Yes, you're doing something wrong, you're using MSIE...but that has nothing to do with the script error you're getting;)
It seems that the Wuname generator is yet another victim of the dreaded Slashdot Effect. It may get fixed, but in the meantime take another look at Slashdot Man's fanpage. Now that's creepy! ---
Re:wuname for Bill Gates is Flailing Fanatical Kil
on
Humpday Quickies
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· Score: 1
A hashtable could have the same effect. But who cares? It's funny as hell!
P.S. I'm the Gratuitous F-REEK from now on. Boo-yah!
I don't get these YAPLs. Don't they just end up meaning that the company in question gets to be the sole distro? Or is it more like they're the only ones who have the right to make a profit off of it? I don't see how that could really help the companies (esp. in the case of Mozilla, since Netscape will distribute Netscape 5 for free anyway, so there's no profit to protect).
Does anyone have a page up that explains/compares the GNU GPL, Netscape PL, Mozilla PL, APSL, etc. in plain English? Legalese makes my brain go squish.
Point taken, but did you have to bring up the Nazis?
This "being a gun owner in America is like being a Jew in Nazi Germany" BS is the silliest crap I've heard in a while. Is the gov't shipping your friends & family off to buttfsck, nowhere and gassing them? Last time I checked, nothing like that was happening. Or is it all a big coverup?
Yes, the government frequently oversteps its bounds, and yes, the persecution of law-abiding citizens is inexcusable. But you can make a case against the government's policies and behavior without resorting to hyperbole. It may give you a pleasant sensation of moral justification through victimization, but it just makes you look like a wacko to other people. It's just propaganda, which is never a good thing. Two wrongs do not make a right.
P.S. If you want solid evidence of America as police state, take a look at California's prison economy.
Why did this get market as a troll? Just because he gave his opinion (and then followed it with an exception, I might add)?
Wrox has some decent stuff out there. Frank Boumphrey's (sp?) book on stylesheets is excellent, for example. They ain't O'Reilly, but you could do a lot worse.
The only thing that sort of rubs me the wrong way about Wrox is their Windows bias. The vast majority of their books are about MS-proprietary technologies, and their web-development books concentrate on developing for MSIE almost exclusively. ---
Right. I should have been more clear. Obviously, decompressing to a level of detail greater than that of the original image is going to produce some artifacts.
The lack of inherent size is more useful for displaying on screens of arbitrary resolution. This is a feature that seems built for the web, but will probably never be seen there.
I agree that it probably isn't a good choice for medical images or any application where sharpness is extremely important. It's much better for photographic data and art.
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Re:Last minute completion
on
Apocalypse Not
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· Score: 2
Fear - Most fear computers. They are a genuine job threat to many in the news business and to many people that they know. Most of their friends and colleagues are in the older, dying industries that are threatened by computers.
I really don't know where you're getting this. All the reporters I know use computers constantly. Fear is the last word I'd use to describe their opinion. More like "relief" (there was dancing in the halls when the SF Chronicle finally moved to networked desktops from the decades-old mainframe). Until somebody writes a program that can contact sources, interview people, and write an interesting article, reporters won't worry.
The tech reporters feel especially unthreatened--their jobs exist because of computers, and they're well aware of this. In fact, the biz dept. at the San Francisco Chronicle has high turnover partly because tech reporters keep getting snatched up by dotcoms! They're obviously not afraid for their careers.
As for "most of their friends and colleagues are in the older, dying industries etc.", what are you talking about? Tech reporting is almost entirely concerned with computers anymore, and where it isn't it's usually covered by somebody specializing in non-computer tech. (consumer tech, etc.)
The people in the newspaper business who are most threatened by computers are the typographical workers and web pressmen, since desktop publishing and printer technology have largely made their jobs obsolete. However, they have little or no influence over stories.
