Which calculator is that? BPS has never authorized a TETRIS® game for the TI, Casio, or HP calculator platforms. You may have had a falling tetramino game (incidentally, here's how to make one), but it wasn't Tetris brand (for instance, I remember playing "Jetris" on a TI-89 calculator, where the J was a reversed half-uncial T); if it was, the author infringed the trademark on Tetris. We don't want ticalc.org to shut down again, do we?
The information is readily available on Google's site. Why bother accessing it any other way?
Two use cases, both resulting in failure:
I try to access Google's site directly from a certain computer, and I get an error message: "No network connection is available." In other words, I'm not online 24/7.
I try to access Google Groups from any computer, and I get an error message: "groups.google.com does not exist." How do we know Google will be around for the next decade?
Napkin calculation: VHS as a backup medium
on
How Google Saved USENET
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Hell, a converted VCR using VHS as a backup medium can store like 100GB (saw one somewhere, I forget the link.)
Assuming 9 Mbps of raw data (half the data rate of HDTV, because garden-variety VHS is nowhere near broadcast-quality), and assuming some heavy-duty error correction reducing effective data rate to 6 Mbps, VHS's SP mode records for 7200 seconds, giving 5 gigabytes on a tape at a bare minimum. (For comparison, a single-layer DVD holds about 4 1/2 GB.) If we go to EP mode, increase the bandwidth to S-VHS levels, and apply 3:1 text compression (common with deflation of large Latin-alphabet texts, especially containing quoted material), we may be able to store even more data per tape.
My first few years of UseNet posts had a copyright declaration in them. I own that copyright, and I did NOT grant google that copyright usage.
You licensed it for use in Usenet and Usenet-like media as soon as you clicked Send. You can terminate that license by going to google.com and submitting a remove request.
Actually, RLE is different [from horizontal line vector encoding of a bitmap]. RLE is when the file says X is repeated Y times as the basic way to compress.
Doesn't "a pixel colored X is repeated Y times" sound like "draw a horizontal 1-pixel-wide line in color X from the current position, Y pixels to the right"?
where the loser of a lawsuit can be (and usually is) held liable for the winner's court costs. What this prevents is blatant misuse of the legal system.
Except in that case, if the ??AA wins a case on grounds of an unjust law or a technicality, it can overbill its lawyers through creative accounting to run up legal fees. I'd suggest that in cases where one party's ability to pay is orders of magnitude larger than the other's, basing part of the legal fees on ability to pay may have merit.
Actually, if you change the domain you can get what appears to be impressive compression. Consider a bitmapped picture of a child's line drawing of a house. Replace that by a description of the drawing commands. Of course you have not violated Shannon's theorem because the amount of information in the original drawing is actually low.
And if you manage to express all drawing commands in terms of "draw a horizontal line," you've re-invented run-length encoding that MacPaint and PCX files have been using for ages.
The fractal transform that Barnsley's products use is merely vector quantization, mapping each 8x8 pixel block of an image onto a 4x4 pixel block of a reduced version of itself, plus an RGB offset for DC. It begins to converge to the desired image after a few iterations of the transform.
So if you define "practically random data" as "data that is random enough for practical purposes," you can compress it by storing the random seed and the string length.;-)
However, the seed may be almost as long as the string itself, if not longer. In the worst case, you're expanding the string by the 48-bit integer necessary to hold the string length.
The big problem is that for a game to boot up on a GBA, the ROM has to have the correct header information, which includes code copyrighted by Nintendo (part of which is the NINTENDO logo that appears when you turn on the GBA with a kart in)
It's copyrighted, but copying it does not constitute infringement. From the Sega v. Accolade decision, if a game console checks for a magic cookie in the software, even the 14 KB magic cookie in the Dreamcast boot sector, copying the magic cookie for interoperability counts as Fair Use(TM). Just make sure you follow the Bleem developers' example and display "CORRECTION: This software is not licensed by Nintendo" once your code gets control.
Which character would [require 1000 Vs games]?... Mr. Game & Watch can be unlocked by beating classic mode, adventure more, or target test with all of the other twenty-four characters.
I was referring to Mr G&W. I've found some characters whose target test absolutely stumps me (e.g. Young Link). Even then, unlocking all the stages...
Plus, until most music albums are on DVD audio at the highest sampling rate
Buy any music video collection, and the audio track will be at the highest sampling rate that you can even hear. The human hearing system can't hear more than 20 kHz due to the low-pass action of inner ear fluid, and the Nyquist-Shannon sampling rate theorem states that 48 kHz sampling can reconstruct a 0-24 kHz signal perfectly. Your ear also can't hear more than 20 bits, as 20 bit linear PCM has a 120 dB dynamic range, and if you calibrate a 105 dB SPL range as is done in THX setups (i.e. reproduce a -30 dB reference sound at 75 dB SPL), 20 bits will more than cover everything. Dolby Digital is a 384 kbps lossy encoding of 5.1 channel 48 kHz 24 bit audio.
