That makes a lot of sense. No sarcasm intended. A question though, doesn't this imply going to the Moon caused inflation? I think it was worth going there BTW, just seeing where the question takes us.
I really dislike this style of writing, free-flow smugness. I -think- the parent is a parody and if it is, it's very very good. Sorry if I spoil the joke... OTOH if it isn't a parody, I'm worried.
I changed my generic PSU for a quality one in an Athlon TBird system. In both cases I have to UNDERclock at 124 MHz FSB to get a stable system. I'm not disputing your experience, indeed it's interesting, I'm just making a suggestion folks can try before shelling out on a better PSU.
I'm guessing, but try killing "artsd" to fix your sound server problem, or asking xmms to use artsd instead of OSS or ALSA. SuSE is now at 8.2 so the power mgt is 9-12 months improved.
I use a Pinnacle DC10+. It creates HUGE but beautiful mjpeg files at 768x576 (PAL) using lavrec (mjpegtools), gobbling 8.1 Gbytes/hour(!), but with mencoder I can shrink these files down to manageable DiVX size. Nice thing is, the DC10+ -always- gets video and audio in sync, it does not load the CPU or gobble memory bandwidth (it has hardware compression), and it can playback to the TV. It supports NTSC and PAL. It can't do pause while recording unfortunately but I prefer nice quality recordings to such features so I'm happy. At least it's a different approach for Linux PVRs. There's a catch, diagonal lines interference in some machines (see Pinnacle webboard) but there's an easy fix if you can solder.
The number ranges he chose struck me as strange too. I'd use the interval 0.5 hours to 1.4999... hours in his example. In general I'd define the interval as plus-or-minus half the "distance" between successive values, the step size as it were, and I'd include minus half but not plus half to support rounding. Just like 2's complement integers with an implied binary point do (as opposed to sign-magnitude as used for floats). Or maybe I just don't get it. It's good brain exercise whether or not he's right or wrong.
I love Radio 4, but you'll no doubt be pleased to hear I consider Thought for the Day reactionary, anti-science, and infuriating, especially the poor quality of the straw man arguments.
Thing is, does anyone have the right to require that all the people listening to R4 on older radios should upgrade so they can muscle in? As a wise slashdotter says in his/her sig - "just because you can doesn't mean you should". Why crap over FM, since the only reason I can see is to take advantage of the installed base of radios, but you want to replace them all? Why not choose a less contentious part of the spectrum, and if it works there, you have proof by example which helps make your case for new technologies.
(I also question the assumption that pirate radio listeners and broadcasters all have state-of-art equipment - maybe Alan Partridge suffers from interference caused by sloppy transmitter equipment?)
Anyways, are you going to subsidise people (all those doddery old ladies and gents who fought two orld wars blah blah) who will have to upgrade (on a crap state pension) to suit the onward march of technology? I don't think so.
You do have a point, the spectrum is as much yours as anyone else's and they shouldn't call the shots because they grabbed it first.
So surely the best way to resolve conflicting interest is through consensus and informed debate, not by acting like a cowboy or the Borg (you said - "there's nothing they can do... ").
I value radio more than TV, but I am aware of how much many people value TV, so I'm opposed to the "inevitablity" of terrestrial TV and satellite TV - something that helps me earn a living BTW - people shouldn't have to pay through the nose, and TV reception should not degrade to blocks, stuck pictures and squawky sounds the minute it rains, so someone else can pursue a selfish agenda (more channels and lower bitrates all for more adverts).
Next time you turn on your transmitter, think again about what that wise slashdotter said 'cos it's very very deep: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Let's not forget the article is about interference on the FM band as seen by a law from 1949. Maybe my attitude is a drag for you, but not everyone who disagrees with you is a bad guy, maybe they had a case for introducing that law in 1949 that no longer applies. So do something about it, but respect that good faith - EM spectrum usage allocation back then wasn't tainted with issues anywhere like it is now. I have personal experience of antiquated legal attitudes to spectrum usage impacting a nice idea a friend and I came up with, but I didn't put myself above the law. Knee jerk attitudes, I have not. Pro authority, I am not. Pro our current goveernment (or its opposition) I am not. Pro laws drawn up in good faith to avoid the tragedy of the commons? Damn right. Just watch me make life harder and more dangerous.
