"Remember the scenario in the Andromeda Strain...."
No I don't. I don't recall that happening. Not ever. I do recall a movie making up an implausibly virulent organism that most likely couldn't exist in real life though.
Hint how not to look like an idiot: Don't use your Hollywood science knowlege in a real debate about scientific issues.
You're so ill-informed about this issue, it makes me wonder if you are a clever troll...
Why bother, its just normal fungus you would find coating the walls of your shower if you didn't clean it for a few years. Much like... The Russians never built Mir's internal components to be cleaned from the inside, ever. Add that with humidity, prespiration, condensation... Imagine not cleaning your shower for 20 years, and that is what Mir is like.
Ferry up a few high-thrust ion engines or VASIMR rockets. Hell, even chemical rockets would do. Attatch them to Mir. Boost Mir up and park it next to the international space station. Tether them together, or figure out some other way to keep them near each other. Once the ISS gets big enough, you could even keep MIR in a holding bay.
Then, you have a make work renovation project for astronauts from the ISS, kind of like renovating an old house. Strip all the components out, expose the mold to solvents and/or vacuum to get rid of it. Voila! You have a space station or spacecraft shell that you can do anything you want with. Sure beats putting something that big on a rocket and putting it in orbit. Stripped down and rebuilt, the shell could easily be used for a MISSION TO MARS.
Real estate is real estate, no matter what it is. Mir is too valuable to throw into the Pacific! At $10,000 a pound to get something into orbit these days, MIR would be a huge asset to the ISS even as scrap metal! Russians have a lot to learn... No red-blooded capitalist would ever let such a prime piece of real estate fall into the sea, even dilapitated as it is.
Then again, Russians have learned a lot, perhaps they're increasing the pressure to get a better sale price. Thats my second guess. I sure hope Mir doesn't fall into the sea though!!!
The question is, if I sent above mentioned art as an attachment to a female co-worker, can she sue for sexual harassment?
I think the whole point of this software is to allow corporations to err on the side of caution, without having to actually manually read ALL e-mail going through. Sure beats your boss sifting through every e-mail you've ever sent and recieved every night! If you're honestly trying to send illicit photos through corporate networks, would you rather have a human reviewing what you send, or a (semi) predictable computer?
Childeren don't own property. Their parents own it, and allow childeren to use it as they see fit. There is no such thing as looking through your daughters sock drawer. You are looking through your own sock drawer that your daughter uses.
This is in the eyes of the law. And in the eyes of morality, if you subscribe to conservative points of view.
Well, if you work there, you probably noticed the huge exodus of IT staff? The fact that they cut the wages of their tech support staff to near half? As I do consulting, I have already noticed the drop in ADSL tech support. Before they were smart, educated people, but now, I expect to hear "do you want fries with that" at the end of my call... At least this is true for the Telus offices in Edmonton, people are leaving like rats from a sinking ship. (3 personal friends and about 5 aquaintances so far have done so.)
"What a waste of taxpayers dollars! $300M to give broadband access to farmers living out in the sticks? There is, at most, about 400,000 people living in Rural Alberta."
You forget how the canadian electoral system works (or rather, does NOT work). Rural ridings have by far less people in them than do municipal ridings. Basically, farmers votes actually count more per vote than do city-dweller votes. It's much easier to keep happy small groups of farmers than large groups of city people, yet their vote is worth the same.
This is why politicians are so quick to pander to farmers.
Since Telus and BCTel merged, Telus hasn't been able to offer the kind of internet service it used to. I have a few personal friends who used to be very high up in Telus IT positions, and they attest to a mass exodus of employees after the merger. Some of the reasons given is clueless management, downsizing, and massive pay reductions.
The real reason Telus didn't take the job is because they wouldn't be able to handle it.
I said Quadrophonic or equivalent. Surround sound is pseudo pentaphonic, because you have 5 speakers... How soon till people will want a different audio stream for each one?
Sure you would know which parts were discarded and which weren't. But... Would you know which discarded bits were audible, and which weren't, and which were in between?
By using a very detailed model of what the human ear can and can't hear, you have to weigh every discarded bit by labelling it "audible discarded", or "inaudible discarded", or perhaps a percentage in between, which would be more accurate.
Once you have that, then you can really tally which encoder is best, because you can compare which encoder truly drops more audible data. Nobody but rabid audiophiles cares about the inaudible bits, not even the programmers who wrote these encoders!!!
When rating mp3 encoders, one should rate them for what they're designed to do, not rate them by how well they reproduce experimental sine sweeps and other such sound test garbage.
Can anyone think of anything else that I missed that would help make a more fair test?
