> You can normally fit around 45 Minutes worth of SVCD video onto a CD
Only if you have unreasonably high standards. I've put all of Shrek onto one single CD, and the quality is almost indistinguishable from the DVD on my 35" TV except for a few high-motion scenes that show brief pixellation. In fact, I would say for average consumption you can fit many if not most 90 minute movies onto a single CD. Of course, that's without the bonus material and alternative soundtracks. This is not to say that I wouldn't prefer my DVD player to be able to play DivX, because I would. You should be able to fit a two hour movie onto a single CD with considerably less artifacting.
> If the reader expects each bit to be X distance from the next, but the tape streches, then the > read head will read some other magnetic data from the extended area.
This isn't as big a problem as you might think. If you store bit transitions rather than bits, you only have to worry about clock drift during runs of identical bits, which are kept to a minimum by encoding the raw data into groups of bits designed to minimize such runs (such as Manchester). This problem also exists in communications, where the data is also encoded. Once you can recover the clock from the data itself, tape stretch ceases to be an issue.
> I think the next big format will be hard drives.
I've been thinking exactly the same thing. I wish one of the camcorder manufacturers would come out with a unit that uses 2.5" laptop HDs, prefereably in some removable fashion. A 30 GB drive could hold about three tapes' worth of data and only cost around $100. That's roughly three times more expensive than tape, but the convenience of random access would be incredible. Plus, they could make the camcorders even smaller and less fragile, since most moving parts would be gone.
I'd like to see some yield figures for biodiesel production. What quantity of diesel could be expected per acre of hemp? My gut feeling on this is that the US alone consume way more fuel than could reasonably be produced on all arable lands, not considering that you wouldn't want to grow hemp on every empty spot of real estate anyway.
> people who hate SUV's because they can't see over them
More like the other way around--yesterday I was nearly run off the right lane of a freeway by a patriotic American in a good-for-the-economy truck because he couldn't see my sedan over his high passenger window sill.
> or just get mad when they see someone in a bigger car
Yes, because in the end all people are motivated by the same Freudian need for larger things in life. The fact that some people might actually want more compact cars with less inertia and tight suspensions that can be thrown around corners (it's called "h-a-n-d-l-i-n-g") is obviously pure FUD thrown up by inferior foreign auto manufacturers that can't compete with the exquisite American sculptures-in-(lots-of)-steel.
> People who want to force automakers to make smaller flimsier dangerous cars
Structural rigidity decreases with increasing structure size, as any engineer will tell you. IOW, the larger a vehicle, the worse it does in collisions with objects of its own heft. Never mind that current trucks are not even particularly engineering for crashes--they feature inferior crumple zones and body rigidity. They are designed to survive crashes mainly due to the overwhelming odds that they will collide with a much smaller vehicle. Truck-on-truck collisions fare much worse than car-on-car collisions. Of course, in the US trucks are not measured on the same crashworthiness scale anyway, so they don't have to.
That's A LOT of bulbs. I only have 4 40W overhead neons, plus the computers. Unfortunately the builders put the two rooms in the finished basement on the same breaker, so when I throw on the 35" TV and 600W surround sound system in the other room, the laser will DEFINITELY throw the breaker.
Like I said, there's a difference between regular paper and coated photo paper. Even pigment inks are still suspended in liquid for a brief amount of time until they adhere to the page. It's a tightly timed evaporation process, but that's how the pigment adheres to the page (unlike toner, which is fused to the paper). So any kind of fibrous paper will exhibit a certain amount of wicking (except for coated paper). No matter how minor the wicking, the edges of characters will never be as sharp and well-defined as a laser.
You're definitely right about Epson being way ahead of HP, I've always been very impressed with their Stylus printers, which I consider the best for budget photo printing. But even so, your regular black ink on paper document will smudge to some extend, unlike your glossy paper. Besides, there's the speed issue: if I have to print out a 20 page document that gets revised a few times, you'd be done much, much quicker with a laser than with an inkjet. Plus, highlighting the ink document with a yellow marker will again introduce nasty smudging.
