For some reason 'rpm' from mandrake is surprisingly inefficient on SSD's. It makes mandrake practically unusable for me on my eeepc. Yet dpkg/apt-get/aptitude on debian and ubuntu is just zippy.
You really configure your mouse so the cursor on the screen travels through *less* distance than the mouse on your desk? In addition to very precise mousing, that must have the added benefit of keeping other people from trying to use your computer.
Your quote came from an article about cheap LED holiday light strings which run straight 120v AC through 30 or more LEDs in series. LED interior lights (and even better quality holiday strings) are designed differently, using full-wave rectifiers + capacitors or regulated power supplies.
In fact, any LED lighting manufacturer would be shooting themselves in the foot by running LEDs on unrectified AC; the LEDs will put out much less than their optimal radiant flux (because they're only "on" 1/3 of the time) and burn out quickly (from high peak forward and reverse voltages).
I've got two of the "high quality" CFLs over my head as we speak. They have 95+ CRI and give everything in the room a very accurate color cast. But if it wasn't for a couple incandescent bulbs next to them I'd have vertigo and a throbbing headache.
It's funny, as I'm not normally the sensitive sort — strobe lights and flashing video games don't bother me in the least, I love bright sunlight, and I'm virtually immune to motion sickness. But stick a CFL in the room (without an equal amount of non-fluorescent light) and I'll be curled up in a corner clutching my head inside of two hours.
If you can cruise at 2hp you're driving a moped, and an efficient one at that. For an American car with a "normal" drag coefficient, cruising at 65mph requires around 20–30kw (~25–40hp). And the reason an elevator can use such a small motor is because it has a counterweight balancing the load.
The Tesla is very lightweight, and has a low drag coefficient, so I'd expect it to use as little as 10kw (~12–15hp) cruising at 65mph. Which is still very good, on par with a small riding mower or dirt bike, but you sure won't find a 10KW generator the size of a house cat.
I don't live that far away from work, so if I ever forget my laptop it's not too much of a trek. To be honest I'm more likely to "forget" my pass and then I have to go and temporary one from the lovely girls in premises (I'm not stupid you know).
Nothing more unusual than a human keeping a chimpanzee as a pet.
Cartoon relationships become easier when you assume that bipedal, clothes-wearing, english-speaking characters are a different "species" than their feral cousins.
Companies like Valve and Microsoft have already adopted this mentality — they don't just capture information about how you play the game, they store it in an online profile, and let you unlock achievements, compare your data with others, or view a chart of your own scores to monitor your improvement.
Ironically, by making this kind of data public, you'll cause players to start putting less value on their own privacy. It's the Alcoholics Anonymous effect in action — when other people disclose private information, you're more likely to disclose private information too.
Of course, this doesn't mean that you as a developer should be collecting any sort of truly private data. If you can't explain to players in detail what data you're getting and why you want it, you shouldn't be collecting it.
Also, provide a simple way for players to provide spur-of-the-moment feedback on your game. For example, add a simple text box to the game's pause screen that lets users zip off a note to the game developers, along with data about where they are in the game and their current status. I can think of a hundred times when I would have given the developer feedback but was stymied by the hassle of finding the proper web site, setting up an account, explaining the situation in detail and not even knowing that anyone on the development team actually read the message boards. A quick message system built in to the game would be much handier to players, would collect raw off-the-cuff impressions, and best of all, would be entirely opt-in.
Very interesting indeed. I am constantly amazed by the cognitive abilities of wild animals, and how quickly they can adapt to new environments foreign to their "instinctive behavior patterns".
Our ability to selectively perceive the world is equally amazing. The brain's fundamental pattern-matching ability naturally defines new experiences within the context of previous ones, which is great if you're trying to recognize a dangerous situation but terrible for interpreting new data in an unbiased manner: When one believes that the sun revolves around the earth, that one social group is superior to another social group, or that other species are simple automata, even the most damning evidence to the contrary is subconsciously twisted, rationalized, and fit into one's pre-existing world view.
Speaking of the rationalizing mind, language works in a similar format: When we experience something, we link it to other former experiences. To pass the experience to another party, we describe it in terms of connections to simple experiences which we assume the other party shares, by means of adjectives and adverbs, analogies and metaphors. The sender converts their new experience into a list of simple mental connections, and the receiver assembles those connections to recreate the experience.
