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1376
Someone needs their mass-emailing privileges suspended while they sit & think about what they have done. :)
1377
General Software Discussion / Re: At last: MP3 Lossless!!!
« Last post by Innuendo on November 15, 2009, 10:12 AM »
While this is true of acoustic music, I don't know if it applies to tones generated electronically, but then I don't listen to much electric music anyway.

There have been studies done on this and yes, it's even a factor when the music is generated electronically. One study found that people who listened to the music via a lossless were affected mentally and emotionally more than when they listened to the same music via a lossy source.

Something else I found interesting was that the test subjects exhibited more mental fatique when listening to the lossy music as their brains were trying to find the parts of the music that "wasn't there" even if there was no audible difference between the lossy & lossless source to the human ear.

That said, high bit rate MP3 (256-320 kbs, VBR) should be nearly indistinguishable from CD sound if properly encoded...

I find that to be 99% true, but during some complex musical segments even the best MP3 encoding cannot get rid of some artifacts that just aren't there when listening to a lossless version of the song. Again, it's very rare that it ever happens, but it irritates me no less.

In-ear headphones also help make up for some of the upper frequency hearing loss.

In-ear headphones also contribute to hearing loss. :)
1378
General Software Discussion / Re: At last: MP3 Lossless!!!
« Last post by Innuendo on November 15, 2009, 10:05 AM »
yeah, I know, I didn't say it right. The idea of explaining it in English, was a bit overwhelming at the time. Sorry.

Don't worry about it, Curt. I'm a native English speaker & sometimes even I struggle for the right way to say something.

When I was younger there was no Internet. If I wanted to hear a new CD, I would go into a shop in an actual building and put on a giant pair of headphones, or take a seat in their "listening room", and listen to that music in high fidelity sound. At high volumes!

Lucky you. When I was younger there was no internet, either, but the shops around here didn't even have listening rooms. One just had to either hope that during the time you were shopping one of the clerks would play it on the in-store sound system or you could try your luck begging one of those clerks to put on the album you were were interested in. If the clerk didn't have anywhere near your musical tastes then you were out of luck.

Today I will have to go to a page on the Internet and listen to some tiny 22 kbps LOW fidelity sound stream.

Yes, which is why when I am interested in hearing what something REALLY sounds like I don't even bother with those crummy sound streams & I secure a more high-fidelity sample elsewhere.

The same goes for the replacement of the BIG stereo gear in my living-room; the two four feet cabinets on the floor have been replaced by a couple of tiny speakers next to my monitor on the table. Quality has been sacrificed for comfort. No progress, in real life.

Technology used to listen to has changed, but you don't have to give up quality if you do not want to. There are stereo components that integrate with that BIG stereo gear in your living room that allows you to stream high quality music streams (FLAC, APE, TAK, etc.) across your network & play them through your high end stereo like any other sound source with amazing results.

And as for the computer itself, sacrifices do not have to be made there, either, if you are willing to part with a little cash. Myself, I have a stand-alone sound card (Creative Audigy 2 ZS - needs upgrading, I know, but still sounds good) connected to a set of Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 Ultra speakers. With this setup on my PC I can tell you that music can fill the house, the yard, the neighbors' yards, etc. and sound excellent with any sounds emanating from my PC. Once I found the music player with the plugins of my choice a little tweaking yielded me a heavenly music experience.

I guess what I'm saying is just like it's always been, good sounding audio is possible, but today you just have to spend your money on slightly different directions in order to achieve your goal.
1379
Living Room / Re: Portable computer
« Last post by Innuendo on November 15, 2009, 09:46 AM »
You should avoid the Celeron processor if you want to use that laptop for any serious computing, like playing a movie while on the road, these processors have serious performance issues, as in being sloooowwww, any day of the week.

I agree with what you are saying in principle as I'm what people would call a power user so a Celeron isn't for me, but we actually bought one of those laptops to be a Christmas gift for a teenager & as I've been setting it up for them the performance hasn't been bad & for a casual user it would be fine, IMHO.

And going back to the original post, I think the way Garboni worded his post price is a bigger factor in his decision than performance.
1380
Your problem(s) might be something as simple as you having crummy Linux video card drivers. To compound the problem laptops, especially older ones, are infamous for having craptacular video chipsets.
1381
Living Room / Re: Portable computer
« Last post by Innuendo on November 13, 2009, 09:14 PM »
Would anyone be able to recommend a particular portable computer that does not cost a very large sum of money and that is neither very big nor very small?

Well, the deal is over, but Wednesday Best Buy was selling an Acer Extensa laptop (2.2 GHz Celeron, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HD, 15.4" screen, Windows 7 Home Premium) for $250.

It's early in the holiday shopping season, too, so there's bound to be more killer deals like this one.
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General Software Discussion / Re: At last: MP3 Lossless!!!
« Last post by Innuendo on November 13, 2009, 09:11 PM »
I haven't got the slightest idea what progress you are talking about! Is it the "progress" from 1411 kbps, to 320 kbps, to 64 kbps, to 22 kbps, or what??? In case you didn't notice, the quality has been constantly FALLING every year for twenty five years; there has been absolutely NO "progress"! Each and every manufactory is working at heir hardest to get lower quality, not higher.

