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There are already MPlayer, the ffmpeg library, mjpegtools, bbmpeg, Ogg Vorbis and Theora, Cinelerra... I for one don't feel that I need a bone thrown to me by Real, much less a proprietary, binary-only, NDA-encumbered (no, more like encrusted) one.

Others' mileage, of course, may vary. I admit, I may be just preaching to the choir here-- but I hope that what I just named off the top of my head can show potential moviemakers some of the options that are available.

I think what you meant was the Type R. ;)

Have a look at these links: 2 1

Here's some of what I saw.

While a 555 timer offers flexibility, I decided a christmas tree light and relay required less effort. Let's see if I've got that page up. Yep Dinky Cox page lacks space!

It's used for so many Blast implementations because it's well suited for Blast. That doesn't make Altivec "far superior to anything Intel has". One might as well lambast Motorola for their crappy implementation of SSE2. Besides, Blast isn't the only computationally intensive programming task out there. It wouldn't kill you to give the G4 some props without re-mouthing Apple's marketing line. Why not give us some goodies about G4 vs P4 performance at CFD, for example? If it's as flat out superior as you claim it to be the proof shouldn't be too hard to find.

The high end G5 beats the best PC you can build right now with dual Xeon CPU's

Well, according to the benchmarks done at NASA the G5's performance is equivalent to the performance one could get from the best P4 available in November 2002. So I would say your claim is up for some dispute. Is it really so hard to just plain like the computer you want without needing to believe it's the "best"?

I love my s800 too...except for the cyan fade problem. High ozone environments cause the cyan to fade in just a couple of months, even on high quality photo paper, so that the photos have a strong orange cast to them.

The Canon paper is the worst for this. The initial photo prints are indistinguishable from photo-lab prints. But in a month or two they are so faded as to be worthless.

This problem is well documented, and one guy dedicated a site to testing different papers to see which worked best. See here: Orange Shift Paper Site. Note, look for the s800 link on the left menu to read about this issue for the Canon. Obviously, from the site's name, you can see that Epson has the same problem.

The only long term solution is to put the prints under glass or clear plastic to seal out the air. Paper makes a huge difference, and I've used Kodak Ultima for awhile (be sure to set the printer driver to "plain paper" with Ultima to prevent the ink from beading on the surface of the print), and the prints are relatively fade free for a year or so. But they are only 85% as good as the ones on the Canon paper to begin with. So you have to choose: great prints for two months, or pretty good prints for a year or so.

Anyway, the new Epson 2200 was designed to eliminate this issue (among other things). I'd like to see Canon fix it too, since the s800 is otherwise a great color printer.

FWIW, here's more information on the satellite outage:

Loral Skynet
500 Hills Drive
P.O. Box 7018
Bodminster, NJ 07921

July 11, 2003

Mr. Michael Day
President
Atlanta Direct-to-Home (ADTH)
5388 New Peachtree Rd.
Chamblee, GA 30341

Dear Mr. Day,

As reported in the news media, it appears that an unknown entity is blocking certain signals into Loral Skynet's Telstar 12 satellite, which signals carry Farsi language and Iranian programming. Skynet is taking all appropriate actions to resolve the interference, and regrets any inconvenience to Atlanta DTH ("ADTH") and its customers caused by the interference. This letter summaries our understanding of the source of the interference and our efforts to resolve it.

Interference into Transponder 10 on Telstar 12 was first reported to Skynet by one of ADTH's uplinkers on July 5, 2003 at approximately 5:35 p.m. EST, and ADTH spoke with Skynet operations personnel within minutes thereafter to discuss the problem. Skynet immediately instituted its standard procedures for detecting the cause of the interference, including investigating any cross-pole carrier or adjacent operator issues and any recent uplinking activity that may have adversely affected the carrier. Skynet determined that none of those factors contributed to the interference, and that the Telstar 12 satellite and Transponder 10 were, and had been, operating properly (and, in fact, continue to operate properly). As a result, Skynet concluded that the interference was caused by a third party.

Similarly, ADTH instituted several procedures to attempt to resolve the interference, including reducing its bandwidth and splitting capacity among three carriers. Despite these procedures, intermittent interference continued.

