MPEG-4, and Windows Media may well do great with low bit rate video, but that means it is more compressed. MPEG-2 does very well with higher bit rates and is designed for high quality video, not reasonable quality at a low data rate.
Any new format to replace DVD will likely have to deal with HDTV, a high bit rate high resolution video format. What MS is doing is positioning themelves to supply that new format; they aren't really trying to replace DVD. That'll put them in control of a very lucritive format for decades.
I can't trust people like Wontsombodypleasehel to run governments; I prefer democray. Sure, it has its problems, but it makes an excellent attempt at keeping people from gaining too much power and creating a true tyrrany / dictatorship.
Democray is the best attempt in all of human history to move away from conquest and move toward harmony and freedom. Let us not foolishly destory democracy on the basis of a few mistakes. Let us instead work with our governments by making ourselves heard by our elected representatives (and others) in government.
It looks like Pioneer's drive is now cheaper than the new HP one, and I think the disks are cheaper, too. Plus, it is readily available, and so are the DVD-R's and DVD-RW's. It also works with Linux, at least to write CD's. I've done it.
S-VHS didn't fail, but it isn't used much by people who aren't demanding of video quality. S-VHS VCR's are no longer very expensive (under $150 at entry level), and the tapes aren't anywhere near $50, try $5.
I use S-VHS, and I like it very much. It records an S-Video signal, which likely has something to do about the S-VHS S-Video confusion.
BTW: VHS sucks. S-VHS is much better.
Nanometers ahoy!
on
CPU Wars
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Before we get to 0.09 microns, lets start using nanometers to get rid of those preceding decimal places. Plus, unlike micron, a nanometer is an accepted SI unit (see http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html). Strange the PR people should use it first -- could this be a sign of the Apocalypse?
What's this about too slow refresh rates for LCDs? 60Hz vertical refresh on an LCD is just fine.
The primary reason for having high refresh rates on CRTs is to reduce flicker. The flicker exists because a CRT only lights a point on the screen at any given time and scans horizontal lines from top to bottom.
In contrast, an LCD lights the entire image at all times, so there is no flicker and no need to go faster than 60Hz vertical refresh. A CRT, however, will benifit greatly from a higher refresh rate.
BTW: I have a Nokia branded Sony Triniton CRT display sitting next to an SGI 1600SW LCD (Mitsbishi made display, like the Apply Cinima Display). The SGI LCD has superior focus and notably less flicker than the CRT when the CRT is used at 85Hz (which I do think is far better than the CRT at 60 or 70HZ).
I also do video work with the SGI LCD. It is plenty fast enough for that, so I gather it's fast enough for most games.
6DOF tracking, good finger position pickup, and gesture recognition where all demonstrated at Siggraph 94 (I was there). This stuff has just been taking a long time to get to PCs probably because people are having trouble finding ways to use it that will convince buisness people to spend money to fund a project.
To set things staight, I used a Power Glove in my last high school science project (6 years ago), and it had 4DOF tracking (x,y,z plus wrist rotation along the axis of the arm (which didn't work very well)) and gesture recognition. The Power Glove sends 2-bits for each of 4 fingers (excludes the small one that isn't the thumb) to describe how far the whole finger is bent.
The project I displayed those 6 years ago used simple gestures to move through the enviornment and to select, move, and rotate objects in the environment. It also allowed moving by use of the directional pad.
In Huntsville, Alabama, the members of UAH SEDS (University of Alabama in Huntsville Students for the Exporation and Development of Space) for sometime held a pumpkin launch around Holloween night (technically, UAH SEDS had nothing to do with the event for liability reasons). Several people attached model rocket engines to hollowed out pumpkins and launched them.
The results? Usually an unpredicable object that never got far from the ground. But once, a large pumpkin was hurled maybe 150 feet into the air on a parabolic trajectory. The crowd began to run for cover once the pumpkin started on its way down. It splatered into many peices and became completely flat. Much fun:-)
It seems to me that things like these loathsome flames are a product of irrationality. I would like to see people give their reasons to force them to state a rational argument, but that often doesn't happen.
Furthermore, it seems that rationality is in short supply. On Slashdot, for instance, there is an overwhelming bias in favor of Linux and like of everything free, and a not so good to evil bias of everything that costs money. Technical mertits are only secondary. For instance, Windows has some nice ideas in its GUI, like its ability to handle printing so that any program that can draw with the GUI can print to a printer -- no completely dissimilar GUI and printer code required (less code, less complexity, less time needed to make printing work, etc). Yet, when I mention this in a discusion about GUIs and X on Slashdot, I get flamed. Flamed for mentioning some wonderful technical benfits of another API probably because no one here likes the API so they aren't willing to acknowledge a few benifits it has that X doesn't.
