Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Media

Submission + - Why Distributing Music As 24-bit/192kHz Downloads Is Pointless (xiph.org)

An anonymous reader writes: A recent post at Xiph.org provides a long and incredibly detailed explanation of why 24-bit/192kHz music downloads — touted as being of 'uncompromised studio quality' — don't make any sense. The post walks us through some of the basics of ear anatomy, sampling rates, and listening tests, finally concluding that lossless formats and a decent pair of headphones will do a lot more for your audio enjoyment than a 24/192 recordings. 'Why push back against 24/192? Because it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, a business model based on willful ignorance and scamming people. The more that pseudoscience goes unchecked in the world at large, the harder it is for truth to overcome truthiness... even if this is a small and relatively insignificant example.'

Comment Re:Pay attention, here... (Score 1) 706

I'd agree with you about repeat offenders, but making the first offense a felony is not going to help. First, drunk people are not exactly known for making the best judgment. Second, how many immature 20 year olds (probably demographic most likely to have the first DUI) will be branded felons for life for making a mistake? Third, driving drunk without causing other offense makes no harm, and while it is irresponsible and should be punished, it doesn't compare with other felony crimes. Fourth, I'm fairly sure I've driven tired enough to the point of being highly impaired on more than one occasion. It's about as irresponsible as drunk driving, yet there is no punishment. The gap between no punishment and felony for pretty much the same kind of behavior is simply too big. Fifth (and this is more about stigma rather than laws), I'm yet to see a convincing argument why society considers that people aren't accountable for having drunk sex (can't give consent), but are accountable for drunk driving.

You can find counter-arguments to each of these points fairly easily, but taken together they build a strong case.

Maybe US has more DUIs because virtually everyone drives here, and starts driving way earlier than in other countries? Maybe other countries have better public transportation for the drunks to get home after parties?

also increase the stigma of DUI

This is probably the first time I've heard that DUI is not stigmatized enough.

Comment Re:CLEP Tests (Score 1) 913

For truly well rounded self educated people, they should be a breeze.

Even if you're not "truly well rounded" or are afraid to fail the test, here is what you should do (I passed some CLEP tests this way):

0. Make sure CLEP tests are accepted (some engineering programs/colleges don't accept certain tests).
1. Find related college course at a decent university that has lecture notes online.
2. Buy the book that this course follows, read it and read the notes. Often course notes will hint at which parts of the book are most important.
3. Pass the test, submit a form to get credit for an equivalent class.

Comment Re:Harsh Realities (Score 1) 315

power users will be able to tweak it to a great extent

Right, so I installed a bunch of extensions to make Firefox look and behave like version 2.0... and still haven't upgraded to 5.0 because I'm afraid these extensions will break. "Power users" or "geeks" may be able to tweak their browser, but it doesn't mean we want to (especially as we get older and have more work / less time). It looks like there is at least one new extension that I need to install with every major release of Firefox to bring old 2.0 appearance back. It's not just corporations that want some stability with their software.

Comment Re:Comcast won't let you (Score 1) 697

I have a similar deal with AT&T DSL. Home phone / DSL package was actually $5-10 cheaper than DSL alone (~$45). In fact it makes sense, as the landline was a negative value for me - way too many marketing/donation soliciting/incorrect calls.

This bundling practice is annoying as Internet connection pretty much makes all other services redundant.

Comment Re:"Speed Limits" are stupid in general (Score 1) 566

I agree that the whole concept of a speed limit is stupid, because actual safe maximum speed is highly context-dependent. There are so many factors that even enumerating them is pointless. Speed limits only may somewhat make sense in certain areas in the city (school zone, residential zone, shopping area).

Show me a highway where the majority of the traffic drives at or under the speed limit on a nice day. Similarly, I lost control and totaled my last car when I was going 25 mph under the limit on an interstate. While driving through a residential neighborhood or a shopping area, safe speed at night is actually higher than during the day - exact opposite of a highway. Everything depends on the context.

People will drive at the speed they deem comfortable and safe. Speed limits exist only to make everyone guilty like the parent said and to generate revenue.

Comment Re:current environment in biology causes bad scien (Score 1) 332

I'm doing mine in CS, and the papers I enjoy reading the most are those that discuss alternatives / tradeoffs / unsuccessful directions that the authors attempted with their design. Sure, in order to be published your work has to show some improvement of the state of the art, but it is often more educational to read how people came up with a successful system rather than the result itself. I actually heard some professors claim that you should only write about what you did right because the reader would not be interested in the thought process or intermediate experiments you went through, and I find this claim completely false.

Slashdot Top Deals

% APL is a natural extension of assembler language programming; ...and is best for educational purposes. -- A. Perlis

Working...