I think AMPAS will probably define the difference between animated and "normal" movies with these criteria:
1. Regular movies will have actors who are filmed (or shot on movie-quality high-definition video) for the most part; animated movies will have actors who 100% drawn from the start.
2. AMPAS will probably create a criteria of how many percent of the film's background is real and how many percent digitally-created to quality for a "regular" movie.
3. You can forget about the idea of the "final" master of the movie being on film; after all, Disney's animated features since The Rescuers Down Under are all stored digitally on the final master (thanks to the CAPS compositing system), and more recent movies are now being done on digital masters (e.g., the two Spy Kids movies and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones).
If Spirited Away doesn't win Best Animated Feature, the Oscars are a joke.
I would agree with you, but you have to admit that Lilo & Stitch is a good alternate choice if AMPAS voters are not comfortable with Spirited Away. It's got everything that a good Disney animated feature should have: excellent storytelling, great animation (especially the watercolor-painted backgrounds), and even excellent musical numbers.
Given your descriptions, I really have to wonder are you assuming we're heading towards World War III.
If that is the case will Malthus' dire predictions come true, where World War III (this time with nuclear weapons) will likely reduce the human population by 30% or more?
I can understand your skepticism about the quality of LCD displays in general, but have you ever bothered to see the best LCD models?
Go take a look at the Samsung SyncMaster 152T (15"), 181T (18") and 191T (19") models--they are STUNNING LCD monitors with amazing sharpness, superb brightness and color accuracy, and have response times fast enough to play DVD movies and today's high-end games with just about no motion blurring. I think after seeing a SyncMaster 191T for yourself, your skepticism about LCD panels will probably go away. =)
If you're talking about current games that use DirectX 8.1 the GeForce Ti4200 (sorry, the Ti4400 is out of production) is still a reasonable choice.
However, you are going to see games that use the full DirectX 9.0 functionality over the next 12 months. That unfortunately means the GeForce4 Ti4xxx series cards are going to start bogging down on highly-complex backgrounds and 3-D effects from these new games. You'll want a card that support DX9 functionality in hardware like the ones that use the ATI R300 chipset (Radeon 9500 and above) and the ones that use the new nVidia GeForce FX chipset.
I hate to say this, but a number of games that need DirectX 9.0 are going to be shipping within the next year. Asheron's Call 2, Doom III, and very likely EverQuest 2 will need DX9 features for highly-complex background scenery these games will generate.
Why bother getting an nVidia GeForce4 Ti4200 chipset card that will likely bog down with the games I mentioned because they won't support many DX9 features in hardware? Besides, the new Radeon 9500/9500 Pro boards are reasonably priced (under US$200) and offer full DX9 compliancy.
I have my doubts that AOL can switch people from IE to Mozilla on Windows 9x/ME/2000/XP platforms with the AOL client, given that you'll end up with two large browsers on your hard drive. That unfortunately can lead to confusion and possible compatibility problems. =(
Which does remind me--has Real Networks released a version of RealOne that works with Mozilla 1.x or Netscape 7.0x? I know that RealOne requires IE 5.0 at minimum in order to work.
Netscape 7.01, which is based on Mozilla technology, is actually a very nice browser.
Well there is one problem though: it has a bad habit of expiring "cookies" in only a few days. Whenever I save settings for online message boards under Netscape 7.01 it would stop saving that cookie after at most 4-5 days; does anyone know how to stamp out that problem? =(
I think besides the obvious attention to proper posture (which is about 75-80% of solving the stress injury problem, in my personal opinion), get a keyboard that doesn't force you to turn your wrists at a side angle when you type.
That's why I have a Microsoft Natural Elite Keyboard--because you type on this keyboard with the wrists not scrunched at an angle, I can type for much longer than with a regular keyboard. Mind you, some people need other types of ergonomic keyboards, so the MS Natural may not be suitable for everyone.
I can't believe how many people should actually be attending their community colleges instead of going right to a four-year college. Indeed, many of the colleges here in California actually like people who have gotten an Associate degree from a community college because they've proven you can do college-level work, more or less.
