Of course, this doesn't affect college radio at all. And if you listen to commercial radio (especially at work).... well you've heard the songs 10K times already, so no big deal.
But the way this will work is most stations use software to automate their entire broadcast. So what they will do is setup an identical rotation on a seperate machine, and not put a DJ on it. Then they can put their streams back online.
I thought the hole point of JS was client side scripting - it shouldn't matter what OS you use because it isn't compiled. Now there are differences in M$, Netscape (and I'm sure mozilla too), but if they designed the applications to work according to standards, this would not be a problem.
There is a reason we want standards. Maybe you should request the bank support web standards and not filter clients based on the browser.
Well, being an NCSU student I'd like to point out a few things. Sometimes what you are forced to take is helpful...wether YOU LIKE IT OR NOT! I didn't like taking a presentation speaking class, but it has been helpful. I would have never taken this class and instead pursued a degree purely in technical work.
Engineering in never purely technical. There is communication, organization, and so on. I would agree on a ever-growing university, changing to the needs of the students at a much faster pace. Better tools, better labs, but many of these problems boil down to the Professor, not the department.
Just for the record, I think the Engineering School fell in love with Redhat over the summer when they installed their first few linux machines...much much cheaper than the Ultrasparcs that we've been using lately. But will it ever be completely open source? No, there are too many EE/CPE/CSC tools that are not open source. I'd like to see Cadence open sourced personally.
But its good that there are some smart decisions being made. They first tried to go with NT, and now they are on the right track.
I don't know about you, but I have been in radio (though non-commercial). The music is free, you don't go out and buy it. You know when the labels bitch about their promotions expenses - most of it is to send thousands (I mean thousands) of free copies off to Radio Stations + extras for the DJ's.
Radio stations generally don't accept payment to play something loads of times - thats not legal to my knowledge (sounds something too much like payola).
And this is OLD news. There is a series of wacky rules (such as previous playlists CANNOT become available publically - only what you are playing currently) - go read it if you want to see what BS is in there.
With technologies like CDMA, one can get quite a lot out of a small chunk of spectrum, and by just changing the code used, avoid interference with other transmitters and recievers. Can't wait for it to take off for more than cellphones...
First of all, CDMA is used in a lot more that cellphones. Most military applications use them because the security of jumping from this frequency to that frequency. DSL's Multiplexing is the same as any wideband CDMA multiplexing. And CDMA isn't truly frequency hopping because it only hops up and down by one channel at a time (not like from channel A to channel XXX, only A to B to C, etc). And then to make things worse, writing software for CDMA is quite complicated.
CDMA isn't necessarily the way to go either. In GSM, you use slots (ie, you only transmit 1/8th of the time because you share the channel with 7 other people). You know, like you are radiating your head 12.5% of the time instead of 100% of it. GSM's use of spectrum is *not* quite as good as CDMA or TDMA for that matter, but they give up the spectral efficiency for voice quality. There are lots of ways of communicating, and spread spectrum isn't the answer to everything.
....as power levels go lower? Unfortunately, thats not going to happen very soon. Power level for what? Your cellphone? The weakness of most phones is not the downlink, but the uplink. The transmitter's output is reduced to sacrifice battery life for range. I have yet to find a spot where my receiver was the issue with my phone. Noise isn't going away either, thats the limiting factor in our communications.
There are lots of problems with wireless communications are there are no easy answers. Some guy (www.timedomain.com I think) supposedly has a way to transmit with unlimited bandwidth by making the signal appear as noise. That is, instead of a continuous signal, he uses discrete signals instead. I haven't gone over the math, but apparently its pretty crazy stuff.
Unfortunately, a monster was created and can't be destroyed. The X86 instruction set SUCKS! Its old, it needs to die. The reason why it won't is because there is such a large infrastructure of the chips and because they are so cheap. We simply can't just replace them and make things work magically.
Case and point, the telephone system was designed in the 50's and SUCKS. Now everybody wants boardband, DSL, all that stuff, but the reason why we don't have a 8 Mbit connection to the 'net is because the way the telephone system was designed. We can't just throw out the telephone system and replace it overnight. Its going to take a LONG time.
