Pleconaril (prounounced plah-CONN-ah-rill) is the latest in a short list of medicines that kill viruses.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding has always been that viruses are technically not classified as living things, and thus they can't be killed. (Destroyed, perhaps, but certainly not killed.)
I was a huge fan of Dashboard, back in the Windows 3.x days, and it had nothing resembling the taskbar, in either appearance or function.
Dashboard was a glorified program launcher. Windows 95's Start menu was pretty much a direct rip-off from Dashboard, as were Windows 98's toolbars (e.g. Quick Launch).
According to this article on The Adrenaline Vault, Road Runner "will begin to carry AOL services on its high-speed cable system". Road Runner customers will also begin receiving junk mail from AOL.
However, this will not be happening immediately, since "the merger is subject to certain closing conditions, including shareholder approvals, and is expected to close near the end of 2000".
So it looks like I at least have until the end of the millennium to find an alternative cable ISP before I am assimilated into the evil AOL empire. Cold comfort, to be sure, but at least not as bad as I initially thought.
Macrovision copy protection is easily defeated using a "stabilizer" box. There are many of them out there, but the one I can vouch for is the Sima Color Corrector. Not only does it perfectly disable Macrovision protection on all the DVD-Video discs and VHS tapes I've ever tried it on, it also has an array of useful image adjustment controls.
The only downsides I can think of are:
1. It supports only composite video (not S-video).
2. It's expensive ($179.99 list price).
I bought mine from Cameraworld.com for $99.99, with free shipping within the US.
...if you can get to WAV you can easily get to MP3, why even mention it?
If you can get to WAV then you can easily get to MP3? Depends. Consider:
WAV is only a wrapper format. There are a few de facto "standard" WAV data types, such as the ubiquitous PCM, but there nevertheless is no such thing as a "standard WAV format". Many WAVs are encoded using a Microsoft ACM (audio compression manager) codec, and in order to decode that WAV at all, you would need to have at least the decoder portion of the codec installed on your system.
For example, it is theoretically possible to create a WAV which is actually an ACM-encapsulated RA file. Now how would you decode that WAV? Only with an RA codec!
Creating an MP3 requires an MP3 encoder. An MP3 encoder is not a trivial thing to write! When software is advertised as being able to create MP3 files (in addition to WAV or whatever else), it is implicit that the software contains a built-in MP3 encoder, eliminating the need for third-party (and possibly expensive) MP3 encoder.
In summary: In order to "get to MP3" from WAV, you would need both (a) the appropriate codec to decode the WAV in question; and (b) an MP3 encoder.
On my Windows box, whenever given a choice, I always opt for Windows Media over Real. Why? Because the current RealPlayer clients are bloated, clunky, unstable, and slow.
Back in the early days (circa 1995), RealAudio was king, and no one else could even come close. But now that the competition has caught up and overtaken Real (in several ways), having to play any kind of Real media is just a big annoyance to me.
I mean, direct sensory simulation of the brain is obviously 'the future', but that doesn't make me slag off people who say that digital projectors are 'the future';)
I'm slagging Ebert off not because he said that something is the future, but because he said that something is not the future.
What if I said to you that direct sensory simulation of the brain is not "the future" because the future is digital projectors?
I'm betting you would say something to the effect of, "Well, I'm sure that digital projectors will figure in somewhere in the near future, but please don't entirely discount the possibility of direct sensory stimulation of the brain because of that."
I agree with you. It was Ebert's very sloppy sweeping use of "the future" that I was protesting against in the first place.
Indeed, for all we know, MaxiVision48 could very well be the projection system of the (near) future. However, for Ebert to say flat-out that "the future" does not hold any place for digital projection systems is just silly.
Ebert might possibly have made some sense if he had qualified the phrase "the future", as in: "Digital projection systems are just not going to cut it in the near future, because the technology employed in the current digital system is not yet mature; meanwhile, there are cheaper better analog alternatives, such as the MaxiVision48".
Forget about the laughable technical errors in Ebert's article; let's cut to the chase. Ebert makes the following sweeping statement:
I have seen the future of the cinema, and it is not digital.