> As an aside, I have used laser printers that could draw 12 amps
Even my Lexmark Optra R+ frequently pushes the 15A breaker over the limit when my wife turns on her foot heater in addition to the two computers with 19" monitors. Modern household circuits have simply not kept up with modern appliances. The standard should be increased to 25A or 30A in all rooms.
> Why they heck should I care if the text isn't razor sharp?
Because touching it with ungloved fingers will inevitably smudge it. Smuding is the biggest drawback of inkjets after cost. Inkjets really only make sense for applications that laser printers are not (economically) suitable for, which is pretty much only color printing. Given decent quality $250 lasers and $100 inkjets, there's little excuse not to have both, using each for its particular strengths.
> I have 0 problems with ink saturation of the paper
Then you are not a very discerning user. Every inkjet has wicking issues to some extent, regardless of type of ink and paper used. It's the nature of spraying wet stuff on fibrous material. Wicking automatically reduces the effective resolution of the printer. On paper that 1440 dpi is meaningless, it only matters when printing on plastic coated surfaces.
> I maky my own as it adds that extra personal touch
No kidding there. Every time I get cards from the likes of you that leave that "personal touch" of ink smudge on my fingers, I appreciate color that much more.
> Hint: when was the last time you saw a small group of conservative protesters use insults, > violence or threats of violence to shut down a liberal speech, event, or newspaper
Well, I guess shooting doctors doesn't count. Curbing a citizen's abilities to pursue legal activities because it clashes with religious beliefs must be missing from the conservatives' Book Of Sins. I think I will start my own Church Of Tolkien and lobby for legal recourse against transgressors of the Lord Of The Rings morality.
I think most people that consider themselves center to modestly left of center have no problem with rational discourse. Unfortunately such a thing hasn't been heard of from our contemporary statue-covering Right. As long as Less Government only applies to money matters of the established classes and not to meddling with people's morality and curbing of civil liberties, the whole ideology is nothing but a thinly disguised farce.
And you're right, your viewpoint is unequally represented on Slashdot because that is a reflection of the society at large. Take it or leave it, but your views are quite right of center and by necessity mainstream opinion would be left of yours.
> but the guy's point was that humans can do a lot when they have the will to do so.
Correction, Americans, not humans. I'm mainly using sarcasm to defuse his nationalistic (under)tone. But in this post-9/11 world (to use a Katzism), that's a lost cause anyway.
> The lives and liberty of millions of real human beings were at stake.
Maybe you should avail yourself of some transcripts of the type of language floating around in the White House at the time. JFK basically asked if we had any reasonable chance of beating the Russians to the moon, and if yes, to proceed. Given the alternative, of course the answer was affirmative, even though the track record up to that point hadn't been encouraging. Keep in mind that just a few years earlier the US was caught with their PR pants down when the USSR launched Sputnik. Winning the moon race was by far mostly about regaining respect for democracy--after all, the West itself painted the world as a struggle between Good (West) and Evil (USSR). How could they let Evil triumph? This had nothing to do with developing semiconductors or Teflon in order to develop superior military technology. It was a war of rhetoric. In hindsight it also led to bankrupting the USSR in the long term, but this is just something we can pat ourselves on the shoulder about today. Back then nobody sat down to strategize how to bankrupt the Soviets. At the time it still appeared to be a viable social and political system.
You mainly got trounced for failing to notice the suggestion that maybe the US didn't just spent countless billions on the moon race out of some altruistic urge to simply be the best they can be, but rather because the Russians would have gotten there first otherwise (maybe, in hindsight), and that simply would have not been good at all for PR.
I can hear the sounds of the national anthem and see a huge flag unfurling behind you while you utter these most patriotic words. Oh JFK, you most American of our sons, what would our country be without you? Of course, thank God for the Cold War and the need to beat them godless Russkies, too.
The finger is the sign. Let us follow His example.
This reminds me of Life Of Brian. Fanatical devotees of obscure causes and people tend to take anything for a sign. Sure, Steve is flipping off a rabid Apple fan. Whatever.
That will likely happen, but that's the nature of boycotting the media industry. They can blame anything that lowers their revenue on piracy, even burning down Hollywood. Still, a combination of boycott and public protest is more proactive than just keeping on buying their products.