Big schools still have the better pranks, though
on
Stealth Force Beta
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· Score: 1, Redundant
While this group at New Mexico State had some interesting pranks, they have nothing on what MIT and CalTech students have done over the years.
Who can forget the numerous attempts to decorate the Great Dome at MIT? Or someone at CalTech managed to sabotage a spectator placard display so when the placards were displayed at a football game it read CALTECH?
I am sure that the infamous Port Chicago blast was not caused by a nuclear explosion.
I mean, when investigators looked at the blast, there were NO signs of a nuclear explosion at ground level: a circular yawning crater, people blinded by the initial nuclear fireball, and definitely NO strong background radiation at the center of the explosion. A ground-level nuclear explosion of even a low-yield device would throw up a lot of highly-radioactive fallout particles, but there wasn't any downwind from Port Chicago, so....
This conspiracy crowd definitely needs to be passed tinfoil hats, that's to be sure.
My bet is that Bush will push that date back in order to please his buddies in the oil industry who claim that it's so hard to produce low-sulfur diesel (even though they sell it overseas).
Except there are no plans to change the date of mandatory switch to low-sulfur diesel across the USA (due some time in 2005). California has required low-sulfur diesel for some time, and so far there has been no significant effects on diesel engines now in service in California.
I think the US automakers would love to sell turbodiesel engines for pickup trucks, SUV's and minivans because these types of vehicles really do benefit from the strong low-end torque that is the characteristic of diesel engines.
There's one problem with your scenario: you can't have wide-scale adoption of diesel power for automobiles because Diesel #2 fuel sold in the USA contains too much sulfur compounds, which will quickly corrode the modern fuel-delivery and exhaust emission control systems found on European diesel-powered cars.
This will change in a few years when the EPA will require diesel fuel with no more than 80 parts per million of sulfur compounds; this will allow the introduction on a large scale of diesel-powered automobiles, pickup trucks and SUV's that will have 25 to 40 percent better fuel mileage but still meet the strict Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV) exhaust emission standard.
I can see by 2006 a major switch on pickup trucks, SUV's and minivans to turbodiesel power; it's actually better for these type of vehicles since the high low-end torque of turbodiesel engines are well-suited for this type of application.
Re:There's this other problem
on
Hardware Bytes
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· Score: 2
I agree with your assessments if you're an experienced computer user, but for the less-knowledgeable user all those buttons on the Logitech MX500 mouse are just overkill.
For the vast majority of users, a two-button mouse with scroll wheel is more than enough for general everyday use.
In my personal opinion, the most important thing to be added to a mouse pointer is the scroll wheel, which makes up-down navigation of a long document or web page much easier.
There's this other problem
on
Hardware Bytes
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Too many buttons. =(
I've actually held and tried the Logitech MX500 mouse and frankly, there are just too many buttons on the mouse to press, which can cause no end of confusion unless you have a really good idea how to use the supplied Mouseware software. Does anyone remember Logitech's bizzare Marble F/X trackball mouse? That thing confused the heck out of me figuring out how to use it correctly. (frown)
One thing I like about Microsoft's and Logitech's lesser optical mouse pointers is that you only have the scroll wheel and two buttons to deal with, which makes acclimating yourself to the pointer much easier.
However, don't think that the digital format supporters are standing on their laurels, though.
New formats derived from the technology used on DVD movie discs have resulted the Sony/Philips Super Audio CD and Panasonic DVD Audio formats. Unlike the original Red Book format CD, the new formats have much higher data sampling rates for frequency response to well beyond 30 kHz and a signal to noise ratio of nearly 120 dB! That is a HUGE improvement, one you can definitely hear on playback of violins, cymbals, flutes, or any musical instrument with lots of high frequency harmonics. It's small wonder why many folks who've heard SACD and DVD Audio discs have commented on its warmer sound due to the near lack of high frequency distortion.
While a freshly-pressed LP record played on a high-quality turntable does sound great, you are forgetting that the sound quality of an LP discs starts to degrade fairly quickly due to the wear from the physical contact of the phonograph needle with the LP disc itself.
