Out of curiousity, what are the features you are missing from text editors?
I think the likes of UltraEdit, TextPad, and maybe JEdit fail to suck. But there are many features I'd have to see all in the same editor before I would call that editor 'good':
antialiased fonts - easyier to read, and can be smaller if required.
smooth scrolling - so you can read the text and you scroll down, none of this line-at-a-time crap scrolling.
syntax highlighting inside strings - a neat feature I saw in kedit, but not yet any other editor.
line indenting ala tab in emacs in C/C++ mode - personal pref, but it would be nice to have the option.
windows style tab controls for buffers
(That's not all of them either)
I'm not holding my breath on seeing an editor with all those that also has the basics (hex mode, syntax highlighting, regular expression searches, unlimited undo etc etc), and I have on numerous occasions thought of writing my own - but I think adding features to JEdit might be the best way to go, just that smooth scrolling (in combination with some other features I have in mind) may need architecture designed to accommodate them from the ground up.
Problem is that anything other than a sine wave has higher order components
OK, a different way of putting it
There is nothing other than sine waves. Sine waves are the only kind of [sound] wave that are transmitted by the medium (normally air). We don't build sound out of sine waves because it seemed like a good idea at the time, we build sound out of sine waves because that's the only thing sound is made of - not square waves or triangular waves
Next time you're in the bath, try and make a square wave, or a triangular wave (without using sine waves):)
The only way a near-square wave could exist is as a sum of sines, and the point at which its sine components are no longer audible is the point where you no longer store them.
Likewise, we don't hear square waves or triangluar waves, the do-hickies in our ears oscillate to sine waves, so we only hear the sine compenents of square waves etc.
A square wave is a sum of sine waves, likewise with a trianglar wave, any fequencies higher than the nyquist limit needed to build the wave would be lost (though the basic shape would still be there if enough harmonics fit under the limit) but this isn't an issue because sound isn't made up of artificial waves like square waves or triangluar waves, it's made out of sine waves.
Guitar strings, vocal chords, wind whistling through trees - none of these are square waves, square waves are an artificial construct that can't even exist as sound - infinite energy would be required. You're making up a scenario that can't happen then pointing to it and saying 'look, can't be encoded'.
Also, nyquists is a bit more powerful than you suggest in your message, not only can you reproduce a sine wave by sampling at twice the frequency of the original, but you can also reproduce all the sine waves (of any frequency lower or equal) that were contained in the arbitrary wave.
I'm not sure what you were saying about CD and DVD but DVD Audio can store frequencies far higher than anything your stereo will ever be able to reproduce, and far far higher than anything mine will ever be able to reproduce, so I'm happy.
but a recent Stereophile Magazine article has mentioned...
Steriophiles don't have a clue, but thanks to a slashdotter posting in the SDMI threads, you don't have to take my word for it, you can see for yourself. I've also noticed one reply to your message already pointing out that steriophiles fall over in double blind tests.
The example they gave is along the lines that even an untrained listener is capable of differentiating between someone playing a trumpet down the hall and a recording
The conclusion automatically being that it must be the bit-depth or sample rate that lets us tell, when so many other factors are being ignored - like the sound source is comming from two origins (stereo) rather than one, the volume is not that of real trumpet, the music is continuous like a recording, not stopping, repeating, practicing.
After listening to much stereo equipment I can tell you there is something missing in today's recordings.
While I'm quite open to 44Khz not being enough, and believe that 16bit isn't ideal, I think that is far overshadowed by the fact that (unless it's a solo) you're trying to recreate a 3d sound environment with two speakers - which can never fly unless you start going binaural.
...there are 4 samples per cycle...
I can tell you that your fear here is misplaced, look up Nyquists theorem, every waveform up to 22Khz can be perfectly reproduced from a CD recording (With the exception of some 44Khz noise 90db quieter than the CD's maxmimum volume, and recording mechanisims in practice not being perfect). I know it's non intuitive, but look it up. Yes I can hear the difference between a sine and a square wave, but you have to stop thinking about it that way because you don't connect the dots with straight lines, you fit a wave to the dots.
There is more to audio gear than simply outputing digital samples at two times the upper limit of "audible" sound.
Agreed, but I think you should be looking beyond the storage mechanism, DVD Audio can store sound perfectly with frequencies up to 96Khz at 132db dynamic range. The problem is not the storage format.
The thing about the Nyquist limit is we know DVD Audio can store everything up to 96Khz, this is not the case with Sony's new system.