You can send them your opinion if you want, but I'm pretty certain that they have employees whose sole job it is to laugh at all submissions and then shred them. We can hang around all day on Slashdot and whine about the evil RIAA and MPAA, or we can take action. I'm fully prepared to not visit any movie theaters, not rent any DVDs, and cancel my subscription to DirecTV for one year, just to send a message. If enough members of the geek community (who probably exhibit above average consumption of media products) followed through and put their convictions above their addictive urge to see AOTC etc, we might just create a significant enough dip in revenues for one year to get their attention.
If your will power isn't strong enough to resist visiting the cineplex, at least try buying only used CDs and DVDs (locally or from Amazon) and avoid renting new releases. Also, get a TiVo and set it to grab movies from free TV. Get a TiVo just to piss them off, if nothing else.
First, since they only seem to have given it away, how on earth were they planning to stay in business long-term? The other major problem was that their content was never terribly impressive. A large percentage of articles was devoted to product roundups and descriptions, and showcasing embedded Linux projects of various companies. Unfortunately these showcases were more of the look-what-cool-stuff-we-did-aren't-we-great variety, rather that providing lots of truly helpful information and how-tos for someone wanting to do the same. Frankly, I've gotten MUCH more useful articles on Linux embedding and programming from Circuit Cellar (Ingo Cyliax is bloody amazing) that from ELJ.
Re:Helium vs. Hydrogen, Americans vs. Germans
on
Zeppelins on Patrol?
·
· Score: 2
Actually, the Hindenburg was originally designed for He operation and only switched to H use when the US refused delivery. Its initial planned payload capability was less than what it ended up being (with H).
Slashdot Mirror
> You can normally fit around 45 Minutes worth of SVCD video onto a CD
Only if you have unreasonably high standards. I've put all of Shrek onto one single CD, and the quality is almost indistinguishable from the DVD on my 35" TV except for a few high-motion scenes that show brief pixellation. In fact, I would say for average consumption you can fit many if not most 90 minute movies onto a single CD. Of course, that's without the bonus material and alternative soundtracks. This is not to say that I wouldn't prefer my DVD player to be able to play DivX, because I would. You should be able to fit a two hour movie onto a single CD with considerably less artifacting.
> If the reader expects each bit to be X distance from the next, but the tape streches, then the
> read head will read some other magnetic data from the extended area.
This isn't as big a problem as you might think. If you store bit transitions rather than bits, you only have to worry about clock drift during runs of identical bits, which are kept to a minimum by encoding the raw data into groups of bits designed to minimize such runs (such as Manchester). This problem also exists in communications, where the data is also encoded. Once you can recover the clock from the data itself, tape stretch ceases to be an issue.
> I think the next big format will be hard drives.
I've been thinking exactly the same thing. I wish one of the camcorder manufacturers would come out with a unit that uses 2.5" laptop HDs, prefereably in some removable fashion. A 30 GB drive could hold about three tapes' worth of data and only cost around $100. That's roughly three times more expensive than tape, but the convenience of random access would be incredible. Plus, they could make the camcorders even smaller and less fragile, since most moving parts would be gone.
I'd like to see some yield figures for biodiesel production. What quantity of diesel could be expected per acre of hemp? My gut feeling on this is that the US alone consume way more fuel than could reasonably be produced on all arable lands, not considering that you wouldn't want to grow hemp on every empty spot of real estate anyway.
> Humanity's CO2 exhaust contributes only a small part to the climate change which is mostly natural
Oh, good, you worked that one out. Phew, that was a toughie, I thought we'd never get a handle on it. No panic then. Nothing to see, people, go home.
> people who hate SUV's because they can't see over them
More like the other way around--yesterday I was nearly run off the right lane of a freeway by a patriotic American in a good-for-the-economy truck because he couldn't see my sedan over his high passenger window sill.
