Can anyone recommend any alternative sound cards for gaming and/or general use other than Creative's cards? Or perhaps a sound card review site?
Re:I can't make out exactly what you are looking f
on
GPS and Portability?
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· Score: 0
Wow, great information. I myself am looking for GPS hardware + software combo for PocketPC that does driving directions and map navigation with voice driving direction output. Any recommendations for that?
The article's reference to Openwave's device products is really about their application suite for mobile devices, Phone Suite V7. V7 provides the missing piece to Linux, the "expensive-to-develop" embedded application software, including web browsing, messaging, file management, media playback, etc.
V7 also has a framework that lets phone makers develop custom applications and UI, including a kick-ass graphics engine (think Java 2D), UI framework, and all the goodies you need on a resource constrained device (much more constrained than a smartphone), which we use to build these applications.
When phone makers look at Linux by itself, it lacks the necessary phone application stack which is both tricky and expensive to develop, and is where V7 provides the solution.
There's a good discussion on OSNews about V7 (can't seem to find it right now), and some press release-ish stuff on LinuxDevices
Note: I'm one of the core developers working on this project, so factor that in accordingly.
Dream? We're already here! You're missing out! Come on over, we'll take care of you. You don't have to worry about all that rubbish anymore. There's no government, no laws, and food and clothing? It grows, it always grows. Just be sure not to go out on your own after dark, and sleep in large groups.
Sounds like you've also never been to Japan. KDDI and J-Phone both run wildly popular networks, with devices that vary greatly between handset vendors.
Plus, Symbian still has only a 1% market share of phones in Europe. (according to a latest press release by Symbian)
I strongly urge anyone who wishes to learn more about current research in combining motion capture with animation (similar to image-based rendering techniques applied to the motion domain) to look at these links, one from this year's SIGGRAPH, and a link to several other papers on the topic. SIGGRAPH 2002 had a special track on this (and the bibliography is cited as well).
Good point. Maybe that also means that you could say that any music or media advertising encouraging the buyer to "own a copy today!" constitutes fraud, since you really aren't going to "own" it anyway.
These above mentioned effects shots (Gap commercial, etc.) are very different from The Matrix's bullet-time effects from a technological standpoint. Look at my previous comment if you want to learn more. (Note: The relation to Dr. Debevec's work is actually more loosely related than I had first mentioned.)
Maybe I should write to some science journal, but I lack the entropy:-)
Cyclic universes might explain the origin of the primordial soup. If there indeed were infinite cycles of the universe, then there must have been infinite number of possible universe configurations occuring (have occured). One of those cycles (perhaps our current one) may have triggered the successful formation of the proteins found in the primordial soup, leading to the origin of life.
Suppose, in that cycle, that life was able to form, and evolved enough to comprehend the nature of the universe. That intelligent life might have decided to propagate the instructions to create life to the next cycle -- perhaps as simply as primordial proteins, or perhaps affecting the next cycle's energy configuration to produce those proteins.
It may seem a bit far fetched, but the big idea here is that with infinite cycles, and thus, infinite configurations of the universe, it makes the creation of the primordial soup much more plausible and likely.
If you have even half a brain, you know who the Slashdot crew is voting for, and perhaps it's not our place to suggest how they run their own web site. But as a self-proclaimed news site, they ought to feel some responsibility towards providing unbiased political coverage. Or even something close. It would be a refreshing change over the slanted coverage given by mainstream media.
In defense of sendmail, sendmail-related security advisories have always come through the sendmail-announce list. Some idiot decided it was good to post about the advisory on Slashdot, which is certainly not the right forum for these things. (This is why there are these advisory mechanisms) The sendmail team even had enough good judgement to wait until the Linux kernel team had a patch before announcing the existence of this exploit.
People are so quick to place blame on things. Just upgrade your damn kernel and be done with it.
Shoot! I just replied to the top before I saw this. Sendmail, Inc. has a configuration feature which does essentially what you've suggested here. Details can be found here.
