Except that I found my SO on an internet matchmaking service... and she's the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful woman on the planet, inside and out. We would have never crossed paths otherwise... or if we had, we'd never have recognized one another.
OK, sweetie, if you're reading this, yes technically, you found me.:*
To simulate the Universe in every detail since time began, the computer would have to have [10^90] bits - binary digits, or devices capable of storing a 1 or a 0 - and it would have to perform [10^120] manipulations of those bits. Unfortunately there are probably only around [10^80] elementary particles in the Universe.
So... there are only 10^10 bits of unique information to be bookkept for every elementary particle? I find this intuitively inadequte. The precision needed just for locating the particle in the vastness of the universe is immense. Not to mention derivatives of this value wrt time...
Of course, we could see a lot more improvement if we used quantum computing.
Oh, wait - that's already been done! We're part of it.
Didn't anyone read the full interview on Lot 49? It appears to me no one has. I don't know why the whole thing isn't on Salon, it's great stuff.
Scalfani makes some excellent observations, predictions, and explains his business model fully. He carefully selects the artists he features on Fightcloud.
I expected this to generate some insightful, intelligent commentary here on Slashdot, but all I found was kneejerk whining about shipping and handling and the number of artists on the site.
Damn, I'm really disappointed in you all. Go read the full interview.
Greg the Bunny is TV executives what Dilbert is to the IT worker [sic]
Yeah, like that flies. Remember Action? Even funnier and more biting than GtB, and how long did it last, eh?
I lost my respect for FOX when they cancelled that show without even trying to find the right time slot for it. C'mon... Thursday night? It took ABC and CBS nearly a decade to break NBC's domination of that schedule.
It looks nice, but's not as high resolution as you would think.
A colleague of mine told me a surprising story a couple of years ago, right before Ep. 1 came out. She worked on a project to develop a 6-megapixel CCD chip for cinematic cameras. Her employer apparently embarked on this, and actually cut silicon, before consulting with studios. Once they did, they were shocked to learn that most cinematic cameras use only 1.3 megapixel (1280x1024) -- the studios discovered that audiences didn't react well to too much resolution. Viewers complain the pictures look "too perfect." In post production, the filmmakers actually have to add noise to make the image look more natural.
The CCD folks tried hard to sell the hi-res chip with advantages like better aliasing performance, better Modulation Transfer Function, better interpolation capability to mask bad pixels, less sensitivity to fixed pattern noise, etc... but apparently it is still cheaper to fix all those digital artifacts in software during post production rather than start with a higher resolution image. The real showstopper, though, was storage. A 4x increase in storage size for the raw master affected the cost of all their equipment...
Maybe one day audiences will come to expect ultra-sharp, zero noise moving pictures, but right now, many of us operate our 19"+ monitors at higher resolutions than what they'll project SW:AoTC in.
Heh, reminds me of a story that one of the venerable old EE's here loves to tell. Again and again and again...
He was in Nevada back in the 50's working on ECCM (electronic counter-counter measures... jam-proof radar, basically) for the Air Force, and they were testing out the system in the field. And on an intermittent basis, their radar would just be totally washed out with noise... better than the military's best countermeasures could produce. Suspicious, the Air Force tracked down the source...
To an old geezer out in the middle of nowhere using a 1900's era DC arc welder.
That thing put out noise "from DC to light," as the story goes. They tried to buy the welder from the man, but he wouldn't sell it for any amount of money.
And I'm working on the next generation of hyperspectral imagers that generate 80 GB/hr of raw, uncompressed data. Take a look at the data system requirements for AVIRIS, and you'll see what I mean. AVIRIS scan lines are 224 spectral channels by 614 pixels. Our Advanced Hyperspectral Imager collects 2048 spectral channels over 3072 pixels across a 120 FOV and a spectral range of 360 to 1000 nm. This is adequate to cover the globe with better than 10km resolution daily using a sun-synchronous polar orbit.