Not sure what you mean...there are even some online music you can buy in FLAC form so I'm not sure where you are getting that quality is falling. Please elaborate as I must be misunderstanding/missing your point, Curt.
1383
General Software Discussion / Re: At last: MP3 Lossless!!!
« Last post by Innuendo on November 13, 2009, 09:08 PM »
... which is multiplied with a constant factor every time something gets "remastered", see the latest Beatles remasters with the cut-off peaks...

Yep....Loudness war.

Stupid music industry...
1384
General Software Discussion / Re: Linux Desktop Turns 10: World Yawns?
« Last post by Innuendo on November 13, 2009, 05:43 PM »
Mike Doyle has had enough of Macs.

Mike Doyle also has a passing resemblance to Stuart Pankin.
1385
General Software Discussion / Re: Linux Desktop Turns 10: World Yawns?
« Last post by Innuendo on November 13, 2009, 05:38 PM »
Thanks for the tip, Innuendo. I'm shopping for a new router by January.

Just read up on 3rd-party firmwares such as DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato, and others by visiting their web sites & then choose a router to buy that supports your chosen firmware. For about $100 you'll have a router that can do everything the $500+ routers can.
1386
General Software Discussion / Re: At last: MP3 Lossless!!!
« Last post by Innuendo on November 13, 2009, 05:35 PM »
MP3 at a decent bitrate with a good encoder is just fine, and there's so much out there for it (both infrastructure and the music itself) that it's not going anywhere for some time.

I don't think the point in using something like FLAC implies that MP3s are inherently bad. The point in using a lossless codec is for archival purposes. When MP3's lossy codec replacement comes along, and believe me sooner or later it will as progress is inevitable, those who have their music ripped to a lossless codec like FLAC can just transcode their music to the New Great Thing without having to spend all the time re-ripping their CDs. Transcoding is a lot faster than ripping. Transcoding an MP3 to a different lossy format is less than ideal as you will have the information in the music you lost while ripping to MP3 and then you'll have additional loss as you transcode to the new lossy codec.

Now if you want to leave lossless codecs out of the conversation & just talk about lossy codecs available now I think that someone who chooses Ogg Vorbis over MP3s may not even do it because of the sound quality, either. This person may choose Ogg Vorbis because they like to support the open source effort & maybe because the Ogg Vorbis tagging standard is more versatile than ID3 v2.3/v2.4/v.ad-nauseum.
1387
Living Room / Re: a gmail system that works for me.
« Last post by Innuendo on November 13, 2009, 05:25 PM »
Google employees can read your email anytime? Really? And you know this how? :D

This was a reference to a statement made when Gmail first went public that Google employees could, if need be, access users' emails 6 months after they were deleted. I think they removed that 'feature' pretty quickly after privacy organizations complained.

Over 30 privacy organizations are still petitioning Google over Gmail privacy issues. Your emails are still scanned by Google's computers to provide context-aware ads while you read your email. The information gleaned from these scans (not the emails themselves) are kept by Google for an unspecified amount of time. Google has declined to answer on how long it keeps this data.

And a bit of advice for those who keep all their emails on webmail servers forever, not just Google's, at least in the United States, after 6 months an email loses its protected status becoming just another database record & can be used by the company who owns the server however they wish including giving it to anyone they want. Coincidentally, Google actively encourages Gmail users to never delete any emails. Conclude whatever you may from correlating those two facts.
1388
Living Room / Re: a gmail system that works for me.
« Last post by Innuendo on November 13, 2009, 10:38 AM »
The Gmail system that works for me is not to use Gmail at all. I hate how they index your emails, keep copies of your emails even after you delete them & Google employees can read your email any time they want.

Google wants to index the world & I'm trying my best to keep them out of my little corner of it.
1389
General Software Discussion / Re: Security Software for OS X
« Last post by Innuendo on November 13, 2009, 10:31 AM »
  • Mcafee and Norton - universally reviled as junk, badly written for OS X. Some consider Norton the clearest piece of malware on the mac!

Missed this the first time around, but had to comment...

You write "badly written for OS X" as if there's a platform that McAfee and Norton exist on that they aren't badly written. Everything those two companies write for any platform should be purged from the face of the Earth.
1390
General Software Discussion / Re: Linux Desktop Turns 10: World Yawns?
« Last post by Innuendo on November 13, 2009, 10:22 AM »
I used to run a Cisco router here at home, but when I went to look for an upgrade it seemed they had lost their way. Their replacement SOHO router had a gigabit WAN port and four Fast Ethernet LAN ports. Can anyone tell me where there's a SOHO environment where that would make sense?