There's another dimension in audio that will eat up more hard disk space... As hard drives get larger, will the high end audio people still stick with 44 kHz stereo? I think not. As the capabilities of machines to handle much finer sampling rates increases, so will file size as well. As it is we've been seeing a lot about DVD quality audio, or the Sony system... Plus as things get better/faster/cheaper, I wonder if quadrophonic sound, or something else of that nature gives file size another doubling.
Though speed and storage double easily, I've noticed, so do audio file sizes. There comes a point in the future where we are just not sure anymore, but I think at least for the forseeable future, audio compression will become more important, not less.
While agreeing that for high quality audio one must "fuck mp3", I have to disagree with you that it will loose it's appeal.
Right now, the attitude is "Why be able to store several hundred songs, when I can store several thousand..."
In a couple of years, the numbers will change but the rationale will be the same. Why store ten thousand PCMS when I can have a hundred thousand??
I agree at some point things will become meaningless, but there will have to be quite a major revolution first... Perhaps that infinite data storage by quantum methods. Perhaps I'm a bit too hesitant to rely overmuch on Moore's law.
Is it me, or or does this seem like an oxymoron? Not being an audiophile, someone correct me if I'm wrong here... Audiophiles are interested in the most accurate reproduction of sound... Why would they even consider a lossy compression scheme at all? Just like serious digital artists shun JPEG for all but web distribution to the masses, and even then we see much done in gif or tiff. I would say that MP3 audio done by ANY encoder is unacceptable to an audiophile.
Second, I want to challenge some of the assumptions and declarations that this experimenter made. The experiments placed on these encoders are mostly "torture tests" that one would never encounter in real situations... And by using this series of torture tests he tells people which encoders are best for encoding mp3's. Does anyone see this reasoning as flawed? He's subjecting encoders to situations that NONE of them have been designed for, and proclaiming that this has something to do with reality. I see little correlation... How often do you hear pure sine sweeps in any song?
I found the previous mp3 performance analysis posted on Slashdot to be much more informative. It put the encoders up on real world performance, and rates them accordingly.
The guys who wrote the encoders realized that some things just wouldn't happen in normal music, such as these torture tests, so they wrote "shortcuts" that ignored these conditions, and resulted in a higher compression rate! How dare he rate encoders on something that the programmers all deliberately IGNORED.
My friends, trust no statistics that you did not falsify.
Ever go to a hardware store and proclaim loudly that you really need black caulk? Its hilarious... Then we go to the compressor supplies department, and insist on buying a pair of 3/4" nipples. We nearly got kicked out of the store...
The sad thing is that we actually needed these things.
Speaking of content... It seems like they spent a lot of effort just "cataloguing" porn. Man, what a job! Heck, if I got paid do do that, I'd never leave the office! I'd grow a beard, walk around in bare feet, and sleep under a desk.
"There are plenty of level editors, and the game source (not including graphics networking etc) is freely availible to remove the weapons. You can do an imressive amount just with the public tools released by iD."
As an architectural technologist, but not much of a gamer (no time), I am VERY interested in this. What kind of software exactly is availiable to do this kind of thing? I understand there are level editors, but I know very little about this.
Also, the article is low on detail, I wonder if they re-drew the buildings in the quake level editors, or did they import the 2d and 3d data from an external source, such as AutoCAD? I would love detail on the implementation of this technology. Can anyone help?
Ooo man I wish I could moderate on this one! That was the funniest one-liner post I've seen in a long time. It totally describes the stupidity of most environmentalists!
I remember a long time ago environmentalism was a science. Kudos to you!
Ancient bacteria being released probably happens *all the time*. They said these bacteria were found in salt crystals underground. What are the chances your salt in your salt shaker came from a salt mine? If the original poster is indeed as paranoid as his post, upon coming upon this realization, he should probably never eat salt again in his life.
And then there are natural occurences. Volcanoes, plate tectonics, landslides in mountainous regions, geysers, million year old glaciers melting, co2 under the ocean getting released, the list goes on. I imagine that ancient underground bacteria are being releasted contantly!
This is similar to the panic caused by people worrying about mini black holes created by supercolliders. No-one stopped to realize that far more energetic reactions occur constantly in our atmosphere as super high energy cosmic rays come down from space. The nice thing about the collider was that you could have the lower energy collisions in a nice laboratory environment.
Yet dumb people freaked. At times like this I really hate the X-Files.
Information can't set you free if you don't understand it.
Slashdot Mirror
"plant charges to blast the pieces into smaller pieces"
Great idea. 120 tonnes of shrapnel in low earth orbit, ready to shred Space Station Alpha and anything else in its path.
The sentinels from the Matrix were really well done.
Okay, you say it is a bad idea. I would like to know why recycling of space stations is a bad thing, or are you just a troll?
Bork!
What would a game of Survivor be, without the threat of death, dismemberment, starvation, eating raw grubs or space mold, or even re-entry?
This could be the best Survivor type show yet!
"Remember the scenario in the Andromeda Strain...."