AVIRIS generates about 140MB per frame, which takes about 15 minutes to collect. In comparison, our instrument generates 6MB per frame, but collects 7 frames per second. We throw about half of this away. At this rate, it would take our instrument only about a month to fill a 120TB volume with raw, level 0 data. Fortunately, specific missions will not require the full FOV or spectral range of our laboratory model, so the cost of the downlinks and data systems can be mitigated somewhat.
Well, my experience has been different. I've been a PacBell customer for over 12 years, and before SBC bought them, their customer service was outstanding. Now it could suck a hard vacuum out of a bell jar.
No, really. Try to use their telephone support line for billing or service changes. You have to sit through a 60 second spiel explaining why you should agree to let the operator use the personal info from your account as a basis for selling you new services. Worse, you have to opt out every time you call. It takes minutes just to get into the queue to talk to a human. And they closed down all but a few of their walk-up customer service windows here in So. CA, so forget about talking to a human in person.
Heck, they're brainwashed before they get lined up and herded into the front of the process.
This may sound like a troll, but it's honestly my own perception: Microsoft operates on a cult-like corporate culture. It was especially evident during the antitrust trial; the behavior of the lawyers and execs and their obvious inability to concede, even to themselves, that they just might not be arguing from a rock solid position. It really did remind me of Scientology.
And I'm offended that Mr. Howard thinks of us "geeks" as such simple, predictable, uniformly malleable children. Methinks he's been working in a cult organization too long.
I went to High School in Denver betewen 81 and 83, and lived within walking distance of the original Tattered Cover in the Cherry Creek shopping district. I chatted with the owner a lot, and she has a genuine love for books, the press, and freedom of expression. I was not suprised to find that she holds such similar regard for privacy rights to fight this search warrant with all her resources.
I've lived in a lot of cities and never come across another general interest bookstore as complete as the Tattered Cover. Cheers and congratulations are due all around.
It won't be long until people have the bandwidth to distribute.WAV files or even.ISO images...
Well, the way that DSL subscription rates are levelling off, and the way DSL providers are going bankrupt and shutting down, and the way telcos are rolling out less and less new DSL capacity, I believe it will take longer than you think. The telcos are discovering that high speed services aren't as profitable as they once envisioned.
Today I can download 256 and 300kbps sample rate MP3s in a reasonable amount of time (10-30 minutes, depending on track length), but that's only because I typically get twice the bps download speeds promised by my provider. When their DSL hosts reach capacity, I expect my download speeds to decline.
And it doesn't take a perfect ear to hear the imperfections in a 128k MP3 - just decent speakers. Try listening to something with a lot of entropy, like techno or Hole, sampled at 128k... one of the worst-sounding MP3's I have is Hole's cover of "Gold Dust Woman" at 128k. Like another poster commented, it "sounds like ass."
My point is that without Napster, I probably would never have learned about Paul Oakenfold, or the more obscure tracks on Hole's albums, and so would never have spent money on their CDs.
Not ironic at all. What's ironic is that the RIAA didn't think of it first!
Napster was an attractive acquisition once they proved widely popular. If Brilliant and Kazaa can establish a huge user base that can actually pay for the content they're downloading, they'll be even more attractive than Napster was. There's a reasonable chance that the record labels will wise up and buy/operate the Altnet and finally quit whining about lost profits. Not only does this kind of network generate revenue via the shared resource angle, but it will also generate more CD sales by promoting new artists and releases that aren't on ClearChannel's top 40 playlists.
Of course, it's not surprising the record execs couldn't innovate this kind of solution to their failing business model: they're middlemen, not creators.
All they want is to add to their 100GB collection of mp3's.
Hmm... looks to me like while the RIAA spent all that time whining and crying and complaining about "piracy," they missed out on a promising business model.
"Here, you can download all of our music you can stomach, as long as you let us load software on your personal computer that lets us use your unused bandwidth and CPU cycles."
Sounds fscking brilliant to me... too bad the record company execs would rather whine than innovate.
