...what was goiong on in the tech world when I was merely 4 years old.
To the comments on programmers being "st00pid": I guarentee there where 800x the compitent engineers, coders and all around computer personel than there are today. If you had to store a database of transaction records and you have 640k of RAM (yes, total, OS, program, and allocated blocks) or LESS, and a tape drive to write to disk with, and a punchcard reader for reloading code, wouldn't you shortcut? Not to mention that recompiling a whole system of the type would take (IIRRC) a WEEK?
ANcient times, I know, as we sit warm from the glow of out (now becomming obsolete even) CRT monitors with our 2GHz prosessors, our 1GB of RAM, and 180GB IDE drive, and 4xAGP GeForce 4 Ti .
Once I realized that this was all over a stupid PATENT DISPUSE, I vomited.
It's not the fear of eating a plant that has been genetically modified, apparently this Mugabe is more educated than most Americans who assume this has just "been done" to the plants and distrubuted without and FDA or company-internal testing. THAT MAKES IT ALL THE MORE SICKER. Why doesn't Mugabe mill the corn and create jobs for his starving people? He wouldn't have to pay them much, would he?
I guess he doesnt' want his people's problems to go away. Or he wants to whorde all his government's money as if it where his own riches. Bastard.
Or maybe we shouldn't be able to patent lifeforms, merely the TECHNIQUES USED TO ENGENEER THEM. And no, "planting" does not count. Plenty of prior art.
OS X is really cool all around. Very fast as a web server, even here on a cable modem.
As far as RAM issues I believe the limit has been going up, but I'm not exactly sure. Still, 512MB is enough to do plenty of at-home stuff, even for a power user. I know the cap-off is at least 1GB, probably more, but again I dont' remember. 64-Bit is (supposedly) slated to be a part of the G5 series but that's pretty much all speculation at this point. Motorola, Apple, and IBM are very hush hush about their future processor plans. I'm sure they're not sitting idly by, at least not Apple...
I paid $3000 for my Mac system (Extra video card for dual head display, + other things). That was in 1997. It's right here, still runnng the latest apps today.
Macs dont' go obsolete as fast as your x86/video card/RAM special hyped-up latest thing of the week.
Oh, and our OS doesnt' suck (well, neither does yours if you use a *NIX...)
I am all for the death of the floppy, because we can easily do better for cheaper.
The problem now with eliminating the floppy (as many, many posts have already pointed out) is there will no longer be any viable storage medium for small files. I need to bring a Word document to a computer without 'net access. Why waste a whole CD? Why wait for a CD-RW to burn? You dont' really think I'm someday going to use DVD-RAM for 249k, do you?!?!?
The Imation SuperDrive is a thing of the past, however beautiful it was. ZIP Disks? Dont' make me laugh, I think everyone has been clicked to death. I actually had to open up a Zip Disk once to GLUE THE MEDIUM BACK TO THE SPINDLE because it stopped working. Fortuantely, I was able to recover about 95% of what was on the disk.
With all the advances in flash-style media, why not include built-in SmartMedia drives? Small, inexpensive, and already widely accepted. Or perhaps a USB Key ring-style device with 32MB of memory on board, just plug it in and it mounts as a USB disk? Any data you need to carry around can be put on this key ring, and just plug it in.
I'm sure others have suggested this before me, even right here under this story. So if it's such a good idea, why aren't we doing it? Whoever does this first will make millions, people do NOT want to RELY on the Internet.
<OFFTOPIC>Speaking of which, when do we get to have all disks as microships instead of magnetic media spinning at high rates? Woudln't access be faster? and what happened to those 20TB flash chips reported here on/. a while back?</OFFTOPIC>
mmm the warm bass... only type of music i ever noticed a vinyl difference was for music with loud or enhanced bass range... it just seems "warmer" in vinyl.
If only it was a little bigger, maybe 2 or 3 feet tall... then it would have enough room to stick the base of an iMac in his head with a nice 17" flat-panel screen sticking out the top, nice GUI, BSD under the hood, 802.11 built in...
Ahhh, someday I will build my own droid. Then...uhh... phase 3: Profit!
I asked about Motion JEPG before, in a thread in the story about the pantent infringement claim, but got no response.
The parent post to that comment is where I got most of my information from, although it seems slightly less than gramatically sound and is definately not formatted to be easy on the eyes. I had a hard time fully understanding, as I also am no expert on Wavelet/Fourier/Cosine/Etc. style JPEG-type math.
If there is some compression using the JPEG-type algorithms for compressing video which stores not only the compressed image but information about changes across frames then the patent will hold against only that. Is this the way Motion JPEG works, or does it merely use JPEG compression to reduce each frame and simply string them all together for playback? The latter case would be legal.
Their patent describes a technique for digital video compression that uses some of the same mathematical techniques as JPEG, only their method requires more than one frame to be present to offer any significant compression (so I have been told).