This is absurd. Ebert sees a demonstration of the current implementation of a video projection system, doesn't like what he sees, and then jumps to the ludicrous conclusion that "digital" projection is inherently a Bad Thing.
I take strong exception. Based on Ebert's review, I agree that the current implementation probably does have a ways ago. (I'll reserve final judgment until I've seen it for myself.) However, I will say for the record that the future of cinema is digital, and in a very big way. The digital projection system of the future will blow today's technology away -- and yes, that includes Ebert's precious MaxiVision48 system.
This "future" may not be as close as the hype has been leading some of us to believe, but it is there, and it will be waiting for us once the technology matures. Anyone who doesn't see this as self-evident must be unbelievably myopic when it comes to technology.
Re:It's not illegal to photocopy currency
on
IDs in Color Copies
·
· Score: 1
Enlarging by 20% and then subsequently reducing by 20% will result in an image that's 96% the size of the original -- not 100%.
If you have an image that's been enlarged by 20%, you would have to reduce it by 1/6 (that is, 16.66...%) to get it back to exactly the original size. Now, 16.66...% is not exactly a "round" number. Perhaps most common photocopiers are deliberately designed not to have presets (or any other means) to allow them to perfectly "undo" their own enlargements or reductions.
No. Don't embed the invisible GIF itself, but rather an IMG tag that points to an invisible GIF hosted somewhere on the Net. Tack on extra tracking information to the GIF's URL if desired, which later can be parsed on the server side.
Embedding the GIF itself in the e-mail message wouldn't do anything useful.
FWIW, when I first heard "Celeron", I automatically assumed that the derivation was from [ac]celer[ati]on, or at least the root word thereof. I'm surprised that I seem to be only one to have made this (imagined?) connection.
Does anybody know the actual story behind the name?
Great movies v. great animated movies
on
Review:Toy Story 2
·
· Score: 5
I'm always disheartened when I hear someone praise a wonderful movie like Toy Story solely for its technical merits. Toy Story was an astounding technical achievement, to be sure, but what really impressed me about it was that it was simply a great movie, period. I went in to the theater expecting forgettable eye candy, and I came out an hour and a half later having witnessed true movie magic. Toy Story manages to be both riotously funny and deeply moving, and is easily one of the best movies (if not the best movie) released by Disney in the 1990s.
Similarly, whenever I mention to someone how much I liked the movie Antz, the invariable response is to ask me what I thought of A Bug's Life. I bristle at the automatic lumping together of these two movies into some imagined category merely due to some unfortunate superficial similarities, namely that they're both computer-animated, and that they're both about insects.
It's a pity that Antz is doomed forever to be compared to the immeasurably inferior A Bug's Life (and let's not get into the infamous behind-the-scenes politics about the making of these two movies). While Antz was smart, relentlessly witty, and darkly funny, A Bug's Life was distressingly shallow, antiseptic, and soulless -- especially considering that many of the people behind it were responsible for the great Toy Story.
I went into Toy Story 2 on Thanksgiving Day with giddy anticipation tempered with a healthy measure of trepidation due to my previous disappointing experience with A Bug's Life.
I am happy to report that I needn't have worried. Toy Story 2 is a terrific movie. I sat through almost the entire film with a goofy grin that lasted well after I left the theater. While not as technically groundbreaking as the original Toy Story was (the improvements are more evolutionary than revolutionary), Toy Story 2 nevertheless packs quite a punch. It's certainly more ambitious in its story and action sequences -- almost to a fault (the action becomes perhaps a little too frenetic towards the end). It also manages to explore deep existential issues just like the first movie, although some of the emotional wallop has diminished and occasionally seems forced.
Which of the Toy Story movies did I prefer? It's a very tough call. While the sequel wildly exceeded my very high expectations -- which is saying quite a bit -- if forced to choose, I'd have to go with the original.