First of all, it's not a perfect copy! This myth has been allowed to propagate too far, for too long. The MP3 format is nowhere near perfect, and any compressed format is going to have audible artifacts. People tolerate these because they are getting the MP3 files for essentially nothing. MP3's sampled at bitrates that sound nearly perfect are too large for most peoples' convenience.
Secondly, the internet and personal computers are what is called a "disruptive technology." The Gutenberg press disrupted the monopoly monks had on the bible, and created new business opportunities. The gasoline engine disrupted the monopoly that the rail industry had on passenger and freight travel, and created new business opportunties. So now digital networking is disrupting the old school entertainment industry. They need to either adapt or die. They have no entitlement to their market share in a changing world.
Look around any slashdot article on this issue. People are identifing new business models left and right. Here's one: publish the MP3 version of every release, new and old, on your website for FREE download. Sure, it's digital, but it's not perfect. If the customer wants a perfect copy, he or she can buy one on CD from the same website, or trot over to the record store and plunk down the $18. And I'm not even trying.
The point is, market forces need to be allowed to form their own solution. The content owners, who still generate huge profits, have the power to manipulate the outcome, and right now they are stalling. Hollings is too impatient, it's irresponsible to force the issue -- perhaps he just wants to cap off his legacy before he's forced to retire?
I'd say that I miss objective journalism, but I've become cynical: I no longer believe there ever was any.
(Sig!)
Yeah, I noticed how slanted it was, too, and started to get irritated.
But about halfway thru, I remembered it's a Wisconsin paper, yaknow... everyone I've met from Wisconsin has been so laid back that they're immune to this crap. And the winters are so cold and so long there, there's nothing to do but play computer games, or RPGs, or do drugs for days on end, yaknow. Everybody up there knows this, eh?
Now that I think about KPCC some more, it's probably best to send them a dedicated letter pointing out how this bill is being spun so far to the left that they're hiding the fact that this law will kill the technology market.
Even if you don't live in SoCal, write to KPCC, because that's the station that most of the entertainment idustry gets their NPR dosage from, and NPR is good at exploring stories that get whitewashed in the commercial media. The other major NPR station in the area is KCRW in Santa Monica.
Write specifically to Air Talk, Larry Mantle's two hour issue-oriented program. It's a popular show, Larry is very interested in big stories that get ignored, and he seems very open minded, although he is by no means terse...
Of course, you can also write to your local NPR affiliate, too.
I live in his district, and I sent him a nice, polite, rational letter...
And now this.
Of course, on KPCC's "Call Sheet" - a short entertainment industry news/talk program aired during All Things Considered on the Pasadena affiliate, the host called the CBDTPA "dead on arrival." But one of the panelists put a real spin on the bill:
Alex Ben Block of the Hollywood Star News characterized Hollings as being impatient with the content owners for not coming up with a protection standard. So Hollings wrote this bill to "motivate" the content owners to come up with a workable protection scheme. I wanted to reach though the radio and smack him so hard he spun the other way. Then the host made the DOA comment, to my relief.
So, in addition to mailing your US Rep, send a copy to the Hollywood Star News, care of Alex Ben Block, and to KPCC. I'd provide a link to the Hollywood Star News contact page, but I can't find any mention of the rag, not even here, here, or even here. So be sure and mention Mr. Block in your correspondance to KPCC.
Comments like this (and its replies) are why I continue to read Slashdot despite all its warts. I can count on at least one insightful, indepth, cogent question, commentary, or correction on significant science or technology stories.
Mark me offtopic, thanks. I need a reason to earn more karma since I'm stuck at 50.But I just have to express my gratitude to ontopic posters on every story that add more depth and intelligent commentary than I could get from any other media source. It's worth putting up with the trolls and whiners just to read intelligent, cogent discourse about sci/tech news stories. And invariably there'll be a story where I can offer the same, based on my own areas of expertise.