Another thing that sucks is designing the friggin' processor for X86 sucks even worse. Engineers take a very simple approach to design: KISS (keep it simple stupid!). There is no simplicity in the X86 architecture. Now in MIPs, simplicity is everything.
Then again, I'm not an expert in this field. I can tell you all about high speed electrical stuff, but my knowledge in processors is fair. I certainly know that X86 does indeed suck.
Concerning useing two cards running in tandem, it is also possible to run this card in
quads. Each card will render every other pixel of every other scanline, thereby
quadrupling the effective frame rate. That is, only if you have 4 slots.
hm, from the press release:
To ensure total performance dominance, the chip also includes support for ATI's patented
MAXX(TM) multi-ASIC technology, enabling twin Radeon 256 chips on a single graphics card.
The new chip will appear this summer in a range of board products.
I didn't see anywhere multiple boards, but if they can get circuitry for 2 radeons into one asic, I'm sure they could find a way to run them in parallel on one video card. But then again, if the radeon lives beyond the hype, we shall see.
But for linux consider your alternatives: nVidia insists they will bring killer drivers to linux (I have been waiting a long time now and am tired of their development efforts for linux). Question for somebody else, hasn't ATI opened the specs for their older cards? Aren't they contracting Precision Insight to bring drivers to linux (Xfree 4.0)?
This is probably the best comment I've ever read on slashdot, period. I just wanted to add a few comments to it. But we know that's not true: independent filmmakers are all over the place, borrowing from family and maxing out their credit cards to make a movie because they have something to say. And bands are continually putting their OWN material up as MP3s to let people hear it. Loss of access control would suck a lot of the money out of the current system, but it wouldn't be the death of creativity.
Absolutely not. In fact, creativity will thrive as people move away from being controlled by corporate entities. But the simple truth is that the Movie Studios will always be there. An independent producer simply can't afford the big names and nice production. Likewise, an independent musician can't afford all the great professional musical equipment, big name studio producers, or market the music. If anything, the internet creates more room for independent media. Big labels and Big studios aren't going to disappear anytime soon.
And if it brought the salaries of movie stars and sports "heroes" down to less than 9-digit levels, I for one wouldn't shed a tear over it.
The only people you forgot was the movie studio and record label suits.
simon "she gets what she wants and walks away. and she doesn't give a fuck what you might say"
Do we really want our favorite Politricians (sic) governing Technology when they have no idea about Technology? Just insert your favorite stupid comment by Al Gore for proof. They should keep their noses in other business and not worry about Technology. They should be more concerned with Privacy, and thats not just internet privacy, thats our every day privacy.
I don't trust a politician as far I can throw them because they are all puppets of the lobbyists. I'll start to believe more in our gov't when they ban lobbying and do finance campaign reform. Now if you wonder why I vote as an independent, now you know the answer. Yeah, my.sig sucks to, need to change it....
simon "she gets what she wants and walks away. and she doesn't give a fuck what you might say"
fight club is not a geek movie by any means, but this movie, at least to me, was the best I've seen in a long time. Certainly its not for you 6 year old, and its a bit weird at times. But it has some serious messages in it, very serious. When you walk out of the movie, you will still be thinking about what it all meant. I don't think I have ever seen a movie that had multiple layers like this one.
Excellent performance by Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, killer story, and has some very strong points about our society. Well worth seeing a good theatre if you are into movies that has something to say. I'd say if you couldn't swallow trainspotting, there is no way you'd want to see this movie.
Secondly, Schwartzie had a stroke while recording EoD, thats why it took so long. He kept everything on the downlow about it, thats why it took a while to record it.
simon "she gets what she wants and walks away. and she doesn't give a fuck what you might say"
excellent points that can be taken much farther
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 1
Okay, I figured this would be a couple paragraphs, but Tom keeps going on and on. But he does do a good job of pointing out yes PC keyboards do suck. I'm on a sun keyboard right now, and its much easier. Same with Mac keyboards, thats because there aren't 200 different vendors making the keyboards. But it is still important for there to be some quality control.