I believe that the greatness of a movie should be judged for the totality of the experience, and not merely a single facet. You may have noticed that in my evaluations of the various computer-animated movies of recent years, animation quality hardly figured in at all (especially since they were all excellently animated, albeit with different degrees of excellence).
I just tried it. I inserted a DVD into the drive, went to explorer, dragged d:\video_ts\vts_01_0.vob to c:\temp, and it copied fine as far as I can tell.
Did you run DeCSS before doing this? If so, the copy operation succeeded probably because DeCSS left the drive "unlocked".
The day identified at 28-8-888 on the Gregorian calendar is, always was, and always will be 28-8-888 on the Gregorian calendar, regardless of who is or isn't using the Gregorian calendar on that day.
Is? Yes. Always will be? Yes. Always was? Nope.
The Gregorian calendar did not yet exist on 28-8-888, so that date was not 28-8-888 at the time. It did not actually become 28-8-888 until the day the Gregorian calendar was devised, many centuries later.
You could always think of weekends as being like bookends: one at each end. This of course uses "end" in the delimiter sense of the word -- rather than the temporal sense that one might assume when talking about time.
It seems to me that any video piraters could just distribute the encrypted VOB files along with pirated playback software.
It's impossible to copy the encrypted.VOB file straight off a DVD-ROM. Go ahead and try to do it (using Windows Explorer or whatever file manager you normally use): you'll get an error message, because the file is encrypted, and the drive itself is designed to refuse you access if you don't have the key.
Slashdot Mirror
Overrated? By whom, exactly?
Slashdot should be modified so that messages cannot be meta-moderated before they have even been moderated.
In any case, I make a valid point in my original post (about very sloppy journalism on the part of CNN). See #183 for additional information.
The article states:
Pleconaril (prounounced plah-CONN-ah-rill) is the latest in a short list of medicines that kill viruses.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding has always been that viruses are technically not classified as living things, and thus they can't be killed. (Destroyed, perhaps, but certainly not killed.)
I was a huge fan of Dashboard, back in the Windows 3.x days, and it had nothing resembling the taskbar, in either appearance or function.
Dashboard was a glorified program launcher. Windows 95's Start menu was pretty much a direct rip-off from Dashboard, as were Windows 98's toolbars (e.g. Quick Launch).
But the taskbar owes nothing to Dashboard.
According to this article on The Adrenaline Vault, Road Runner "will begin to carry AOL services on its high-speed cable system". Road Runner customers will also begin receiving junk mail from AOL.
However, this will not be happening immediately, since "the merger is subject to certain closing conditions, including shareholder approvals, and is expected to close near the end of 2000".
So it looks like I at least have until the end of the millennium to find an alternative cable ISP before I am assimilated into the evil AOL empire. Cold comfort, to be sure, but at least not as bad as I initially thought.
Not sure what PCMICA stands for, but PCMCIA stands for Personal Computer Memory Card International Association .
Or, if you prefer: People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.
I'm all for making fun of Southerners, but isn't that so damn easy.
There's a huge difference between making fun of rednecks, and making fun of rednecks to their faces.
Macrovision copy protection is easily defeated using a "stabilizer" box. There are many of them out there, but the one I can vouch for is the Sima Color Corrector. Not only does it perfectly disable Macrovision protection on all the DVD-Video discs and VHS tapes I've ever tried it on, it also has an array of useful image adjustment controls.
The only downsides I can think of are:
1. It supports only composite video (not S-video).
2. It's expensive ($179.99 list price).
I bought mine from Cameraworld.com for $99.99, with free shipping within the US.
If you can get to WAV then you can easily get to MP3? Depends. Consider:
- WAV is only a wrapper format. There are a few de facto "standard" WAV data types, such as the ubiquitous PCM, but there nevertheless is no such thing as a "standard WAV format". Many WAVs are encoded using a Microsoft ACM (audio compression manager) codec, and in order to decode that WAV at all, you would need to have at least the decoder portion of the codec installed on your system.
- Creating an MP3 requires an MP3 encoder. An MP3 encoder is not a trivial thing to write! When software is advertised as being able to create MP3 files (in addition to WAV or whatever else), it is implicit that the software contains a built-in MP3 encoder, eliminating the need for third-party (and possibly expensive) MP3 encoder.
