Is this BYU, by any chance? Business majors there really annoy me. Not to mention they stand out like sore thumbs (even at a Mormon school...). Oh well. I'll stick to my math and music, though I suppose my singing as I roam campus probably makes me just as unaware of everything around me as those guys talking on mobile phones...
Not to mention they're great for bootlegging or other live recording...:) That's what I use my MD recorder for the most, and it's also quite nice on plane or bus trips when I don't want to carry around a bulky (in comparison) CD player.
Anyway, the only hardware MP3 player I have is a Jensen 3310 in my truck. If I need more portable music with me I'll use my MD Walkman. So far I haven't needed more than a few MD's to get me where I need to go.:)
SMS messages through AT&T Wireless cost 10 cents to send (or $4.95/month unlimited) and nothing (ever) to receive... I'm rather surprised that anybody charges to receive messages. Seems rather silly since you can't opt not to read the message as you can not to take a call.
Yes, spam on the phone REALLY sucks. But my provider (AT&T), and I imagine most others, doesn't charge for receiving SMS messages - only for sending.
At least they can't crawl for SMS-capable phone numbers like they can email addresses...unless you're crazy enough to put your wireless' email address online...
Think about it this way, the gradient from (0,0,0) to (255,255,255) passes through (1,1,1), (2,2,2), etc. Exactly 256 points.
That's an all gray gradient - which is why grayscale is [almost?] never displayed in more than 8-bit color depth.
I can't quite visualize what gradients would look like in such a cube. But a straight line from one corner to another would usually not make for a smooth gradient that shows all the shades of one color. And as I think about it further, it's probably impossible to show all the shades of a color in a single smooth gradient. You'd need two dimensions (a plane out of the cube) to do that, not a line.
Ah, I suppose I'd better go to bed before I confuse myself any more...
Seems to me that actual shades of a color will be when the other two colors have the same value.
For example, 0,0,255 is going to be "pure blue", 128,128,255 will be a fairly light blue, but if the red and green are different, e.g. 128,200,255, the color is not really a shade of blue (it's more of a blue-green).
But shades of blue don't have to have 255 for the blue value. Any time the blue value is greater than (or equal to, if you want to count the gray shades) the other two values (which must be equal), then you have a shade of blue.
The math for this allows a lot more than 256 shades of blue. Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm really tired), but it seems like the math would go something like this:
C = 256 + 255 + 254 +... + 2 + 1 + 0
The series simplifies to 256*128 = 32768 shades of each primary color.
This could be generalized to match each hue (rather than just primary colors), but I'm too tired to figure out how color "value" works at the moment. For visualization, though, open up Gimp or Photoshop and go to the color chooser. Find the one with a disc with all the hues and a vertical value bar (it's labeled GTK in the Gimp), and play with it. While my little math up there only really applies the primary colors, you can see with the color selector that it applies to any color.
Sorry if this was a little longwinded or incoherent, and please correct me if I got anything blatantly wrong.:)
Yes, most emulators on the Dreamcast suck still. But for the old NES games, NesterDC (official site, condensed download site, bootable CD-R's on Dreamcast) works perfectly. The games play just like they do on the original NES, which I guess isn't really saying much, considering the hardware difference between the NES and DC. But to say that the Dreamcast can't even handle NES is really inaccurate.
The link in the quickies is broken, and in any case, JLN labs are the source for both this one and the one you mentioned, so it's likely to be exactly the same.
I watched the video after reading the article, and I must say I'd be getting the hell out of there when it flashed that bright blue... Seriously, it's quite an interesting experiment, though I'd be afraid to put anything other than food in my own microwave.
Their article on their GDP thruster design is also pretty interesting - does anybody know how viable this would actually be?
I love the MiniDisc format. I haven't used it much for actually listening to music, but for that even it is much more suitable than a tape Walkman (random access, near-CD quality, and very decent skip protection). But I have found MD's very useful for a portable recording solution.
The last couple years I was in high school I was interested in having high quality recordings of my choir concerts. We already had sound equipment at the schools - microphones used to pick up the choir and the piano, when it was used, went through a mixer, whose output went to some amplifiers (standard stuff, here). But we didn't have anything but a cassette recorder hooked up to it. I hate tapes. So I got to talking with a friend I had from Germany, and he mentioned that he had a MiniDisc recorder. I was hooked from there - one cable from the sound board to the line-in jack on the MD recorder and it worked as easily as a tape player with the quality of a CD player.
Anyway, from then on I've recorded choir concerts and made CD's for everyone (obviously the CD's aren't as high-quality as one recorded in a studio, but for live stuff it doesn't matter that much). And when I'm too lazy to hook my sampler and other stuff to the computer to make a recording (since I'm too poor to buy professional recording equipment...:-/ ), or I'm not near my computer, it's nice and simple to plug in to my MiniDisc Walkman and make a decent recording.
I know of lots of people who could benefit from MiniDisc technology the way I do; Sony and Sharp and others who make MD Walkmen might do better to market their recording devices less to consumers, since everyone is impatient and doesn't ever want to wait for music to record, even if you can keep the recording on a cheap disc... But for live (and portable) recording of just about anything, MD is wonderful, and that's really where it excels most.
Everyone seems to be making a huge deal out of the fact that the school district would have data identifying a student by his fingerprint and that under law, they might have to release the data.
What's the big deal? According to the manufacturers of the scanners, the data used to identify a print cannot be reassembled into a real fingerprint image. There's no way this could help, say, law enforcement to match a suspect with a dusted print. The police need a real image from which to compare prints, and you can't just feed a dusted print through one of these things.
There's way too much hype over this. People see "fingerprint" and "school" and connect those terms with "government agency," and turn it into a big privacy issue. It's not. And frankly, the system makes a lot more sense than passing money around at lunch.