But I think Tom could have taken his article a bit farther. I do read up a lot on design, particularly human interaction with web design and such....and the stuff isn't obvious. Software has the same pitfalls as hardware. Creating an intuitive interface is very challenging. I expect in the coming years to see "interface experts" for software more common. Certainly they aren't needed as much as a software engineer, but there is more need for somebody with knowledge on creating an intuitive interface to help software engineers. Software engineers generally think in terms of function, not usability. There needs to be more thought in terms of usability and consistency to improve software quality.
okay, thats enough from me.
simon "she gets what she wants and walks away. and she doesn't give a fuck what you might say"
As far as I'm concerned, Mozilla is doing the right thing - standards complaince. Yeah its late as hell, and by the time it comes out, there might be an IE 6 release (or shall we say...bloat?). Mozilla is focused on releasing a small modular browser that follows standards.
The largest problem with the web is poor support for w3 standards. After you look over webpages created with CSS2/CSS and HTML 4, you'll wonder why its taken so long for somebody to actually implement the standards. While technology has been so important for the first few releases, the standards are more important in the development of the web now.
If there is one thing that Linux and the Internet has taught us, it is that open standards are good for the consumer and for the developer. If nobody follows standards, even browsers, then what happens is fragmentation. In other words, Mozilla is the right way instead of moving towards poor compliance.
Finally, lets remember that Mozilla is a very ambitious project and does have a chance to dominate the browser wars once stable and released. Lets look at it this way - Mozilla is designed to be modular and cross platform. Necko, XUL, Jabber, so much good and hardly any bad.
I know that when N5 does finally come out, developers will jump on it because it does support standards. Websites will be more attractive, easier to design, easier to read, and what else?
Since I am in a similar situation (soon to graduate EE), here is how I look at the situation. A PE is a good thing to have as any kind of engineer. But you really only need it if you are going to be a contractor or are going to be doing serious work which requires the a PE to sign off on (like say...building bridges). A PE basically means that YOU, the PE who signs the document, are responsible for the design and anything that might happen to it. When you build a bridge that fails, you can be sure they come after you when it falls apart after 3 months. So really you'll need it more in building design, bridge building, power system design, and so forth. When it comes to most EE applications, it doesn't apply. But its *still* a very good thing to have. I would take the class if you have time, but for me, I'd rather take an extra class in RF design, antenna, signal processing, or some other cool EE class. hope that helps, simon
Its compression, you do lose signal quality. But for the most part, this degradation is hardly noticable. On Jazz and Classical, yes you can hear the difference. Thus for all practical purposes - MP3 audio is CD quality. Lets not forget that MP3 IS a very old algorithm.
False: DVD audio is a huge leap in audio quality
This is complete rubbish. The only thing that DVD audio offers is a higher bits per sample rate. It will make a difference, but its significance will not warrant replacing current technologies. Lets say it samples at 88 kHz. Whoop dee doo, it can accurately reconstruct a signal up to 44 kHz (but a safe frequency would be 40 kHz). What good is 20 kHz you can't hear going to do?
If you want pure signal with no distortion, buy a tube cd player - you'll hear the difference and wondered how you ever lived without it.
Hm, not to flame this guy, he has his points but I can't stop poking holes in them. More than anything I'm a little ticked by the MP3 rarity.
Oh - I have this ultra rare live track by artist B, and you don't. haha, poor you.
I get pissed when people act like this. I'm a music lover, I don't care if its vinyl (though I DO prefer my 7's and 12's), CD, or MP3: music is music. I want to hear the music, I want to crank it loud. Rare tracks aren't rare anymore - so who really cares? Its not a collection game, its about getting the music you want to hear and enjoying it.
Sure I was thrilled to find a copy of DJ Cam's debut LP, or Orb's UFOrb on Vinyl, or a college only promo of Radiohead tracks, but life is more than collecting music. I love music, and I live in NC, definitely not the greatest place to live if you want to collect music. I'm still looking for this ultra rare bootleg of early Verve on Vinyl, or Ride's mega rare Kaleidoscope EP. And I don't want them because they are rare - I want them because I want to hear them and enjoy them.
