Tarkin is still on, but development is slow. The focus has shifted from being competitive to MPEG-4 to something significantly better. While MPEG-4 and VP2 (Theora) use somewhat the same technology, Tarkin will be radically different and require much more CPU-power to compress and decompress. However, one idea that has popped up in the mailing list is to utilize 3D graphics hardware for decoding, which would make smooth playback possible on today's hardware.
One thing that was whined about in the old thread was the price. Actually, the price of a Parks Saber ($200 and up) is pretty reasonable considering that
It is very well made and has good features.
The official licensed StarWars-brandedreplicas cost just as much, are of less quality and have less features.
If you want to create a replica made from the same parts as the props in the films, they will cost you quite a lot more.
I used that phrase in a job application once. It got me an interview, but they turned me down once I had explained to them that I was only using a metaphore.
I have some early plans to construct some electronics which should create good sounds. The key components would be an Analog Devices ADXL 202 accelerometer, a PIC microcontroller and (of course) a speaker.
In several European countries with a feudal system during the middle ages, it was customary for the nobility to elect a ruler among themselves if the previous ruler had died without leaving an heir to the throne. By electing a person, they implicitly elected the person's family and a policital faction to rule in the future. A child could be given the throne if it was correct according to the family's strict rules of succession.
That scene and a few others were available on the CD-ROM "Star Wars - Behind The Magic" which came out in '98, I believe. I believe I may also have seen the scene on a television documentary about Star Wars once.
Or why not just push on the falling column using the force. It would have fallen where Yoda placed it in the movie. That would have given him enough time to stop Dooku... which may have been the point.
Btw. Why the strange expression on his face when he moved the column?
And why is Yoda bluer than in TPM or in the OT? What's the deal with all that facial hair that couldn't be seen in TPM?
My VCR sets its clock from the Teletext signal
of the first channel it has been tuned to.
I guess you live in Europe and get Teletext. I dont know about the US and NTSC though.
Here,
many TV channels have a "teletext" signal which
is a very simple hypertext system that has been
around since 1975. (At least the docs I've read
about it are that old)
Each page of text shows a clock
on the top of the page. When I press the "clock" button on my remote control, it shows the teletext clock. If the channel doesnt have any teletext signal, I can not get a clock to appear on that channel.
You find a page by typing its number on the remote control. All pages are transmitted continously during the vertical blank. Each page consists of 24 lines of 40 characters. Six lines of text are transmitted each frame on six scanlines.
There is only one broadband operator in the area where I live, offering broadband for the same price as what I currently pay for dial-up access to the Internet. I choose dial-up, for the simple reason that the broadband operator's firewall doesn't let SSH or CVS through. I have been nagging at them for over a year about this, but to no avail. I assume that many other people would be in the same situation like me.
From the little that I know, FTP should have support for partial transfer of files, or at least be extensible.
When it comes to security I would expect that a system like this would have its own bare-bones implementation of the FTP protocol, thus avoiding most of the types of security holes that major FTP servers might have.
The question of whether or not such a world-altering technology would "make it into the wrong hands" is
easy to avoid if you get this world-altering technology into *everyone's* hands, all at once.
You would get a race between software vendors and crackers to fix/exploit the discovery. It is quite common for crackers to be first when security holes are found. You should also have in mind that many machines are never patched.
What I would do if I had cracked RSA would be to publish a proof of the finding (say, the md5 checksum to the answer to the RSA Factoring Challenge) in a public forum (say, news:sci.crypt). My post would be anonymous, but together with an message, encrypted using a symmetric encryption algorithm.
A year after that, I would publish the algorithm
in the same forum, and a year after that I would publish my name together with the decryption key to my secret message from the first post.
This way, most systems using the algorithm would have had time to be phased out, the algorithm would have been published, I would get the credit and the risk of being gunned down by any disgruntled computer security expert would have been somewhat reduced.
BTW, when is the GTK documentation going to be available ? IMO if there isn't any documentation, it doesn't even deserve to be called "1.0".
Gtk+ 1.2.x comes with a good overview, but lacks a reference. The reference can be found in the development series though. It's a pity they have not back-ported it the stable series.
There are numerous VR projects all around the world, but they are mostly confined to research institutions and the military.
For VR to become attractive to the masses, it needs to be more generic and interactive, which means that it must be easier to create interactive worlds.
Networking is also important, to be able to interact with other people.
For a world to be perceived as realistic, it needs to simulate actual-world physics, and doing this
in realtime over a network is hard and attempts in the past often resorted to hard-coded methods.
Then there is the aspect of having the system be secure. In other words, there are still a few technical problems that must be solved before massive deployment of VR is possible
I guess it all started with the SR-71 Blackbird. A large proportion of that aircraft was titanium to withstand the heat of high-speed flight while being strong and light.