Look at the differences, Sony's system can store a 2.8Mhz signal, but can only store that signal at the quietest volume it's capable of - so who cares you ask (nobody can hear that high), well, the point is that the higher the frequency, the less volume this system can store it at (right up to that extreme of 2.8Mhz at quietest possible volume). And it can't store a square wave at all (not that we'll have speakers that can accurately reproduce a square wave, tho that would be cool - as a weapon or something).
Basically, yeah, it's got the high frequencies, but with Nyquists limit on a DVD we know we get everything. This system relies on it's failings being to subtle for us to notice.
The Nyquist limit for DVD Audio is 96Khz, DVD Audio also has the flexibility of being able to go from 96khz - 192khz (thats a lower bitrate than SACD up to a much higher one) depedending on the quality vs quantity requirements of the media - and you can buy movies on them.
The watermarking method you propose wouldn't fly, for reasons you point out.
I haven't got around to looking at audio watermarks or the SDMI stuff, but I think you'll find that the watermarks are normally manipulations of the frequency domain and not the amplitude. I use the word manipulations because the watermarks won't just add their data in frequencies so much as tweek what's already there. Obviously this depends on the watermarking scheme.
You also store watermarks with a lot of redundancy, for example the watermark stored in the low frequencies will survive being dubbed from CD to tape, while the watermark stored in the higher frequencies will survive complete in any small sound-bites extracted from the music (but only if extracted at a high enough sample rate). A lot of the redundancy in watermarking is basically just hedging bets.
Watermarks can be very effective if you don't know they're there. They're not as brittle as you portray them, of course, once it's known that they're there all it takes is some pleb and a little signal theory to break them
It would be nice if when SDMI disolves, they place all the watermarking research they did and results they found into the public domain (that's assuming that some of the watermarking schemes were actually innovative). I'm not holding my breath.
I've thought about how to do a working force feedback mouse before, never came up with anything revolutionary tho.
The problem with braking systems (such as the one you suggested) is they can't move the mouse - only resist it (guideing the mouse to stay in a scrollbar etc really wants to be active rather than passive resistance), and more importantly, generally they can't resist in an arbitrary direction (probably all of the breaking systems I thought up suffered from this to some degree).
Using the rotating pins of the mouse as brakes means you can only control it if it's moving in an orthangonal line. For instance, if there was a diagonal area to avoid, you want to be able to drag the mouse along it's edge with no resistance, but not across it and because your breaks can't break in an arbitrary direction the best you could do is clamp down both rollers whenever the mouse is moving in a direction that crosses the area to avoid, unfortunately as the mouse clamps down it becomes less able to determine what direction it is being pushed in (and hense, whether it should break).
It's also going to have implementation issues, such as one break coming on slightly faster than the other - making your mouse tend to move orthonally (and screw up attempts to determine the direction it's being pushed). That's assuming the ball has the required grip on the surface and doesn't just start skidding whenever the brakes come on (something even non-braking mice do).
One of the ideas I had that was better than most of the others was to give up on force feedback for now and concerntrate on tactile feedback (which I think is just as important but practical.
Eg, take an optical mouse and put 3 teflon/nylon feet on it, each of which can be raised and lowered about 4mm independantly of the others. This gives 3 (more precise) degrees of control over the way the mouse handles (up/down, rotate forward/back, rotate left/right).
Excellent. Thanks for the link too - I especially liked:
Another nice thing is that you can easily take jumps with it, because it is very strong. The only problem with taking jumps is that sometimes the Lego falls off.
: )
Anyway, etoys doesn't say much about the kit, so could you fill me in? First of all does it have a proper handset - ie an adult sized one compareable to a proper one and without lego stuff all over it (Maybe I'm just thinking inside a square but I don't see the point of putting lego on the handset)?
What does the reciever system consit of - is it a reciever block with two standard trinary lego outputs requiring a power source, or is it a reciever block with two special servo plugs and lego servos or what?
Everyone mentions the batteries - what batteries does the car take (different ones for wheels vs reciever?) and what does the transmitter take?
toro(sp?) was compatible to a degree.
However I think you may be right, interoperability doesn't appear to be as protected in toyland. But lego has been around more than 20 years, what kind of patents do they have?
This robot's sensors are way better than mindstorms, but I'd still have to agree with you.
If any of you hardware geeks out there are listening, there is a market here. Make a microcontroller brick that fails to suck and is interoperable with lego (ie has lego panels stuck to the top and bottom), compatibility with the programming environments could be irratating, but imagine what you could do with a mindstorms that had 8 analogue in's (provide sensor bricks too), 8 digital ins and 8 trinary outs (the brick being big enough to support 24 2x2 plug blocks)
My other 'lego product begging to be made' idea is radio controlled servos for lego (and a radio control reciever). Might make this one myself as I can just buy an off the shelf radio control and put it in lego blocks.