Besides, setting a phonograph player to play discs correctly is a pretty finicky operation; I remember the days of carefully adjusting the phono cartridge on the cartridge holder for the right geometry and very carefully adjusting the tracking force--both not operations for neophytes, that's to be sure. The setup is even more finicky with high-end tonearms that have adjustments out of the wazoo.
I think many of the early CD's didn't sound great because many the older original master tapes were engineered to specifically mask the limits to LP's, which makes the music sound quite harsh sounding on the CD version, to say the least. However, as more and more music were mastered from digital masters or very carefully engineered analog masters, the sound quality of CD's vastly improved.
By the way, digital music optical disc formats have made some substantial improvements in the last few years. The Sony/Philips Super Audio CD and Panasonic DVD Audio formats have much higher data sampling rates than the original Red Book audio CD format, which results in VASTLY improved sound quality, especially in the treble range. Musical instruments with lots of higher frequency harmonics like violins and cymbals no longer sound harsh; this lack of harsh sounds in the treble range is a good reason why many people have said SACD and DVD-Audio have a warmer sound. In short, you get the convenience and better durability of standard CD's with the sound quality that's probably better than 99.9% of today's LP turntable players.
Having seen some Doraemon episode , the show is actually quite a lot of fun because that robotic cat tries to help and things often go unexpectedly worng (misspelling is deliberate, but you know what I mean ^_^ ).
The reason why Detective Conan is very popular in Japan is the fact the Japanese LOVE detective mystery stories in general. That does explain why the Sherlock Holmes stories are quite popular in Japan.
Another enormously popular series in Japan is Osamu Akimoto's Kochikame (as the series is affectionately called in Japan--the full name is actually quite long--I believe it's Kochira Katsushikaku Kouen-mae Hasutsujo or something very close to that). Poor Ryoutsu Kankiichi--every crazy scheme he tries usually ends up being a major disaster one way or another.:-) The manga serial has been running in Shounen Jump since 1976, and the anime series has been running since 1996. Akimoto's keen sense of every major Japanese fad makes it a very fun series to read and/or watch if you are fluent in Japanese.
RedHat has pretty much become the de facto standard for Linux because of the fact this is pretty much the standard Linux distro found on many desktop computers. After all, a lot of Dell server racks run RH Linux nowadays.
It'll be interesting to see what Red Hat Linux will be like when the 2.6.x kernel appears.
The market for separate DVD decoding boards pretty much vanished when CPUs got faster than 350 MHz.
I disagree on that. It was when CPU speeds went past 400 MHz that all-software decoding solutions became really viable. And even then, programs like WinDVD and PowerDVD took advantage of MPEG-2 decoding assistance on newer graphics card chipsets (ATI's Rage 128 and most of the Radeon line, nVidia GeForce series, SiS 305 and newer, the onboard video of Intel's 810 and 815 motherboard chipsets, etc.) so playback is a bit smoother.
But VCD's never really took off in the US market when they were first introduced, mostly because they never sold stand-alone VCD players like it was done in Asia. Besides, why bother with a video format with about the same picture quality as VHS tapes?
AMD, on the other hand, is struggling to wring a few more modest speed bumps out of the K7 before it limps along to the end of its design life.
However, you are forgetting a few facts:
1. The advantage of the current Northwood core Pentium 4's over the Thoroughbred core Athlons is the fact the latest Pentium 4's sport a very generous 512 KB L2 cache on the CPU die. What happens when the Barton core Athlons with 512 KB of L2 cache comes out? I expect the new Athlons to match the current Pentium 4's in terms of performance, but at a much lower price. It's likely that once AMD gets to 0.09 micron process the Athlon CPU's will sport 1024 KB L2 cache on the CPU die, just like the Prescott core Pentium 4's due in the second half of 2003.
2. The Athlon's CPU core is a much more modern design than that of the Pentium 4's, which still owes a lot to the Pentium Pro CPU core from 1995. This means the Athlon will generally match Pentium 4 performance but at much lower core CPU clock speeds.
Slashdot Mirror
Try this: use a Jarvey. =)
(For those who don't know, you'll have to read the Harry Potter books to find out. ^_^)
In my personal opinion, Sony is still far from ready with a PlayStation 2 replacement.