An anectode: Nobody produced the amount of titanium that was needed - except for the Soviet Union... which is from where the titanium in the Blackbirds was purchased.
The wavelet compression of MPEG-4 offers better quality than JPEG with file sizes approximately 25
percent of the size for Web quality.
MPEG-4 encodes video pixels using DCT in a manner similar but not exact to MPEG-1..3 and JPEG.
Perhaps you are confused by the fact that MPEG-4 does use wavelet encoding for "sprites",... or maybe you are referring to JPEG-2000 which also happens to be based on the wavelet transform and which does have the advantage over old JPEG that you mention.
Wavelets dynamically allow servers to reduce bitmap file sizes (which also affect quality) when working with lower bandwidths, reducing the need to create different presentations to account for a variety of connection speeds.
[...]
A potential barrier to widespread MPEG-4 use are the licensing and fees issues, due to several companies having patents that apply to aspects of MPEG-4.
Maybe I should mention: Xiphophorous', the people behind Ogg Vorbis (an open source patent-free mp3-replacement) have started working on a free, patent-free video codec named Ogg Tarkin.
It is still in the research stage, but is leaning towards using wavelets for both image data and motion compensation.
Also, classical is much more demanding on an encoder so I thought it would be a better test.
Not necessarily. Look at a comparison of a couple of different lossless audio codecs.
Some of the classical music tracks in the comparison get almost twice the compression rate over the pop tracks.
You can start using IPv6 right now even if your ISP only supports IPv6, by tunneling it using 6to4 to another 6to4 machine acting as gateway. The 6to4 tunneling protocol is in the kernel as of at least 2.4.1 (earlier version than that I believe you need to apply a patch or two).
If you live in Sweden (like me), check out SICS' 6to4 gateway. They have connections to the 6bone and to several ISPs (it is recommended that you try one of those first). ---
I found what is best described as a white-paper about a part of the PS2 architecture:
Benefits of A Micro-programmable Graphics Architecture.
Seems that you need to write some heavy VLIW assembler to get the most out of it.
Fine by me, I love assembler.;-)
Under X I use the good old:
-Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-SemiCondensed--13-120-75-75-C -60-ISO8859-1
(Accept no substitute!)
I have to create a font alias for it to be available for KDE apps. Under Windows there is really only one alternative: Lucida Console.
I hate Courier.
My color scheme is light gray (#C0C0C0) on a dark color (#100820). White-on-black is just as bad for the eyes as pure black-on-pure white.
Operating systems with very short boot times are already available. Look at EROS which is a system under development where you are able to shutdown and start up again - and you will be back where you were. If there is a power failure,
you will be able to boot up to a previous state that is not older than five minutes prior to the power failure.
EROS's commercial predecessor did this, and it did also come with a version of Unix running on top.
EROS is open-source, the kernel is running fine, a CORBA-like native IPC service is underway and a Unix-server is planned.
By the way both Linux and Windoze 2000 can suspend and restart, but without crash-recovery and there are some issues with X.(I have not tried it myself though)
How should I adjust my monitor's black level and picture controls?
On a CRT monitor, the picture control, often misleadingly labelled contrast, adjusts overall luminance. The black level control,
often misleadingly labelled brightness, adjusts offset. Display a picture that is predominantly black. Adjust black level so that
the monitor reproduces true black on the screen, just at the threshold where it is not so far down as to "swallow" codes greater
than the black code, but not so high that the picture sits on a pedestal of dark grey. When the critical point is reached, put
a piece of tape over the black level control. Then set picture to suit your preference for display luminance.
Luminance should be set relative to the ambient brightness of the room you are in. Also, make sure that you don't have any light-sources positioned as to cause specular high-lights on the monitor screen.
By the way, Feng Shue recommends that you should not have any bright light-source
at the side of your dominant hand
at your work-place. This recommendation is for all office workers - not just those working with computers.
--
Slashdot Mirror
Tarkin is still on, but development is slow. The focus has shifted from being competitive to MPEG-4 to something significantly better.
While MPEG-4 and VP2 (Theora) use somewhat the same technology, Tarkin will be radically different and require much more CPU-power to compress and decompress. However, one idea that has popped up in the mailing list is to utilize 3D graphics hardware for decoding, which would make smooth playback possible on today's hardware.
I like this one better. Not x-rated.
One thing that was whined about in the old thread was the price. Actually, the price of a Parks Saber ($200 and up) is pretty reasonable considering that
I used that phrase in a job application once.
It got me an interview, but they turned me down once I had explained to them that I was only using a metaphore.
Minor correction: MP3 can be either MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer 3.
