Sip

Let me guess, 297 are by Harut.

By the way, it's unfair to compare the bit rate of CD audio to mp3 audio as one is raw data and the other is compressed. I can guarantee you that 10 minutes of silence will sound just as good on a CD as it will on a 128Kbps mp3 audio. Heck I can write a 0bps custom audio codec to encode that stream with 0 loss

Where did I say that? I said "Once you go up to 160 Kbps, 192 Kbps, and even 256 Kbps, thing get much better and better so you end up with files that will sound even better than a CD (quality wise)." Sorry if it was confusing but yah you generally can't compress something and get better quality than the source. Not unless you use some sort of filtering or some additional processing on top of the basic compression. There are a lot of things that will outperform mp3s. MP3s are by no means the solution to end it all. But much like VHS and Casette tapes stuck around for a loooooooong time (heck VHS is still around!), mp3s and DVDs will also be around for a while to come even though right now we have mpeg4 doing a much better job than mpeg2 (DVD). People and companies just have way too much $$$ invested in those things to let them go. But at the same time, I wouldn't say 128Kbps mp3s "suck". They may leave a lot to be desired. As far as switching to ogg, I might do it if I had an ogg player in the car and a couple of portable ogg players to take with me to the gym or to listen on the plane

emmmmmmm ... yah and the one person who actually does pay for internet would have to pay $14,000,000 a month

Free bandwidth tends to do that

That is awesome. I participated in a couple of regional such contests sponsored by ACM at the college level (and first year grad) and all I can say is that it is EXTREMELY impressive to win one of these! I looked at some of the problems they had to solve this year here and even at this level of competition they are no easy tasks! Congrats to Vahe and kudos to him!

HAPPPPPPPPY BIRTHDAY MARAL!!!! It's the big 100 so I hope you can still chew your cake ... if not, a blender I'm sure will do wonders

Ipods are extremely overpriced. Don't give into the fad There are MANY different mp3 players out there with varying sizes, features, and prices. For example, believe it or not, one of the cooleest ones in my opinion out there right now is sold at .... get this ... WALMART! The link is here and it's a 1 GB cube about the size of a quarter! for only $130 ... another one would be something like 40 GB Creative Nomab ... it's a hellovalot cheaper than Ipod and it's certainly not the only one. I personally have 2 different ones .... a really small Samsung Yepp for working out and a bigger hard drive based one made by Archos for the car and trips (it's about 5 years old now and not sold anymore but it has been fantastic).

Obviously morally and ethically it is wrong unless you tell your neighbor and they agree. Legally, I don't know. Security wise, it's a big risk as maybe someone left it open on purpose.

Actually mp3 would work well for classical music since there are so many "empty" spaces in the music (quiet periods or relative quiet) as opposed to the constant bang bang bang bang ra ra ra ra of rock or pop music. For that, you may want to look into "variable bit rate" mp3s. Basically, with variable bit rate, the mp3 will automatically switch between low quality to high quality when needed. When for example there's a lot of stuff going on in a piece, the mp3 might switch to 192 or 256 Kbps while during the more quiet times it may switch to 128 or 96. So this way, you'll have very high quality reproductions while keeping the file sizes relatively small. But with CDs, it doesn't matter what you are recording ... it'll always take the same amount of space on the disk.

Anoushik, mp3 is a compression standard. More importantly, it is a "lossy" compression. With lossy compression, you will lose some of the original information contained in the data (e.g. music) you are trying to compress. However, the "quality" and "bit rate" of an mp3 compressed file will play a big role in how much of this data you lose. With the proper settings, the "loss" will be negligible and in many cases would be impossible to detect by a human ear. As a rule of thumb, a 128 Kbps MP3 file will sound just about as good as a CD audio. Once you go up to 160 Kbps, 192 Kbps, and even 256 Kbps, thing get much better and better so you end up with files that will sound even better than a CD (quality wise). So your friend is kind of right but not right at the same time. If you are going to convert your CDs to mp3, try 128 Kbps (there will be an option in the program you use). If you want really good quality, try 192. Any more that that, and you are wasting disk space in my opinion if you are using CDs as your source (higher settings will result in larger and larger files). In addition to this bit rate setting, there is also a "quality" setting with "Fast/Low" all the way to "Slow/High" ... at Slow/High, it'll take longer to produce the mp3 compressed file but it will sound much better than the fast ones.

I bought the SOAD CD because everything on it was good. I haven't seen the CD since I bought it ... it's probably somewhere in my stacks of old cds I couldn't care less about the actual CDs because they are practically useless. When you can have ALL your music on a 20Gig drive, why bother with those archaic pieces of plastic? The only time I burn CDs now is to put mp3 files on them for the car. 700 MB worth of mp3s lasts a good month or so.

QueBeceR, I want to be just like you when I grow up ... well, except for all the French stuff.

http://www.seapahn.us/hf/fadix2.jpg

That thing is definitely very sweet. ... But I want one of these.

Take any of Ricki Martin's or Spice Girlseses songs ... look up their lyrics ... and it'll be the same as what he is singing.

I think he has been "celibate" for around 10 years now

I think we all need some xhorovats and ghini ... well, all except for Azat and phantom.

He makes some valid points but there seems to be a huge disconnect with how he preceives things and reality. Granted Louisiana and New Orleans may look like Bangladesh right now but did he visit any part of the Midwest for example? Some parts of this country are in trouble no doubt. There are many things that need to be addressed and are far from perfect. But the core of this country and what makes it the greatest nation ever is still very alive and will continue to be IMO. The rest of the clowns on TV and in Washington are a different story though. They just make it all "seem" much worse than it actually is.

I was trying to think which one is worse ... a migraine or a migraine AND greasy temples

Well next time you have a migraine, be thankful that you don't have greasy temples too

The question is not whether Armenians are European or part of Europe or not, but whether Europeans are Armenian or part of Armenia or not.

Ok that settles it ... an ass kicking for Quebecker (long story) and a punch in the face for Accelerated (it'll be like a simulated migrain) when we all get together in Vegas some day And Anahid, 18-20 hours is nothing. I have gone 36 hours once with only bathroom breaks!

I usually get mine after spending several hours concentrating at the monitor or on the laptop. Usually I get it after 16-17 hours of straight computer use without much break but sometimes it happens sooner. Do you get it when you use your computer? Or you don't think is related? Also, when was the last time you had your vision checked?

LMAO at the esssse video Azat, I saw this hit new show on NBC the other day that immediately made me think of you. Do you know what it was called?