Re: FLAC or other uncompressed formats, which is best?
- From: Don Y <this@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 25 May 2012 16:46:12 -0700
Hi Richard,
On 5/25/2012 4:42 PM, Richard Webb wrote:
Note National Federation of the Blind vs. American Federation FOR
the Blind! Get the wrong preposition in there and
you'll never hear the end of it!
Yep, I've been one of those to quibble over taht one. big
difference.
And a very emotional one! The whole role of each organization
can be summed up in those two prepositions!
I used to spend a good deal with a guy ("Michael") who I<snip>
recall being tied to NFB somehow (I would stumble across
him in various places around the country instead of in
one single locality).
YEah met him a few times. Michael Hingson iirc.
Ha! Excellent! I don't know if I ever knew his last name.
But, a quick google for images turned up lots of photos
of him that I could believe to be "what he looks like,
35 years later!"
He just paused a bit and said, "That's a good question.
You know, Don, if you can tell me what it is like to SEE,
I'll tell you what it's like NOT to see!" I've still
not figured out how I could redo that conversation
and have either of us get any MORE information out of
it.
<rotfl> Can relate.
But I couldn't! It had never occurred to me just how
silly the question was -- until afterwards.
Its sort of like the "tastes like milk" commercial
(What's milk taste like? <shrug> What does this
taste like? Milk!)
I never envied Ray his job. He had to move away from
engineering (why go to an engineering school if you want
to be a businessman?) to keep a business running. At
that time, we were very small. I'm willing to bet about
25 people, total. It was his job to make sure the money
kept coming in to keep us paid.
YEah I bet. Hard to take off the hat you've prepared your
life for and put on the other. Interesting story about the
crunch push when the money men wanted to see a working
product.
There are a couple of amusing stories that went along with
this -- but probably not appropriate for discussion in a
public forum! :>
I believe he now has a cell-phone sized device that provides similar
functionality?
YEp, and it's marketed in partnership with NFB. Mike is
involved in that one. I ever get some business things
caught up where I'd like to be one's in my future. Amazing
device. The ability to just sit down in a restaurant and
read the menu when they dont' ahve one in braille ... a
liberating experience<g>.
That was the feeling I would get whenever setting up a
new machine at a new site. You'd get things running
properly. Some representative from the client agency
would sit down to use the machine -- invariably visually
impaired -- and you'd watch them cringe as they tried to
make sense of that god-awful voice! Literally *squinting*
as if that would somehow improve their hearing skills!
But, you could tell the instant they understood the
dialect. Their eyes would literally go wide -- "Wow!
I can finally read my own personal mail without having
to rely on my secretary -- and having her aware of
things that are none of her business!"
Liberating is a good term.
Thing is, you get so many gadgets you almost need to care a
pelican case with foam inserts to keep all yoru gadgets safe<g>.
Exactly. Each does *one* thing. And, often, not well!
Surprisingly common. Regrettably. Regardless of the
market and user base targeted. These folks should be made to USE
some of the products they've developed!
I've said this about a lot of things over the years. NOt
just use it, but use it in the manner that the end user is
likely to user it. Sometimes if you do that you'll end up
going back to the drawing board.
There is also the hazzard of making a device that defines
how it must be used. Even if that is the way that 99%
of the user base is likely to use it, it forces 100% of
users to follow that prescription -- even if it isn't
a necessary condition for the device's operation!
"Why do I have to specify this parameter before that
parameter? They are independant yet you are forcing
me to pick a certain one before the other. How did you
decide that this is the only way it should be done?"
I'm reading _The Art of Choosing_, currently. It addresses
how people deal with choices -- among other things. Things
like how the number of choices can affect our satisfaction
with our eventual choice. Too many can be worse than too
few, for example. On the other hand, how choices are
presented to you can greatly affect how well you can make
a set of choices and how happy you can be with the result.
In one example, they demonstrated (through experiment) how
the order that choices are forced upon a user can lead to
increased or decreased satisfaction. Think about web
interfaces where you are forced to make certain choices
before you are presented with the next set of choices -- even
if the first set has no bearing on the second set!
In this case, they allowed real customers to specify the options
they wanted in the automobile they would be ordering. For one
set of customers, they presented the choices in order of
"most choices" to "least choices". E.g., there were more
choices for body paint color than engine size so body color
was "selected" first and, eventually, engine size. For another
set of customers, the order in which the choices were presented
was the exact opposite -- pick the engine, transmission, choice
of sound system, etc. and, finally, the COLOR of the vehicle.
The result of that experiment -- which might not be generalizable
to choice, in general -- was that people found it easier to
proceed from those options with FEW choices to those with
MORE choices than the other way around. I.e., once the user
had specified the engine, accessories, body style, etc., they
had a better image in their mind for how to specify the
remaining options -- like body color.
Wanna bet that most vendors just throw choices at the user
in whatever order is convenient for the vendor??! I.e., if
we know what file format he wants, then we can refine the
sample rates and data formats to those that are supported
*in* that file format. "Piece of cake!"
Why can't you let the user decide what is important to him
and *then* refine your offerings?! The technical problem
in implementing this is exactly the same! But, the
attitude conveyed to the user is entirely different!
*He* drives the device instead of the device driving *him*!
Exactly. Hence the reason I pick the brains of everyone I
can. There's only so much you can "imagine" -- regardless
of how good your imagination might be!
Right, which is another reason I'm leery of a lot of the
digital mixing console offerings for my remote truck right
now. Were I working with the same act doign the same show,
or pretty close to, i could save my preferred working setup
on whatever storage media it uses, and if it crumps druing
the gig, all I've got to remember is the keystrokes to get
it to load it back upfor me. But, a remote truck might be
working a variety of things, and every time it goes out is
different.
OK, I think I follow your reasoning -- though have no
firsthand experience in that application domain (so I
can't comment on how I would react when faced with
the same issues)
Then there's the old what i do if I"ve got two of us working
the console, one of us is flying in an effects cue with an
aux send, and the other one working with the faders for the
percussions section. How do we decide who gets waht menu
up? IF they solve the ergonomics to my liking though I'd
sure rather run cat5 from venue to truck, or even better,
fiber. Yes, part of that stumbling block is blindness
related (see other post) but it's a combination of factors,
the blindness, as well as the fluid working environment.
Can't multiple menus be displayed concurrently?
For example, there are many desktop GUIs that will
let you "pin" (think: thumbtack) a menu or a dialog
to the desktop so that it is "persistent". When you
want to remove the object, you remove the "pin"
and the object goes away.
So, you could open each thing that you wanted to access,
move them to appropriate parts of the desktop, then
pin them in place so they stay accessible/active.
You might also look into what are called "pie menus".
With these, you open the menu and find yourself in
the center of a circular "pie". From there, you pick
a direction to select a specific item from the menu.
Think of the menu as slices of a pie and you are just
deciding which slice you want -- always from the known
reference point in the center of the pie!
Of course, menus have to be designed to keep the number
of choices small. Much easier to pick from 6 or 8
"slices" than 16 or 18!
.
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