Perhaps not unsurprisingly, we've noticed the same sorts of behavior in animals — we know that some species have rather complicated forms of communication, and they seem to be able to describe new experiences the same way we do, by referring to other, similar things. But that doesn't mean we speak a common language; just as you'd have trouble swapping pop culture references with members of a lost Brazilian tribe, most animals have had completely different experiences than you. Different species perceive the world differently, and since language is primarily a series of shared mental connections, it would probably be impossible to translate more than basic emotions.
Though I'm not worried about Jobs passing away any time soon, I would feel better if there was "another Steve Jobs" who could replace him. Tech companies almost always suffer when their original founders leave, and Apple nearly went bankrupt without Jobs once before
Steve isn't an engineer, or a programmer, and I can't even say I'd want to be his friend, but hell - the guy built Apple, NeXT, and Pixar from scratch. The tech industry needs a lot more Steve Jobs-type leaders, and a lot fewer company-hopping CEOs that only care about their stock portfolios.
Given the insane draw that the magic "iii-Phoooneee" (cut briefly to random gumby skit) has, I wouldn't be surprised if it killed any server farm. But I really don't care if the "early adopter" mobs had to wait six hours to activate their new phones. People who want to wait in lines... wait in lines. People who want the smoothest possible experience... wait a few days or weeks for the crowds to thin and the initial bugs to be worked out.
I'm a big fan of usability, and IMHO the iPhone is head and shoulders above other smartphones in that regard. Since I work for a living, my time is important; if an iPhone saves me one minute per day it pays for itself a few times over each year.
But the coverage these days on everything Apple makes is ridiculous. It's a great phone. It's not the second coming of Christ. There are very important things happening in the world right now; why are we getting worked up because a gadget got updated today, a zillion people rushed out to get it, and they're now slash... er, iPhone-dotting a server farm?
Forgive me for getting political, but it'll all be over tomorrow. FISA won't.
My original point was simply not to blame the manufacturer for something that isn't their fault.
Your allegory is fairly decent, but I'd suggest adding a few points:
First, add that the reason you have to contact the manufacturer to activate your sports car is because the government mandated activation on all sports cars. The manufacturer that made your sports car sells 20 other vehicles, none of which require activation.
Second, add that the activation works fine 364 days out of the year, but today a hugely anticipated new model year was released nationwide and the servers are swamped. Oh - and the same people complaining about spending hours waiting to activate the car also spent hours standing in line just so that they could be the firstest person in teh w0rld! to own one.
Third, add that the mandatory activation can be easily bypassed with a freely available tool which everyone knows about. It won't make the vehicle street legal, but you'll still gain full access to the vehicle for personal use.
There. Now we've got one hell of a ridiculously over-complicated but relatively accurate "analogy".
True, but the "activation" just pairs the device with the computer; it doesn't verify anything with Apple's servers. You can set up an iPod Touch with no Internet access whatsoever.
The techno-survivalist geek in me wants gadgets that are fully functional right out of the box, but the experienced IT geek in me has learned that without a degree of control, inexperienced users get themselves into deep trouble.
In other words, I'd rather spend a minute pairing the handheld device with the PC at the very start than spend hours trying to get the two to sync properly after the fact... It's always fun making two semi-overlapping contact lists/mail folders/calendars on two separate devices perfectly merge with no loss or duplication of data. While the CFO breathes down your neck.
Slashdot Mirror
OP is asking for open source tools. You cited a commercial one that doesn't provide source.
VisualHub (the front-end app) may be closed, but ffmpeg is LGPL.
And the GP was suggesting using ffmpeg, not VisualHub.
For some reason 'rpm' from mandrake is surprisingly inefficient on SSD's. It makes mandrake practically unusable for me on my eeepc. Yet dpkg/apt-get/aptitude on debian and ubuntu is just zippy.
--jeffk++
An aptly named program, to be sure.
Wait, what?
You really configure your mouse so the cursor on the screen travels through *less* distance than the mouse on your desk? In addition to very precise mousing, that must have the added benefit of keeping other people from trying to use your computer.
Ah, I see someone has a case of mouse pad envy...