I think the main source of hysteria was TV news, which by its very nature has to condense complex issues to easily digestible sound bites, and "experts" who overestimating the effects of a date rollover. Oh, and the government saying "nothing's wrong." Nothing convinces people of a problem faster than the government denying that it exists:)
Ahhh, Apple Logo 2...my second programming language (after BASIC). I have many fond memories of my old Apple IIc. I spent more time fiddling with Logo than I did with my games, which included Rampage...more fond memories...damn, now I'm in an infinite nostalgia loop! ---
Ummm...IIRC, wavelets were first devised as a way of representing audio, as a sort of replacement for sine wave decomposition. The reasoning was that sine waves became problematic if the sound wasn't a tone (e.g. a drumbeat) or a reapeating pattern. In general, the spikier and more chaotic it is the more sine waves you need to represent it. Wavelets can represent spiky data and localized sounds relatively easily. ---
I'd thought they'd had these techniques rolled into JPEG and MPEG already but it looks like you're right, they've kept the techniques for their own products.
...which is precisely why no one uses the format. Dang shame too, it compresses to an insane level with very little loss of detail, and artifacting takes the form of some blurring at the edges instead of the blocky tiling of overcompressed JPEGs. Fractal images also have no inherent dimension and can be decompressed to any size, like vector formats.
Scientific American ran a short article (I think about a page) in the early '90s about it. I think it was written by the inventor.
Mathematically brilliant, but no sense. He didn't realize that by keeping it proprietary, he was limiting its use to applications where it is necessary, as opposed to places where it would be convenient (like the Internet). As long as he sits on his patent (it's a British patent, IIRC), nobody is going to use his format.
Then there's JIF, which is basically just GIF with LZ77 compression instead of LZW. Unlike PNG, it supports animation. It doesn't have PNG's nifty features, but then it's designed to be an interim format, easy to add to an application that already supports GIFs. Adding features would defeat the purpose.
A request for support has been submitted to the mozilla project as Bug #21445"
I don't see what *you're* seeing. The JPEG2000 looked better than the vanilla JPEG in all cases, IMO, and the difference was most noticeable at for more compressed files. Compare the JPEG2000 to the JPEG for this image and see what I mean. The JPEG2000 is very nice, with smooth curves (!), while the JPEG looks like something done on an Apple IIgs. ---
I hate DVD's. I've never had any media (except Windows software on CD-ROM media) that took so much control of my own entertainment experience away from me. I want to watch an MPEG video stream, dammit, not play an elaborate video game trying to get subtitles and audio in my preferred language.
Any decent DVD player has those options on the remote, so you don't need the menu.
Hell, DVD's have bits on their control tracks that exist only to tell my player when it's not allowed to let me use the fast-forward button!
That's actually important for implementing menus (this is an educated guess based on playing around with my machine, I haven't looked at the spec). It allows them to set a still image and make the next "frame" a programmed behavior, e.g. to jump to another title. (If I'm wrong about this, feel free to correct me)
Some bands already do something like this (re: the Grateful Dead allowing anyone to record their live performances), and it seems to work all right in those cases. But it assumes that all musicians play live. This is not the case. Many are studio-bound either because their method of creating music require a studio (e.g. multitracking, computer generation, etc.), or because they just don't like to perform live (e.g. Joe Satriani, who tours at most once a year). Some people are excellent musicians but not partcularly interesting live acts--musical talent and showmanship are independent talents. Should they be prevented from earning a living? ---
At the SF Chronicle, we just ran a little bit from the Associated Press on the decision this morning. The basic reasoning is that this was just a preliminary, and we're waiting to see how it goes from here.
However, I forwarded a couple of messages from this discussion to the Assistant Editor (Copying vs. Decoding by SEWilco and Explanation (of sorts) by Chris Johnson). So I'm hoping we'll get a little more in-depth fairly soon.
Personally, I think we should be giving this issue more play, but I'm just an editorial assistant so it's not really my call.
Patents are the opposite of secrets: they are always published.
When so many innocent reinventors have been ambushed by submarine patents, in what sense are they not secret?
Because anyone who files a patent is legally required to publish it and make the information publically available. Specifically, you can get information on all granted patents through the patent office (albeit after wading through a bunch of red tape).