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Is this BYU, by any chance? Business majors there really annoy me. Not to mention they stand out like sore thumbs (even at a Mormon school...). Oh well. I'll stick to my math and music, though I suppose my singing as I roam campus probably makes me just as unaware of everything around me as those guys talking on mobile phones...
John
Not to mention they're great for bootlegging or other live recording... :) That's what I use my MD recorder for the most, and it's also quite nice on plane or bus trips when I don't want to carry around a bulky (in comparison) CD player.
:)
Anyway, the only hardware MP3 player I have is a Jensen 3310 in my truck. If I need more portable music with me I'll use my MD Walkman. So far I haven't needed more than a few MD's to get me where I need to go.
Pretty sure "due diligance" only applies to trademarks, not patents...
SMS messages through AT&T Wireless cost 10 cents to send (or $4.95/month unlimited) and nothing (ever) to receive... I'm rather surprised that anybody charges to receive messages. Seems rather silly since you can't opt not to read the message as you can not to take a call.
Yes, spam on the phone REALLY sucks. But my provider (AT&T), and I imagine most others, doesn't charge for receiving SMS messages - only for sending.
At least they can't crawl for SMS-capable phone numbers like they can email addresses...unless you're crazy enough to put your wireless' email address online...
That's an all gray gradient - which is why grayscale is [almost?] never displayed in more than 8-bit color depth.
I can't quite visualize what gradients would look like in such a cube. But a straight line from one corner to another would usually not make for a smooth gradient that shows all the shades of one color. And as I think about it further, it's probably impossible to show all the shades of a color in a single smooth gradient. You'd need two dimensions (a plane out of the cube) to do that, not a line.
Ah, I suppose I'd better go to bed before I confuse myself any more...
John
Seems to me that actual shades of a color will be when the other two colors have the same value.
... + 2 + 1 + 0
:)
For example, 0,0,255 is going to be "pure blue", 128,128,255 will be a fairly light blue, but if the red and green are different, e.g. 128,200,255, the color is not really a shade of blue (it's more of a blue-green).
But shades of blue don't have to have 255 for the blue value. Any time the blue value is greater than (or equal to, if you want to count the gray shades) the other two values (which must be equal), then you have a shade of blue.
The math for this allows a lot more than 256 shades of blue. Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm really tired), but it seems like the math would go something like this:
C = 256 + 255 + 254 +
The series simplifies to 256*128 = 32768 shades of each primary color.
This could be generalized to match each hue (rather than just primary colors), but I'm too tired to figure out how color "value" works at the moment. For visualization, though, open up Gimp or Photoshop and go to the color chooser. Find the one with a disc with all the hues and a vertical value bar (it's labeled GTK in the Gimp), and play with it. While my little math up there only really applies the primary colors, you can see with the color selector that it applies to any color.
Sorry if this was a little longwinded or incoherent, and please correct me if I got anything blatantly wrong.
John
I think the poster's point was that 20 base 5 is 10, roughly how long ascript has actually been around.
Yes, most emulators on the Dreamcast suck still. But for the old NES games, NesterDC (official site, condensed download site, bootable CD-R's on Dreamcast) works perfectly. The games play just like they do on the original NES, which I guess isn't really saying much, considering the hardware difference between the NES and DC. But to say that the Dreamcast can't even handle NES is really inaccurate.
The link in the quickies is broken, and in any case, JLN labs are the source for both this one and the one you mentioned, so it's likely to be exactly the same.
John
I watched the video after reading the article, and I must say I'd be getting the hell out of there when it flashed that bright blue... Seriously, it's quite an interesting experiment, though I'd be afraid to put anything other than food in my own microwave.
Their article on their GDP thruster design is also pretty interesting - does anybody know how viable this would actually be?
Looks like the hardware alone that comes in the kit is worth the $199!
Too bad I don't have a PS2...
The last couple years I was in high school I was interested in having high quality recordings of my choir concerts. We already had sound equipment at the schools - microphones used to pick up the choir and the piano, when it was used, went through a mixer, whose output went to some amplifiers (standard stuff, here). But we didn't have anything but a cassette recorder hooked up to it. I hate tapes. So I got to talking with a friend I had from Germany, and he mentioned that he had a MiniDisc recorder. I was hooked from there - one cable from the sound board to the line-in jack on the MD recorder and it worked as easily as a tape player with the quality of a CD player.
Anyway, from then on I've recorded choir concerts and made CD's for everyone (obviously the CD's aren't as high-quality as one recorded in a studio, but for live stuff it doesn't matter that much). And when I'm too lazy to hook my sampler and other stuff to the computer to make a recording (since I'm too poor to buy professional recording equipment... :-/ ), or I'm not near my computer, it's nice and simple to plug in to my MiniDisc Walkman and make a decent recording.
I know of lots of people who could benefit from MiniDisc technology the way I do; Sony and Sharp and others who make MD Walkmen might do better to market their recording devices less to consumers, since everyone is impatient and doesn't ever want to wait for music to record, even if you can keep the recording on a cheap disc... But for live (and portable) recording of just about anything, MD is wonderful, and that's really where it excels most.
Anyway, there's my very prolix $0.02...
What's the big deal? According to the manufacturers of the scanners, the data used to identify a print cannot be reassembled into a real fingerprint image. There's no way this could help, say, law enforcement to match a suspect with a dusted print. The police need a real image from which to compare prints, and you can't just feed a dusted print through one of these things.
There's way too much hype over this. People see "fingerprint" and "school" and connect those terms with "government agency," and turn it into a big privacy issue. It's not. And frankly, the system makes a lot more sense than passing money around at lunch.
Anyway, that's my two cents, for what it's worth.