If that is true, that alone should be enough to tell Forgent to piss off. IANAL
I notice that was availible as part of older releases of Quicktime... perhaps this is a Motion JPEG patent? OR is Motion JPEG just a bunch of JPEG images in a sequience without any variance in quality, as you described above?
Honestly, where do they dig these people up to be politicians? There are maybe one or two senators who might actually have a clue, and that goes double for house reps.
I'd run, but I wouldn't be good at it. That and I'm 21....
The terrorists won, you know. Already. Everyone here changed after 9/11. Am I the only one that no longer cares that some ignorant towelhead learned to fly a plane? Tragedy, yes, no question. But if we let it corrupt and ruin us from the inside, the terrorists won. As if blowing up two buildings alone was what "stopped America". No, not only did the economic havoc mess us up but now everyone is still "emotionally scarred" from the experience, and they're all trying to compensate by being blind, flag waving sheep. They will be further abused by those who see this opportunity, and that number of "those" isn't small....
Oh, but dont' you dare speak out about it, or you're a terrorist. And Baby Jesus, who sits on our legislative branch now, will together with Uncle Sam stick a pitchfork in your heathen ass and ship you to the South Pole.
Guess what kids? If you crack Palladium, or use a felt marker to "fix" a copy protected CD... YOU'RE A HACKER. A sad day when I can stab someone with a Sharpie and get less time than if I write with it.
Land of the free, home of the sellout. I'm going to Canada.
Assumtion is the mother of all fuckups. - Under Siege 2
Please post any and all information you can. People always bitch about how the government engages in "disinformation", because people "have the right to know". Well, don't do yourself on accident what you don't want them doing on purpose.
Slashdot Mirror
I COULD see all angles of the scenes at the same time. Of course, time stopped... Sorry.
I clicked on the links from the story. They said it was supposed to be "just" the 2600.
:-D
So in essence I didn't RTFA, but in my defense, the links provided should have been the "pure" links....
It's a minor detail, I still think it's cool. What's the point of having a synth you cant' drown in effects anyways?
...do I hear some reverb in there? Dont' expect your polyphonic synth to sound like anything but an original atari 2600.
Still, old sound chips do have many unique qualities. I'd love one of these. Now if only he'd sodder MIDI into one...
...what was goiong on in the tech world when I was merely 4 years old.
To the comments on programmers being "st00pid": I guarentee there where 800x the compitent engineers, coders and all around computer personel than there are today. If you had to store a database of transaction records and you have 640k of RAM (yes, total, OS, program, and allocated blocks) or LESS, and a tape drive to write to disk with, and a punchcard reader for reloading code, wouldn't you shortcut? Not to mention that recompiling a whole system of the type would take (IIRRC) a WEEK?
ANcient times, I know, as we sit warm from the glow of out (now becomming obsolete even) CRT monitors with our 2GHz prosessors, our 1GB of RAM, and 180GB IDE drive, and 4xAGP GeForce 4 Ti .
Once I realized that this was all over a stupid PATENT DISPUSE, I vomited.
It's not the fear of eating a plant that has been genetically modified, apparently this Mugabe is more educated than most Americans who assume this has just "been done" to the plants and distrubuted without and FDA or company-internal testing. THAT MAKES IT ALL THE MORE SICKER. Why doesn't Mugabe mill the corn and create jobs for his starving people? He wouldn't have to pay them much, would he?
I guess he doesnt' want his people's problems to go away. Or he wants to whorde all his government's money as if it where his own riches. Bastard.
Or maybe we shouldn't be able to patent lifeforms, merely the TECHNIQUES USED TO ENGENEER THEM.
And no, "planting" does not count. Plenty of prior art.
OS X is really cool all around. Very fast as a web server, even here on a cable modem.
As far as RAM issues I believe the limit has been going up, but I'm not exactly sure. Still, 512MB is enough to do plenty of at-home stuff, even for a power user. I know the cap-off is at least 1GB, probably more, but again I dont' remember. 64-Bit is (supposedly) slated to be a part of the G5 series but that's pretty much all speculation at this point. Motorola, Apple, and IBM are very hush hush about their future processor plans. I'm sure they're not sitting idly by, at least not Apple...
I paid $3000 for my Mac system (Extra video card for dual head display, + other things). That was in 1997. It's right here, still runnng the latest apps today.
Macs dont' go obsolete as fast as your x86/video card/RAM special hyped-up latest thing of the week.
Oh, and our OS doesnt' suck (well, neither does yours if you use a *NIX...)
Maybe computers should start comming bundled with one? They already have frontside USB, or the keyboard has an extra port...
I am all for the death of the floppy, because we can easily do better for cheaper.
/. a while back?</OFFTOPIC>
The problem now with eliminating the floppy (as many, many posts have already pointed out) is there will no longer be any viable storage medium for small files. I need to bring a Word document to a computer without 'net access. Why waste a whole CD? Why wait for a CD-RW to burn? You dont' really think I'm someday going to use DVD-RAM for 249k, do you?!?!?
