I remember an issue of a Commodore64 magazine years ago (10? 12?) that had a contest of who could make their c64's look the coolest..one guy who was in the air force had his done in a camo pattern...
Oddly enough, I actually remember this. It was in an issue of COMPUTE!'s Gazette, and he called it the Commando 64. Turns out it was actually a reworked VIC-20, but hey, it's all good.
Signed artists who want their MP3s distributed... well, they can get a website!
Okay, here's my paranoic rant:
Big corporation has now won a major case against Napster. So now they go for control of digital media on the Internet.
Would it be possible for them to win a ruling that would prevent any Indie bands from posting stuff they own on the web/Gnutella?
Think about that for a minute. "We, the RIAA, have now won a lawsuit which will prevent anybody not signed with a member label from using the Internet to distribute their music or other self-promotion". Scary, isn't it?
I think by vectors they mean long arrays of power-time and power-frequency data on which they apply Fourier and other transforms.
Which then makes it perfect for digital music synthesis, composition, and audio processing. I just may have to do some research now and see what turns up.
Well - could the card just do the basic work and just output values that a driver will recognize as useful? Maybe just output in wave form and feed it to the sound card? It would be much better if it had its own audio output... that would be very cool.
This is a possibility, but it ends up choking your PCI bus with lots of two-way traffic. If it had it's own audio output and associated DSP, that would put a definite cap on how much information has to come back to the main CPU.
Hey, if a student put this together as a project, maybe I could get my hands on some of these procs and play around with my own ideas...:o)
If all it does is calculate vectors, maybe it could be hacked into being something useful like AltiVec that the G4s have. Imagine having a 6chip board that gobbles away at vector graphics.
I was thinking the same thing, but with a different application: Music synthesis. A lot of music synthesis is based upon FFT, and other vector-based algorithms. Of course, the hard part there is where do you put the audio out?
Hey, how about voice activated cel phone support? I know we're not supposed to use our cel phones in our cars, but having a hands-free one available to us in our car would make them a whole lot safer (maybe even safe enough to use).
Just to let everyone know, I NEVER use my handheld cel phone while driving. But I do think I could use a hands-free one with a speaker phone like function safely while driving. There would be little difference to talking to someone in the next seat.
One way to solve this problem is to make it to where a certain series of words has to be said in order for the player to actually do anything.
So you start with "stereo", and the unit starts paying attention. There is then a list of words, one of which has to be said within a certain time period in order for it to continue listening. If one of those is said, say, "play", it then listens for the next thing, which would be a valid song title. If that's said then it plays. If not, it ignores you.
So, as in the above, if a valid word is not said after the preceding valid word, the unit ignores you, so it would take a wild coincidence in a conversation to activate it by accident.
The problem with this, of course, is you'd have to build several relational databases in the unit. Not a big deal, really.
By the way, I would snag one of these very quickly if it proved to be reliable.
There is one problem with searching for alien laser beacons using this kind of a system: What if you actually find one?
If there is one thing I know about the scientific community, it's that they always try to find a natural reason for any phenomenon.
So you find something that looks like a laser and is pulsing. "Aliens!" you cry, but the scientists you work with then concoct some weird theory using "dark matter" and "exotic particles" to explain away you're discovery as false. And they get the credit, because they have the PhD's, right?
Scientists are still people, and some will always twist facts to get the result they want.
PS - The previous was only my opinion. I am not trying to troll or start a flamewar. But I think my point has merit, and I want to share it with the rest of the Slashdot Community.
And, just so I don't give anyone the idea that this is a pro gun control issue, you leave an unsupervised kid in a car with the keys in the ignition, and something terrible may also happen
Funny you should mention this... A friend of mine just told me about that very thing happening that resulted in his wife's car being totaled. Her car was parked at the gas station where she works when it was hit by a truck that was released into neutral by a 4 year old left alone in it.
Fortunately, only property damage resulted, but the story about the little boy's mother trying to cover for her mistake was almost funny.
Slashdot Mirror
Oddly enough, I actually remember this. It was in an issue of COMPUTE!'s Gazette, and he called it the Commando 64. Turns out it was actually a reworked VIC-20, but hey, it's all good.
Okay, here's my paranoic rant:
Big corporation has now won a major case against Napster. So now they go for control of digital media on the Internet.
Would it be possible for them to win a ruling that would prevent any Indie bands from posting stuff they own on the web/Gnutella?
Think about that for a minute. "We, the RIAA, have now won a lawsuit which will prevent anybody not signed with a member label from using the Internet to distribute their music or other self-promotion". Scary, isn't it?
Anyone else think this could happen?
Hmmm, reading down the list, it's possible this is all a hoax anyway. Oh well, better luck next time.
Which then makes it perfect for digital music synthesis, composition, and audio processing. I just may have to do some research now and see what turns up.
Well - could the card just do the basic work and just output values that a driver will recognize as useful? Maybe just output in wave form and feed it to the sound card? It would be much better if it had its own audio output... that would be very cool.
This is a possibility, but it ends up choking your PCI bus with lots of two-way traffic. If it had it's own audio output and associated DSP, that would put a definite cap on how much information has to come back to the main CPU.
Hey, if a student put this together as a project, maybe I could get my hands on some of these procs and play around with my own ideas... :o)
I was thinking the same thing, but with a different application: Music synthesis. A lot of music synthesis is based upon FFT, and other vector-based algorithms. Of course, the hard part there is where do you put the audio out?
Well, a friend of mine told me about how he got his Commodore 1541 disk drive to sing in different pitches...
There was one room that contained a cast iron pot. One day, in a fit of frustration, we typed in "smoke pot". The program replied, "That's illegal".
We couldn't stop laughing.
Just to let everyone know, I NEVER use my handheld cel phone while driving. But I do think I could use a hands-free one with a speaker phone like function safely while driving. There would be little difference to talking to someone in the next seat.
So you start with "stereo", and the unit starts paying attention. There is then a list of words, one of which has to be said within a certain time period in order for it to continue listening. If one of those is said, say, "play", it then listens for the next thing, which would be a valid song title. If that's said then it plays. If not, it ignores you.
So, as in the above, if a valid word is not said after the preceding valid word, the unit ignores you, so it would take a wild coincidence in a conversation to activate it by accident.
The problem with this, of course, is you'd have to build several relational databases in the unit. Not a big deal, really.
By the way, I would snag one of these very quickly if it proved to be reliable.
There is one problem with searching for alien laser beacons using this kind of a system: What if you actually find one?
If there is one thing I know about the scientific community, it's that they always try to find a natural reason for any phenomenon.
So you find something that looks like a laser and is pulsing. "Aliens!" you cry, but the scientists you work with then concoct some weird theory using "dark matter" and "exotic particles" to explain away you're discovery as false. And they get the credit, because they have the PhD's, right?
Scientists are still people, and some will always twist facts to get the result they want.
PS - The previous was only my opinion. I am not trying to troll or start a flamewar. But I think my point has merit, and I want to share it with the rest of the Slashdot Community.
... While your at it? -Darren
Funny you should mention this... A friend of mine just told me about that very thing happening that resulted in his wife's car being totaled. Her car was parked at the gas station where she works when it was hit by a truck that was released into neutral by a 4 year old left alone in it.
Fortunately, only property damage resulted, but the story about the little boy's mother trying to cover for her mistake was almost funny.
-The Consul