Accordingly, Skynet contacted a transmitter geo-location service, TLS, Inc., to attempt to locate the transmit source of the interference. TLS was able to provide an ellipse of the most probable location of the source of the interference, which it identified as being in the vicinity of Havana, Cuba. As the services being interfered with are licensed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the probable source of the interference is not within United States boundaries, on July 9 Skynet forwarded the information concerning the interference and TLS's investigation to FCC personnel. The FCC has contacted TLS for further technical discussions.

As Skynet continues its efforts to eliminate the interference into Telstar 12, I want to reassure you that Skynet understands ADTH's concerns and those of its customers regarding their broadcasting integrity, and Skynet remains full committed to resolving the issue as quickly as possible.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to discuss this matter further.

Sincerely,

Peggy A. Courter
Director, Client SErvices

Copies of the original fax have been posted online (scanned page 1 | scanned page 2)

FWIW, here's more information on the satellite outage:

Loral Skynet
500 Hills Drive
P.O. Box 7018
Bodminster, NJ 07921

July 11, 2003

Mr. Michael Day
President
Atlanta Direct-to-Home (ADTH)
5388 New Peachtree Rd.
Chamblee, GA 30341

Dear Mr. Day,

As reported in the news media, it appears that an unknown entity is blocking certain signals into Loral Skynet's Telstar 12 satellite, which signals carry Farsi language and Iranian programming. Skynet is taking all appropriate actions to resolve the interference, and regrets any inconvenience to Atlanta DTH ("ADTH") and its customers caused by the interference. This letter summaries our understanding of the source of the interference and our efforts to resolve it.

Interference into Transponder 10 on Telstar 12 was first reported to Skynet by one of ADTH's uplinkers on July 5, 2003 at approximately 5:35 p.m. EST, and ADTH spoke with Skynet operations personnel within minutes thereafter to discuss the problem. Skynet immediately instituted its standard procedures for detecting the cause of the interference, including investigating any cross-pole carrier or adjacent operator issues and any recent uplinking activity that may have adversely affected the carrier. Skynet determined that none of those factors contributed to the interference, and that the Telstar 12 satellite and Transponder 10 were, and had been, operating properly (and, in fact, continue to operate properly). As a result, Skynet concluded that the interference was caused by a third party.

Similarly, ADTH instituted several procedures to attempt to resolve the interference, including reducing its bandwidth and splitting capacity among three carriers. Despite these procedures, intermittent interference continued.

Accordingly, Skynet contacted a transmitter geo-location service, TLS, Inc., to attempt to locate the transmit source of the interference. TLS was able to provide an ellipse of the most probable location of the source of the interference, which it identified as being in the vicinity of Havana, Cuba. As the services being interfered with are licensed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the probable source of the interference is not within United States boundaries, on July 9 Skynet forwarded the information concerning the interference and TLS's investigation to FCC personnel. The FCC has contacted TLS for further technical discussions.

As Skynet continues its efforts to eliminate the interference into Telstar 12, I want to reassure you that Skynet understands ADTH's concerns and those of its customers regarding their broadcasting integrity, and Skynet remains full committed to resolving the issue as quickly as possible.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to discuss this matter further.

Sincerely,

Peggy A. Courter
Director, Client SErvices

Copies of the original fax have been posted online (scanned page 1 | scanned page 2)

(Pardon if any of these links are going stale.)

You said:
Altivec is nice, for what it is meant for (mainly media type calculations, signal processing, etc.) But scientists will prefer SSE2.

Well I was under the impression, that if I need double-precision floating point arithmetic I use the FPU (which is quite fast with the G5 as you can see in Fig. 1 of the Article).
Concerning fast vector operations - some problems can be "dumbed down" to take advantage of the faster single precision units and lastly you can do an additional Newton-Raphson refinement step where double precision is needed.
Your claim "scientists will prefer SSE2" was proven wrong by the article, where the Jet3D test suite was only ported to take advantage of the Altivec SIMD unit, not the SSE2 SIMD unit - unless of course you argue that NASA engineers are not scientists ;-)

IMHO real scientists use whatever they think is best suited to solve their specific problem.