That said, you can have the last word if you like.
Yay! Big cheer for us in the UK. There's a finite amount of electromagnetic spectrum. For everybody. Unless you're an idiot who defines PI as (int) 3 theere's no way to use suits or lawyers or politicians to make more spectrum, but any idiot can trash spectrum. We bloody well _rock_ in the UK. If you disagree with this, you'd p*ss in your own drinking water and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth just thinking about it.
If I use ~15 extra watts running at 100% CPU for a month 24/7, that's 10 kW hours at 10 cents a kW hour (source http://www.howstuffworks.com/question91.htm) which makes a dollar. Explain the remaining $19 a month.
Slashdot Headline 26/12/2003 - Beagle confirms it has found a few isolated areas on Mars where it is possible to make a decent cup of tea. As yet, no evidence of rain.
Grrrr. Yes, you have a point about our health and education services. You are utterly wrong with the quip 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need'. It is irrelevant whether or not you or I approve of communism or socialism, or whatever "ism", or believe it works, or think it sucks. All over the world, we get sold promises by politicians that aren't delivered, period. We have more people in government employ now than we did when we were running a worldwide empire. That's why our teachers and nurses have such a hard time, too many chiefs, not enough indians, more so if you look at their pay. Grrr.
It is much more fun to cat files to a MIDI device, but you should not use ASCII, you need bytes with the high bit set. Try an XEmacs binary for example.
But VHS is OK? What the fuck is the reason behind that?
VHS and MJPEG degrade the image, but they don't "make anything up", whereas (I'm told) MPEG-4 (which is used in security DVRs) has the problem that it does prediction from one frame to the next. So, in court, a blurry or noisy picture is OK, but a picture that the defence can argue is partly made up by a computer is not OK). Is that a razor blade in your hand, or just a coding artefact?
It infuriates me as a customer to see people dumping stuff back on shelves like that, especially perishables. But someone making such a protest with non-perishable razor blades isn't being inconsiderate (and neither person is committing a crime AFAIK). You would punish protesting customers for the sins of the inconsiderate ones. Stores would trash our privacy to punish shoplifters.
Surely this hangs on the customer's understanding of CCTV? RFID isn't CCTV. Machines (ok, sloppy programmers, whatever) drawing conclusions about my activities instead of reasoning humans. Same deal with speed cameras, plod nabs me, it's a fair cop, but how do I argue against dodgy electronics or the lunacy of being busted at 2 am for doing 5 mph over on an industrial estate? If I see CCTV I think it should imply either humans watching me or humans watching recordings. The security industry has had to accept that MPEG-4 isn't admissiblle because of the predictive coding (hence MJPEG).
Or something. Mumble.
I am tempted, should this arrive at my local Tesco, to carefully put the damn things in my basket, smiling for the camera, walk to another aisle, and put them on another shelf. Just out of interest, am I deemed to have bought them when I pick them up, or when I go through the checkout?
Whoa! lack of FP doesn't imply Ogg Vorbis is impossible - just use integers sensibly. It can be done for MP3 too. Think about it (simplistic) if audio has a 120dB dynamic range, that's 20 bits so throwing around some 32 bit ints should cope (yes, I know, I did say "simplistic").
Slashdot Mirror
You jumped to the wrong conclusion perhaps. I agree with you 110% about Iraq and the Moon.
That makes a lot of sense. No sarcasm intended. A question though, doesn't this imply going to the Moon caused inflation? I think it was worth going there BTW, just seeing where the question takes us.