In summary: In order to "get to MP3" from WAV, you would need both (a) the appropriate codec to decode the WAV in question; and (b) an MP3 encoder.For example, it is theoretically possible to create a WAV which is actually an ACM-encapsulated RA file. Now how would you decode that WAV? Only with an RA codec!
On my Windows box, whenever given a choice, I always opt for Windows Media over Real. Why? Because the current RealPlayer clients are bloated, clunky, unstable, and slow.
Back in the early days (circa 1995), RealAudio was king, and no one else could even come close. But now that the competition has caught up and overtaken Real (in several ways), having to play any kind of Real media is just a big annoyance to me.
I mean, direct sensory simulation of the brain is obviously 'the future', but that doesn't make me slag off people who say that digital projectors are 'the future' ;)
I'm slagging Ebert off not because he said that something is the future, but because he said that something is not the future.
What if I said to you that direct sensory simulation of the brain is not "the future" because the future is digital projectors?
I'm betting you would say something to the effect of, "Well, I'm sure that digital projectors will figure in somewhere in the near future, but please don't entirely discount the possibility of direct sensory stimulation of the brain because of that."
I agree with you. It was Ebert's very sloppy sweeping use of "the future" that I was protesting against in the first place.
Indeed, for all we know, MaxiVision48 could very well be the projection system of the (near) future. However, for Ebert to say flat-out that "the future" does not hold any place for digital projection systems is just silly.
Ebert might possibly have made some sense if he had qualified the phrase "the future", as in: "Digital projection systems are just not going to cut it in the near future, because the technology employed in the current digital system is not yet mature; meanwhile, there are cheaper better analog alternatives, such as the MaxiVision48".
But alas, he didn't.
Forget about the laughable technical errors in Ebert's article; let's cut to the chase. Ebert makes the following sweeping statement:
I have seen the future of the cinema, and it is not digital.
This is absurd. Ebert sees a demonstration of the current implementation of a video projection system, doesn't like what he sees, and then jumps to the ludicrous conclusion that "digital" projection is inherently a Bad Thing.
I take strong exception. Based on Ebert's review, I agree that the current implementation probably does have a ways ago. (I'll reserve final judgment until I've seen it for myself.) However, I will say for the record that the future of cinema is digital, and in a very big way. The digital projection system of the future will blow today's technology away -- and yes, that includes Ebert's precious MaxiVision48 system.
This "future" may not be as close as the hype has been leading some of us to believe, but it is there, and it will be waiting for us once the technology matures. Anyone who doesn't see this as self-evident must be unbelievably myopic when it comes to technology.
Enlarging by 20% and then subsequently reducing by 20% will result in an image that's 96% the size of the original -- not 100%.
If you have an image that's been enlarged by 20%, you would have to reduce it by 1/6 (that is, 16.66...%) to get it back to exactly the original size. Now, 16.66...% is not exactly a "round" number. Perhaps most common photocopiers are deliberately designed not to have presets (or any other means) to allow them to perfectly "undo" their own enlargements or reductions.
Embed invisible GIFs in the email.
No. Don't embed the invisible GIF itself, but rather an IMG tag that points to an invisible GIF hosted somewhere on the Net. Tack on extra tracking information to the GIF's URL if desired, which later can be parsed on the server side.
Embedding the GIF itself in the e-mail message wouldn't do anything useful.
FWIW, when I first heard "Celeron", I automatically assumed that the derivation was from [ac]celer[ati]on, or at least the root word thereof. I'm surprised that I seem to be only one to have made this (imagined?) connection.
Does anybody know the actual story behind the name?
I'm always disheartened when I hear someone praise a wonderful movie like Toy Story solely for its technical merits. Toy Story was an astounding technical achievement, to be sure, but what really impressed me about it was that it was simply a great movie, period. I went in to the theater expecting forgettable eye candy, and I came out an hour and a half later having witnessed true movie magic. Toy Story manages to be both riotously funny and deeply moving, and is easily one of the best movies (if not the best movie) released by Disney in the 1990s.
