Re:Anyone have any experience with APC?
on
PHP 4.3.0 Released
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· Score: 1
We used it for a while on Wikipedia. Seemed to help, but you had to manually clear the cache files when changing the.php sources (with the mmap'd version, supposedly it can automagically check in shared-memory mode).
Also had some problems with it reporting segfaults sometimes when running scripts that used the same includes in a different order; this may be fixed in later revisions.
An old Pinnacle Studio DC10+; run the TV out from the DVD player into the Studio in, pass-through back out to a VCR. Very handy for making NTSC VHS backups of my PAL DVDs which I couldn't play anymore if my RPC1 DVD reader were to fail.
Sure, I could just buy the region 1 DVD... oops, not out in North America. And even when they are out, they don't have the same set of special features. Feh!
Re: "digital data is PAL?"
on
Emigrating DVD's?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Technically speaking it's not "PAL", but it is 720x576 at 25 frames per second rather than 720x480 at 29.976 frames per second. Depending on the player, it may or may not be able to output PAL-ish data as NTSC. If not, he can just bring his TV with him or look around for a multi-system set (or just use his computer).
Surely they're supposed to purchase both domains, just like American companies are encouraged to buy their names in the.com,.net, and.org TLDs 'to protect their intellectual property'...
Ah, meta-meta-weblogs...:) A couple weeks ago that article was
discussed nicely on K5. Not terribly detailed, but a couple more tidbits there. (Note that the Japanese apparently love their T9-like system for mobile phone text messaging.)
Very few people include human sacrifice in their definition of civilized.
You can bet they would if they'd been raised in a society where human sacrifice was normal, expected, and holy. The word 'civilized' generally is used to mean 'exactly like my society'. 'What, they eat dogs? They're uncivilized!' 'What, they eat cows? They're uncivilized!' 'What, they sacrifice humans to their false gods? They're uncivilized!' 'What, they don't sacrifice humans to the gods? They're uncivilized!'
Really, a 'civilization' is any organized society that has citizens (Latin root 'cives') and some system of law. Plenty of legal codes in modern Western 'civilizations' provide for numerous ways of killing citizens for the good of society... Keeping the gods happy so they don't destroy your whole society seems like it's for the good of all, no? Seemed reasonable to them, at least.
or it could be some odd sort of new Antivirus software prototype (laugh!)
Naw, if the antivirus folks were behind it, it would also look for credit card numbers so they could charge you for the priveledge of having your system secured.
Isn't this one of the inevitable uses for Display Postscript? You can render the PS description at any point in the image-- you can either do it immediately or you can pipe it over the net to some other display device.
Sure! But I'm not clear on what happens if you want to do something that DPS doesn't support (like, 3d bump-mapped whatsahooey). You'd either require a protocol extension (losing your device independence and requiring certain hardware) or render it locally and send an image (possibly inefficient, and requires knowing a target resolution, again losing some device-independence).
On the plus side, the future coming of 200dpi monitors would be a heckuvalot easier to deal with - the monitor would automagically render the higher-resolution fonts and vector graphics, and images would be scaled to an appropriate size instead of limited to some particular pixel count that doesn't match the real world; all without changing a thing on the computer.
Is it like super-sampling, where the OS and Video card generate 4 times the information and then downsample and anti-alias?
Basically, but when pixels have (known, ordered) components to them such as in color LCD displays - red, green, and blue chunks - you can go farther and treat those three chunks as having separate positions instead of pretending the pixel is a single solid chunk. Thus instead of ooo in the middle of a diagonal line you can have.oO where . is red, o is green, and O is blue.
Why couldn't monitors come with enough RAM to store 2 frames at the highest resolution at 32 bpp? At 1600x1200, that'd be 7.5 MB. 8MB of RAM coupled with a processor that runs fast enough to blend pixels for and 85Hz refresh rate.
That could be done, sure, but... why? You could put the same ability in the graphics card/chip, and avoid sending 4x redundant data to the monitor. And, you wouldn't have to buy a new monitor to get there - monitors are much more expensive than graphics cards in general
Make monitors like printers.