And finally, to stay on topic, how do these results bear on the theories that DNA first evolved as a result of clay formations that allowed chain-like molecules to aggregate due to the clays' microscopic self-organisation of surface structures? It seemed to me that this was the catalyst for the formation of amino acids and DNA/RNA. Now that's all called into question.
Great story, great comments. All around thought provoking.
Also, [how or] can we do spectroscopic analyses to find amino acids in the matter surrounding other star systems? That would be a fascinating next line of inquiry.
And finally, if I weren't reading/. drunk, I might phrase my questions better... OK, for that reason alone I'm checking off the "No score +1 bonus" here.
A scene at Lothlorien, where Galadriel bestows upon each of the Fellowship a gift which will play an important role later in the Trilogy.
Aha... this is the scene that I missed the most. It really diminished the entire Lothlorien act. And besides, the more Cate and Liv on screen, the better.
I may actually have to give in and buy a DVD player for this one. Maybe I can still find one that I can disable the region codes on...
Slashdot Mirror
OK, sweetie, if you're reading this, yes technically, you found me. :*
Well gee, if you'd learn a wee bit of HTML you wouldn't have to resort to profanity.
So... there are only 10^10 bits of unique information to be bookkept for every elementary particle? I find this intuitively inadequte. The precision needed just for locating the particle in the vastness of the universe is immense. Not to mention derivatives of this value wrt time...
Of course, we could see a lot more improvement if we used quantum computing.
Oh, wait - that's already been done! We're part of it.
Scalfani makes some excellent observations, predictions, and explains his business model fully. He carefully selects the artists he features on Fightcloud.
I expected this to generate some insightful, intelligent commentary here on Slashdot, but all I found was kneejerk whining about shipping and handling and the number of artists on the site.
Damn, I'm really disappointed in you all. Go read the full interview.
No, probably not. I work in a similar place, and would appreciate a similar caveat.
Most of the time, a few four letter words or off color jokes are fine. Nobody scans the content of every page that comes thru the proxy.
But if they decided they needed something to use against us, or if we somehow ticked off the BOFH, then we're hosed.
Yeah, like that flies. Remember Action? Even funnier and more biting than GtB, and how long did it last, eh?
I lost my respect for FOX when they cancelled that show without even trying to find the right time slot for it. C'mon... Thursday night? It took ABC and CBS nearly a decade to break NBC's domination of that schedule.
A colleague of mine told me a surprising story a couple of years ago, right before Ep. 1 came out. She worked on a project to develop a 6-megapixel CCD chip for cinematic cameras. Her employer apparently embarked on this, and actually cut silicon, before consulting with studios. Once they did, they were shocked to learn that most cinematic cameras use only 1.3 megapixel (1280x1024) -- the studios discovered that audiences didn't react well to too much resolution. Viewers complain the pictures look "too perfect." In post production, the filmmakers actually have to add noise to make the image look more natural.
The CCD folks tried hard to sell the hi-res chip with advantages like better aliasing performance, better Modulation Transfer Function, better interpolation capability to mask bad pixels, less sensitivity to fixed pattern noise, etc... but apparently it is still cheaper to fix all those digital artifacts in software during post production rather than start with a higher resolution image. The real showstopper, though, was storage. A 4x increase in storage size for the raw master affected the cost of all their equipment...
Maybe one day audiences will come to expect ultra-sharp, zero noise moving pictures, but right now, many of us operate our 19"+ monitors at higher resolutions than what they'll project SW:AoTC in.
Back in my day, my computer got stoned more than I did.
Back in my day, more letters fell off my screen hairs fell from my head.
Back in my day, a write-protect sticker and/or a condom were effective means of prophylaxis when inserting my media into unfamiliar slots.
I saw them once at an adult industry convention, and I can assure you they do not resemble a sleeping girl...
They resemble a DEAD girl.
The creep factor is surpassed only by the imagery of a room full of headless realdolls hanging from hooks.