Sendmail, Inc., has posted a blocking configuration feature that enables sendmail mail servers to stop the "ILOVEYOU" virus from entering your computer network at the server level. This feature works on all versions of sendmail 8.9 and above.
Upgrading to 8.10 will help performance immensely by virtue of the new multiple mail queues feature, allowing you to reduce inode depths for long queue directories. In your case, you should definitely upgrade.
There are also other various improvements to the source overall which have increased I/O performance incremently, but the multiple mail queues is the killer feature you'll want.
Mini-disclaimer: I work for Sendmail, Inc., am one of Sendmail Switch's developers, but my opinions are not necessarily representative of those of Sendmail, Inc.</CYA>
Sendmail Switch isn't open source software, it's commercial software. It does many sophisticated management thingies besides configuring sendmail.
That being said, OS sendmail configuration got much easier since m4 configuration files came about. And while it's not an Apache-style configuration, etc., it's on the same level in terms of difficulty.
The OS sendmail developers work pretty much orthogonal to the commercial component developers. Feature sets of OS sendmail are driven by the OS community. They are aware of the inherent difficulty of configuring sendmail, and consider it to be quite a shortcoming of OS sendmail, independent of whether management components exist in a commercial software product.
You will probably see OS sendmail become easier to use somewhere down the line.
One final note, Sendmail Switch was built using open source technology. It's not apparent to people outside the company, but if you bought the product you'd see we use open source technology extensively in the product. The commercial component developers also believe in OS principles, which is why our products use open source technology where possible.
Sendmail Switch is commercial software. But buying it supports the company. Supporting the company supports the OS developers - giving a secure "home" and dedicated resources to OS sendmail development. Benchmarking, compatibility labs, food, and clothing are examples of such.
To your first question, Manex developed custom software to perform color correction, film grain, and other lighting corrections on the recovered frames.
To your second question, I believe it was just a single still taking from one camera viewpoint. They may have "idled" the frame (where you capture 4-7 frames very close together and loop them to fix film grain problems and to give a bit of "movement" to the eye.
I know one of the people who did the R&D on bullet-time sequences in "The Matrix"; he recently gave a seminar at U.C. Berkeley along with Jon Gaeta where they discussed how the bullet-time sequences were done.
First, the difference between bullet-time sequences and the GAP commercial sequences is a big one:
Freeze-time shots (e.g., the GAP commercial) are easy to do. All shots are taken simultaneously of the scene, and you don't need to worry about the motion of the subjects in the scene.
Bullet-time shots actually have to move in very slow motion. At the seminar, they said that although they had many cameras firing sequentially over the camera path, they were unable to place cameras close enough together to capture sufficient frames during really slow segments of movement (if you watch The Matrix bullet-time sequences, you'll see that initially the motion starts out very slow, and gradually speeds up)
The way that Manex solved this was to use computer vision techniques to interpolate the necessary "in between" frames. This is especially difficult since the motion in some shots (i.e. Keanu Reeves' arm waving in a circle in the air) have motion that isn't linear (meaning that the compute can't simply compute the pixels along a straight line from one frame to another). Manex used a lot of combined interpolation techniques to achieve the results in the movie.
In addition, obtaining consistent camera lighting, film grain, and film speed parameters proved difficult. They used cameras that were all uniform in make and model, but had to image process the frames to achieve consistency.
Second, you may notice that all bullet-time sequences were captured on a green screen! One of the reasons they did this was because the angle of rotation is actually more than 180 degrees. (This is also a difference from the GAP commercial) So how did they insert the background?
Well the answer is, they re-created the backgrounds. Manex used image-based modelling and rendering techniques that were based on work done by Dr. Paul Debevec at U.C. Berkeley. You can read more about the FACADE photogrammetric modelling system and The Campanile Movie (which I helped work on) by following the link.
Manex's techniques greatly improved upon the work at U.C. Berkeley; they showed an OpenGL real-time demo of the sub-way and government building lobby shots from the movie at the seminar; very cool stuff.