So forget being so greedy about physical music. I don't care if its vinyl, cd, mp3, or tape - music is music and I just want to enjoy it. i guess i'm not a collector, I just love listening to music.
In the mean time, I have to move - but only 6 crates of vinyl. I'm sure I'll be at 18 some day.
Cable networks are just like Ethernet networks, packets can be sniffed by anybody because the protocol is not address based and everybody shares the same data pipe.
This is not true with ADSL, nobody shares the pipe with you. I'm exactly sure how ADSL network packets actually work, I am more familiar with the theory and singal processing end of ADSL. But the only person that receives the data is you.
This security has been a strong selling point to ADSL. That and, when 3000 people all try downloading netscape on the cable network, bandwidth doesn't go back to modem-esque speeds.
Slashdot Mirror
But the way this will work is most stations use software to automate their entire broadcast. So what they will do is setup an identical rotation on a seperate machine, and not put a DJ on it. Then they can put their streams back online.
I thought the hole point of JS was client side scripting - it shouldn't matter what OS you use because it isn't compiled. Now there are differences in M$, Netscape (and I'm sure mozilla too), but if they designed the applications to work according to standards, this would not be a problem.
There is a reason we want standards. Maybe you should request the bank support web standards and not filter clients based on the browser.
Well, being an NCSU student I'd like to point out a few things. Sometimes what you are forced to take is helpful...wether YOU LIKE IT OR NOT! I didn't like taking a presentation speaking class, but it has been helpful. I would have never taken this class and instead pursued a degree purely in technical work.
Engineering in never purely technical. There is communication, organization, and so on. I would agree on a ever-growing university, changing to the needs of the students at a much faster pace. Better tools, better labs, but many of these problems boil down to the Professor, not the department.
Just for the record, I think the Engineering School fell in love with Redhat over the summer when they installed their first few linux machines...much much cheaper than the Ultrasparcs that we've been using lately. But will it ever be completely open source? No, there are too many EE/CPE/CSC tools that are not open source. I'd like to see Cadence open sourced personally.
But its good that there are some smart decisions being made. They first tried to go with NT, and now they are on the right track.
simon.
I don't know about you, but I have been in radio (though non-commercial). The music is free, you don't go out and buy it. You know when the labels bitch about their promotions expenses - most of it is to send thousands (I mean thousands) of free copies off to Radio Stations + extras for the DJ's.
Radio stations generally don't accept payment to play something loads of times - thats not legal to my knowledge (sounds something too much like payola).
And this is OLD news. There is a series of wacky rules (such as previous playlists CANNOT become available publically - only what you are playing currently) - go read it if you want to see what BS is in there.
First of all, CDMA is used in a lot more that cellphones. Most military applications use them because the security of jumping from this frequency to that frequency. DSL's Multiplexing is the same as any wideband CDMA multiplexing. And CDMA isn't truly frequency hopping because it only hops up and down by one channel at a time (not like from channel A to channel XXX, only A to B to C, etc). And then to make things worse, writing software for CDMA is quite complicated.
CDMA isn't necessarily the way to go either. In GSM, you use slots (ie, you only transmit 1/8th of the time because you share the channel with 7 other people). You know, like you are radiating your head 12.5% of the time instead of 100% of it. GSM's use of spectrum is *not* quite as good as CDMA or TDMA for that matter, but they give up the spectral efficiency for voice quality. There are lots of ways of communicating, and spread spectrum isn't the answer to everything.
There are lots of problems with wireless communications are there are no easy answers. Some guy (www.timedomain.com I think) supposedly has a way to transmit with unlimited bandwidth by making the signal appear as noise. That is, instead of a continuous signal, he uses discrete signals instead. I haven't gone over the math, but apparently its pretty crazy stuff.
Unfortunately, a monster was created and can't be destroyed. The X86 instruction set SUCKS! Its old, it needs to die. The reason why it won't is because there is such a large infrastructure of the chips and because they are so cheap. We simply can't just replace them and make things work magically.