No I don't. I don't recall that happening. Not ever. I do recall a movie making up an implausibly virulent organism that most likely couldn't exist in real life though.
Hint how not to look like an idiot: Don't use your Hollywood science knowlege in a real debate about scientific issues.
You're so ill-informed about this issue, it makes me wonder if you are a clever troll...
Why bother, its just normal fungus you would find coating the walls of your shower if you didn't clean it for a few years. Much like... The Russians never built Mir's internal components to be cleaned from the inside, ever. Add that with humidity, prespiration, condensation... Imagine not cleaning your shower for 20 years, and that is what Mir is like.
Blek!
I have a much better idea!
Ferry up a few high-thrust ion engines or VASIMR rockets. Hell, even chemical rockets would do. Attatch them to Mir. Boost Mir up and park it next to the international space station. Tether them together, or figure out some other way to keep them near each other. Once the ISS gets big enough, you could even keep MIR in a holding bay.
Then, you have a make work renovation project for astronauts from the ISS, kind of like renovating an old house. Strip all the components out, expose the mold to solvents and/or vacuum to get rid of it. Voila! You have a space station or spacecraft shell that you can do anything you want with. Sure beats putting something that big on a rocket and putting it in orbit. Stripped down and rebuilt, the shell could easily be used for a MISSION TO MARS.
Real estate is real estate, no matter what it is. Mir is too valuable to throw into the Pacific! At $10,000 a pound to get something into orbit these days, MIR would be a huge asset to the ISS even as scrap metal! Russians have a lot to learn... No red-blooded capitalist would ever let such a prime piece of real estate fall into the sea, even dilapitated as it is.
Then again, Russians have learned a lot, perhaps they're increasing the pressure to get a better sale price. Thats my second guess. I sure hope Mir doesn't fall into the sea though!!!
Bork!
The question is, if I sent above mentioned art as an attachment to a female co-worker, can she sue for sexual harassment?
I think the whole point of this software is to allow corporations to err on the side of caution, without having to actually manually read ALL e-mail going through. Sure beats your boss sifting through every e-mail you've ever sent and recieved every night! If you're honestly trying to send illicit photos through corporate networks, would you rather have a human reviewing what you send, or a (semi) predictable computer?
Food for thought...
Bork!
Childeren don't own property. Their parents own it, and allow childeren to use it as they see fit. There is no such thing as looking through your daughters sock drawer. You are looking through your own sock drawer that your daughter uses.
This is in the eyes of the law. And in the eyes of morality, if you subscribe to conservative points of view.
As for you liberals, flame away...
Bork!
Well, if you work there, you probably noticed the huge exodus of IT staff? The fact that they cut the wages of their tech support staff to near half? As I do consulting, I have already noticed the drop in ADSL tech support. Before they were smart, educated people, but now, I expect to hear "do you want fries with that" at the end of my call... At least this is true for the Telus offices in Edmonton, people are leaving like rats from a sinking ship. (3 personal friends and about 5 aquaintances so far have done so.)
Bork!
How many city votes equal one rural vote? Did you know it is not a one to one ratio?
But I will reply to the troll anyways.
I recall a certain survey done by McLeans, about redneck values. Ontario came on top by a huge margin. Go figure.
Just a bit of trivia for you guys out there who care.
"What a waste of taxpayers dollars! $300M to give broadband access to farmers living out in the sticks? There is, at most, about 400,000 people living in Rural Alberta."
You forget how the canadian electoral system works (or rather, does NOT work). Rural ridings have by far less people in them than do municipal ridings. Basically, farmers votes actually count more per vote than do city-dweller votes. It's much easier to keep happy small groups of farmers than large groups of city people, yet their vote is worth the same.
This is why politicians are so quick to pander to farmers.
Just the facts, ma'am!
Since Telus and BCTel merged, Telus hasn't been able to offer the kind of internet service it used to. I have a few personal friends who used to be very high up in Telus IT positions, and they attest to a mass exodus of employees after the merger. Some of the reasons given is clueless management, downsizing, and massive pay reductions.
The real reason Telus didn't take the job is because they wouldn't be able to handle it.
Ha ha!
I said Quadrophonic or equivalent. Surround sound is pseudo pentaphonic, because you have 5 speakers... How soon till people will want a different audio stream for each one?
E
Sure you would know which parts were discarded and which weren't. But... Would you know which discarded bits were audible, and which weren't, and which were in between?
By using a very detailed model of what the human ear can and can't hear, you have to weigh every discarded bit by labelling it "audible discarded", or "inaudible discarded", or perhaps a percentage in between, which would be more accurate.
Once you have that, then you can really tally which encoder is best, because you can compare which encoder truly drops more audible data. Nobody but rabid audiophiles cares about the inaudible bits, not even the programmers who wrote these encoders!!!