Suppose I should post these to ShouldExist.org at some point. RC lego might already exist, but I'd be willing to bet they didn't do it properly - probably have a tiny lego-ified handset etc:)
Actually, I exagerated a bit there because for me personally, the biggest difference for flexible gaming is not kickass graphics engines but that a PC has a mouse, high res graphics and flexible networking. Not all of which the XBox will address fully (I imagine).
With regard to a fixed target not compeating with something constantly evolving, I'm not sure that bothers me. All it means is that the XBox has a window of life whereas the PC archetecture will go on - this is the case with any console (and any individual PC, but that's beside the point). Anyone who buys an XBox knows it won't be hot shit in two years and nobody is suggesting that the XBox will be the death of the PC.
Anyone know if the XBox clock speeds will stay fixed?
I was going to mod you up as interesting, but I thought I'd reply instead:) sorry
A big difference between an XBox and a PC in a game console style molded plastic shell is the software. When writing a game for the XBox you only have to write for one computer, and more importantly, optimize for one computer. XBox games can count on the XBox having a specific chipset, they can undercut DX8 and talk to it direct if they want (actually I don't know if it's worth/possible to undercut DX8, but it might be). Even if everthing must be done through DX8 on an XBox it'll still smoke a PC game running on the same hardware because DX8 will have 101 features bolted onto it to take advantage of the XBox hardware - features that you just can't count on a bog standard PC having, and hense features you can't make integral to your PC game engine.
I think that's the difference, developing games on a PC is a nightmare. The X-Box will give all the benifits of the PC platform while releaving some of the nightmare.
An AIDS infected syringe wont stay AIDS infected for long once outside the body, and time between geocache visits would probably(?) be measured in weeks not hours. (Also, unless I had AIDS, I wouldn't want to play with AIDS infected needles when constructing public area booby traps)
That aside, ruling out your example scenario obviously doesn't rule out your underlying concern so I'll have a shot at that too.
Now why would somebody do that? Presumably they get a kick out of knowing they've completely fucked up the life of someone they'll never meet - or something along those lines.
If this is their motivation, then why would they wait until Geocaching to satisfy it? They could string piano wire accross a downhill section of a cycle path at neck height at night, they could pour arsenic into the town drinking water, they could release the front wheel quick-release of bikes parked in a bike stand (this has happened to me), they could snip the break cable of a car while the owners are camping, they could smear cyanide on a stairway banister rail...
If you want to make yourself safe from all the hypothetical things sick-fucks could do, then you're going to have to pull out of life.
It has lot to do with other things as well. I have a non-pirated version of aliens on video-cd, it is very clean (divx clean, but takes 2 CDs). All the other video CDs I've seen (non original) have pretty poor quality. Whenever I've tried compressing my own video I get even worse quality.
I had assumed this was because noise in the video source was wasting bandwidth, (since the compressor I had did i/p/b frames, and motion compensation so I was asuming it was a good one). The aliens-VCD was digitised off film and so wouldn't have any noise compared to video.
To make a long story short, I too have failed to get any quality out of those formats (havn't tried sorenson, but have seen an excellent sorenson vid) using multiple plugins in premier, but I know mpeg1 & 2 can still do kickass compression because I've seen it. Sounds like either the divx encoder is much better than the mpeg plugins I was using, or the divX format handles video artifacts a whole lot better. Either way it's pretty damn cool. I was just peeved at the article because it made it sound like divx on a CD could give DVD a run for it's money on the quality front.
Ahh, fair enough. If that's all you meant then yeah, I've seen divX, and it was good but it wasn't 11 times as good. I wouldn't even say it was twice as good, but then I wasn't doing a comparison at the time, I was just watching a movie.
Looking at a divx movie and going 'wow, that looks good, and it's very watchable' does not mean that it's compareable quality to a DVD. VHS is, after all, quite watchable. The article gives the impression that there is only minor quality loss.
Because not everyone has a DVD drive. And as I said in the post, mpeg2 already picks out moving objects from a scene on a static background and compresses accordingly. It's nothing new - I believe even mpeg1 did it (though I imagine the implementation can be improved).
Since mpeg4 could also be fractal compression, I should mention that fractal compression can also be resolution independant. So instead of looking at bitrates and resolutions, you people are going to have to compare full-sized uncompressed images before oohing and ahhing at the compression magic.
While mpeg2 is not the best video compression out there, there certainly isn't one an entire order of magnitude better.
Warning bells:
11 times better compression - this sounds too good to be true.
