government is certainly not preparing anything similar to what J.F. Cooper called a "hasty pudding"...

Thus, High Speed Rail may or may not reach the Scottish border before the end of the current century, anybody willing to place a bet against that?

Comment We are certainly not alone. (Score 1) 745

There's at least 6 billion of "them" and counting...

On a more speculative side, there might be highly developed life forms elsewhere in the universe that we carbon-based blighters wouldn't even recognize as "life" if we stumbled over one of them (and perhaps vice versa).

Comment Anti-matter vs. dark matter (Score 2, Insightful) 113

In my opinion and in contrary to what the original posting suggests, anti-matter should not be viewed as particularly "dark".

E.g., anti-Hydrogen, consisting of an anti-proton and a positron, will readily absorb a quantum of energy (a photon, which happens to be one of the particles that are their own anti-particles) and re-emit a photon again, just like "plain old" hydrogen. Thus, a cloud of anti-hydrogen should be observable as easily (or difficultly) as a cloud of hydrogen, assuming their masses, their viewing distances and all other parameters like temperature, density etc. being equal.

So there should be no difference in observability here, due to the fact that photons are citizens of both realms, of "nornal" matter as well as of anti-matter, and will interact with mass particles of both realms in the same way.

Obviously, "dark matter" looks like a very different beast...

Comment Agreed. Asahi or Stella Artois would look cool. (Score 1) 229

But then, a can of the _original_ Budweiser (i.e., the one from the Czech Republic) would certainly achieve the coolness goal as well.

Including the taste goal. Many of the beers from Belgium or Ireland would do.

Just make sure to avoid those U.S. beverages that pretend to be "beer". Don't drink them, don't use their cans for your projects. ;-)

Comment Calculus. Bertrand Russell. And Einstein himself. (Score 1) 358

First, you might start to enhance your understanding of advanced calculus.

At some early point along the road, get yourself a copy of
The ABC of Relativity, by Bertrand Russell, first ed. in 1925.
(Reading this book will just take the better part of a rainy day, breaks included. Enjoy it.)

Later on, read the Master's own writing:
Relativity. The Special and General Theory, by Albert Einstein, first ed. in 1920
http://www.bartleby.com/173/

Meanwhile, don't forget to continue your calculus efforts. ;-)

Remember, Einstein had a very pragmatic approach towards mathematics, he just used it.
To understand GR, you won't necessarily have to become more of a mathematician than Einstein wanted to be.

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