The only difference is a couple of new bitrates and sampling rates.
I have some early plans to construct some electronics which should create good sounds.
The key components would be an Analog Devices ADXL 202 accelerometer, a PIC microcontroller and (of course) a speaker.
My thought when I saw that scene was: It is going to fall out... Too bad it didn't. Would have been fun.
In several European countries with a feudal system during the middle ages, it was customary for the nobility to elect a ruler among themselves if the previous ruler had died without leaving an heir to the throne.
By electing a person, they implicitly elected the person's family and a policital faction to rule in the future. A child could be given the throne if it was correct according to the family's strict rules of succession.
That scene and a few others were available on the CD-ROM "Star Wars - Behind The Magic" which came out in '98, I believe.
I believe I may also have seen the scene on a television documentary about Star Wars once.
Or why not just push on the falling column using the force. It would have fallen where Yoda placed it in the movie. ... which may have been the point.
That would have given him enough time to stop Dooku
Btw. Why the strange expression on his face when he moved the column?
And why is Yoda bluer than in TPM or in the OT?
What's the deal with all that facial hair that couldn't be seen in TPM?
My VCR sets its clock from the Teletext signal of the first channel it has been tuned to. I guess you live in Europe and get Teletext. I dont know about the US and NTSC though. Here, many TV channels have a "teletext" signal which is a very simple hypertext system that has been around since 1975. (At least the docs I've read about it are that old) Each page of text shows a clock on the top of the page. When I press the "clock" button on my remote control, it shows the teletext clock. If the channel doesnt have any teletext signal, I can not get a clock to appear on that channel. You find a page by typing its number on the remote control. All pages are transmitted continously during the vertical blank. Each page consists of 24 lines of 40 characters. Six lines of text are transmitted each frame on six scanlines.
I found this site the other day: www.traxinspace.com. It has modules only. Some are remixes of old C64 tunes.
From the little that I know, FTP should have support for partial transfer of files, or at least be extensible. When it comes to security I would expect that a system like this would have its own bare-bones implementation of the FTP protocol, thus avoiding most of the types of security holes that major FTP servers might have.
What I would do if I had cracked RSA would be to publish a proof of the finding (say, the md5 checksum to the answer to the RSA Factoring Challenge) in a public forum (say, news:sci.crypt). My post would be anonymous, but together with an message, encrypted using a symmetric encryption algorithm. A year after that, I would publish the algorithm in the same forum, and a year after that I would publish my name together with the decryption key to my secret message from the first post. This way, most systems using the algorithm would have had time to be phased out, the algorithm would have been published, I would get the credit and the risk of being gunned down by any disgruntled computer security expert would have been somewhat reduced.
There are numerous VR projects all around the world, but they are mostly confined to research institutions and the military.
For VR to become attractive to the masses, it needs to be more generic and interactive, which means that it must be easier to create interactive worlds.
Networking is also important, to be able to interact with other people.
For a world to be perceived as realistic, it needs to simulate actual-world physics, and doing this
in realtime over a network is hard and attempts in the past often resorted to hard-coded methods.
Then there is the aspect of having the system be secure. In other words, there are still a few technical problems that must be solved before massive deployment of VR is possible
An anectode: Nobody produced the amount of titanium that was needed - except for the Soviet Union
You can start using IPv6 right now even if your ISP only supports IPv6, by tunneling it using 6to4 to another 6to4 machine acting as gateway. The 6to4 tunneling protocol is in the kernel as of at least 2.4.1 (earlier version than that I believe you need to apply a patch or two). If you live in Sweden (like me), check out SICS' 6to4 gateway. They have connections to the 6bone and to several ISPs (it is recommended that you try one of those first).
---
The log from the Minix mailing list can be found in the book
Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, Appendix A.
---
I found what is best described as a white-paper about a part of the PS2 architecture: Benefits of A Micro-programmable Graphics Architecture. Seems that you need to write some heavy VLIW assembler to get the most out of it. Fine by me, I love assembler. ;-)
(Accept no substitute!) I have to create a font alias for it to be available for KDE apps. Under Windows there is really only one alternative: Lucida Console. I hate Courier.
My color scheme is light gray (#C0C0C0) on a dark color (#100820). White-on-black is just as bad for the eyes as pure black-on-pure white.
By the way both Linux and Windoze 2000 can suspend and restart, but without crash-recovery and there are some issues with X.(I have not tried it myself though)
Luminance should be set relative to the ambient brightness of the room you are in. Also, make sure that you don't have any light-sources positioned as to cause specular high-lights on the monitor screen.
By the way, Feng Shue recommends that you should not have any bright light-source at the side of your dominant hand at your work-place. This recommendation is for all office workers - not just those working with computers.
--