Hope that sheds some light on how effects in The Matrix are really done.
Slashdot Mirror
A classic group of beloved superheroes -OR- A nice set of...
... brains. Big... beautiful... brains.
*nod*
You didn't happen to notice by any chance that he had blue hands, did you?
... less filling!
Can anyone recommend any alternative sound cards for gaming and/or general use other than Creative's cards? Or perhaps a sound card review site?
Wow, great information. I myself am looking for GPS hardware + software combo for PocketPC that does driving directions and map navigation with voice driving direction output. Any recommendations for that?
What form would the "mail order" take? Would it be a print out of the eBay item? Or is there an official USPS mail order form?
The article's reference to Openwave's device products is really about their application suite for mobile devices, Phone Suite V7. V7 provides the missing piece to Linux, the "expensive-to-develop" embedded application software, including web browsing, messaging, file management, media playback, etc.
V7 also has a framework that lets phone makers develop custom applications and UI, including a kick-ass graphics engine (think Java 2D), UI framework, and all the goodies you need on a resource constrained device (much more constrained than a smartphone), which we use to build these applications.
When phone makers look at Linux by itself, it lacks the necessary phone application stack which is both tricky and expensive to develop, and is where V7 provides the solution.
There's a good discussion on OSNews about V7 (can't seem to find it right now), and some press release-ish stuff on LinuxDevices
Note: I'm one of the core developers working on this project, so factor that in accordingly.
Dream? We're already here! You're missing out! Come on over, we'll take care of you. You don't have to worry about all that rubbish anymore. There's no government, no laws, and food and clothing? It grows, it always grows. Just be sure not to go out on your own after dark, and sleep in large groups.
Weena! Don't touch that nice man's machine!
Sounds like you've also never been to Japan. KDDI and J-Phone both run wildly popular networks, with devices that vary greatly between handset vendors.
Plus, Symbian still has only a 1% market share of phones in Europe. (according to a latest press release by Symbian)
Good point. Maybe that also means that you could say that any music or media advertising encouraging the buyer to "own a copy today!" constitutes fraud, since you really aren't going to "own" it anyway.
You say that like it's a good thing. *shakes head*
These above mentioned effects shots (Gap commercial, etc.) are very different from The Matrix's bullet-time effects from a technological standpoint. Look at my previous comment if you want to learn more. (Note: The relation to Dr. Debevec's work is actually more loosely related than I had first mentioned.)
Cyclic universes might explain the origin of the primordial soup. If there indeed were infinite cycles of the universe, then there must have been infinite number of possible universe configurations occuring (have occured). One of those cycles (perhaps our current one) may have triggered the successful formation of the proteins found in the primordial soup, leading to the origin of life.
Suppose, in that cycle, that life was able to form, and evolved enough to comprehend the nature of the universe. That intelligent life might have decided to propagate the instructions to create life to the next cycle -- perhaps as simply as primordial proteins, or perhaps affecting the next cycle's energy configuration to produce those proteins.
It may seem a bit far fetched, but the big idea here is that with infinite cycles, and thus, infinite configurations of the universe, it makes the creation of the primordial soup much more plausible and likely.
If you have even half a brain, you know who the Slashdot crew is voting for, and perhaps it's not our place to suggest how they run their own web site. But as a self-proclaimed news site, they ought to feel some responsibility towards providing unbiased political coverage. Or even something close. It would be a refreshing change over the slanted coverage given by mainstream media.
Typical for the slashdot folks.
In defense of sendmail, sendmail-related security advisories have always come through the sendmail-announce list. Some idiot decided it was good to post about the advisory on Slashdot, which is certainly not the right forum for these things. (This is why there are these advisory mechanisms) The sendmail team even had enough good judgement to wait until the Linux kernel team had a patch before announcing the existence of this exploit.
People are so quick to place blame on things. Just upgrade your damn kernel and be done with it.
Shoot! I just replied to the top before I saw this. Sendmail, Inc. has a configuration feature which does essentially what you've suggested here. Details can be found here.