I think Sony will probably do the following:
1. Reveal final specs for the chips on the next-generation machine some time this late this fall.
2. Reveal the final machine configuration at the spring Tokyo Game Show in 2004.
3. Ship the first machines for the Japanese market in early September 2004.
3. US market machines will ship in mid-November 2004.
I think AMPAS will probably define the difference between animated and "normal" movies with these criteria:
1. Regular movies will have actors who are filmed (or shot on movie-quality high-definition video) for the most part; animated movies will have actors who 100% drawn from the start.
2. AMPAS will probably create a criteria of how many percent of the film's background is real and how many percent digitally-created to quality for a "regular" movie.
3. You can forget about the idea of the "final" master of the movie being on film; after all, Disney's animated features since The Rescuers Down Under are all stored digitally on the final master (thanks to the CAPS compositing system), and more recent movies are now being done on digital masters (e.g., the two Spy Kids movies and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones).
If Spirited Away doesn't win Best Animated Feature, the Oscars are a joke.
I would agree with you, but you have to admit that Lilo & Stitch is a good alternate choice if AMPAS voters are not comfortable with Spirited Away. It's got everything that a good Disney animated feature should have: excellent storytelling, great animation (especially the watercolor-painted backgrounds), and even excellent musical numbers.
Given your descriptions, I really have to wonder are you assuming we're heading towards World War III.
If that is the case will Malthus' dire predictions come true, where World War III (this time with nuclear weapons) will likely reduce the human population by 30% or more?
I can understand your skepticism about the quality of LCD displays in general, but have you ever bothered to see the best LCD models?
Go take a look at the Samsung SyncMaster 152T (15"), 181T (18") and 191T (19") models--they are STUNNING LCD monitors with amazing sharpness, superb brightness and color accuracy, and have response times fast enough to play DVD movies and today's high-end games with just about no motion blurring. I think after seeing a SyncMaster 191T for yourself, your skepticism about LCD panels will probably go away. =)
If you're talking about current games that use DirectX 8.1 the GeForce Ti4200 (sorry, the Ti4400 is out of production) is still a reasonable choice.
However, you are going to see games that use the full DirectX 9.0 functionality over the next 12 months. That unfortunately means the GeForce4 Ti4xxx series cards are going to start bogging down on highly-complex backgrounds and 3-D effects from these new games. You'll want a card that support DX9 functionality in hardware like the ones that use the ATI R300 chipset (Radeon 9500 and above) and the ones that use the new nVidia GeForce FX chipset.
I hate to say this, but a number of games that need DirectX 9.0 are going to be shipping within the next year. Asheron's Call 2, Doom III, and very likely EverQuest 2 will need DX9 features for highly-complex background scenery these games will generate.
Why bother getting an nVidia GeForce4 Ti4200 chipset card that will likely bog down with the games I mentioned because they won't support many DX9 features in hardware? Besides, the new Radeon 9500/9500 Pro boards are reasonably priced (under US$200) and offer full DX9 compliancy.
I have my doubts that AOL can switch people from IE to Mozilla on Windows 9x/ME/2000/XP platforms with the AOL client, given that you'll end up with two large browsers on your hard drive. That unfortunately can lead to confusion and possible compatibility problems. =(
Which does remind me--has Real Networks released a version of RealOne that works with Mozilla 1.x or Netscape 7.0x? I know that RealOne requires IE 5.0 at minimum in order to work.
Netscape 7.01, which is based on Mozilla technology, is actually a very nice browser.
Well there is one problem though: it has a bad habit of expiring "cookies" in only a few days. Whenever I save settings for online message boards under Netscape 7.01 it would stop saving that cookie after at most 4-5 days; does anyone know how to stamp out that problem? =(
I think besides the obvious attention to proper posture (which is about 75-80% of solving the stress injury problem, in my personal opinion), get a keyboard that doesn't force you to turn your wrists at a side angle when you type.
That's why I have a Microsoft Natural Elite Keyboard--because you type on this keyboard with the wrists not scrunched at an angle, I can type for much longer than with a regular keyboard. Mind you, some people need other types of ergonomic keyboards, so the MS Natural may not be suitable for everyone.