Case and point, the telephone system was designed in the 50's and SUCKS. Now everybody wants boardband, DSL, all that stuff, but the reason why we don't have a 8 Mbit connection to the 'net is because the way the telephone system was designed. We can't just throw out the telephone system and replace it overnight. Its going to take a LONG time.
Another thing that sucks is designing the friggin' processor for X86 sucks even worse. Engineers take a very simple approach to design: KISS (keep it simple stupid!). There is no simplicity in the X86 architecture. Now in MIPs, simplicity is everything.
Then again, I'm not an expert in this field. I can tell you all about high speed electrical stuff, but my knowledge in processors is fair. I certainly know that X86 does indeed suck.
hm, from the press release:
To ensure total performance dominance, the chip also includes support for ATI's patented MAXX(TM) multi-ASIC technology, enabling twin Radeon 256 chips on a single graphics card. The new chip will appear this summer in a range of board products.
I didn't see anywhere multiple boards, but if they can get circuitry for 2 radeons into one asic, I'm sure they could find a way to run them in parallel on one video card. But then again, if the radeon lives beyond the hype, we shall see.
But for linux consider your alternatives: nVidia insists they will bring killer drivers to linux (I have been waiting a long time now and am tired of their development efforts for linux). Question for somebody else, hasn't ATI opened the specs for their older cards? Aren't they contracting Precision Insight to bring drivers to linux (Xfree 4.0)?
Absolutely not. In fact, creativity will thrive as people move away from being controlled by corporate entities. But the simple truth is that the Movie Studios will always be there. An independent producer simply can't afford the big names and nice production. Likewise, an independent musician can't afford all the great professional musical equipment, big name studio producers, or market the music. If anything, the internet creates more room for independent media. Big labels and Big studios aren't going to disappear anytime soon.
And if it brought the salaries of movie stars and sports "heroes" down to less than 9-digit levels, I for one wouldn't shed a tear over it.
The only people you forgot was the movie studio and record label suits.
simon
"she gets what she wants and walks away.
and she doesn't give a fuck what you might say"
I don't trust a politician as far I can throw them because they are all puppets of the lobbyists. I'll start to believe more in our gov't when they ban lobbying and do finance campaign reform. Now if you wonder why I vote as an independent, now you know the answer. Yeah, my .sig sucks to, need to change it....
simon
"she gets what she wants and walks away.
and she doesn't give a fuck what you might say"
Excellent performance by Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, killer story, and has some very strong points about our society. Well worth seeing a good theatre if you are into movies that has something to say. I'd say if you couldn't swallow trainspotting, there is no way you'd want to see this movie.
Secondly, Schwartzie had a stroke while recording EoD, thats why it took so long. He kept everything on the downlow about it, thats why it took a while to record it.
simon
"she gets what she wants and walks away.
and she doesn't give a fuck what you might say"
But I think Tom could have taken his article a bit farther. I do read up a lot on design, particularly human interaction with web design and such....and the stuff isn't obvious. Software has the same pitfalls as hardware. Creating an intuitive interface is very challenging. I expect in the coming years to see "interface experts" for software more common. Certainly they aren't needed as much as a software engineer, but there is more need for somebody with knowledge on creating an intuitive interface to help software engineers. Software engineers generally think in terms of function, not usability. There needs to be more thought in terms of usability and consistency to improve software quality.
okay, thats enough from me.
simon
"she gets what she wants and walks away.
and she doesn't give a fuck what you might say"
As far as I'm concerned, Mozilla is doing the right thing - standards complaince. Yeah its late as hell, and by the time it comes out, there might be an IE 6 release (or shall we say...bloat?). Mozilla is focused on releasing a small modular browser that follows standards.
The largest problem with the web is poor support for w3 standards. After you look over webpages created with CSS2/CSS and HTML 4, you'll wonder why its taken so long for somebody to actually implement the standards. While technology has been so important for the first few releases, the standards are more important in the development of the web now.
If there is one thing that Linux and the Internet has taught us, it is that open standards are good for the consumer and for the developer. If nobody follows standards, even browsers, then what happens is fragmentation. In other words, Mozilla is the right way instead of moving towards poor compliance.