Sendmail, Inc., has posted a blocking configuration feature that enables sendmail mail servers to stop the "ILOVEYOU" virus from entering your computer network at the server level. This feature works on all versions of sendmail 8.9 and above.
You can find the details here.
If administrators add this feature to their sendmail gateways, it will slow the spread of this virus over the Internet.
There are also other various improvements to the source overall which have increased I/O performance incremently, but the multiple mail queues is the killer feature you'll want.
Sendmail Switch isn't open source software, it's commercial software. It does many sophisticated management thingies besides configuring sendmail.
That being said, OS sendmail configuration got much easier since m4 configuration files came about. And while it's not an Apache-style configuration, etc., it's on the same level in terms of difficulty.
The OS sendmail developers work pretty much orthogonal to the commercial component developers. Feature sets of OS sendmail are driven by the OS community. They are aware of the inherent difficulty of configuring sendmail, and consider it to be quite a shortcoming of OS sendmail, independent of whether management components exist in a commercial software product.
You will probably see OS sendmail become easier to use somewhere down the line.
One final note, Sendmail Switch was built using open source technology. It's not apparent to people outside the company, but if you bought the product you'd see we use open source technology extensively in the product. The commercial component developers also believe in OS principles, which is why our products use open source technology where possible.
Sendmail Switch is commercial software. But buying it supports the company. Supporting the company supports the OS developers - giving a secure "home" and dedicated resources to OS sendmail development. Benchmarking, compatibility labs, food, and clothing are examples of such.
Hope that gives a small view from the inside.
Regards,
Charles
First?
To your first question, Manex developed custom software to perform color correction, film grain, and other lighting corrections on the recovered frames.
To your second question, I believe it was just a single still taking from one camera viewpoint. They may have "idled" the frame (where you capture 4-7 frames very close together and loop them to fix film grain problems and to give a bit of "movement" to the eye.
I know one of the people who did the R&D on bullet-time sequences in "The Matrix"; he recently gave a seminar at U.C. Berkeley along with Jon Gaeta where they discussed how the bullet-time sequences were done.
First, the difference between bullet-time sequences and the GAP commercial sequences is a big one:
Freeze-time shots (e.g., the GAP commercial) are easy to do. All shots are taken simultaneously of the scene, and you don't need to worry about the motion of the subjects in the scene.
Bullet-time shots actually have to move in very slow motion. At the seminar, they said that although they had many cameras firing sequentially over the camera path, they were unable to place cameras close enough together to capture sufficient frames during really slow segments of movement (if you watch The Matrix bullet-time sequences, you'll see that initially the motion starts out very slow, and gradually speeds up)
The way that Manex solved this was to use computer vision techniques to interpolate the necessary "in between" frames. This is especially difficult since the motion in some shots (i.e. Keanu Reeves' arm waving in a circle in the air) have motion that isn't linear (meaning that the compute can't simply compute the pixels along a straight line from one frame to another). Manex used a lot of combined interpolation techniques to achieve the results in the movie.
In addition, obtaining consistent camera lighting, film grain, and film speed parameters proved difficult. They used cameras that were all uniform in make and model, but had to image process the frames to achieve consistency.
Second, you may notice that all bullet-time sequences were captured on a green screen! One of the reasons they did this was because the angle of rotation is actually more than 180 degrees. (This is also a difference from the GAP commercial) So how did they insert the background?
Well the answer is, they re-created the backgrounds. Manex used image-based modelling and rendering techniques that were based on work done by Dr. Paul Debevec at U.C. Berkeley. You can read more about the FACADE photogrammetric modelling system and The Campanile Movie (which I helped work on) by following the link.
Manex's techniques greatly improved upon the work at U.C. Berkeley; they showed an OpenGL real-time demo of the sub-way and government building lobby shots from the movie at the seminar; very cool stuff.
Hope that sheds some light on how effects in The Matrix are really done.
-- Charles