Someone mod MickLinux way up!! =)
I can't believe how many people should actually be attending their community colleges instead of going right to a four-year college. Indeed, many of the colleges here in California actually like people who have gotten an Associate degree from a community college because they've proven you can do college-level work, more or less.
While this group at New Mexico State had some interesting pranks, they have nothing on what MIT and CalTech students have done over the years.
Who can forget the numerous attempts to decorate the Great Dome at MIT? Or someone at CalTech managed to sabotage a spectator placard display so when the placards were displayed at a football game it read CALTECH?
I am sure that the infamous Port Chicago blast was not caused by a nuclear explosion.
I mean, when investigators looked at the blast, there were NO signs of a nuclear explosion at ground level: a circular yawning crater, people blinded by the initial nuclear fireball, and definitely NO strong background radiation at the center of the explosion. A ground-level nuclear explosion of even a low-yield device would throw up a lot of highly-radioactive fallout particles, but there wasn't any downwind from Port Chicago, so....
This conspiracy crowd definitely needs to be passed tinfoil hats, that's to be sure.
My bet is that Bush will push that date back in order to please his buddies in the oil industry who claim that it's so hard to produce low-sulfur diesel (even though they sell it overseas).
Except there are no plans to change the date of mandatory switch to low-sulfur diesel across the USA (due some time in 2005). California has required low-sulfur diesel for some time, and so far there has been no significant effects on diesel engines now in service in California.
I think the US automakers would love to sell turbodiesel engines for pickup trucks, SUV's and minivans because these types of vehicles really do benefit from the strong low-end torque that is the characteristic of diesel engines.
There's one problem with your scenario: you can't have wide-scale adoption of diesel power for automobiles because Diesel #2 fuel sold in the USA contains too much sulfur compounds, which will quickly corrode the modern fuel-delivery and exhaust emission control systems found on European diesel-powered cars.
This will change in a few years when the EPA will require diesel fuel with no more than 80 parts per million of sulfur compounds; this will allow the introduction on a large scale of diesel-powered automobiles, pickup trucks and SUV's that will have 25 to 40 percent better fuel mileage but still meet the strict Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV) exhaust emission standard.
I can see by 2006 a major switch on pickup trucks, SUV's and minivans to turbodiesel power; it's actually better for these type of vehicles since the high low-end torque of turbodiesel engines are well-suited for this type of application.
I agree with your assessments if you're an experienced computer user, but for the less-knowledgeable user all those buttons on the Logitech MX500 mouse are just overkill.
For the vast majority of users, a two-button mouse with scroll wheel is more than enough for general everyday use.
In my personal opinion, the most important thing to be added to a mouse pointer is the scroll wheel, which makes up-down navigation of a long document or web page much easier.
Too many buttons. =(
I've actually held and tried the Logitech MX500 mouse and frankly, there are just too many buttons on the mouse to press, which can cause no end of confusion unless you have a really good idea how to use the supplied Mouseware software. Does anyone remember Logitech's bizzare Marble F/X trackball mouse? That thing confused the heck out of me figuring out how to use it correctly. (frown)
One thing I like about Microsoft's and Logitech's lesser optical mouse pointers is that you only have the scroll wheel and two buttons to deal with, which makes acclimating yourself to the pointer much easier.
However, don't think that the digital format supporters are standing on their laurels, though.
New formats derived from the technology used on DVD movie discs have resulted the Sony/Philips Super Audio CD and Panasonic DVD Audio formats. Unlike the original Red Book format CD, the new formats have much higher data sampling rates for frequency response to well beyond 30 kHz and a signal to noise ratio of nearly 120 dB! That is a HUGE improvement, one you can definitely hear on playback of violins, cymbals, flutes, or any musical instrument with lots of high frequency harmonics. It's small wonder why many folks who've heard SACD and DVD Audio discs have commented on its warmer sound due to the near lack of high frequency distortion.
While a freshly-pressed LP record played on a high-quality turntable does sound great, you are forgetting that the sound quality of an LP discs starts to degrade fairly quickly due to the wear from the physical contact of the phonograph needle with the LP disc itself.