When rating mp3 encoders, one should rate them for what they're designed to do, not rate them by how well they reproduce experimental sine sweeps and other such sound test garbage.
Can anyone think of anything else that I missed that would help make a more fair test?
There's another dimension in audio that will eat up more hard disk space... As hard drives get larger, will the high end audio people still stick with 44 kHz stereo? I think not. As the capabilities of machines to handle much finer sampling rates increases, so will file size as well. As it is we've been seeing a lot about DVD quality audio, or the Sony system... Plus as things get better/faster/cheaper, I wonder if quadrophonic sound, or something else of that nature gives file size another doubling.
Though speed and storage double easily, I've noticed, so do audio file sizes. There comes a point in the future where we are just not sure anymore, but I think at least for the forseeable future, audio compression will become more important, not less.
E
While agreeing that for high quality audio one must "fuck mp3", I have to disagree with you that it will loose it's appeal.
Right now, the attitude is "Why be able to store several hundred songs, when I can store several thousand..."
In a couple of years, the numbers will change but the rationale will be the same. Why store ten thousand PCMS when I can have a hundred thousand??
I agree at some point things will become meaningless, but there will have to be quite a major revolution first... Perhaps that infinite data storage by quantum methods. Perhaps I'm a bit too hesitant to rely overmuch on Moore's law.
E
Is it me, or or does this seem like an oxymoron? Not being an audiophile, someone correct me if I'm wrong here... Audiophiles are interested in the most accurate reproduction of sound... Why would they even consider a lossy compression scheme at all? Just like serious digital artists shun JPEG for all but web distribution to the masses, and even then we see much done in gif or tiff. I would say that MP3 audio done by ANY encoder is unacceptable to an audiophile.
Second, I want to challenge some of the assumptions and declarations that this experimenter made. The experiments placed on these encoders are mostly "torture tests" that one would never encounter in real situations... And by using this series of torture tests he tells people which encoders are best for encoding mp3's. Does anyone see this reasoning as flawed? He's subjecting encoders to situations that NONE of them have been designed for, and proclaiming that this has something to do with reality. I see little correlation... How often do you hear pure sine sweeps in any song?
I found the previous mp3 performance analysis posted on Slashdot to be much more informative. It put the encoders up on real world performance, and rates them accordingly.
The guys who wrote the encoders realized that some things just wouldn't happen in normal music, such as these torture tests, so they wrote "shortcuts" that ignored these conditions, and resulted in a higher compression rate! How dare he rate encoders on something that the programmers all deliberately IGNORED.
My friends, trust no statistics that you did not falsify.
Ever go to a hardware store and proclaim loudly that you really need black caulk? Its hilarious... Then we go to the compressor supplies department, and insist on buying a pair of 3/4" nipples. We nearly got kicked out of the store...
The sad thing is that we actually needed these things.
Speaking of content... It seems like they spent a lot of effort just "cataloguing" porn. Man, what a job! Heck, if I got paid do do that, I'd never leave the office! I'd grow a beard, walk around in bare feet, and sleep under a desk.
Wait a minute....
"There are plenty of level editors, and the game source (not including graphics networking etc) is freely availible to remove the weapons. You can do an imressive amount just with the public tools released by iD."
As an architectural technologist, but not much of a gamer (no time), I am VERY interested in this. What kind of software exactly is availiable to do this kind of thing? I understand there are level editors, but I know very little about this.
Also, the article is low on detail, I wonder if they re-drew the buildings in the quake level editors, or did they import the 2d and 3d data from an external source, such as AutoCAD? I would love detail on the implementation of this technology. Can anyone help?
Bork! Bork! Bork!
"If anyone is interested I have a few citations for reviews I could find. Ta ta for now ladies!
"
Yes I am interested.
Ooo man I wish I could moderate on this one! That was the funniest one-liner post I've seen in a long time. It totally describes the stupidity of most environmentalists!
I remember a long time ago environmentalism was a science. Kudos to you!
Ancient bacteria being released probably happens *all the time*. They said these bacteria were found in salt crystals underground. What are the chances your salt in your salt shaker came from a salt mine? If the original poster is indeed as paranoid as his post, upon coming upon this realization, he should probably never eat salt again in his life.
And then there are natural occurences. Volcanoes, plate tectonics, landslides in mountainous regions, geysers, million year old glaciers melting, co2 under the ocean getting released, the list goes on. I imagine that ancient underground bacteria are being releasted contantly!
This is similar to the panic caused by people worrying about mini black holes created by supercolliders. No-one stopped to realize that far more energetic reactions occur constantly in our atmosphere as super high energy cosmic rays come down from space. The nice thing about the collider was that you could have the lower energy collisions in a nice laboratory environment.
Yet dumb people freaked. At times like this I really hate the X-Files.
Information can't set you free if you don't understand it.
E