I publish a number of arcade documents under the Open Content license. Some people have used the license fairly. One person blatently stole a bunch of stuff for a commercial site. Worse, they were in England.

I'm pleased to say that he went to bat for me and, as a third party, convinced the other person to take down the material, where I as an individual was unsuccessful.

I'll look into the Creative Commons, but I'm sorry to see this go.

The web pages that I had published are gone, but I'm working on something new. An Arcade Gameroom Design Information website. I need to change my OC license links... they're bad. But take a look! And, yes, "cox.net" is COX cable. ;)

The Cox limits are 30GB down per month, 2GB max per day, and 7.5GB up per month, 1GB max per day.

Slashdot screencap

You should check out whether your cable company offers digital phone service. Cox Communications does in many locations, and they claim to have similiar uptime to regular phone service, but much cheaper prices.

I would have gone with them when I moved to California, but at the time they didn't have the service available in my neighborhood. I'm still hoping to check them out sometime.

Consider that one of the experiments on Columbia was to see if popcorn pops differently in space.

Actually, I believe this is part of a greater experiment in time-travel.

>>Greetings people of Earth. I am the ambassador from the Galactic Federation. Now that you have achieved the required levels of societal and technological advancement, we are allowed to make contact.

And we have come here to serve man.

If we were being kept as farm animals, it would seem to me to make more sense to harvest us covertly. After all, with the exception of most politicians humnans are a sentient race and can figure out they're being eaten, while turkeys can't.

The end all is that the writers have to put in some kind of plot device to indicate iminent danger to the human race. And its all pretty shallow. They have to instill a mystery and a cover up, and a rebel force to fight against it, etc. They really need better motivation for all this to work well. Otherwise, is just another waste of celluloid.

It's been tried many times, but the only two I can think of right now that have got it right are The Twilight Zone and Predator.

A mini-itx project and three atx.

Funny stuff! Mod up. For those of you who missed reading the book or seeing the movie Dune, a picture of the gom jabbar scene is here... The scene depicts Paul Atreides being "tested" by holding his right hand in a pain box, which simulates extreme heat... The reverend mother is holding a gom jabbar to his neck, and theatens to stab him with it if he pulls his hand out of the box. Perhaps this was Frank Herbert's depiction of what job interviews felt like to him. :^)

Next on ask slashdot:

Show us your cool new dwelling modifications...

Like the Type R Toilet!!!

My view is here.

Here is the summary of a dual Xeon system I am thinking about building. It has links to more information about each part, and where cheapest to buy them. I have done a lot of research into this since last weekend, and am still not sure if I am going to do it or not.

For $1300, you too can build a kick ass system like this too. Follow the links.

The R-Type American Standard

I've also had troubles with this as my secondhand console collection has grown. What I've done with the systems is to put each in one drawer of a plastic set of drawers with cables coming out the back (a tight fit, but possible if things don't close all the way). All the controllers for that system go in the drawer when not in use to keep things from tangling like crazy. I have a little plastic thing that holds all the carts. For cabling, I got one of these switches (except 5-in-1, I can't find it on their site) for $20 from Wal-Mart and it works great.

Just wanted to point out to everyone (it's been mentioned before in some replys, but what the heck) that there are *TWO* unofficial Linux data installers available here and here. All you need are your installation CDs. No Windows partition required.

After installing the data, you're then going to need some form of Wine (the latest Wine worked for me). You then add the following to the end of ~/.wine/system.reg:

[Software//Bioware//NWN//Neverwinter] 1048122278
"Location"="X://nwn"

With drive X (or what have you) set up to point to wherever the nwn data directory is.

Finally you download and run the standalone patch using Wine.

-Colin

Are you typing from a cell phone or something?

Here's an english translation:
"If you don't have a Windows install, you can extract the data from your CDs with these tools:
http://icculus.org/~ravage/nwn/nwn_linux_installer .run http://members.cox.net/monteslu/nwn_data_installer .run
There may be issues since the stuff extracted from the CDs isn't patched up to 1.29, but I can't say for sure. Reply with info and/or tips if you have any."