Besides, setting a phonograph player to play discs correctly is a pretty finicky operation; I remember the days of carefully adjusting the phono cartridge on the cartridge holder for the right geometry and very carefully adjusting the tracking force--both not operations for neophytes, that's to be sure. The setup is even more finicky with high-end tonearms that have adjustments out of the wazoo.
I think many of the early CD's didn't sound great because many the older original master tapes were engineered to specifically mask the limits to LP's, which makes the music sound quite harsh sounding on the CD version, to say the least. However, as more and more music were mastered from digital masters or very carefully engineered analog masters, the sound quality of CD's vastly improved.
By the way, digital music optical disc formats have made some substantial improvements in the last few years. The Sony/Philips Super Audio CD and Panasonic DVD Audio formats have much higher data sampling rates than the original Red Book audio CD format, which results in VASTLY improved sound quality, especially in the treble range. Musical instruments with lots of higher frequency harmonics like violins and cymbals no longer sound harsh; this lack of harsh sounds in the treble range is a good reason why many people have said SACD and DVD-Audio have a warmer sound. In short, you get the convenience and better durability of standard CD's with the sound quality that's probably better than 99.9% of today's LP turntable players.
Having seen some Doraemon episode , the show is actually quite a lot of fun because that robotic cat tries to help and things often go unexpectedly worng (misspelling is deliberate, but you know what I mean ^_^ ).
:-) The manga serial has been running in Shounen Jump since 1976, and the anime series has been running since 1996. Akimoto's keen sense of every major Japanese fad makes it a very fun series to read and/or watch if you are fluent in Japanese.
The reason why Detective Conan is very popular in Japan is the fact the Japanese LOVE detective mystery stories in general. That does explain why the Sherlock Holmes stories are quite popular in Japan.
Another enormously popular series in Japan is Osamu Akimoto's Kochikame (as the series is affectionately called in Japan--the full name is actually quite long--I believe it's Kochira Katsushikaku Kouen-mae Hasutsujo or something very close to that). Poor Ryoutsu Kankiichi--every crazy scheme he tries usually ends up being a major disaster one way or another.
RedHat has pretty much become the de facto standard for Linux because of the fact this is pretty much the standard Linux distro found on many desktop computers. After all, a lot of Dell server racks run RH Linux nowadays.
It'll be interesting to see what Red Hat Linux will be like when the 2.6.x kernel appears.
The market for separate DVD decoding boards pretty much vanished when CPUs got faster than 350 MHz.
I disagree on that. It was when CPU speeds went past 400 MHz that all-software decoding solutions became really viable. And even then, programs like WinDVD and PowerDVD took advantage of MPEG-2 decoding assistance on newer graphics card chipsets (ATI's Rage 128 and most of the Radeon line, nVidia GeForce series, SiS 305 and newer, the onboard video of Intel's 810 and 815 motherboard chipsets, etc.) so playback is a bit smoother.
VCD came out years before DVD.
But VCD's never really took off in the US market when they were first introduced, mostly because they never sold stand-alone VCD players like it was done in Asia. Besides, why bother with a video format with about the same picture quality as VHS tapes?
AMD, on the other hand, is struggling to wring a few more modest speed bumps out of the K7 before it limps along to the end of its design life.
However, you are forgetting a few facts:
1. The advantage of the current Northwood core Pentium 4's over the Thoroughbred core Athlons is the fact the latest Pentium 4's sport a very generous 512 KB L2 cache on the CPU die. What happens when the Barton core Athlons with 512 KB of L2 cache comes out? I expect the new Athlons to match the current Pentium 4's in terms of performance, but at a much lower price. It's likely that once AMD gets to 0.09 micron process the Athlon CPU's will sport 1024 KB L2 cache on the CPU die, just like the Prescott core Pentium 4's due in the second half of 2003.
2. The Athlon's CPU core is a much more modern design than that of the Pentium 4's, which still owes a lot to the Pentium Pro CPU core from 1995. This means the Athlon will generally match Pentium 4 performance but at much lower core CPU clock speeds.
In short, don't count out AMD just yet.