I ended up replacing my Cisco with a Linksys that has gigabit WAN and LAN ports, wireless G & N, a faster CPU, and runs Linux for a fraction of what a Cisco router costs. Seems very fitting given the tone of this topic.
1391
General Software Discussion / Re: At last: MP3 Lossless!!!
« Last post by Innuendo on November 12, 2009, 10:01 AM »
This sounds like what mp3PRO failed to do.

While on the surface it may seem like they are similar in their goals they really aren't. MP3Pro was all about providing better sounding audio at lower bit-rates, but it was always still lossy. MP3HD is trying to implement lossless as part of the MP3 standard while the core MP3 technology is the same as it always has been.

They've got a tough row to hoe if they are going to overtake FLAC as the lossless standard.
1392
General Software Discussion / Re: Worst Win7 reviews (ongoing)
« Last post by Innuendo on November 12, 2009, 09:57 AM »
The best thing I've found is dockbarX for gnome, which does the launcher + taskbar button + grouping behavior, but doesn't really have the window previews. Maybe some day (hopefully not too far away ;) )

I'm sure the windows preview will be copied and made available in docbarX soon. With all the neat eye-candy features in KDE I can't wait to see how it's implemented & enhanced.

Now, before someone responds and accuses me of making a snarky comment that's not how I meant that to be taken. Whenever any OS adds a neat feature there are third-party programmers on other OSes that like the way that feature works & there's a rush to get that feature working on the OS of their choice, i.e. look how quickly the dock appeared on Windows after it was introduced on OS X.
1393
General Software Discussion / Re: Minefield(Firefox) 3.7Pre seems to work
« Last post by Innuendo on November 11, 2009, 09:51 AM »
Well, 3.6 Beta 2 is out...though I don't know what that has to do with the mention of 3.7pre in the OP. Are they the same thing?

Anyway, Mozilla wants people to uninstall the Nightly Tester Tools & instead use the new Add-on Compatibility Reporter. It fulfills the same function as Nightly Tester Tools, but adds functionality that lets you report misbehaving add-ons.

I've heard that in beta 2 they have really worked on the responsiveness of the GUI so I took a chance and installed it. I'm really enjoying it so far. All my extensions work so far thanks to the Reporter add-on & the GUI is more responsive...everything seems more responsive. The only thing that doesn't seem to consistently work right that I've noticed so far is the little taskbar thumbnails in Windows 7. Sometimes you just get the little spinning circle & no preview ever comes up.

1394
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Fun with Scroll Lock LED
« Last post by Innuendo on November 11, 2009, 09:32 AM »
My favorite apps in this vein would use the Scroll Lock LED as a hard drive activity indicator.
1395
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: a-squared Anti-Malware, free, TODAY (11/11)
« Last post by Innuendo on November 11, 2009, 09:20 AM »
A-Squared in the past has always had way too many false positives for my tastes, but free is free. I signed up for a free 1-year license.
1396
General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?
« Last post by Innuendo on November 10, 2009, 12:25 PM »
And comments like your previous one don't go over too well here.

Perhaps after you've been here a little longer you'll start to show a bit more courtesy towards your fellow members; and hopefully develop a better appreciation for the social norms at Donation Coder?

I'm hoping that as it appears that Bamse is not a native English speaker he doesn't mean the brash way some of his remarks are coming off.
1397
General Software Discussion / Re: 10 things to do after installing Linux
« Last post by Innuendo on November 10, 2009, 12:21 PM »
I should add that under the Linux Help blogroll section of my blog, I have a few great links for new users and tips. Grokdoc also has an outline for businesses switching to Linux.

And I commend you for that, Zaine. There was a time not too long ago the only answer a Linux newbie was apt to get when asking a question would be, "RTFM, noob!" I am glad we're evolving past that.
1398
General Software Discussion / Re: 10 things to do after installing Linux
« Last post by Innuendo on November 10, 2009, 12:18 PM »
Besides that, I wasn't talking about speed.

I was talking about the lack of installation due to pre-installation.

Because of the Linux model, if distroes want to have certain software installed alongside the OS, then the newbie has it as soon as they install the OS on their PC.

Okay, I misunderstood the point you were trying to make. Yes, things are great if your distro has the software you want in their repository. If not, I've seen enough stories, even recently, of having to install dependencies and dependencies for those dependencies that the process is nothing a newbie is going to want to deal with.

Linux is getting better, but it still hasn't reached the ease of next-next-next-finish install wizards on Windows. I'm really looking forward to that day but we just aren't there yet in spite of wishful thinking to the contrary.
1399
If you are looking for things that take advantage of Win7's jump lists I can recommend PowerArchiver (Professional). All of its major functions are present in the jump list.
1400
Living Room / Re: I'm Going to HELL! Please feel sorry for me... :(
« Last post by Innuendo on November 09, 2009, 04:51 PM »
Watch out for the spiders! As big around as a dinner plate some of them are.

A friend of mine told me that those big ones you can spray a whole can of insecticide directly on them & it only stuns them.  :o
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