NTSC DVDs are 640x480, PAL DVDs are 720x576 but those comparison pictures aren't even 640x480
some of the "Resizing Quality Options" (which are interpolation algorithms) are said to "causes a relatively big data stream".
While I don't know the specifics of the mpeg4 format (and the article doesn't mention any technical detail, so don't flame me, correct me), I'm guessing mpeg4 uses wavelets.
Wavelet compression is potentially(1) the best image compression I know of (ignoring fractal here for now). I was under the impression it offers about a 20% gain over DCT etc, not a 1000% gain.
Anyway, the thing with many forms of wavelet compression is that their result is resolution independent - you can decompress them to any resolution you like, and if the detail isn't there then it will just look a bit blurry. I believe this is what's happening here. While the video stream might be decoding to a NTSC res image, it probably has no more detail than a 320x240 image that has been scaled up in Photoshop.
I doubt the object compression mentioned in the article is any use for a video stream as the video compression program doesn't know what is an object and what isn't - it just sees pixels. Sure it can deduce that that bunch of pixels is moving in that direction, but so does mpeg2. Having objects in the scene is more useful for computer generated video where the encoder can be feed object information about the scene (or feed the scene in layers) and not just what the scene looks like.
In summary, looks cool and convenient, but won't have nearly the detail of a DVD. As to DeCSS, well you can probably pull the same stunt with a laserdisc player and a video-in, the image quality might end up slightly worse as noise from the composite video signal/format will throw the compression somewhat, but you still end up with a high quality, indefinitely reproduceable movie on a CD.
1) I said potentially because it's quite a loose term and DCT etc could be considered wavelet compression - whether it's any good depends on what waves you choose and how you implement it.
No big revelations on the websafe colours front, but something I don't know is websafe fonts.
"helvetica, arial, verdana, sans-serif"
is the only one I know off the top of my head, are there any others?
You could crawl even deeper into the pit with websafe font sizes, Netscape on Linux being the main offender - and
while were at it I wouldn't mind a list of websafe HTML either:)
Time Warner on current DVD encryption methods: "In no way does this disadvantage consumers or any other public interest"
Regarding licenses to make DVD players: "there is no restriction on the availability of licenses to manufacture them"
I stopped reading there, I really can't be bothered wasting my time reading corporate crap and getting annoyed, Time Warner etc are lying, and they know they are lying, that irritates me.
Normally I would say 'Thank God I don't live in America', however I suspect they'll be shoving the DMCA down the throats of the rest of the world RSN.
<Sigh>
(Are non-US citizens allowed to submit comments to the US copyright office re DMCA, based on the probability that the DMCA will be used to screw up copyright laws for overseas countries? : ))
I take it efforts to explain this in court failed.
Could someone explain to me what is required to be classified as a copy protection device?
Currently, without circumventing CSS I am able to run off copies of DVDs onto VHS, or even save them into mpeg's (using two computers) and upload them to the internet for digital distribution. Commercial pirates can stamp DVDs just like CDs - also without requiring the circumvention of CSS.
If it allows all this, while lining the pockets of the movie industry with licensing fees and regional pricing etc, why is it just accepted by the court as a copy protection device - isn't the piss poor job it does of copy protection (in the few contrived scenarios where it complicats piracy) just a side effect of its actual intended purpose.
Did the MPAA present documentation proving it was designed first and formost as a copy protection device and not a player control device?
Linux apps are highly inconsistant, not with MS, but with each other. This has nothing to do with acting differently to Windows - Macs act very differently to windows yet nobody complains about their lack of consistancy.
The computer is nothing more than a tool for various jobs, it's not a god, it's not a way of life, people want to do the job, they don't want to waste time learning to use the tool yet again because it doesn't work the way the rest of linux was working - that's a completly unneccessary waste of time.
You also seem to be on some sort of high horse about users having to think to use the computer, instead of using a system so sensible they don't have to. That to me seems as unneccessary and daft as advocating a return to double-declutching to change gear. I've got better things to think about.
Years ago, a Mac person told me the interface was the most important part of an application, and should be the first part designed. I was a CLI weenie back then and thought this was a complete load of bollox. It's only taken me 6 years to realize he was correct and the user interface really is the most important part of an application.
Given a choice between a computer that crashes occassionally but is easy to use, and a stable computer that is hard to get anything done in, people always choose the one they can actually get something done on, it's not just lazyness, it's a sensible choice.
I can't help but get the impression you want to be some 1337 hax0r dude because you can use a system that requires thinking and isn't easy to learn. What does giving the system to the lowest common denominator mean? What do you lose if linux has a consistent UI that fails to suck? You've still got a command line and you can still run whatever archaic software takes your fancy.