This is a much more interesting idea, the device-independent sound of it intrigues me... but basically you're integrating the graphics card into the monitor. Now, if you want the latest 3d bump-texture-particle gizmo feature, you have to buy a new monitor instead of just a new video card.
But I'm off topic.
Hey, this is slashdot! If you don't have a goatse.cx link, you're about as on-topic as they come here.
They don't have a standard order, but any given LCD screen does have a defined order that is consistent across the screen. The problem with a CRT is that any pixel can end up on any old splotch of phosphor in no defined, consistent, or useful order. Most people run their monitors at resolutions so high that multiple pixels actually overlap on the same phosphor patches... which really is like free antialiasing already.:)
More likely that's just an arbitrary cut-off date, so they don't have to give rebates to everyone who buys a zip drive in the future... Since they haven't admitted liability in the settlement, I wouldn't expect them to have actually changed anything in response to it.
Maybe because the suit was filed in a US court? If you want to collect damages in Canada, sue them in a Canadian court... Hey, maybe you'll get lucky and get more than a rebate.:)
So if you're a member of the affected class, go object!
I'd consider it if the court weren't several thousand miles away from me... It certainly doesn't bug me enough to take the trip, just to sit on my ass and complain loudly.:)
Anybody going to be in Deleware in June? Feel free to visit the court (June 8, 10 am, Delaware Superior Court) and complain.
A lot of people posted here that they never had these problems, but I'm sure they will take the rebates.
I personally won't, mainly because I can't think for the life of me what I'd do with them.:) I already have more Zip disks than I'll ever need (I just use them to copy files between home and school) and have access to two drives if one of them fails.
I'm kinda (really; really) pissed
that the dumb ass lawyers settled for rebates.
Lawyers have a bad rep here on slashdot, but they are smarter than you think - they're not being paid with rebates, they get cold, hard cash. $4.7 million of it if the court approves... If you REALLY don't like it, you can appear at the court hearing and ask the judge to alter their compensation.:) June 8, 2001, at 10 am, in the Superior Court of Delaware, 1020 N. King Street, Wilmington, DE 19801.
Ok, they didn't admit it, they "settled" which could be construed as either admittal or not wanting to bother with it.
Looking through my copy of the papers... "Iomega denies any liability or wrongdoing which is alleged in the Complaint, but has decided to enter into this settlement in order avoid[sic] the costs and burdens associated with continuing the litigation." A settlement which requires everyone to buy more Iomega products... They have some GREAT lawyers...
The various rebates you can get range from $12.50 off on a pack of six Zip100 disks to $40 off on a Zip 250 drive with 6 zip250 disks if you submit "proof of manifestation" (you swear you had click-o-death), or from $5 to $25 on the same stuff if you didn't. And free technical support for ten months!
The best part though is that Iomega is required to donate $1,000,000 worth of Zip drives & disks to K-12 schools... That's right, donate DEFECTIVE HARDWARE TO CHILDREN!!!!
No, not true. the BEST part is "d. Cash Payment -- Iomega shall pay to the Class in settlement of the Class Claims an amount up to $4.7 million, or such lesser amount that the Court may approve, which amount shall be designated for Class Counsel's reasonable attorney's fees and expenses." (emphasis added) Lawyers are making OVER FOUR MILLION DOLLARS off this suit, while the people (supposedly) harmed by Iomega's actions get COUPONS for products from a company we don't trust. What a good deal.
Of course, the settlement still has to be approved by the court, so who knows...
What portable phones do is to give people the power to bother you anywhere at anytime.
An amazing feature of many mobile phones is the ability to turn them off when you don't want to receive incoming calls. Using this feature, you have the ability to make outgoing calls whenever you want, and are still able to receive calls when you know you might need to by turning it on selectively.
Re:Yes, this exists, but is not the best solution.
on
DVDs On DAT?
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· Score: 2
Doesn't DV use mpeg 2?
No, DV actually uses an encoding similar to (but not the same as) motion JPEG. So, like MJPEG and MPEG it uses discrete cosine transforms to compress individual frames, but unlike MPEG it does not have any temporal compression. Frames are recorded individually, which requires a much higher bit rate (25 Mbps) than MPEG2. This is good for editing, but not ideal for storage.