> or just get mad when they see someone in a bigger car
Yes, because in the end all people are motivated by the same Freudian need for larger things in life. The fact that some people might actually want more compact cars with less inertia and tight suspensions that can be thrown around corners (it's called "h-a-n-d-l-i-n-g") is obviously pure FUD thrown up by inferior foreign auto manufacturers that can't compete with the exquisite American sculptures-in-(lots-of)-steel.
> People who want to force automakers to make smaller flimsier dangerous cars
Structural rigidity decreases with increasing structure size, as any engineer will tell you. IOW, the larger a vehicle, the worse it does in collisions with objects of its own heft. Never mind that current trucks are not even particularly engineering for crashes--they feature inferior crumple zones and body rigidity. They are designed to survive crashes mainly due to the overwhelming odds that they will collide with a much smaller vehicle. Truck-on-truck collisions fare much worse than car-on-car collisions. Of course, in the US trucks are not measured on the same crashworthiness scale anyway, so they don't have to.
> linuxrichtlinien
It interpreted "Rules" as "Rules and Regulations", rather than "it's really great".
> TiVo made changes in the 2.5 software which made it easier to use the box without service.
Give some specific examples. From what I've heard, the opposite is true.
That's A LOT of bulbs. I only have 4 40W overhead neons, plus the computers. Unfortunately the builders put the two rooms in the finished basement on the same breaker, so when I throw on the 35" TV and 600W surround sound system in the other room, the laser will DEFINITELY throw the breaker.
> Foot heaters are modern appliances?
You should see this one--runs Linux, is web-controllable, the works. Ok, just kidding.
Like I said, there's a difference between regular paper and coated photo paper. Even pigment inks are still suspended in liquid for a brief amount of time until they adhere to the page. It's a tightly timed evaporation process, but that's how the pigment adheres to the page (unlike toner, which is fused to the paper). So any kind of fibrous paper will exhibit a certain amount of wicking (except for coated paper). No matter how minor the wicking, the edges of characters will never be as sharp and well-defined as a laser.
You're definitely right about Epson being way ahead of HP, I've always been very impressed with their Stylus printers, which I consider the best for budget photo printing. But even so, your regular black ink on paper document will smudge to some extend, unlike your glossy paper. Besides, there's the speed issue: if I have to print out a 20 page document that gets revised a few times, you'd be done much, much quicker with a laser than with an inkjet. Plus, highlighting the ink document with a yellow marker will again introduce nasty smudging.
> As an aside, I have used laser printers that could draw 12 amps
Even my Lexmark Optra R+ frequently pushes the 15A breaker over the limit when my wife turns on her foot heater in addition to the two computers with 19" monitors. Modern household circuits have simply not kept up with modern appliances. The standard should be increased to 25A or 30A in all rooms.
> Why they heck should I care if the text isn't razor sharp?
Because touching it with ungloved fingers will inevitably smudge it. Smuding is the biggest drawback of inkjets after cost. Inkjets really only make sense for applications that laser printers are not (economically) suitable for, which is pretty much only color printing. Given decent quality $250 lasers and $100 inkjets, there's little excuse not to have both, using each for its particular strengths.
> show me a laser under $500 that can do above 600dpi.
a sp?sk u=10317380&loc=257
Oh, ok:
http://www.buy.com/retail/computers/product.
Just one of many.
> I have 0 problems with ink saturation of the paper
Then you are not a very discerning user. Every inkjet has wicking issues to some extent, regardless of type of ink and paper used. It's the nature of spraying wet stuff on fibrous material. Wicking automatically reduces the effective resolution of the printer. On paper that 1440 dpi is meaningless, it only matters when printing on plastic coated surfaces.
> I maky my own as it adds that extra personal touch
No kidding there. Every time I get cards from the likes of you that leave that "personal touch" of ink smudge on my fingers, I appreciate color that much more.
> Hint: when was the last time you saw a small group of conservative protesters use insults,
> violence or threats of violence to shut down a liberal speech, event, or newspaper
Well, I guess shooting doctors doesn't count. Curbing a citizen's abilities to pursue legal activities because it clashes with religious beliefs must be missing from the conservatives' Book Of Sins. I think I will start my own Church Of Tolkien and lobby for legal recourse against transgressors of the Lord Of The Rings morality.