How on earth did this story make it to the front page?
Yes, and all the practical reasons asside, someone is being required to expand their usefulness/knowledge from the single dev environment they are familiar with and someone asks:
Is this limited form of teaching really teaching?
Perhaps if you plan to program purely as a hobbyist for the rest of your life then opening your eyes to all the other options might not be absolutely required (even if in hindsight you would realize it was a good thing).
I wouldn't want to work with anyone who would only work in vi with g++ (especially if they wouldn't even try other environments).
Slashdot Mirror
Out of curiousity, what are the features you are missing from text editors?
I think the likes of UltraEdit, TextPad, and maybe JEdit fail to suck. But there are many features I'd have to see all in the same editor before I would call that editor 'good':
- antialiased fonts - easyier to read, and can be smaller if required.
- smooth scrolling - so you can read the text and you scroll down, none of this line-at-a-time crap scrolling.
- syntax highlighting inside strings - a neat feature I saw in kedit, but not yet any other editor.
- line indenting ala tab in emacs in C/C++ mode - personal pref, but it would be nice to have the option.
- windows style tab controls for buffers
(That's not all of them either)I'm not holding my breath on seeing an editor with all those that also has the basics (hex mode, syntax highlighting, regular expression searches, unlimited undo etc etc), and I have on numerous occasions thought of writing my own - but I think adding features to JEdit might be the best way to go, just that smooth scrolling (in combination with some other features I have in mind) may need architecture designed to accommodate them from the ground up.
There is nothing other than sine waves. Sine waves are the only kind of [sound] wave that are transmitted by the medium (normally air). We don't build sound out of sine waves because it seemed like a good idea at the time, we build sound out of sine waves because that's the only thing sound is made of - not square waves or triangular waves
Next time you're in the bath, try and make a square wave, or a triangular wave (without using sine waves)
The only way a near-square wave could exist is as a sum of sines, and the point at which its sine components are no longer audible is the point where you no longer store them.
Likewise, we don't hear square waves or triangluar waves, the do-hickies in our ears oscillate to sine waves, so we only hear the sine compenents of square waves etc.
Nyquists still holds.
A square wave is a sum of sine waves, likewise with a trianglar wave, any fequencies higher than the nyquist limit needed to build the wave would be lost (though the basic shape would still be there if enough harmonics fit under the limit) but this isn't an issue because sound isn't made up of artificial waves like square waves or triangluar waves, it's made out of sine waves.
Guitar strings, vocal chords, wind whistling through trees - none of these are square waves, square waves are an artificial construct that can't even exist as sound - infinite energy would be required. You're making up a scenario that can't happen then pointing to it and saying 'look, can't be encoded'.
Also, nyquists is a bit more powerful than you suggest in your message, not only can you reproduce a sine wave by sampling at twice the frequency of the original, but you can also reproduce all the sine waves (of any frequency lower or equal) that were contained in the arbitrary wave.
I'm not sure what you were saying about CD and DVD but DVD Audio can store frequencies far higher than anything your stereo will ever be able to reproduce, and far far higher than anything mine will ever be able to reproduce, so I'm happy.
The conclusion automatically being that it must be the bit-depth or sample rate that lets us tell, when so many other factors are being ignored - like the sound source is comming from two origins (stereo) rather than one, the volume is not that of real trumpet, the music is continuous like a recording, not stopping, repeating, practicing. While I'm quite open to 44Khz not being enough, and believe that 16bit isn't ideal, I think that is far overshadowed by the fact that (unless it's a solo) you're trying to recreate a 3d sound environment with two speakers - which can never fly unless you start going binaural. I can tell you that your fear here is misplaced, look up Nyquists theorem, every waveform up to 22Khz can be perfectly reproduced from a CD recording (With the exception of some 44Khz noise 90db quieter than the CD's maxmimum volume, and recording mechanisims in practice not being perfect). I know it's non intuitive, but look it up. Yes I can hear the difference between a sine and a square wave, but you have to stop thinking about it that way because you don't connect the dots with straight lines, you fit a wave to the dots. Agreed, but I think you should be looking beyond the storage mechanism, DVD Audio can store sound perfectly with frequencies up to 96Khz at 132db dynamic range. The problem is not the storage format.
I replied a little hastily before...
The thing about the Nyquist limit is we know DVD Audio can store everything up to 96Khz, this is not the case with Sony's new system.
Look at the differences, Sony's system can store a 2.8Mhz signal, but can only store that signal at the quietest volume it's capable of - so who cares you ask (nobody can hear that high), well, the point is that the higher the frequency, the less volume this system can store it at (right up to that extreme of 2.8Mhz at quietest possible volume). And it can't store a square wave at all (not that we'll have speakers that can accurately reproduce a square wave, tho that would be cool - as a weapon or something).