The Imation SuperDrive is a thing of the past, however beautiful it was. ZIP Disks? Dont' make me laugh, I think everyone has been clicked to death. I actually had to open up a Zip Disk once to GLUE THE MEDIUM BACK TO THE SPINDLE because it stopped working. Fortuantely, I was able to recover about 95% of what was on the disk.
With all the advances in flash-style media, why not include built-in SmartMedia drives? Small, inexpensive, and already widely accepted. Or perhaps a USB Key ring-style device with 32MB of memory on board, just plug it in and it mounts as a USB disk? Any data you need to carry around can be put on this key ring, and just plug it in.
I'm sure others have suggested this before me, even right here under this story. So if it's such a good idea, why aren't we doing it? Whoever does this first will make millions, people do NOT want to RELY on the Internet.
<OFFTOPIC>Speaking of which, when do we get to have all disks as microships instead of magnetic media spinning at high rates? Woudln't access be faster? and what happened to those 20TB flash chips reported here on
Is there something wrong with geeks kicking back and partying once and a while?
I'm sure if an EFF ref. stood before Congress, he wouldn't box with Barney the dinosaur with Kid606 kicking away in the background...
mmm the warm bass... only type of music i ever noticed a vinyl difference was for music with loud or enhanced bass range... it just seems "warmer" in vinyl.
;-)(
I post, therefore I am.
If only it was a little bigger, maybe 2 or 3 feet tall... then it would have enough room to stick the base of an iMac in his head with a nice 17" flat-panel screen sticking out the top, nice GUI, BSD under the hood, 802.11 built in...
Ahhh, someday I will build my own droid. Then...uhh... phase 3: Profit!
..If one of these things tries to sell me a Han Solo frozen in carbonite or whatever, then (I'm Doug, and) I'm ooouuutta heeEEeerreee..
This is exactly the type of answer I was looking for.
Thank you, not only for the info, but for the peace of mind.
*beer*
I asked about Motion JEPG before, in a thread in the story about the pantent infringement claim, but got no response.
The parent post to that comment is where I got most of my information from, although it seems slightly less than gramatically sound and is definately not formatted to be easy on the eyes. I had a hard time fully understanding, as I also am no expert on Wavelet/Fourier/Cosine/Etc. style JPEG-type math.
If there is some compression using the JPEG-type algorithms for compressing video which stores not only the compressed image but information about changes across frames then the patent will hold against only that. Is this the way Motion JPEG works, or does it merely use JPEG compression to reduce each frame and simply string them all together for playback? The latter case would be legal.
Their patent describes a technique for digital video compression that uses some of the same mathematical techniques as JPEG, only their method requires more than one frame to be present to offer any significant compression (so I have been told).
If that is true, that alone should be enough to tell Forgent to piss off.
IANAL
...to Motion JPEG video compression?
I notice that was availible as part of older releases of Quicktime... perhaps this is a Motion JPEG patent? OR is Motion JPEG just a bunch of JPEG images in a sequience without any variance in quality, as you described above?
You are simply a dickhead troll. Nothing more. Kindly fuck off.
...except for the fuckin politicians.
Honestly, where do they dig these people up to be politicians? There are maybe one or two senators who might actually have a clue, and that goes double for house reps.
I'd run, but I wouldn't be good at it. That and I'm 21....
The terrorists won, you know. Already. Everyone here changed after 9/11. Am I the only one that no longer cares that some ignorant towelhead learned to fly a plane? Tragedy, yes, no question. But if we let it corrupt and ruin us from the inside, the terrorists won. As if blowing up two buildings alone was what "stopped America". No, not only did the economic havoc mess us up but now everyone is still "emotionally scarred" from the experience, and they're all trying to compensate by being blind, flag waving sheep. They will be further abused by those who see this opportunity, and that number of "those" isn't small....
Oh, but dont' you dare speak out about it, or you're a terrorist. And Baby Jesus, who sits on our legislative branch now, will together with Uncle Sam stick a pitchfork in your heathen ass and ship you to the South Pole.
Guess what kids? If you crack Palladium, or use a felt marker to "fix" a copy protected CD... YOU'RE A HACKER. A sad day when I can stab someone with a Sharpie and get less time than if I write with it.
Land of the free, home of the sellout. I'm going to Canada.
You should be downloading it for free instead!
I rent the DVD and rip it, then put it in my Kaaza shared directory for ALL to download for free. pr0n for the masses! H@cK tH3 pL@N3t!!!!
I know. Late night, lots of beer, we've been over this. (see other replies).
The "F" in Funk, is for the flavor that us Chicago niggaz know how to bring... - Bringin' the Funk (CZR & Ito)
*shakes head*
Actually, I said I could care less about how a Mac looks, and more about how it functions.
Troll...
"PLEASE MOD PARENT UP"
Assumtion is the mother of all fuckups. - Under Siege 2
Please post any and all information you can. People always bitch about how the government engages in "disinformation", because people "have the right to know". Well, don't do yourself on accident what you don't want them doing on purpose.