I really dislike this style of writing, free-flow smugness. I -think- the parent is a parody and if it is, it's very very good. Sorry if I spoil the joke ... OTOH if it isn't a parody, I'm worried.
I changed my generic PSU for a quality one in an Athlon TBird system. In both cases I have to UNDERclock at 124 MHz FSB to get a stable system. I'm not disputing your experience, indeed it's interesting, I'm just making a suggestion folks can try before shelling out on a better PSU.
I was just bitchin' too. Variety is the spice of life.
I'm guessing, but try killing "artsd" to fix your sound server problem, or asking xmms to use artsd instead of OSS or ALSA. SuSE is now at 8.2 so the power mgt is 9-12 months improved.
I use a Pinnacle DC10+. It creates HUGE but beautiful mjpeg files at 768x576 (PAL) using lavrec (mjpegtools), gobbling 8.1 Gbytes/hour(!), but with mencoder I can shrink these files down to manageable DiVX size. Nice thing is, the DC10+ -always- gets video and audio in sync, it does not load the CPU or gobble memory bandwidth (it has hardware compression), and it can playback to the TV. It supports NTSC and PAL. It can't do pause while recording unfortunately but I prefer nice quality recordings to such features so I'm happy. At least it's a different approach for Linux PVRs. There's a catch, diagonal lines interference in some machines (see Pinnacle webboard) but there's an easy fix if you can solder.
Britain's oldest brewer with a politically incorrect sense of humour. Master Brew, Bishop's Finger, yum!
The number ranges he chose struck me as strange too. I'd use the interval 0.5 hours to 1.4999... hours in his example. In general I'd define the interval as plus-or-minus half the "distance" between successive values, the step size as it were, and I'd include minus half but not plus half to support rounding. Just like 2's complement integers with an implied binary point do (as opposed to sign-magnitude as used for floats). Or maybe I just don't get it. It's good brain exercise whether or not he's right or wrong.
Hello again:-)
I love Radio 4, but you'll no doubt be pleased to hear I consider Thought for the Day reactionary, anti-science, and infuriating, especially the poor quality of the straw man arguments.
Thing is, does anyone have the right to require that all the people listening to R4 on older radios should upgrade so they can muscle in? As a wise slashdotter says in his/her sig - "just because you can doesn't mean you should". Why crap over FM, since the only reason I can see is to take advantage of the installed base of radios, but you want to replace them all? Why not choose a less contentious part of the spectrum, and if it works there, you have proof by example which helps make your case for new technologies.
(I also question the assumption that pirate radio listeners and broadcasters all have state-of-art equipment - maybe Alan Partridge suffers from interference caused by sloppy transmitter equipment?)
Anyways, are you going to subsidise people (all those doddery old ladies and gents who fought two orld wars blah blah) who will have to upgrade (on a crap state pension) to suit the onward march of technology? I don't think so.
You do have a point, the spectrum is as much yours as anyone else's and they shouldn't call the shots because they grabbed it first.
So surely the best way to resolve conflicting interest is through consensus and informed debate, not by acting like a cowboy or the Borg (you said - "there's nothing they can do ... ").
I value radio more than TV, but I am aware of how much many people value TV, so I'm opposed to the "inevitablity" of terrestrial TV and satellite TV - something that helps me earn a living BTW - people shouldn't have to pay through the nose, and TV reception should not degrade to blocks, stuck pictures and squawky sounds the minute it rains, so someone else can pursue a selfish agenda (more channels and lower bitrates all for more adverts).
Next time you turn on your transmitter, think again about what that wise slashdotter said 'cos it's very very deep: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Let's not forget the article is about interference on the FM band as seen by a law from 1949. Maybe my attitude is a drag for you, but not everyone who disagrees with you is a bad guy, maybe they had a case for introducing that law in 1949 that no longer applies. So do something about it, but respect that good faith - EM spectrum usage allocation back then wasn't tainted with issues anywhere like it is now. I have personal experience of antiquated legal attitudes to spectrum usage impacting a nice idea a friend and I came up with, but I didn't put myself above the law. Knee jerk attitudes, I have not. Pro authority, I am not. Pro our current goveernment (or its opposition) I am not. Pro laws drawn up in good faith to avoid the tragedy of the commons? Damn right. Just watch me make life harder and more dangerous.