Similarly, whenever I mention to someone how much I liked the movie Antz, the invariable response is to ask me what I thought of A Bug's Life. I bristle at the automatic lumping together of these two movies into some imagined category merely due to some unfortunate superficial similarities, namely that they're both computer-animated, and that they're both about insects.
It's a pity that Antz is doomed forever to be compared to the immeasurably inferior A Bug's Life (and let's not get into the infamous behind-the-scenes politics about the making of these two movies). While Antz was smart, relentlessly witty, and darkly funny, A Bug's Life was distressingly shallow, antiseptic, and soulless -- especially considering that many of the people behind it were responsible for the great Toy Story.
I went into Toy Story 2 on Thanksgiving Day with giddy anticipation tempered with a healthy measure of trepidation due to my previous disappointing experience with A Bug's Life.
I am happy to report that I needn't have worried. Toy Story 2 is a terrific movie. I sat through almost the entire film with a goofy grin that lasted well after I left the theater. While not as technically groundbreaking as the original Toy Story was (the improvements are more evolutionary than revolutionary), Toy Story 2 nevertheless packs quite a punch. It's certainly more ambitious in its story and action sequences -- almost to a fault (the action becomes perhaps a little too frenetic towards the end). It also manages to explore deep existential issues just like the first movie, although some of the emotional wallop has diminished and occasionally seems forced.
Which of the Toy Story movies did I prefer? It's a very tough call. While the sequel wildly exceeded my very high expectations -- which is saying quite a bit -- if forced to choose, I'd have to go with the original.
I believe that the greatness of a movie should be judged for the totality of the experience, and not merely a single facet. You may have noticed that in my evaluations of the various computer-animated movies of recent years, animation quality hardly figured in at all (especially since they were all excellently animated, albeit with different degrees of excellence).
Here's to great movies, computer-animated or not.
I just tried it. I inserted a DVD into the drive, went to explorer, dragged d:\video_ts\vts_01_0.vob to c:\temp, and it copied fine as far as I can tell.
Did you run DeCSS before doing this? If so, the copy operation succeeded probably because DeCSS left the drive "unlocked".
The day identified at 28-8-888 on the Gregorian calendar is, always was, and always will be 28-8-888 on the Gregorian calendar, regardless of who is or isn't using the Gregorian calendar on that day.
Is? Yes. Always will be? Yes. Always was? Nope.
The Gregorian calendar did not yet exist on 28-8-888, so that date was not 28-8-888 at the time. It did not actually become 28-8-888 until the day the Gregorian calendar was devised, many centuries later.
The word is "dumbening", and it was coined by Lisa Simpson. An absolutely cromulent word, I might add.
You could always think of weekends as being like bookends: one at each end. This of course uses "end" in the delimiter sense of the word -- rather than the temporal sense that one might assume when talking about time.
Because the format would read "01-01-1999", with the zeros being even.
And where does your impeccable logic leave, say, "11-19-00001999"?
Every date in the next thousand years will have at least a 2 in it.
By "at least a 2", I presume you mean even numbers that are greater than or equal to 2.
Well, what about November 30, 1999? Not an Odd day, to be sure, but neither does it have any even digits that are "at least a 2".
(BTW, if it makes you feel any better, November 30, 1999 is the only exception to your statement.)
Nope. There is an infinite number of Odd days in the future; the next one will be Sunday, January 1, 3111.
So "Happy Odd Day" it is (was).
It seems to me that any video piraters could just distribute the encrypted VOB files along with pirated playback software.
.VOB file straight off a DVD-ROM. Go ahead and try to do it (using Windows Explorer or whatever file manager you normally use): you'll get an error message, because the file is encrypted, and the drive itself is designed to refuse you access if you don't have the key.
It's impossible to copy the encrypted
VHS tapes have *no* copy protection
Not true. VHS tapes can (and do) have Macrovision copy protection, which prevents casual copying from one VHS machine to another.