Finally, lets remember that Mozilla is a very ambitious project and does have a chance to dominate the browser wars once stable and released. Lets look at it this way - Mozilla is designed to be modular and cross platform. Necko, XUL, Jabber, so much good and hardly any bad.
I know that when N5 does finally come out, developers will jump on it because it does support standards. Websites will be more attractive, easier to design, easier to read, and what else?
...and N4's CSS implentation is the worst...
simon
Since I am in a similar situation (soon to graduate EE), here is how I look at the situation. A PE is a good thing to have as any kind of engineer. But you really only need it if you are going to be a contractor or are going to be doing serious work which requires the a PE to sign off on (like say...building bridges). A PE basically means that YOU, the PE who signs the document, are responsible for the design and anything that might happen to it. When you build a bridge that fails, you can be sure they come after you when it falls apart after 3 months. So really you'll need it more in building design, bridge building, power system design, and so forth. When it comes to most EE applications, it doesn't apply. But its *still* a very good thing to have. I would take the class if you have time, but for me, I'd rather take an extra class in RF design, antenna, signal processing, or some other cool EE class. hope that helps, simon
Truth: MP3 isn't the perfect compression.
Its compression, you do lose signal quality. But for the most part, this degradation is hardly noticable. On Jazz and Classical, yes you can hear the difference. Thus for all practical purposes - MP3 audio is CD quality. Lets not forget that MP3 IS a very old algorithm.
False: DVD audio is a huge leap in audio quality
This is complete rubbish. The only thing that DVD audio offers is a higher bits per sample rate. It will make a difference, but its significance will not warrant replacing current technologies. Lets say it samples at 88 kHz. Whoop dee doo, it can accurately reconstruct a signal up to 44 kHz (but a safe frequency would be 40 kHz). What good is 20 kHz you can't hear going to do?
If you want pure signal with no distortion, buy a tube cd player - you'll hear the difference and wondered how you ever lived without it.
s!mon
Hm, not to flame this guy, he has his points but I can't stop poking holes in them. More than anything I'm a little ticked by the MP3 rarity.
Oh - I have this ultra rare live track by artist B, and you don't. haha, poor you.
I get pissed when people act like this. I'm a music lover, I don't care if its vinyl (though I DO prefer my 7's and 12's), CD, or MP3: music is music. I want to hear the music, I want to crank it loud. Rare tracks aren't rare anymore - so who really cares? Its not a collection game, its about getting the music you want to hear and enjoying it.
Sure I was thrilled to find a copy of DJ Cam's debut LP, or Orb's UFOrb on Vinyl, or a college only promo of Radiohead tracks, but life is more than collecting music. I love music, and I live in NC, definitely not the greatest place to live if you want to collect music. I'm still looking for this ultra rare bootleg of early Verve on Vinyl, or Ride's mega rare Kaleidoscope EP. And I don't want them because they are rare - I want them because I want to hear them and enjoy them.
So forget being so greedy about physical music. I don't care if its vinyl, cd, mp3, or tape - music is music and I just want to enjoy it. i guess i'm not a collector, I just love listening to music.
In the mean time, I have to move - but only 6 crates of vinyl. I'm sure I'll be at 18 some day.
Cable networks are just like Ethernet networks, packets can be sniffed by anybody because the protocol is not address based and everybody shares the same data pipe.
This is not true with ADSL, nobody shares the pipe with you. I'm exactly sure how ADSL network packets actually work, I am more familiar with the theory and singal processing end of ADSL. But the only person that receives the data is you.
This security has been a strong selling point to ADSL. That and, when 3000 people all try downloading netscape on the cable network, bandwidth doesn't go back to modem-esque speeds.
simon
True audiophiles still use vinyl. Nothing can compare to an old tube amp and high quality (note..HIGH quality cartridge and stylus).
Digital is good, but I still prefer my vinyl.
Note - I'm not saying digital is bad. Digital is great in fact, but when listening to music, most music junkies use vinyl still.