Why reconvert?
DV is a standard format, you can buy recorders and players (including portable decks) that won't be unique to your personal setup. Downside: recompression and different colorspace divisions (4:2:0 on DVD, 4:1:1 for NTSC DV) will hurt quality slightly.
There wouldn't be any space savings, would there?
Definitely not, and if you're using MiniDV or Digital8 tapes you'll get at most an hour per tape, so 2 tapes are needed for most movies. The larger DVCAM tapes can hold 2 hours or so, but are much more expensive than most DVDs.
In other words, if you don't like the cryptic filenames given to you... rename them! Save v08fsjlse3.exe as "OEM Video driver beta 0.8 (feb 2000).exe" if you like. The renaming police won't lock you away for it. (Yet!)
Depends on what you're doing. If the original poster just needs high-quality recording and playback (possibly with editing), then it'll do fine. (I usually use mine at approx. 3.6MB/s data rate with pleasing results.) If they actually need MPEG-2 as requested, it won't help. However it's unclear from the post what the actual requirements are.
Also note that the DC10+ uses square pixels (640x480 for NTSC, 768x576 for PAL), which is a different resolution from DVD-style MPEG2 (720x480 NTSC, 720x576 PAL), so it's not an ideal card if you want to convert to DVD resolution MPEG2.
I think the DC30 does 720px though... as of course does DV capture over 1394. Of course, I shudder to think of the CPU requirements of decoding DV *and* recoding it as MPEG2, in software, in realtime. (shudder)
The DC10+ does not do MPEG in any way, shape, or form. It does Motion JPEG, which is basically a stream of JPEG images for each picture field (there is no temporal compression, each field is independent of the others).
Re:"Simple" problems for machine translation
on
Wearable Translators
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· Score: 2
For the curious, I recommend a more extensive article on this subject by a former UN translator, including some examples of problem phrases.
The less curious, of course, are under no obligation to read it.
Esperanto kaj Dvorak? Oni povas fari tion chiam, sen Libertarianoj! Estas facila, jhus faru "loadkeys dvorak"... Ho, ankau lernu Esperanton! Iru al esperanto.net...
Slashdot Mirror
Also had some problems with it reporting segfaults sometimes when running scripts that used the same includes in a different order; this may be fixed in later revisions.
when I first stumbled on it a year or so ago, I can only assume you didn't actually read very far, and/or were reading in the wrong place.
An old Pinnacle Studio DC10+; run the TV out from the DVD player into the Studio in, pass-through back out to a VCR. Very handy for making NTSC VHS backups of my PAL DVDs which I couldn't play anymore if my RPC1 DVD reader were to fail.
Sure, I could just buy the region 1 DVD... oops, not out in North America. And even when they are out, they don't have the same set of special features. Feh!
Technically speaking it's not "PAL", but it is 720x576 at 25 frames per second rather than 720x480 at 29.976 frames per second. Depending on the player, it may or may not be able to output PAL-ish data as NTSC. If not, he can just bring his TV with him or look around for a multi-system set (or just use his computer).
AHA! I've been trying for years to remember the name of that cartoon...
Surely they're supposed to purchase both domains, just like American companies are encouraged to buy their names in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs 'to protect their intellectual property'...
Ah, meta-meta-weblogs... :) A couple weeks ago that article was
discussed nicely on K5. Not terribly detailed, but a couple more tidbits there. (Note that the Japanese apparently love their T9-like system for mobile phone text messaging.)
Very few people include human sacrifice in their definition of civilized.
You can bet they would if they'd been raised in a society where human sacrifice was normal, expected, and holy. The word 'civilized' generally is used to mean 'exactly like my society'. 'What, they eat dogs? They're uncivilized!' 'What, they eat cows? They're uncivilized!' 'What, they sacrifice humans to their false gods? They're uncivilized!' 'What, they don't sacrifice humans to the gods? They're uncivilized!'