Basically, yeah, it's got the high frequencies, but with Nyquists limit on a DVD we know we get everything. This system relies on it's failings being to subtle for us to notice.
I doubt very much he was advocating CD Audio
The Nyquist limit for DVD Audio is 96Khz, DVD Audio also has the flexibility of being able to go from 96khz - 192khz (thats a lower bitrate than SACD up to a much higher one) depedending on the quality vs quantity requirements of the media - and you can buy movies on them.
The watermarking method you propose wouldn't fly, for reasons you point out.
I haven't got around to looking at audio watermarks or the SDMI stuff, but I think you'll find that the watermarks are normally manipulations of the frequency domain and not the amplitude. I use the word manipulations because the watermarks won't just add their data in frequencies so much as tweek what's already there. Obviously this depends on the watermarking scheme.
You also store watermarks with a lot of redundancy, for example the watermark stored in the low frequencies will survive being dubbed from CD to tape, while the watermark stored in the higher frequencies will survive complete in any small sound-bites extracted from the music (but only if extracted at a high enough sample rate). A lot of the redundancy in watermarking is basically just hedging bets.
Watermarks can be very effective if you don't know they're there. They're not as brittle as you portray them, of course, once it's known that they're there all it takes is some pleb and a little signal theory to break them
It would be nice if when SDMI disolves, they place all the watermarking research they did and results they found into the public domain (that's assuming that some of the watermarking schemes were actually innovative). I'm not holding my breath.
I've thought about how to do a working force feedback mouse before, never came up with anything revolutionary tho.
The problem with braking systems (such as the one you suggested) is they can't move the mouse - only resist it (guideing the mouse to stay in a scrollbar etc really wants to be active rather than passive resistance), and more importantly, generally they can't resist in an arbitrary direction (probably all of the breaking systems I thought up suffered from this to some degree).
Using the rotating pins of the mouse as brakes means you can only control it if it's moving in an orthangonal line. For instance, if there was a diagonal area to avoid, you want to be able to drag the mouse along it's edge with no resistance, but not across it and because your breaks can't break in an arbitrary direction the best you could do is clamp down both rollers whenever the mouse is moving in a direction that crosses the area to avoid, unfortunately as the mouse clamps down it becomes less able to determine what direction it is being pushed in (and hense, whether it should break).
It's also going to have implementation issues, such as one break coming on slightly faster than the other - making your mouse tend to move orthonally (and screw up attempts to determine the direction it's being pushed). That's assuming the ball has the required grip on the surface and doesn't just start skidding whenever the brakes come on (something even non-braking mice do).
One of the ideas I had that was better than most of the others was to give up on force feedback for now and concerntrate on tactile feedback (which I think is just as important but practical.
Eg, take an optical mouse and put 3 teflon/nylon feet on it, each of which can be raised and lowered about 4mm independantly of the others. This gives 3 (more precise) degrees of control over the way the mouse handles (up/down, rotate forward/back, rotate left/right).
Anyway, etoys doesn't say much about the kit, so could you fill me in? First of all does it have a proper handset - ie an adult sized one compareable to a proper one and without lego stuff all over it (Maybe I'm just thinking inside a square but I don't see the point of putting lego on the handset)?
What does the reciever system consit of - is it a reciever block with two standard trinary lego outputs requiring a power source, or is it a reciever block with two special servo plugs and lego servos or what?
Everyone mentions the batteries - what batteries does the car take (different ones for wheels vs reciever?) and what does the transmitter take?
thanks
(All I need to get now is a son to buy this for)
toro(sp?) was compatible to a degree.
However I think you may be right, interoperability doesn't appear to be as protected in toyland. But lego has been around more than 20 years, what kind of patents do they have?
This robot's sensors are way better than mindstorms, but I'd still have to agree with you.
:)
If any of you hardware geeks out there are listening, there is a market here. Make a microcontroller brick that fails to suck and is interoperable with lego (ie has lego panels stuck to the top and bottom), compatibility with the programming environments could be irratating, but imagine what you could do with a mindstorms that had 8 analogue in's (provide sensor bricks too), 8 digital ins and 8 trinary outs (the brick being big enough to support 24 2x2 plug blocks)
My other 'lego product begging to be made' idea is radio controlled servos for lego (and a radio control reciever). Might make this one myself as I can just buy an off the shelf radio control and put it in lego blocks.
