The diary entries of a little girl nearing 30! - Page 402  

So did Muffy get the perfect ending ;).
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by MuppetFace 

 

Awww.

 

Well, on the plus side you can get about three endings at a time from one save point. Once you get to the final stage, a lot of which ending you get is determined from how you answer the last few questions. For instance you can get both chaos bad and order good endings just from replaying the last level but answering the questions differently. The only reason to start from the beginning is to build up your karma meter in a different direction, so technically you only need to play through the game three times at most to get all nine endings.

 

The Babel levels on the other hand are nightmarishly hard.

Yes I realised that those last questions were important. Strangely I found the game had really variable difficulty towards the end. I think I'll just put it aside for now and watch the endings, and then replay it with a friend :3

This is a striking picture. Circa 1988, I'm guessing. Now all you need is an iPhone. And oh yeah, the jacket over sweater thing seems to be coming back, so some things don't change I guess.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardgedee 

 

 

This is a striking picture. Circa 1988, I'm guessing. Now all you need is an iPhone. And oh yeah, the jacket over sweater thing seems to be coming back, so some things don't change I guess.

Looks to me like it's only Sony products in that picture. If it is some sort of marketing or a commercial, I'm guessing that even the character is a Sony product.

What's even more striking is that you mention an Apple product for today instead of a Sony product. I think it says a lot about the market today - who's on top of it and who's not anymore.

I have mixed feelings about utterances of "lo how the mighty have fallen" when comparing the tech leaders of today with the tech leaders of years past.

There's no telling what Sony might have come up with, had things been a little different -- but on the other hand, this is also true of Microsoft, Cisco, Sun, Toshiba, even Samsung, in a way. Most of the companies I just named are profitable, but all of them developed new products in sectors that overlap Apple's, and many of them have produced speculative work (or sometimes even shipping products) that presage things Apple had done. Three or four of those, for example, had previously created internet appliances, basically lightweight devices of limited functionality that presage the iPad in certain ways; Cisco even had one in stores for a couple months before killing the project. They all ended up doing it wrong in some way or another -- whether it's because a limited-function device is too limited without a supporting ecology of affiliated products and services, or because it was ineptly executed, or because the price was too high, or it was too early to market, or or or...

Maybe Sony will revive. Maybe Samsung will figure out how to make handheld devices that are pleasurable to use. Maybe Microsoft will let go of its Windows brand fetishization and dedicate itself and its prodigious UI/UX teams to bang the bugs out of Metro's successor. Maybe the tech world -- bound for years to the need to optimize and eke every iota of speed and and power out of existing electronics in order to produce smooth and natural-flowing software -- will eventually reach a hardware threshold where quality of execution is a more important differentiator than benchmarks. Maybe Apple will pooch itself. Again.

I like it when Sony doesn't suck, and I hope it finds its old spark, shakes the dust out, and starts doing its part again to make the electronics world interesting. On the other hand, the electronics world is pretty exciting already and it's going to continue moving forward with or without Sony. There is a cycle of life -- of sorts -- in the corporate world, and maybe it's not worth mourning companies for their past achievements as much as it is to celebrate those who manage to supersede them.

Well, it's not that I gloat at the downfall of Sony (or Microsoft, etc.). I think it's a little sad to see a giant fall - especially when there's a lot of people depending on the giant in one way or another (as in employees). Of course, it's also sad if I like their products.

The thing is that I also find it interesting at the same time. What did Apple and Google do right this past decennium? Was it strategies? Their business models? Was it pure luck? What did Sony (et cetera) do wrong? What can we learn from this? Which (computer) companies will be here even in the future? Is it perhaps better to invest in the Apple infrastructure than in the Windows/PC (even professionally)? How can they dig themselves up? Will they? And so on.

Sony isn't done yet, but from my understanding, they sure are headed that way. I'm also wondering which companies will follow, if Sony went down.

All I know is that it's pretty exciting times right now in the world of technology, especially in computer science, with the post-PC, gadgets, uncertainty about systems' best before date, and so on. Personally I think it's best to just try to be as agile as I can be - the future isn't set in stone and seeing how Apple could surpass Microsoft is just proof of that.

I like the cherry wood most. Interestingly, it also looks most like the TH900...

Muppetface, you reminded me of something I was pondering a while ago. Does the woodtype matter when it comes to sound? I mean, different densities, hardness, and so on, makes me believe that it matters. However, I still wonder, and how much does it matter?

Quote:

Originally Posted by MuppetFace 

 

I imagine there's quite a range of opinions, similar to cable difference and burn-in.

 

If you read the Lawton Audio site, Mark makes it seem like the wood contributes quite a bit to the sound, and they have you fill out a quaint little questionnaire to select the wood for you based on its acoustic properties rather than letting you choose based on aesthetics. Not surprising, given that they're selling the wood cups as part of an upgrade package.

 

I'd imagine that it plays some difference given the different densities. I mean, they use specific woods for instruments right? When it comes to headphones however I doubt it's a huge difference.

 

I'd love to see an experiment where someone switched out the cups on a pair of headphones for a different set with the same dimensions, just different wood type.

It sure would be an interesting experiment. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by DigitalFreak 

I'm rather sceptical as far as audiophile DAP's are concerned. Seems like these DAP's are either not sounding as good as people were hoping for or if they do sound good the UI is bug ridden. Here's hoping iBasso bucks the trend because I would love a one unit setup instead of a stack.

I'm also skeptical when it comes to audiophile DAPs.  Part of the reason is because the 5.5 Gen iPods have one of the top Wolfson DACs in them, and those are available on eBay for not a lot of money.  You can load RockBox, and they will handle all of the Codecs of an expensive DAP.  And it's easy to upgrade the storage, battery, etc.  It's also easy to use an LOD to get better gain staging.  So, really, I think this is one of those cases where something is considered better partly because it's more expensive.

That said, I do also have an iRiver H140, and the optical input and output is really handy.  I use the optical in to record from a computer (Pandora etc.) without having to mess with rip software.  So my iRiver is primarily used as a recording device.  The iRiver optical out can be used to an optical DAC, and I do that occasionally, but my 5.5G iPod Video has a better UI and sounds really good, and holds a lot more music.

Speaking of wood cups, and I'll defer to Maxvla's expertise here, but from my experience with violins and stringed instruments, it's not just the wood that contributes to acoustics, but the varnish applied as well. People have spent decades trying to recreate the varnish used by guys like Antonius Stradivarius and Giuseppe Guarneri to pair with specially kept, temperature/humidity-controlled blocks of wood.