The unofficial Linux game data Installer is a start, but the bioware site says to copy the files from a patched windoze install.

Linux still gets treated 2nd class :(

Some industrious Linux elves have built a data extraction tool. You can find it here

I'm guessing someone could probably make a package of the difference between the data on the CDs and the 1.29 required by the client, but you could probably extract the data from the patch files.

• MD5
• SHA-160 (SHA-1)
• SHA-256
• SHA-384
• SHA-512
• RIPEMD-160
• HAVAL (3, 4, 5 passes; 128, 160, 192, 224, 256 bits)
• Good old CRC-32
• Two modes of operation: you can take hash of file or text string
• Files up to 4,294,967,295 bytes length can be processed
• Drag'n'Drop support
• Calculation is performed by separate thread and can be stopped at any time by user. The thread runs at low priority, so you're able to work with other programs while hashing big files
• Sound signal after lengthy operations

Wait no more. From our friends at Farq.

And now that we have the cursory Twilight Zone reference out of the way... :)

+1 funny, tho.

Computerized Go-To telescopes are fine, and if your father is into technological gadgets, go ahead and him one. But astronomy is a learning hobby, and unless he wants to learn about the night sky, the go-to scope you've purchased will end up gathering dust.

The person who recommended a couple of books and a set of binoculars was right. Binoculars are always good to have, even if you have a telescope. However, I understand that you want to have a fun present to give your Dad. With that in mind, I'll give you a basic recommendation:

It really isn't that hard to find objects in the sky with a manually operated telescope. For $300-500 (including shipping) you can buy a 6" or 8" dobsonian-mounted telescope with decent optics. A "dob" is sturdy, simple and most of the money goes into optics, not the computer. At this price range, you just can't make a good scope and a good computer. A 6-8" dob for $300-500 is much better optically than a go-to scope in the same price range.

There are many places to get this type of scope: Orion Telescope has a nice set of beginner dobsonians. Thrown in a pointing device like a Telrad or a Rigel Quikfinder. Either of these finders are a real help in locating objects.

Add in a couple of good beginner's books. Turn Left at Orion is good, as is Nightwatch.

Finally, encourage your dad to join the local astronomy club. The club where I live is full of retired guys who enjoy the night sky.

check this site out, it seems highly relevant to the school subject:

The Salmon Manifesto

The GP32 can't even been seen as an issue due to its pure lack of power. While it has a higher MHZ rating it doesn't have any special hardware to deal with sprite effects, background effects and more...

With a much more powerful processor and 8MB of RAM, GP32 can emulate GBA's hardware effects in software. I've owned a GP32 for about half a year, and a GBA since launch date. Many GP32 games meet and exceed GBA graphics, such as Astonishia Story R.

Plus, a GBA emulator for GP32 is in the works. TONS of other systems, including NES, GameGear/Sega Master System, and SNES are already emulated well on GP32. Despite all this, however, the one thing really keeping GP32 back from direct competition is Nintendo's stranglehold on the handheld industry and the Game Boy's huge library of games.

For more information about GP32, check out my old handheld site, InsertCredit, and GP32news.com.

Although FPGAs may be used to emulate CPUs etc., that does not maximize their potential speed and flexibility. Traditional CPUs are severely restricted to only one (or several) operations/cycle. Thus, most silicon (gates) on general-purpose CPUs is wasted during each cycle with less than 1% active/cycle. FPGAs are inherently parallel, allowing orders of magnitude more operations/cycle. You can pack applications to maximize the operations/cycle and if you exceed the 6 million gates/FPGA chip, even extend to additional FPGAs & FPGA boards. This allows tailoring FPGAs to applications in a reconfigurable way to optimize silicon use. Viva simplifies coding of large-scale applications in a 3-dimensional way (x & y screen axes plus drilling in for the 3rd dimension) which is more intuitive than traditional 1-dimensional sequential line-by-line ASCII coding. The next generation seem to adapt well to graphic (iconic) coding perhaps better than many of us who may have our tradition in 1-D ASCII coding.

Aaand i just found this site which is creating a pseudo Spectrum :-) Not full emulation, but the same basic idea. Sounds interesting.