Companies submerge patents by not publicizing their existence. This is sneaky and underhanded because if something seems obvious (that is, you wouldn't think it could have been patented), you don't usually double check.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, that's just the introduction page. It contains a link to the same CGI-generated page, which gives the same error.
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Yes, you're doing something wrong, you're using MSIE...but that has nothing to do with the script error you're getting ;)
It seems that the Wuname generator is yet another victim of the dreaded Slashdot Effect. It may get fixed, but in the meantime take another look at Slashdot Man's fanpage. Now that's creepy!
---
A hashtable could have the same effect. But who cares? It's funny as hell!
P.S. I'm the Gratuitous F-REEK from now on. Boo-yah!
---
I always thought that an open letter was one not sent to a specific recipient.
---
Well, Programming Perl is more of a reference than a tutorial. Learning Perl might have been a better choice in this case.
---
I don't get these YAPLs. Don't they just end up meaning that the company in question gets to be the sole distro? Or is it more like they're the only ones who have the right to make a profit off of it? I don't see how that could really help the companies (esp. in the case of Mozilla, since Netscape will distribute Netscape 5 for free anyway, so there's no profit to protect).
Does anyone have a page up that explains/compares the GNU GPL, Netscape PL, Mozilla PL, APSL, etc. in plain English? Legalese makes my brain go squish.
---
Point taken, but did you have to bring up the Nazis?
This "being a gun owner in America is like being a Jew in Nazi Germany" BS is the silliest crap I've heard in a while. Is the gov't shipping your friends & family off to buttfsck, nowhere and gassing them? Last time I checked, nothing like that was happening. Or is it all a big coverup?
Yes, the government frequently oversteps its bounds, and yes, the persecution of law-abiding citizens is inexcusable. But you can make a case against the government's policies and behavior without resorting to hyperbole. It may give you a pleasant sensation of moral justification through victimization, but it just makes you look like a wacko to other people. It's just propaganda, which is never a good thing. Two wrongs do not make a right.
P.S. If you want solid evidence of America as police state, take a look at California's prison economy.
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IIRC, she runs a game software company.
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You click on "Reply to This" under the article. Just like replying to a comment.
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Why did this get market as a troll? Just because he gave his opinion (and then followed it with an exception, I might add)?
Wrox has some decent stuff out there. Frank Boumphrey's (sp?) book on stylesheets is excellent, for example. They ain't O'Reilly, but you could do a lot worse.
The only thing that sort of rubs me the wrong way about Wrox is their Windows bias. The vast majority of their books are about MS-proprietary technologies, and their web-development books concentrate on developing for MSIE almost exclusively.
---
Right. I should have been more clear. Obviously, decompressing to a level of detail greater than that of the original image is going to produce some artifacts.
The lack of inherent size is more useful for displaying on screens of arbitrary resolution. This is a feature that seems built for the web, but will probably never be seen there.
I agree that it probably isn't a good choice for medical images or any application where sharpness is extremely important. It's much better for photographic data and art.
---
I really don't know where you're getting this. All the reporters I know use computers constantly. Fear is the last word I'd use to describe their opinion. More like "relief" (there was dancing in the halls when the SF Chronicle finally moved to networked desktops from the decades-old mainframe). Until somebody writes a program that can contact sources, interview people, and write an interesting article, reporters won't worry.
The tech reporters feel especially unthreatened--their jobs exist because of computers, and they're well aware of this. In fact, the biz dept. at the San Francisco Chronicle has high turnover partly because tech reporters keep getting snatched up by dotcoms! They're obviously not afraid for their careers.
As for "most of their friends and colleagues are in the older, dying industries etc.", what are you talking about? Tech reporting is almost entirely concerned with computers anymore, and where it isn't it's usually covered by somebody specializing in non-computer tech. (consumer tech, etc.)
The people in the newspaper business who are most threatened by computers are the typographical workers and web pressmen, since desktop publishing and printer technology have largely made their jobs obsolete. However, they have little or no influence over stories.