Really, a 'civilization' is any organized society that has citizens (Latin root 'cives') and some system of law. Plenty of legal codes in modern Western 'civilizations' provide for numerous ways of killing citizens for the good of society... Keeping the gods happy so they don't destroy your whole society seems like it's for the good of all, no? Seemed reasonable to them, at least.
or it could be some odd sort of new Antivirus software prototype (laugh!)
Naw, if the antivirus folks were behind it, it would also look for credit card numbers so they could charge you for the priveledge of having your system secured.
Sure! But I'm not clear on what happens if you want to do something that DPS doesn't support (like, 3d bump-mapped whatsahooey). You'd either require a protocol extension (losing your device independence and requiring certain hardware) or render it locally and send an image (possibly inefficient, and requires knowing a target resolution, again losing some device-independence).
On the plus side, the future coming of 200dpi monitors would be a heckuvalot easier to deal with - the monitor would automagically render the higher-resolution fonts and vector graphics, and images would be scaled to an appropriate size instead of limited to some particular pixel count that doesn't match the real world; all without changing a thing on the computer.
Is it like super-sampling, where the OS and Video card generate 4 times the information and then downsample and anti-alias?
Basically, but when pixels have (known, ordered) components to them such as in color LCD displays - red, green, and blue chunks - you can go farther and treat those three chunks as having separate positions instead of pretending the pixel is a single solid chunk. Thus instead of ooo in the middle of a diagonal line you can have .oO where . is red, o is green, and O is blue.
Why couldn't monitors come with enough RAM to store 2 frames at the highest resolution at 32 bpp? At 1600x1200, that'd be 7.5 MB. 8MB of RAM coupled with a processor that runs fast enough to blend pixels for and 85Hz refresh rate.
That could be done, sure, but... why? You could put the same ability in the graphics card/chip, and avoid sending 4x redundant data to the monitor. And, you wouldn't have to buy a new monitor to get there - monitors are much more expensive than graphics cards in general
Make monitors like printers.
This is a much more interesting idea, the device-independent sound of it intrigues me... but basically you're integrating the graphics card into the monitor. Now, if you want the latest 3d bump-texture-particle gizmo feature, you have to buy a new monitor instead of just a new video card.
But I'm off topic.
Hey, this is slashdot! If you don't have a goatse.cx link, you're about as on-topic as they come here.
Flatscreens don't have a defined order either
They don't have a standard order, but any given LCD screen does have a defined order that is consistent across the screen. The problem with a CRT is that any pixel can end up on any old splotch of phosphor in no defined, consistent, or useful order. Most people run their monitors at resolutions so high that multiple pixels actually overlap on the same phosphor patches... which really is like free antialiasing already. :)
More likely that's just an arbitrary cut-off date, so they don't have to give rebates to everyone who buys a zip drive in the future... Since they haven't admitted liability in the settlement, I wouldn't expect them to have actually changed anything in response to it.
Maybe because the suit was filed in a US court? If you want to collect damages in Canada, sue them in a Canadian court... Hey, maybe you'll get lucky and get more than a rebate. :)
I think we all remember the lack of success getting money with their zip drive rebate...or have we forgotten.
Actually, I got my Zip drive rebate back in '96. Judging by the lawsuit over those I think I was the only one though...
So if you're a member of the affected class, go object!
I'd consider it if the court weren't several thousand miles away from me... It certainly doesn't bug me enough to take the trip, just to sit on my ass and complain loudly. :)
Anybody going to be in Deleware in June? Feel free to visit the court (June 8, 10 am, Delaware Superior Court) and complain.
A lot of people posted here that they never had these problems, but I'm sure they will take the rebates.
I personally won't, mainly because I can't think for the life of me what I'd do with them. :) I already have more Zip disks than I'll ever need (I just use them to copy files between home and school) and have access to two drives if one of them fails.
I'm kinda (really; really) pissed that the dumb ass lawyers settled for rebates.