Your quote came from an article about cheap LED holiday light strings which run straight 120v AC through 30 or more LEDs in series. LED interior lights (and even better quality holiday strings) are designed differently, using full-wave rectifiers + capacitors or regulated power supplies.
In fact, any LED lighting manufacturer would be shooting themselves in the foot by running LEDs on unrectified AC; the LEDs will put out much less than their optimal radiant flux (because they're only "on" 1/3 of the time) and burn out quickly (from high peak forward and reverse voltages).
I've got two of the "high quality" CFLs over my head as we speak. They have 95+ CRI and give everything in the room a very accurate color cast. But if it wasn't for a couple incandescent bulbs next to them I'd have vertigo and a throbbing headache.
It's funny, as I'm not normally the sensitive sort — strobe lights and flashing video games don't bother me in the least, I love bright sunlight, and I'm virtually immune to motion sickness. But stick a CFL in the room (without an equal amount of non-fluorescent light) and I'll be curled up in a corner clutching my head inside of two hours.
And I'm not the only one.
But how much of an improvement will they be over fluorescent lights, which we already have at an affordable price?
Well, they won't flicker, they won't contain mercury, and they won't be too big to fit in many light fixtures.
Even if LEDs aren't any more efficient than current CFLs, they'll be a lot more attractive to people who don't like or can't use fluorescent lights.
(...nt...)
Simon Travaglia? Is that you?
Or a Reliant Robin.
At least I know I'm safe because I run... Oh, crap.
Or "Maybe I should start over as chaotic good."
Good lord, man! Misusing an apostrophe in a Slashdot thread? When the parent poster owns an open-source justice mob?
Delete your account! Throw away your computer! RUN FOR THE HILLS!
No, me Tarzan, live in Jungle. Have Ape friend!
</brendanfraservoice>
If you can cruise at 2hp you're driving a moped, and an efficient one at that. For an American car with a "normal" drag coefficient, cruising at 65mph requires around 20–30kw (~25–40hp). And the reason an elevator can use such a small motor is because it has a counterweight balancing the load.
The Tesla is very lightweight, and has a low drag coefficient, so I'd expect it to use as little as 10kw (~12–15hp) cruising at 65mph. Which is still very good, on par with a small riding mower or dirt bike, but you sure won't find a 10KW generator the size of a house cat.
I don't live that far away from work, so if I ever forget my laptop it's not too much of a trek. To be honest I'm more likely to "forget" my pass and then I have to go and temporary one from the lovely girls in premises (I'm not stupid you know).
You may be an idiot, but you're no fool?
Nothing more unusual than a human keeping a chimpanzee as a pet.
Cartoon relationships become easier when you assume that bipedal, clothes-wearing, english-speaking characters are a different "species" than their feral cousins.
Agreed; the world is starting to sound entirely too much like Star Trek.
...Actually, scratch that: The real world can never be too much like Star Trek.
Companies like Valve and Microsoft have already adopted this mentality — they don't just capture information about how you play the game, they store it in an online profile, and let you unlock achievements, compare your data with others, or view a chart of your own scores to monitor your improvement.
Ironically, by making this kind of data public, you'll cause players to start putting less value on their own privacy. It's the Alcoholics Anonymous effect in action — when other people disclose private information, you're more likely to disclose private information too.
Of course, this doesn't mean that you as a developer should be collecting any sort of truly private data. If you can't explain to players in detail what data you're getting and why you want it, you shouldn't be collecting it.
Also, provide a simple way for players to provide spur-of-the-moment feedback on your game. For example, add a simple text box to the game's pause screen that lets users zip off a note to the game developers, along with data about where they are in the game and their current status. I can think of a hundred times when I would have given the developer feedback but was stymied by the hassle of finding the proper web site, setting up an account, explaining the situation in detail and not even knowing that anyone on the development team actually read the message boards. A quick message system built in to the game would be much handier to players, would collect raw off-the-cuff impressions, and best of all, would be entirely opt-in.
Very interesting indeed. I am constantly amazed by the cognitive abilities of wild animals, and how quickly they can adapt to new environments foreign to their "instinctive behavior patterns".
