Posts by Rich of Observationz
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I'm still kind of stuck on RoOz's ruse that any kind of digital audio could be lossless
Or even any kind of analog audio.
I reckon it depends on how the content was created. If I make an original track in Ableton, then the WAV/Flac export is the definitive version. If I give you the WAV and you Flacify (flay?) it, then you still have my original bits. If you put it on MP3 or a conventional CD, you've lost information/quality.
A lot of my dance music collection nowadays is on lossless files straight from the artist (via Cytopia, for instance).
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Is there a Wellingtonista for "Rant of The Year"? If so I nominate Bruce Sheppard on the Hanover Finance investors.
"I really despair at the base level of intellect of these old dumb wits.
"My new rule is, I'm not going to spend any time with anyone aged over 60 because, frankly, their residual economic value to the rest of the country is so low they should be put through euthanasia programmes right now."
BTW I've never been called short-but-prescient before :-)
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One advantage of using a lossless system such as FLAC when encoding CDs, even if you have the originals, is that you are spending quite a lot of time doing the actual ripping (unless you own an automated CD library or something). Going to an archival format means you'll never have to revisit this (and can shrinkwrap the CDs and store them away forever).
Another positive for lossless is that converting between two lossy formats (MP3 => AAC or whatever) introduces lots of distortion. If your original is FLAC, you can convert your music en masse to an alternate lossy format without additional degradation.
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Isn't that what all those people with "investment properties" are trying to do?
Well in recent times the rental yield doesn't cover the mortgage, so any gain relies on asset inflation more than covering the loss.
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James: I'd recommend FLAC. It's lossless, which means the sound will be stored exactly as in the original data. It isn't small, but at maybe 50M a minute you'll get a fair amount of music into that terabyte.
You can always batch convert the files to MP3 or Vorbis to use them with low capacity devices.
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which they?
They as in the investors, I'd have thought that was obvious from the context.
any time someone loses your money they are incompetent and possibly crooked
Why? investments have risk. If you put money into a startup venture, for instance, then you will probably lose it, even if the principals are skilled, competent and honest. Sometimes they will also be lucky and you'll get lots back.
The only crookedness is when the amount of risk is misrepresented
That's about the crux of it.
I think people are very quick to seek for a scapegoat, when in fact the general public *wanted* to believe they could make large amounts of money without applying intelligence or effort. The government could have acted to suppress the property boom, but didn't because it would have been unpopular. They could have introduced tight regulation of companies taking investments from the public, as in the EU. they didn't, due to residual ideology and not wanting to be seen as party poopers.
The voters who drove government into these policies are just as blameworthy as the bankers who took advantage of them. Maybe we should jail the voters - we'd need big jails.
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Some decent jailings are long overdue for these corporate crooks
The jails are full and just make bad people worse.
Perpetual bankruptcy would be a more fitting punishment.
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These finance company "bailouts" are almost as much of a rip as the original investments.
I did the sums on the Hanover one, comparing (i) the bailout succeeding and paying out the amounts specified with (ii) the firm being liquidated and the investor putting the cash in a bank deposit.
They're no better off with the bailout plan, even if it does succeed. They should be getting a substantial premium for having their money at risk for the next 5 years.
But they were dumb to put the money up in the first place and dumb to take the bailout deal now.
BTW, this isn't just the benefit of hindsight.
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s/hang/drag
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On the climate change thing, if they hang the select committee out they might get overtaken by events.
This article in the grauniad (linky love - give them your ad $$!) suggests that people may in future be able to sue polluters. So NZ farmers, electricity utilities and possibly SUV drivers could be sued for flooding London, for instance.