Lawyers have a bad rep here on slashdot, but they are smarter than you think - they're not being paid with rebates, they get cold, hard cash. $4.7 million of it if the court approves... If you REALLY don't like it, you can appear at the court hearing and ask the judge to alter their compensation. :) June 8, 2001, at 10 am, in the Superior Court of Delaware, 1020 N. King Street, Wilmington, DE 19801.
Will the USB zip drive work with linux?
Supposedly... http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdv.php3?id=28
Looking through my copy of the papers... "Iomega denies any liability or wrongdoing which is alleged in the Complaint, but has decided to enter into this settlement in order avoid[sic] the costs and burdens associated with continuing the litigation." A settlement which requires everyone to buy more Iomega products... They have some GREAT lawyers...
The various rebates you can get range from $12.50 off on a pack of six Zip100 disks to $40 off on a Zip 250 drive with 6 zip250 disks if you submit "proof of manifestation" (you swear you had click-o-death), or from $5 to $25 on the same stuff if you didn't. And free technical support for ten months!
The best part though is that Iomega is required to donate $1,000,000 worth of Zip drives & disks to K-12 schools... That's right, donate DEFECTIVE HARDWARE TO CHILDREN!!!!
No, not true. the BEST part is "d. Cash Payment -- Iomega shall pay to the Class in settlement of the Class Claims an amount up to $4.7 million, or such lesser amount that the Court may approve, which amount shall be designated for Class Counsel's reasonable attorney's fees and expenses." (emphasis added) Lawyers are making OVER FOUR MILLION DOLLARS off this suit, while the people (supposedly) harmed by Iomega's actions get COUPONS for products from a company we don't trust. What a good deal.
Of course, the settlement still has to be approved by the court, so who knows...
An amazing feature of many mobile phones is the ability to turn them off when you don't want to receive incoming calls. Using this feature, you have the ability to make outgoing calls whenever you want, and are still able to receive calls when you know you might need to by turning it on selectively.
No, DV actually uses an encoding similar to (but not the same as) motion JPEG. So, like MJPEG and MPEG it uses discrete cosine transforms to compress individual frames, but unlike MPEG it does not have any temporal compression. Frames are recorded individually, which requires a much higher bit rate (25 Mbps) than MPEG2. This is good for editing, but not ideal for storage.
DV is a standard format, you can buy recorders and players (including portable decks) that won't be unique to your personal setup. Downside: recompression and different colorspace divisions (4:2:0 on DVD, 4:1:1 for NTSC DV) will hurt quality slightly.
Definitely not, and if you're using MiniDV or Digital8 tapes you'll get at most an hour per tape, so 2 tapes are needed for most movies. The larger DVCAM tapes can hold 2 hours or so, but are much more expensive than most DVDs.
In other words, if you don't like the cryptic filenames given to you... rename them! Save v08fsjlse3.exe as "OEM Video driver beta 0.8 (feb 2000).exe" if you like. The renaming police won't lock you away for it. (Yet!)
Depends on what you're doing. If the original poster just needs high-quality recording and playback (possibly with editing), then it'll do fine. (I usually use mine at approx. 3.6MB/s data rate with pleasing results.) If they actually need MPEG-2 as requested, it won't help. However it's unclear from the post what the actual requirements are.
Also note that the DC10+ uses square pixels (640x480 for NTSC, 768x576 for PAL), which is a different resolution from DVD-style MPEG2 (720x480 NTSC, 720x576 PAL), so it's not an ideal card if you want to convert to DVD resolution MPEG2.
I think the DC30 does 720px though... as of course does DV capture over 1394. Of course, I shudder to think of the CPU requirements of decoding DV *and* recoding it as MPEG2, in software, in realtime. (shudder)
The DC10+ does not do MPEG in any way, shape, or form. It does Motion JPEG, which is basically a stream of JPEG images for each picture field (there is no temporal compression, each field is independent of the others).
For the curious, I recommend a more extensive article on this subject by a former UN translator, including some examples of problem phrases.
The less curious, of course, are under no obligation to read it.
Esperanto kaj Dvorak? Oni povas fari tion chiam, sen Libertarianoj! Estas facila, jhus faru "loadkeys dvorak"... Ho, ankau lernu Esperanton! Iru al esperanto.net...