Our ability to selectively perceive the world is equally amazing. The brain's fundamental pattern-matching ability naturally defines new experiences within the context of previous ones, which is great if you're trying to recognize a dangerous situation but terrible for interpreting new data in an unbiased manner: When one believes that the sun revolves around the earth, that one social group is superior to another social group, or that other species are simple automata, even the most damning evidence to the contrary is subconsciously twisted, rationalized, and fit into one's pre-existing world view.
Speaking of the rationalizing mind, language works in a similar format: When we experience something, we link it to other former experiences. To pass the experience to another party, we describe it in terms of connections to simple experiences which we assume the other party shares, by means of adjectives and adverbs, analogies and metaphors. The sender converts their new experience into a list of simple mental connections, and the receiver assembles those connections to recreate the experience.
Perhaps not unsurprisingly, we've noticed the same sorts of behavior in animals — we know that some species have rather complicated forms of communication, and they seem to be able to describe new experiences the same way we do, by referring to other, similar things. But that doesn't mean we speak a common language; just as you'd have trouble swapping pop culture references with members of a lost Brazilian tribe, most animals have had completely different experiences than you. Different species perceive the world differently, and since language is primarily a series of shared mental connections, it would probably be impossible to translate more than basic emotions.
Good.
God damn it, why can't I have that last name?
The gauntness is probably a direct result of the cancer treatment. Here's a simple article explaining the procedure, and it's aftereffects.
Though I'm not worried about Jobs passing away any time soon, I would feel better if there was "another Steve Jobs" who could replace him. Tech companies almost always suffer when their original founders leave, and Apple nearly went bankrupt without Jobs once before
Steve isn't an engineer, or a programmer, and I can't even say I'd want to be his friend, but hell - the guy built Apple, NeXT, and Pixar from scratch. The tech industry needs a lot more Steve Jobs-type leaders, and a lot fewer company-hopping CEOs that only care about their stock portfolios.
Given the insane draw that the magic "iii-Phoooneee" (cut briefly to random gumby skit) has, I wouldn't be surprised if it killed any server farm. But I really don't care if the "early adopter" mobs had to wait six hours to activate their new phones. People who want to wait in lines... wait in lines. People who want the smoothest possible experience... wait a few days or weeks for the crowds to thin and the initial bugs to be worked out.
I'm a big fan of usability, and IMHO the iPhone is head and shoulders above other smartphones in that regard. Since I work for a living, my time is important; if an iPhone saves me one minute per day it pays for itself a few times over each year.
But the coverage these days on everything Apple makes is ridiculous. It's a great phone. It's not the second coming of Christ. There are very important things happening in the world right now; why are we getting worked up because a gadget got updated today, a zillion people rushed out to get it, and they're now slash... er, iPhone-dotting a server farm?
Forgive me for getting political, but it'll all be over tomorrow. FISA won't.
My original point was simply not to blame the manufacturer for something that isn't their fault.
Your allegory is fairly decent, but I'd suggest adding a few points:
First, add that the reason you have to contact the manufacturer to activate your sports car is because the government mandated activation on all sports cars. The manufacturer that made your sports car sells 20 other vehicles, none of which require activation.
Second, add that the activation works fine 364 days out of the year, but today a hugely anticipated new model year was released nationwide and the servers are swamped. Oh - and the same people complaining about spending hours waiting to activate the car also spent hours standing in line just so that they could be the firstest person in teh w0rld! to own one.
Third, add that the mandatory activation can be easily bypassed with a freely available tool which everyone knows about. It won't make the vehicle street legal, but you'll still gain full access to the vehicle for personal use.
There. Now we've got one hell of a ridiculously over-complicated but relatively accurate "analogy".
True, but the "activation" just pairs the device with the computer; it doesn't verify anything with Apple's servers. You can set up an iPod Touch with no Internet access whatsoever.
The techno-survivalist geek in me wants gadgets that are fully functional right out of the box, but the experienced IT geek in me has learned that without a degree of control, inexperienced users get themselves into deep trouble.
In other words, I'd rather spend a minute pairing the handheld device with the PC at the very start than spend hours trying to get the two to sync properly after the fact... It's always fun making two semi-overlapping contact lists/mail folders/calendars on two separate devices perfectly merge with no loss or duplication of data. While the CFO breathes down your neck.