He was in Nevada back in the 50's working on ECCM (electronic counter-counter measures... jam-proof radar, basically) for the Air Force, and they were testing out the system in the field. And on an intermittent basis, their radar would just be totally washed out with noise... better than the military's best countermeasures could produce. Suspicious, the Air Force tracked down the source...
To an old geezer out in the middle of nowhere using a 1900's era DC arc welder.
That thing put out noise "from DC to light," as the story goes. They tried to buy the welder from the man, but he wouldn't sell it for any amount of money.
email me and I will reply with a link.
AVIRIS generates about 140MB per frame, which takes about 15 minutes to collect. In comparison, our instrument generates 6MB per frame, but collects 7 frames per second. We throw about half of this away. At this rate, it would take our instrument only about a month to fill a 120TB volume with raw, level 0 data. Fortunately, specific missions will not require the full FOV or spectral range of our laboratory model, so the cost of the downlinks and data systems can be mitigated somewhat.
No, really. Try to use their telephone support line for billing or service changes. You have to sit through a 60 second spiel explaining why you should agree to let the operator use the personal info from your account as a basis for selling you new services. Worse, you have to opt out every time you call. It takes minutes just to get into the queue to talk to a human. And they closed down all but a few of their walk-up customer service windows here in So. CA, so forget about talking to a human in person.
This may sound like a troll, but it's honestly my own perception: Microsoft operates on a cult-like corporate culture. It was especially evident during the antitrust trial; the behavior of the lawyers and execs and their obvious inability to concede, even to themselves, that they just might not be arguing from a rock solid position. It really did remind me of Scientology.
And I'm offended that Mr. Howard thinks of us "geeks" as such simple, predictable, uniformly malleable children. Methinks he's been working in a cult organization too long.
I've lived in a lot of cities and never come across another general interest bookstore as complete as the Tattered Cover. Cheers and congratulations are due all around.
Well, the way that DSL subscription rates are levelling off, and the way DSL providers are going bankrupt and shutting down, and the way telcos are rolling out less and less new DSL capacity, I believe it will take longer than you think. The telcos are discovering that high speed services aren't as profitable as they once envisioned.
Today I can download 256 and 300kbps sample rate MP3s in a reasonable amount of time (10-30 minutes, depending on track length), but that's only because I typically get twice the bps download speeds promised by my provider. When their DSL hosts reach capacity, I expect my download speeds to decline.
And it doesn't take a perfect ear to hear the imperfections in a 128k MP3 - just decent speakers. Try listening to something with a lot of entropy, like techno or Hole, sampled at 128k... one of the worst-sounding MP3's I have is Hole's cover of "Gold Dust Woman" at 128k. Like another poster commented, it "sounds like ass."
My point is that without Napster, I probably would never have learned about Paul Oakenfold, or the more obscure tracks on Hole's albums, and so would never have spent money on their CDs.
"People who drink light beer don't like beer. They just like to pee a lot." --Capitol Brewery
"Liquor in the front. Poker in the back." --Attribution Lost
Napster was an attractive acquisition once they proved widely popular. If Brilliant and Kazaa can establish a huge user base that can actually pay for the content they're downloading, they'll be even more attractive than Napster was. There's a reasonable chance that the record labels will wise up and buy/operate the Altnet and finally quit whining about lost profits. Not only does this kind of network generate revenue via the shared resource angle, but it will also generate more CD sales by promoting new artists and releases that aren't on ClearChannel's top 40 playlists.
Of course, it's not surprising the record execs couldn't innovate this kind of solution to their failing business model: they're middlemen, not creators.
Hmm... looks to me like while the RIAA spent all that time whining and crying and complaining about "piracy," they missed out on a promising business model.
"Here, you can download all of our music you can stomach, as long as you let us load software on your personal computer that lets us use your unused bandwidth and CPU cycles."
Sounds fscking brilliant to me... too bad the record company execs would rather whine than innovate.