Suppose I should post these to ShouldExist.org at some point. RC lego might already exist, but I'd be willing to bet they didn't do it properly - probably have a tiny lego-ified handset etc
Actually, I exagerated a bit there because for me personally, the biggest difference for flexible gaming is not kickass graphics engines but that a PC has a mouse, high res graphics and flexible networking. Not all of which the XBox will address fully (I imagine).
With regard to a fixed target not compeating with something constantly evolving, I'm not sure that bothers me. All it means is that the XBox has a window of life whereas the PC archetecture will go on - this is the case with any console (and any individual PC, but that's beside the point). Anyone who buys an XBox knows it won't be hot shit in two years and nobody is suggesting that the XBox will be the death of the PC.
Anyone know if the XBox clock speeds will stay fixed?
I was going to mod you up as interesting, but I thought I'd reply instead :) sorry
A big difference between an XBox and a PC in a game console style molded plastic shell is the software. When writing a game for the XBox you only have to write for one computer, and more importantly, optimize for one computer. XBox games can count on the XBox having a specific chipset, they can undercut DX8 and talk to it direct if they want (actually I don't know if it's worth/possible to undercut DX8, but it might be). Even if everthing must be done through DX8 on an XBox it'll still smoke a PC game running on the same hardware because DX8 will have 101 features bolted onto it to take advantage of the XBox hardware - features that you just can't count on a bog standard PC having, and hense features you can't make integral to your PC game engine.
I think that's the difference, developing games on a PC is a nightmare. The X-Box will give all the benifits of the PC platform while releaving some of the nightmare.
An AIDS infected syringe wont stay AIDS infected for long once outside the body, and time between geocache visits would probably(?) be measured in weeks not hours. (Also, unless I had AIDS, I wouldn't want to play with AIDS infected needles when constructing public area booby traps)
That aside, ruling out your example scenario obviously doesn't rule out your underlying concern so I'll have a shot at that too.
Now why would somebody do that? Presumably they get a kick out of knowing they've completely fucked up the life of someone they'll never meet - or something along those lines.
If this is their motivation, then why would they wait until Geocaching to satisfy it? They could string piano wire accross a downhill section of a cycle path at neck height at night, they could pour arsenic into the town drinking water, they could release the front wheel quick-release of bikes parked in a bike stand (this has happened to me), they could snip the break cable of a car while the owners are camping, they could smear cyanide on a stairway banister rail...
If you want to make yourself safe from all the hypothetical things sick-fucks could do, then you're going to have to pull out of life.
Feel safer?
It has lot to do with other things as well. I have a non-pirated version of aliens on video-cd, it is very clean (divx clean, but takes 2 CDs). All the other video CDs I've seen (non original) have pretty poor quality. Whenever I've tried compressing my own video I get even worse quality.
I had assumed this was because noise in the video source was wasting bandwidth, (since the compressor I had did i/p/b frames, and motion compensation so I was asuming it was a good one). The aliens-VCD was digitised off film and so wouldn't have any noise compared to video.
To make a long story short, I too have failed to get any quality out of those formats (havn't tried sorenson, but have seen an excellent sorenson vid) using multiple plugins in premier, but I know mpeg1 & 2 can still do kickass compression because I've seen it. Sounds like either the divx encoder is much better than the mpeg plugins I was using, or the divX format handles video artifacts a whole lot better. Either way it's pretty damn cool. I was just peeved at the article because it made it sound like divx on a CD could give DVD a run for it's money on the quality front.
I think we agree. (is that legal?)
Ahh, fair enough. If that's all you meant then yeah, I've seen divX, and it was good but it wasn't 11 times as good. I wouldn't even say it was twice as good, but then I wasn't doing a comparison at the time, I was just watching a movie.
Looking at a divx movie and going 'wow, that looks good, and it's very watchable' does not mean that it's compareable quality to a DVD. VHS is, after all, quite watchable. The article gives the impression that there is only minor quality loss.
Because not everyone has a DVD drive. And as I said in the post, mpeg2 already picks out moving objects from a scene on a static background and compresses accordingly. It's nothing new - I believe even mpeg1 did it (though I imagine the implementation can be improved).
Since mpeg4 could also be fractal compression, I should mention that fractal compression can also be resolution independant. So instead of looking at bitrates and resolutions, you people are going to have to compare full-sized uncompressed images before oohing and ahhing at the compression magic.
Warning bells:
- 11 times better compression - this sounds too good to be true.
- NTSC DVDs are 640x480, PAL DVDs are 720x576 but those comparison pictures aren't even 640x480
- some of the "Resizing Quality Options" (which are interpolation algorithms) are said to "causes a relatively big data stream".