I think the main source of hysteria was TV news, which by its very nature has to condense complex issues to easily digestible sound bites, and "experts" who overestimating the effects of a date rollover. Oh, and the government saying "nothing's wrong." Nothing convinces people of a problem faster than the government denying that it exists :)
---
Ahhh, Apple Logo 2...my second programming language (after BASIC). I have many fond memories of my old Apple IIc. I spent more time fiddling with Logo than I did with my games, which included Rampage...more fond memories...damn, now I'm in an infinite nostalgia loop!
---
What have you been smoking? They already have a Linux version, and have for some time.
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Sounds like photographic Unicode!
---
Ummm...IIRC, wavelets were first devised as a way of representing audio, as a sort of replacement for sine wave decomposition. The reasoning was that sine waves became problematic if the sound wasn't a tone (e.g. a drumbeat) or a reapeating pattern. In general, the spikier and more chaotic it is the more sine waves you need to represent it. Wavelets can represent spiky data and localized sounds relatively easily.
---
...which is precisely why no one uses the format. Dang shame too, it compresses to an insane level with very little loss of detail, and artifacting takes the form of some blurring at the edges instead of the blocky tiling of overcompressed JPEGs. Fractal images also have no inherent dimension and can be decompressed to any size, like vector formats.
Scientific American ran a short article (I think about a page) in the early '90s about it. I think it was written by the inventor.
Mathematically brilliant, but no sense. He didn't realize that by keeping it proprietary, he was limiting its use to applications where it is necessary, as opposed to places where it would be convenient (like the Internet). As long as he sits on his patent (it's a British patent, IIRC), nobody is going to use his format.
---
Then there's JIF, which is basically just GIF with LZ77 compression instead of LZW. Unlike PNG, it supports animation. It doesn't have PNG's nifty features, but then it's designed to be an interim format, easy to add to an application that already supports GIFs. Adding features would defeat the purpose.
A request for support has been submitted to the mozilla project as Bug #21445"
---
I don't see what *you're* seeing. The JPEG2000 looked better than the vanilla JPEG in all cases, IMO, and the difference was most noticeable at for more compressed files. Compare the JPEG2000 to the JPEG for this image and see what I mean. The JPEG2000 is very nice, with smooth curves (!), while the JPEG looks like something done on an Apple IIgs.
---
"Apple is making truckloads of money, and Apple sucks."
---
Any decent DVD player has those options on the remote, so you don't need the menu.
That's actually important for implementing menus (this is an educated guess based on playing around with my machine, I haven't looked at the spec). It allows them to set a still image and make the next "frame" a programmed behavior, e.g. to jump to another title. (If I'm wrong about this, feel free to correct me)
---
Some bands already do something like this (re: the Grateful Dead allowing anyone to record their live performances), and it seems to work all right in those cases. But it assumes that all musicians play live. This is not the case. Many are studio-bound either because their method of creating music require a studio (e.g. multitracking, computer generation, etc.), or because they just don't like to perform live (e.g. Joe Satriani, who tours at most once a year). Some people are excellent musicians but not partcularly interesting live acts--musical talent and showmanship are independent talents. Should they be prevented from earning a living?
---
At the SF Chronicle, we just ran a little bit from the Associated Press on the decision this morning. The basic reasoning is that this was just a preliminary, and we're waiting to see how it goes from here.
However, I forwarded a couple of messages from this discussion to the Assistant Editor (Copying vs. Decoding by SEWilco and Explanation (of sorts) by Chris Johnson). So I'm hoping we'll get a little more in-depth fairly soon.
Personally, I think we should be giving this issue more play, but I'm just an editorial assistant so it's not really my call.
---
Because anyone who files a patent is legally required to publish it and make the information publically available. Specifically, you can get information on all granted patents through the patent office (albeit after wading through a bunch of red tape).
Companies submerge patents by not publicizing their existence. This is sneaky and underhanded because if something seems obvious (that is, you wouldn't think it could have been patented), you don't usually double check.
---
Would you rather nobody regulates pharmacies? "The bottle says it's heart medicine, and the pill sure looks all right..."
---