Secondly, the internet and personal computers are what is called a "disruptive technology." The Gutenberg press disrupted the monopoly monks had on the bible, and created new business opportunities. The gasoline engine disrupted the monopoly that the rail industry had on passenger and freight travel, and created new business opportunties. So now digital networking is disrupting the old school entertainment industry. They need to either adapt or die. They have no entitlement to their market share in a changing world.
Look around any slashdot article on this issue. People are identifing new business models left and right. Here's one: publish the MP3 version of every release, new and old, on your website for FREE download. Sure, it's digital, but it's not perfect. If the customer wants a perfect copy, he or she can buy one on CD from the same website, or trot over to the record store and plunk down the $18. And I'm not even trying.
The point is, market forces need to be allowed to form their own solution. The content owners, who still generate huge profits, have the power to manipulate the outcome, and right now they are stalling. Hollings is too impatient, it's irresponsible to force the issue -- perhaps he just wants to cap off his legacy before he's forced to retire?
(Sig!)
Yeah, I noticed how slanted it was, too, and started to get irritated.
But about halfway thru, I remembered it's a Wisconsin paper, yaknow... everyone I've met from Wisconsin has been so laid back that they're immune to this crap. And the winters are so cold and so long there, there's nothing to do but play computer games, or RPGs, or do drugs for days on end, yaknow. Everybody up there knows this, eh?
Even if you don't live in SoCal, write to KPCC, because that's the station that most of the entertainment idustry gets their NPR dosage from, and NPR is good at exploring stories that get whitewashed in the commercial media. The other major NPR station in the area is KCRW in Santa Monica.
Write specifically to Air Talk , Larry Mantle's two hour issue-oriented program. It's a popular show, Larry is very interested in big stories that get ignored, and he seems very open minded, although he is by no means terse...
Of course, you can also write to your local NPR affiliate, too.
I live in his district, and I sent him a nice, polite, rational letter...
And now this.
Of course, on KPCC's "Call Sheet" - a short entertainment industry news/talk program aired during All Things Considered on the Pasadena affiliate, the host called the CBDTPA "dead on arrival." But one of the panelists put a real spin on the bill:
Alex Ben Block of the Hollywood Star News characterized Hollings as being impatient with the content owners for not coming up with a protection standard. So Hollings wrote this bill to "motivate" the content owners to come up with a workable protection scheme. I wanted to reach though the radio and smack him so hard he spun the other way. Then the host made the DOA comment, to my relief.
So, in addition to mailing your US Rep, send a copy to the Hollywood Star News, care of Alex Ben Block, and to KPCC. I'd provide a link to the Hollywood Star News contact page, but I can't find any mention of the rag, not even here, here, or even here. So be sure and mention Mr. Block in your correspondance to KPCC.
Mark me offtopic, thanks. I need a reason to earn more karma since I'm stuck at 50.But I just have to express my gratitude to ontopic posters on every story that add more depth and intelligent commentary than I could get from any other media source. It's worth putting up with the trolls and whiners just to read intelligent, cogent discourse about sci/tech news stories. And invariably there'll be a story where I can offer the same, based on my own areas of expertise.
And finally, to stay on topic, how do these results bear on the theories that DNA first evolved as a result of clay formations that allowed chain-like molecules to aggregate due to the clays' microscopic self-organisation of surface structures? It seemed to me that this was the catalyst for the formation of amino acids and DNA/RNA. Now that's all called into question.
Great story, great comments. All around thought provoking.
Also, [how or] can we do spectroscopic analyses to find amino acids in the matter surrounding other star systems? That would be a fascinating next line of inquiry.
And finally, if I weren't reading /. drunk, I might phrase my questions better... OK, for that reason alone I'm checking off the "No score +1 bonus" here.
Aha... this is the scene that I missed the most. It really diminished the entire Lothlorien act. And besides, the more Cate and Liv on screen, the better.
I may actually have to give in and buy a DVD player for this one. Maybe I can still find one that I can disable the region codes on...