That said, you can have the last word if you like.
Yay! Big cheer for us in the UK. There's a finite amount of electromagnetic spectrum. For everybody. Unless you're an idiot who defines PI as (int) 3 theere's no way to use suits or lawyers or politicians to make more spectrum, but any idiot can trash spectrum. We bloody well _rock_ in the UK. If you disagree with this, you'd p*ss in your own drinking water and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth just thinking about it.
If I use ~15 extra watts running at 100% CPU for a month 24/7, that's 10 kW hours at 10 cents a kW hour (source http://www.howstuffworks.com/question91.htm) which makes a dollar. Explain the remaining $19 a month.
tee hee (just in case you wondered why no-one else found it funny)
Slashdot Headline 26/12/2003 - Beagle confirms it has found a few isolated areas on Mars where it is possible to make a decent cup of tea. As yet, no evidence of rain.
Grrrr. Yes, you have a point about our health and education services. You are utterly wrong with the quip 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need'. It is irrelevant whether or not you or I approve of communism or socialism, or whatever "ism", or believe it works, or think it sucks. All over the world, we get sold promises by politicians that aren't delivered, period. We have more people in government employ now than we did when we were running a worldwide empire. That's why our teachers and nurses have such a hard time, too many chiefs, not enough indians, more so if you look at their pay. Grrr.
It is much more fun to cat files to a MIDI device, but you should not use ASCII, you need bytes with the high bit set. Try an XEmacs binary for example.
How do you say, "What the fuck do you think you're doing" in Dutch?
I'm advised: "Wat denk je dat je aan het doen bent, lul?"
But VHS is OK? What the fuck is the reason behind that?
VHS and MJPEG degrade the image, but they don't "make anything up", whereas (I'm told) MPEG-4 (which is used in security DVRs) has the problem that it does prediction from one frame to the next. So, in court, a blurry or noisy picture is OK, but a picture that the defence can argue is partly made up by a computer is not OK). Is that a razor blade in your hand, or just a coding artefact?
It infuriates me as a customer to see people dumping stuff back on shelves like that, especially perishables. But someone making such a protest with non-perishable razor blades isn't being inconsiderate (and neither person is committing a crime AFAIK). You would punish protesting customers for the sins of the inconsiderate ones. Stores would trash our privacy to punish shoplifters.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Surely this hangs on the customer's understanding of CCTV? RFID isn't CCTV. Machines (ok, sloppy programmers, whatever) drawing conclusions about my activities instead of reasoning humans. Same deal with speed cameras, plod nabs me, it's a fair cop, but how do I argue against dodgy electronics or the lunacy of being busted at 2 am for doing 5 mph over on an industrial estate? If I see CCTV I think it should imply either humans watching me or humans watching recordings. The security industry has had to accept that MPEG-4 isn't admissiblle because of the predictive coding (hence MJPEG). Or something. Mumble.
Beautiful!
I am tempted, should this arrive at my local Tesco, to carefully put the damn things in my basket, smiling for the camera, walk to another aisle, and put them on another shelf. Just out of interest, am I deemed to have bought them when I pick them up, or when I go through the checkout?
Whoa! lack of FP doesn't imply Ogg Vorbis is impossible - just use integers sensibly. It can be done for MP3 too. Think about it (simplistic) if audio has a 120dB dynamic range, that's 20 bits so throwing around some 32 bit ints should cope (yes, I know, I did say "simplistic").
I'd like to take Ogg out for a Jog
instead, 'cos with MP3 I need to pee