While I don't know the specifics of the mpeg4 format (and the article doesn't mention any technical detail, so don't flame me, correct me), I'm guessing mpeg4 uses wavelets.Wavelet compression is potentially(1) the best image compression I know of (ignoring fractal here for now). I was under the impression it offers about a 20% gain over DCT etc, not a 1000% gain.
Anyway, the thing with many forms of wavelet compression is that their result is resolution independent - you can decompress them to any resolution you like, and if the detail isn't there then it will just look a bit blurry. I believe this is what's happening here. While the video stream might be decoding to a NTSC res image, it probably has no more detail than a 320x240 image that has been scaled up in Photoshop.
I doubt the object compression mentioned in the article is any use for a video stream as the video compression program doesn't know what is an object and what isn't - it just sees pixels. Sure it can deduce that that bunch of pixels is moving in that direction, but so does mpeg2. Having objects in the scene is more useful for computer generated video where the encoder can be feed object information about the scene (or feed the scene in layers) and not just what the scene looks like.
In summary, looks cool and convenient, but won't have nearly the detail of a DVD. As to DeCSS, well you can probably pull the same stunt with a laserdisc player and a video-in, the image quality might end up slightly worse as noise from the composite video signal/format will throw the compression somewhat, but you still end up with a high quality, indefinitely reproduceable movie on a CD.
1) I said potentially because it's quite a loose term and DCT etc could be considered wavelet compression - whether it's any good depends on what waves you choose and how you implement it.
No big revelations on the websafe colours front, but something I don't know is websafe fonts.
:)
"helvetica, arial, verdana, sans-serif"
is the only one I know off the top of my head, are there any others? You could crawl even deeper into the pit with websafe font sizes, Netscape on Linux being the main offender - and while were at it I wouldn't mind a list of websafe HTML either
[Lynx users need not reply]
- Time Warner on current DVD encryption methods: "In no way does this disadvantage consumers or any other public interest"
- Regarding licenses to make DVD players: "there is no restriction on the availability of licenses to manufacture them"
I stopped reading there, I really can't be bothered wasting my time reading corporate crap and getting annoyed, Time Warner etc are lying, and they know they are lying, that irritates me.Normally I would say 'Thank God I don't live in America', however I suspect they'll be shoving the DMCA down the throats of the rest of the world RSN.
<Sigh>
(Are non-US citizens allowed to submit comments to the US copyright office re DMCA, based on the probability that the DMCA will be used to screw up copyright laws for overseas countries? : ))
I take it efforts to explain this in court failed.
Could someone explain to me what is required to be classified as a copy protection device?
Currently, without circumventing CSS I am able to run off copies of DVDs onto VHS, or even save them into mpeg's (using two computers) and upload them to the internet for digital distribution. Commercial pirates can stamp DVDs just like CDs - also without requiring the circumvention of CSS.
If it allows all this, while lining the pockets of the movie industry with licensing fees and regional pricing etc, why is it just accepted by the court as a copy protection device - isn't the piss poor job it does of copy protection (in the few contrived scenarios where it complicats piracy) just a side effect of its actual intended purpose.
Did the MPAA present documentation proving it was designed first and formost as a copy protection device and not a player control device?
Just thought I'd reply to this to let you know I did read your reply, and I wouldn't disagree with it.
Dude, you've missed the point entirely.
Linux apps are highly inconsistant, not with MS, but with each other. This has nothing to do with acting differently to Windows - Macs act very differently to windows yet nobody complains about their lack of consistancy.
The computer is nothing more than a tool for various jobs, it's not a god, it's not a way of life, people want to do the job, they don't want to waste time learning to use the tool yet again because it doesn't work the way the rest of linux was working - that's a completly unneccessary waste of time.
You also seem to be on some sort of high horse about users having to think to use the computer, instead of using a system so sensible they don't have to. That to me seems as unneccessary and daft as advocating a return to double-declutching to change gear. I've got better things to think about.
Years ago, a Mac person told me the interface was the most important part of an application, and should be the first part designed. I was a CLI weenie back then and thought this was a complete load of bollox. It's only taken me 6 years to realize he was correct and the user interface really is the most important part of an application.
Given a choice between a computer that crashes occassionally but is easy to use, and a stable computer that is hard to get anything done in, people always choose the one they can actually get something done on, it's not just lazyness, it's a sensible choice.
I can't help but get the impression you want to be some 1337 hax0r dude because you can use a system that requires thinking and isn't easy to learn. What does giving the system to the lowest common denominator mean? What do you lose if linux has a consistent UI that fails to suck? You've still got a command line and you can still run whatever archaic software takes your fancy.
I wouldn't want to work with anyone who would only work in vi with g++ (especially if they wouldn't even try other environments).