Posts by Dan Paul

CD "Quality"

It's too bad but the original LP masters of older music are already compression limited and it takes "remastering" directly from tape to digital to fix that. All you need is for the A/D convertor to be beyond reproach, not better media.

If music was recorded when the vinyl LP was the primary playback method, the base frequencies were limited on the LP pressing master so the recording would fit on the LP. Only the master tape was at full dynamic range. Then there were the RIAA equalization curves applied during preamplification for playback.

A normal CD will capture all the detail and resolution of the old master tape which is why the latest Led Zeppelin cd's sound better than the LP (and different). Using high resolution CD's and "lossless" formats with a dirty source just gives you a really sharp but noisy CD.

All the more reason

to leave the whole of Europe off your tourism list, Courtney. Don't worry though, those people assaulting your driver and damaging their vehicle are just "venting their frustrations". It's really not kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon. Too bad the Gendarme are too busy having a smoke break. Probably in the same union as the taxi drivers.

The French government can't stand any competition with their graft ridden status quo, they make up laws for what ever reason they want, apply them willy-nilly when ever they feel like and are only concerned with lining their pockets. No foreign corporate entity can do business anywhere in Europe without paying their literal "pound of flesh" and even then it's a crapshoot whether someone else will put their hand out or screw you one way or another. At least in the States you know where you stand and graft is a thing of the far past.

Double Cross

Where do you think those jobs are going? The company or agency that outsourced work to Crapita in the first place wants an even cheaper price so Crapita has to outsource overseas. When will people learn outsourcing raises taxes on ALL taxpayers? Someone has to pay for the welfare bill.

Word to the wise, if you ever have to do local onsite support for them; give them the shaft as much as you can.

When every job has been outsourced, what happens then; I ask you?

Indeed, Indeed

Yes, Ashton,

You must mean the case where Microsoft is fighting the US prosecutor that wants the data because the US court has no sovereign rights over the Ireland based subsidiary of Microsoft? Is that any different than YOUR courts thinking they have rights over US corporations?

While we are at it, why don't YOU avoid the Internet all together. There is enough false F.U.D in the world.

Common sense would mean that latency dictates the location of a datacenter. You wouldn't tolerate a 2,000 second ping would you? That's as much the reason as anything why they would locate it closer to the point of use.

Same as the "Victim Mentality" that

leftwing politicians everywhere want everyone to have. They want you to be enraged at the "establishment that has been keepin us down man" to pressure politicians to listen to their shouty voices.

Reda is trying to link unrelated circumstances to create or amplify her freetard agenda. She and her ilk are not above outright lying to get their way. Orlowski is simply outing her behavior.

Taking pictures is not illegal for the most part unless you want to photograph certain sensitive facilities. "Trademarking" any outdoor structure that was built with public funds and then preventing photos is ridiculous and likely against public use legislation. If you can see it, you can likely take a photo of it.

That does not apply to certain "works of art" unfortunately. Music, Movies, Paintings and Literature have various protections and for good reason. The only one I disagree with is the long outdated Region Code nonsense. Artists and the studios that produce their art commercially deserve protections though 70 years is a bit long.

If you can't take a picture of the Eiffel Tower while you are a tourist in Paris, or the London Bridge while you are in London; you may as well stay home. How would that help the "Tourism Economy" that so many live on?

For all those pedantic bastards out there....

as follows taken from the OED page referenced in the article

"Global varieties of English

The territorial expansions of the United Kingdom between the late 16th and early 18th centuries, and of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries carried the English language around the world. In each country where English is spoken, whether as the primary national language or as a secondary language alongside others, it has changed and developed in the context of its new surroundings, not only through loanwords, but also through localized neologisms and changes in the usage of common English words."

Of particular note, please notice the opening phrase "Global varieties of English" and the last sentence of the paragraph.

You don't have a corner on the language, its usage or spelling anymore. It has been commoditized by sheer usage and changes too frequently to be locked in to your ideals anymore.

You get exactly what you didn't pay for....

and since you were a cheap b@st@rd you got nada.

Let's face it, even the expectation of 5 nines is unrealistic in most cases as there are just too many vendors and thus too many points of failure involved.

Use a datacenter located nearby and expect to have a backup ready and waiting if you need that kind of reliability.

Charge what that is worth to the customer.

If they can't afford it, propose less critical service and go to the cheapest datacenter vendor.

Explain the proposal in detail so they have a real understanding and get a signature that notes they have read and agree to the T's &C's if they sign an agreement.

We'll be happy to...

send you some brown recluse spiders if you like. Too small to be seen well, easy to roll over on in bed, range covers the whole Northeast USA and quite deadly venom if the necrotizing fasciitis doesn't get you first.

Streaming is no different than....

FM Radio is, and the royalties should be the same. RIAA should grow up and consolidate all music royalty types and make them the same everywhere. One song play equals one musicians royalty, one distributor payment.

Musicians should be given at least 50% of the royalty payment if not more. Anything different is between musician and distributor, not the RIAA. The distributors should not be able to set the percentages in their favor.

It's good to see that someone with power like Swift can make a company like Apple take notice. Now let's get the "indies" to a place where they have that much power, or a codify some agreeable rules where they do. If we want to argue about equal pay for equal work, then paying musicians for their songs no matter who or when the are played, would be a good start and it would even be gender neutral.

