Thursday, October 30, 2008 Ng: Loud music By Wilson Ng Wired Desktop
IN the past few weeks, I have been listening to my MP3 player (a Microsoft Zune and an iPod) more often than before as I took a new interest in music. I started to notice that many people around me also do the same, listening to music on their iPod–which has become even more popular than the Walkman before. Added to this, of course, are the millions of cell phones that also function as music players.
However, there has to be a caveat here, especially if you are a person that listens to music with the volume turned high. Note that headphones normally cover your whole ear, and if you listen to the music too loud and too often, you might soon experience a strange ringing in your ears.
An EU Scientific Committee came out with a study that says if you listen to loud music an hour a day for five years, you have a 10 percent chance of becoming deaf. The main culprit is the high volume. If you cannot hear the person in front of you speak while you have your headphones or earphones on, then your music is too loud and could pose a risk to your ears.
Obviously, live bands that play too loud and prevent you from having a normal conversation is a dangerous thing as well.
This trend has led Europe to regulate MP3 players sold in stores. The volume if MP3 players sold in Europe are limited to 100 decibels, but then a lot of that would depend on the music itself. In fact, the scientists conclude that anything above 90 decibels with regularity could pose a hearing hazard risk.
Microsoft has been in the news recently as it tries to drum up interest in Windows 7, the next generation Windows system that might debut as early as late 2009 or early 2010. It has just released some details and a beta to some users.
One of the things Microsoft promised is that Windows 7 will let users choose fewer alerts and warnings.
Undoubtedly, Vista is Microsoft’s most secure operating system. But to maintain that, it gives all sorts of warnings and asks for various permissions from users. While it is able to accomplish its objectives, the notifications irritate a lot of users, which by the way, is something that most developers and programmers have to be aware of—there is a fine line dividing a program that is secure and one that is user-friendly and not intrusive.
Microsoft also promised to make Windows 7 faster and to run with less processor power and memory. I guess if you have a souped-up PC, Vista is great; but it is not lost to Microsoft that most of the netbooks (smaller and cheaper notebooks) which are currently in rage now, are usually running XP, because it would become too slow to run Vista.
Microsoft also said that the next version of Word, Excel and other elements of Microsoft office, will be able to run inside a browser.
In the last few days, the company also released Microsoft Azure, which now allows Microsoft to provide web-hosted applications the same way many of its competitors do.
One thing Microsoft also promised is that the next Windows 7 will be available on time – unlike Vista which was delayed for over two years. This is because while there were major code rewrites for Vista, Windows 7 is expected to involve only cosmetic and minor improvements to improve various aspects of Vista.www.ngkhai.net/bizdrivenlife.