I think most people that consider themselves center to modestly left of center have no problem with rational discourse. Unfortunately such a thing hasn't been heard of from our contemporary statue-covering Right. As long as Less Government only applies to money matters of the established classes and not to meddling with people's morality and curbing of civil liberties, the whole ideology is nothing but a thinly disguised farce.
And you're right, your viewpoint is unequally represented on Slashdot because that is a reflection of the society at large. Take it or leave it, but your views are quite right of center and by necessity mainstream opinion would be left of yours.
> but the guy's point was that humans can do a lot when they have the will to do so.
Correction, Americans, not humans. I'm mainly using sarcasm to defuse his nationalistic (under)tone. But in this post-9/11 world (to use a Katzism), that's a lost cause anyway.
> The lives and liberty of millions of real human beings were at stake.
Maybe you should avail yourself of some transcripts of the type of language floating around in the White House at the time. JFK basically asked if we had any reasonable chance of beating the Russians to the moon, and if yes, to proceed. Given the alternative, of course the answer was affirmative, even though the track record up to that point hadn't been encouraging. Keep in mind that just a few years earlier the US was caught with their PR pants down when the USSR launched Sputnik. Winning the moon race was by far mostly about regaining respect for democracy--after all, the West itself painted the world as a struggle between Good (West) and Evil (USSR). How could they let Evil triumph? This had nothing to do with developing semiconductors or Teflon in order to develop superior military technology. It was a war of rhetoric. In hindsight it also led to bankrupting the USSR in the long term, but this is just something we can pat ourselves on the shoulder about today. Back then nobody sat down to strategize how to bankrupt the Soviets. At the time it still appeared to be a viable social and political system.
You mainly got trounced for failing to notice the suggestion that maybe the US didn't just spent countless billions on the moon race out of some altruistic urge to simply be the best they can be, but rather because the Russians would have gotten there first otherwise (maybe, in hindsight), and that simply would have not been good at all for PR.
I can hear the sounds of the national anthem and see a huge flag unfurling behind you while you utter these most patriotic words. Oh JFK, you most American of our sons, what would our country be without you? Of course, thank God for the Cold War and the need to beat them godless Russkies, too.
The finger is the sign. Let us follow His example.
This reminds me of Life Of Brian. Fanatical devotees of obscure causes and people tend to take anything for a sign. Sure, Steve is flipping off a rabid Apple fan. Whatever.
That will likely happen, but that's the nature of boycotting the media industry. They can blame anything that lowers their revenue on piracy, even burning down Hollywood. Still, a combination of boycott and public protest is more proactive than just keeping on buying their products.
You can send them your opinion if you want, but I'm pretty certain that they have employees whose sole job it is to laugh at all submissions and then shred them. We can hang around all day on Slashdot and whine about the evil RIAA and MPAA, or we can take action. I'm fully prepared to not visit any movie theaters, not rent any DVDs, and cancel my subscription to DirecTV for one year, just to send a message. If enough members of the geek community (who probably exhibit above average consumption of media products) followed through and put their convictions above their addictive urge to see AOTC etc, we might just create a significant enough dip in revenues for one year to get their attention.
If your will power isn't strong enough to resist visiting the cineplex, at least try buying only used CDs and DVDs (locally or from Amazon) and avoid renting new releases. Also, get a TiVo and set it to grab movies from free TV. Get a TiVo just to piss them off, if nothing else.
First, since they only seem to have given it away, how on earth were they planning to stay in business long-term? The other major problem was that their content was never terribly impressive. A large percentage of articles was devoted to product roundups and descriptions, and showcasing embedded Linux projects of various companies. Unfortunately these showcases were more of the look-what-cool-stuff-we-did-aren't-we-great variety, rather that providing lots of truly helpful information and how-tos for someone wanting to do the same. Frankly, I've gotten MUCH more useful articles on Linux embedding and programming from Circuit Cellar (Ingo Cyliax is bloody amazing) that from ELJ.
Actually, the Hindenburg was originally designed for He operation and only switched to H use when the US refused delivery. Its initial planned payload capability was less than what it ended up being (with H).