After watching that drivel, I can't help but chuckle in disgust imagining all the hours and effort placed in the making of that hog wash. Being it's from GNN, it's not art. I really can't say I've seen anything more infantile in its feeble attempt at rebellion. If this crap wins anything @ Sundance, Sundance loses all credibility with me, and my support. It'd be different if it had any redeeming value. Well, I may have to bite my tongue if you think of it in a comedic sense.
Lest we forget why we are even in the position to have real factual current events to cull patheticly manipulated sound and video bites from for subversion of the TRUTH, we might forget it was a horrific act of war in and on our country that made it possible. The masses of those who'd see us living in their slowly tightening grip of terrorism, and their supporters, get less than they deserve no matter what happens. I'd like to see as much devotion to a collage of the simple truth in terrorism and all the countless people who might be alive today if we'd acted sooner.
In the mean time, I'll watch THIS MOVIE to get THAT MOVIE out of my head.

Oh, but Lord of the Rings origami exists!

What? It's the One Ring. :]

They've been calling. They've been mailing letters. SBC has really really tried to get me to switch back from Worldcom ("The Neighborhood") as my local carrier with unmetered long distance... oh... and unmetered "local long distance" in my own area code. Here is their latest attempt to convince me to switch back.

They don't have anything close to what I'm getting now. In fact, SBC just got through dropping the plan I had with them, "Local Plus", which was unlimited "local long distance" (again, calls inside your area code that are long distance) so they've moved even further away from what I want.

I figure they're probably going to harrass me for an eternity or until I switch back. I'm more than happy to them to be spending money to pursue me. I'm tired of giving my money to them.

I have identified only two companies that I have dealt with which I believe actually hate their customers and work against them. The first was TCI, the second was SBC. Even at a state level, we have people working with/against SBC (your PUC... public utilities commission, where they go to make their rate and service changes) to prevent them from completely screwing everyone over. Doesn't that tell you something if your own state is protecting you against this company?

See the Cox Byte Cap FAQ. In short, it's 2GB per day and/or 30GB of downloads per month and 1GB per day and/or 7.5GB per month of uploads.

Search engine for obscure food spread products.

i dunno, it sounds like they aren't just blocking them from the sounds of that article. read this. and then read this. here's another reason why you might be getting this...

a friend and i were in the library at school checking out the site like all loyal /. fans do when we ran across this. im sure this isnt new...but it was hte first time ive noticed it. for a very left-wing anti-microsoft (bill gates is a fucking borg for heavensake)site, they sell out pretty easily. i was so dissapointed. its one thing to need to pay your bills and maybe have a little extra cash...but to undermine your core principals, the very foundation that your project is built on...thats just pathetic. even if you decide that ads are necessary, most of us can come to terms with that, but why microsoft? why undermine your purpose and value? needless to say i am very dissapointed. (btw...all ms advocate fags who are going to critisize my argument by making my misspellings obvious, get a fuckign clue and realize that my bad grammar/spelling doesnt change the fact of the truth. that being you suck.)

K ref="http://www.atarimagazines.com/ads/">Antic Magazine Ad Gallery, Vintage Computer Ads, and especially the Obsolete Technology web page.

And if you don't want to "nice" the root servers...bind to query the root servers.

1. 
   Friends don't let friends run BIND
   
2. 
   I'm not adversely affecting the root nameservers, and they're designed to handle a great deal more traffic than they do. Heck, even under a DDOS attack, about half of them stayed responsive.
   
3. 
   Since I run djbdns, my DNS is more reliable than my ISP's, anyway.
   

I may have been exaggerating the point a little for your education, so I'll refer you to this web page that I googled to in less than 30 seconds instead which has a photo showing it:
Photo of leonids meteor shower

Some of the folks who brought us the old Pink Floyd / Wizard of Oz synchronization have investigated others, and some among them think this is a new form of art called synchronicity art.

Have you ever read this?

I keep looking at the photographs and can't shake the feeling that what we are really seeing is the class project for realistic computer graphics. The car is just too glossy and perfect looking, even inside.

Maybe I'm just getting paranoid, because of this Beetle