For music, which is typically mastered at -12 to -6 dB reference, you only need 16 bits. CD Digital Audio is a 1.4 Mbps lossless encoding of 2 channel 44.1 kHz 16 bit audio. CD-quality MP3 is a nominally 192 kbps (see r3mix.net) lossy encoding of 2 channel 44.1 kHz 16 bit audio.
We do not especially need a new standard for DVD Audio. The DVD-Video standard (Dolby Digital audio track) with a blank video track, or with a music video (either conventionally produced or created with audio visualization software), works just fine.
Are there more than 1000 people worldwide who care about the Ogg Vorbis format?
I'd bet there are at least that many on the developers' mailing list, let alone users who have downloaded oggdrop. [/me goes to vorbis.com to pick up oggdrop RC3]
as long as the authors insist on retaining that stupid name for it
How is.wma any less stupid than.ogg? At least the latter is less clumsy to pronounce.
MP3Pro
The free encoder runs at only 64 kbps (nearly equivalent to 112 kbps MP3, fine for flash-based portables but not for anything that uses a disc), the better encoder is $7.50 per unit straight to RCA in addition to the OEM and retail markup, the decoder is $1.25 per unit ("I can't play this in Winamp?"), and all encoders cut out at 15 kHz and have trouble with wideband signals such as cymbals and distorted guitars.
Slashdot Mirror
handy tetris playing calculator.
Which calculator is that? BPS has never authorized a TETRIS® game for the TI, Casio, or HP calculator platforms. You may have had a falling tetramino game (incidentally, here's how to make one), but it wasn't Tetris brand (for instance, I remember playing "Jetris" on a TI-89 calculator, where the J was a reversed half-uncial T); if it was, the author infringed the trademark on Tetris. We don't want ticalc.org to shut down again, do we?
knowing them, they might just screw with StarOffice and give 'Sun' users added goodies
Not likely. OpenOffice.org software is available under the GNU Lesser GPL, and Sun can't take away the freedoms that the LGPL grants.
There's no substitute for 64 bit arch
Define "64 bit architecture." You mean like the "64-bit" Atari Jaguar or Nintendo 64?
Well, you can download the Solaris 8 iso images and burn your own CDs of it as well though.
Not so fast. According to a recent Slashback, Sun has pulled the Solaris operating environment for x86 computers from its download page.
Gracenote wins, obviously, as now they have a prescedent against the evil, market-destroying voulenteer version
An out-of-court settlement does not set common-law precedent. Only a court decision can do that.
and have regained some (small) iota of respectability.
Have they?
However, [the box containing the address of the CDDB server] is freely editable to whatever you wish (freedb.freedb.org, for example).
In the next release, watch it become a list-menu with no "Other..." item rather than an editable text box.
Besides, as I wrote here, Gracenote is phasing out CDDB1.
How long before someone writes a hack to fool roxio's software into using the free alternative.
Gracenote is phasing out the CDDB1 protocol in favor of CDDB2. Part of the agreement may be that future versions of Roxio software not connect to CDDB1 servers.
The information is readily available on Google's site. Why bother accessing it any other way?
Two use cases, both resulting in failure:
I try to access Google's site directly from a certain computer, and I get an error message: "No network connection is available." In other words, I'm not online 24/7.
I try to access Google Groups from any computer, and I get an error message: "groups.google.com does not exist." How do we know Google will be around for the next decade?
Hell, a converted VCR using VHS as a backup medium can store like 100GB (saw one somewhere, I forget the link.)
Assuming 9 Mbps of raw data (half the data rate of HDTV, because garden-variety VHS is nowhere near broadcast-quality), and assuming some heavy-duty error correction reducing effective data rate to 6 Mbps, VHS's SP mode records for 7200 seconds, giving 5 gigabytes on a tape at a bare minimum. (For comparison, a single-layer DVD holds about 4 1/2 GB.) If we go to EP mode, increase the bandwidth to S-VHS levels, and apply 3:1 text compression (common with deflation of large Latin-alphabet texts, especially containing quoted material), we may be able to store even more data per tape.
On every single story, somebody posts a parody of [the ring] poem [from LotR]. This is the new Beawolf cluster.
Not exactly. It'd be the new Beowulf if they started parodying The Adventures of Beowulf .
My first few years of UseNet posts had a copyright declaration in them. I own that copyright, and I did NOT grant google that copyright usage.
You licensed it for use in Usenet and Usenet-like media as soon as you clicked Send. You can terminate that license by going to google.com and submitting a remove request.
Actually, RLE is different [from horizontal line vector encoding of a bitmap]. RLE is when the file says X is repeated Y times as the basic way to compress.
Doesn't "a pixel colored X is repeated Y times" sound like "draw a horizontal 1-pixel-wide line in color X from the current position, Y pixels to the right"?
where the loser of a lawsuit can be (and usually is) held liable for the winner's court costs. What this prevents is blatant misuse of the legal system.