And thanks Andrew for finally using a reasonable picture of Taylor Swift.

Correct!

Lets add to that he's part of the vote buying entitlement circle jerk and counts on the city unions to keep him in office. That's changing soon enough.

The Verizon issue is a huge part of the political corruption going on in all of NY State. They are governed by the NY Public Dis-Service agency and there is a tariff that Verizon is supposed to use to maintain their existing wired network. It's about $5.00/month on every ones phone bill.

Except for the fact that Verizon won't authorize it's union technicians to do any repairs on those lines unless there is a business complaining and then not often. I have been told that directly by their technicians.

The NY Public Service Commission gets plenty of complaints, mine being one of them and yet will not rule against Verizon and recover the money so another could fix the problems.

The PSC and most State Agencies and Authorities are cesspits of political patronage and the friends and families of the influential get those jobs. Then they fail to regulate the industry they are charged with.

The "Garbage Plate" from Nick Tahou's in Rochester

There is a diner style place in Rochester NY USA that has a thing called the "Garbage Plate".

This is a mainstay for drunk college students at RIT and U of R. Nick Tahou's in Rochester has been around since the '50's. This has been copied all over the area in one form or another.

Their Wiki states - "A Garbage Plate is a combination of two selections of cheeseburger, hamburger, red hots, white hots, Italian sausage, chicken tender, fish (haddock), fried ham, grilled cheese, or eggs; and two sides of either home fries, French fries, baked beans, or macaroni salad. On top of that are the options of mustard and onions, and Nick's proprietary hot sauce, a sauce with spices and slowly simmered ground beef. The dish is served with Italian bread and butter on the side.[2][3] Health.com named the Garbage Plate the fattiest food in the state of New York.[4]"

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Tahou_Hots

As good as this ruling may be .....

for one person, this ruling sets a precedent that all contract employees (for any purpose) are not contract anymore. Really, there cannot be a taxi business that doesn't use freelancers

That spells a lot of trouble for a whole lot of "employers" including those in IT.

Glad to see the labor department does not need to live by their earlier decisions.

Why Not?

We have the ridiculous email deletion example from Hilarity Clinton and the State Department and Lois Lerner and the Infernal Revenue Service.

Both deleted emails or destroyed data with impunity to avoid further investigation and prosecution and have never been brought up on charges for the crime of "Obstruction of Justice".

Therefore a legal precedent has been set that no one in the US can be accused of Obstruction for deleting critical evidence and the excuse "the internet ate my homework" is now fully valid.

If it was okay for those two, it is okay for me and everyone else.

Insecure Passwords

are the same as having no password at all, so there was no hacking involved.

Anyone who uses the same passwords in their new job as they did on the old one, deserves to have their database ravaged.

If you have easily guessed passwords and your data is online then too bad for you.

It is the same as leaving the safe door open and expecting they won't take the money.

Just another crackhead pretending to be a journalist

We have enough "blipvert" so called news as it is now without adding this buffoon to the mix.

Hell, we can't get the "News" without "color commentary" right now. Apparently "New Meja" thinks they can do it better than the Walter Cronkite types of yore. That means that "Content" and "Facts" will be missing in action.

You can have him and his pre-censored useless twaddle. Associated Press should just sue him now and get it over with.

Too many crackheads with bright ideas

No, just no absolutely no. Don't waste your (and our) time with this nonsense, PLEASE.

Life is full of useless crap already without adding even more useless crap like emoji's to authentication.

Way back in the stone ages...

I used to scare myself silly watching those Hammer films on Canadian TV channels late at night or even during broad daylight. I must have been in my early teens. I'd sneak into the living room and turn the TV on low. I remember screaming out loud and getting caught one night because of some shocking reveal of the Vampire in all his gory makeup. Christopher Lee WAS the Vampire and others paled by comparison.

He really did become his roles. That thundering voice and dark eyes truly demanded your attention.

Roles such as Scaramanga in the Man with the Golden Gun, Saruman in LOTR, Count Dooku in Star Wars, each were characters that played to his capabilities without being stereotypical. I'm surprised he did not do war movies too but as with many that were actually in WWII, they did not want to talk about or even acknowledge what happened.

Such a full life Lee had. We all could only hope to reach 93, let alone have over 250 acting roles to our credit.

There are plenty of large touchscreens.......

available. Just add a computer and software. There are also add on touch screens for existing TV's or monitors to make them into "whiteboards".

The real test will be how they integrate all the parts in the Microsoft Surface Hub. Will it have Kinect support too? 3D? That would help some modeling and engineering applications. There is a lot of value in a complete package considering that some software could be more than the cost of the Surface.

The investigation should center on...

who programmed the fail mode to be off when the plane was already at 2,000 feet.

THAT was a pretty stupid idea. You always want the failure mode to go to the safest position. Valves fail open or at last position for a reason. Engine control units that are ALREADY at elevation should offer a warning but not just turn off. There should have been an override at the very least.

So?

Any country that already had control of the IANA contract would be doing the same things to prevent it from going elsewhere.

If you don't believe that you are completely deluded.

Personally I believe that ICANN will just screw it up if they get it as there will be far more opportunity for greed to interfere with it. Look at what they have done with TLD's.

The Internet has flourished during the time period we have had control over the contract. It isn't likely to change as long as we do.

Leave it where it is.

Still hear the...

screaming of the lambs Clarisse? Oops I mean Farrell.