Except in that case, if the ??AA wins a case on grounds of an unjust law or a technicality, it can overbill its lawyers through creative accounting to run up legal fees. I'd suggest that in cases where one party's ability to pay is orders of magnitude larger than the other's, basing part of the legal fees on ability to pay may have merit.
Nearly ever connected person to whom I speak has broadband /available/, if not at the price they want.
Yeah, for $200,000 for moving to a different town or part of town, or $1000+ per month for a T1. Hardly reasonable for all but the richest folk.
Guess we're going to be needing these [carpal tunnel exercises] after all.
What about these exercises?
Actually, if you change the domain you can get what appears to be impressive compression. Consider a bitmapped picture of a child's line drawing of a house. Replace that by a description of the drawing commands. Of course you have not violated Shannon's theorem because the amount of information in the original drawing is actually low.
And if you manage to express all drawing commands in terms of "draw a horizontal line," you've re-invented run-length encoding that MacPaint and PCX files have been using for ages.
Sounds like fractal compression to me.
The fractal transform that Barnsley's products use is merely vector quantization, mapping each 8x8 pixel block of an image onto a 4x4 pixel block of a reduced version of itself, plus an RGB offset for DC. It begins to converge to the desired image after a few iterations of the transform.
So if you define "practically random data" as "data that is random enough for practical purposes," you can compress it by storing the random seed and the string length. ;-)
However, the seed may be almost as long as the string itself, if not longer. In the worst case, you're expanding the string by the 48-bit integer necessary to hold the string length.
Well, it doesn't matter how large the key is, or how advanced the algorithm is.
Not if the chips containing the algorithm and the key in silicon are tamper-resistant, committing Capcom Suicide if anybody attempts to hack them.
The big problem is that for a game to boot up on a GBA, the ROM has to have the correct header information, which includes code copyrighted by Nintendo (part of which is the NINTENDO logo that appears when you turn on the GBA with a kart in)
It's copyrighted, but copying it does not constitute infringement. From the Sega v. Accolade decision, if a game console checks for a magic cookie in the software, even the 14 KB magic cookie in the Dreamcast boot sector, copying the magic cookie for interoperability counts as Fair Use(TM). Just make sure you follow the Bleem developers' example and display "CORRECTION: This software is not licensed by Nintendo" once your code gets control.
Which character would [require 1000 Vs games]? ... Mr. Game & Watch can be unlocked by beating classic mode, adventure more, or target test with all of the other twenty-four characters.
I was referring to Mr G&W. I've found some characters whose target test absolutely stumps me (e.g. Young Link). Even then, unlocking all the stages...
Doesnt matter where you buy your hardware, you can put whatever software you want on it. Its up to you.
OK, so tell me which national computer store chain I can walk into and buy a computer without paying Microsoft for software that I will never use.
Plus, until most music albums are on DVD audio at the highest sampling rate
Buy any music video collection, and the audio track will be at the highest sampling rate that you can even hear. The human hearing system can't hear more than 20 kHz due to the low-pass action of inner ear fluid, and the Nyquist-Shannon sampling rate theorem states that 48 kHz sampling can reconstruct a 0-24 kHz signal perfectly. Your ear also can't hear more than 20 bits, as 20 bit linear PCM has a 120 dB dynamic range, and if you calibrate a 105 dB SPL range as is done in THX setups (i.e. reproduce a -30 dB reference sound at 75 dB SPL), 20 bits will more than cover everything. Dolby Digital is a 384 kbps lossy encoding of 5.1 channel 48 kHz 24 bit audio.
For music, which is typically mastered at -12 to -6 dB reference, you only need 16 bits. CD Digital Audio is a 1.4 Mbps lossless encoding of 2 channel 44.1 kHz 16 bit audio. CD-quality MP3 is a nominally 192 kbps (see r3mix.net) lossy encoding of 2 channel 44.1 kHz 16 bit audio.
We do not especially need a new standard for DVD Audio. The DVD-Video standard (Dolby Digital audio track) with a blank video track, or with a music video (either conventionally produced or created with audio visualization software), works just fine.
Or are you shopping for music for your dog?
Are there more than 1000 people worldwide who care about the Ogg Vorbis format?
I'd bet there are at least that many on the developers' mailing list, let alone users who have downloaded oggdrop. [/me goes to vorbis.com to pick up oggdrop RC3]
as long as the authors insist on retaining that stupid name for it
How is .wma any less stupid than .ogg? At least the latter is less clumsy to pronounce.
MP3Pro
The free encoder runs at only 64 kbps (nearly equivalent to 112 kbps MP3, fine for flash-based portables but not for anything that uses a disc), the better encoder is $7.50 per unit straight to RCA in addition to the OEM and retail markup, the decoder is $1.25 per unit ("I can't play this in Winamp?"), and all encoders cut out at 15 kHz and have trouble with wideband signals such as cymbals and distorted guitars.
Downloadable music is no further away than their learning curve.
It's also no further away than emusic.com (who does not employ me).