First of all, Java is starting out a bit slow because the JVM (thing that runs Java byte code) is still being improved. Hotspot is a lot faster than the regular 1.2 JVM or the 1.1 JVM's. Speed will improve.
The parts of Java that are slowest, from my experiance, are:
GUI It still needs work, and I'm not sure that JFC will improve it much. Java software that doesn't use a GUI usually isn't very slow.
Object creation Making a new object takes time. A bit much time. Minimize usage of the new operatator to maximize performance.
Poor programming Admit it -- this is the cause of most problems for almost anything.
And yes, as computers get faster Java's speed will be less relavent. But that is true of anything. You probably don't care how long it takes for your email client to do anything, nor do you care how long your computer takes to deal with number crunching for your undergraduate college classes. That is because your computer can do these things so fast that you don't wait long, if at all. Thus, if those actions became twice as fast, you probably wouldn't care becasue you wouldn't notice.
Re:Does write-once makes sens on the server side?
on
Java Success Stories
·
· Score: 1
E-commerce servers now often includes Windows NT and commercial UNIX's. If you only have to write it once, then all your clients who do e-commerce can use whatever platform they like without giving you huge amounts of grief in portability problems.
Server side Java works; client side just slow
on
Java Success Stories
·
· Score: 2
I work for an e-commerce commpany, (Netran, that has done a lot of Java stuff. We put out a client side Java app to let people shop for groceries (grocer didn't like web browsers). The only problem was the lack of speed and memory usage on the 1.1.4 to 1.1.8 JVMs (The Hotspot stuff with 1.2.2 is much faster). It *DID* run on just about anything, including Windows, OS/2, Mac, and IRIX. Those are all the platforms we tried it on, and it worked on all of them. I have no doubt Solaris and Linux could run it, too. There are a few things the platforms do a little differently, but there is almost always a single way that works and that way is never contorted or weird; just a little different. The one thing that doesn't fit is using a slash for the directory seporator; the Mac didn't like it. In case you're wondering, I wrote most of the GUI code, and some other stuff. I delt with litteraly all the platform incompatibility issues. I worked on the project for over 2 years.
I also got to do some server side Java. It is fast and works great. Using JSP's is much better than ASP's because of the language -- Java is a full language while the ASP stuff is for scripting. VB is just full of inconsistant syntax. Furthermore, the Java Servlet API is very well done. There are a few things that ASPs make difficult to code and JSPs make almost trivial, like a file upload over HTTP (I don't why they were insistant about not using FTP).
Java has other nice & cool things, too, like the communications API. It works with serial and parallel ports. Like most Java API's it is very well written an easy to use.
For a poorly done Java API, look at the InfoBus. It sucks! I made a better one, but its more basic in function (part of the reason I think its better). Its on my web page, if you're interested. I call it the dataBus. All free with LGPL, of course.
Mosaic 2000 isn't out to get the geeks; the school adiministators are. They are buying into Mosaic 2000. If Mosaic 2000 performs as well as claimed, it should help to vindicate the geeks. However, since Mosaic 2000 comes from dealing with trained law enforcement, it'll likely have some trouble adjusting to clueless school administators who will add their own bias to any of Mosaic's questions (which will be revised to limit bias). Of course, with the records already kept on students, that has been a problem -- its not new.
So, the problem is with the administators, not Mosaic 2000. Given time, Mosaic 2000 may actually help geeks by rating them as non-threats. Mosaic 2000 is made to be an objective tool. Its the administators that have been so unobjective as to bring it into the schools. Hopefully it'll show them just how wrong they really are.
Granted, ThinkPads have not had flashy colors, but I think the flat black, with the red button looks pretty cool. I got a ThinkPad, for reasons other than the looks, but I'm quite impressed with the looks. I guess, though, they were trying to make them look cool and be palatible to buisness users in black suits and red ties. Well, at least the ThinkPads look better than suits!
It has been suggested that physical constants indicate our lack of understanding of physics. What if the speed of light isn't constant? If you accept the emerging scalar physics, a new school that uses Maxwell's original euqations, than the speed of light should not be constant.
Swing is a rather nice setup, and its lower level base, the AWT, is pretty logically laid out. Its a very nice system that is based on what Delphi uses. So why should one think Swing is nice, but Delphi bad? If you examine Delphi's GUI libraries and compare to Swing, you'll find the two are quite similar.
"Paving the way to space and laughing all the way" is the motto of HAL5, a chapter of the National Space Society. They're trying to be the first amatuer group to get a rocket in orbit. The motto comes from their hybrid rocket -- it uses asfault and laughing gas for the propellant and oxidizer. It really works! They've been at it for a few years.
Or at least was, but should children be sheilded from Zorak? Is Zorak objectionable to anyone? I think the results should be taken with a pinch of salt. Or a few salty crackers. Your choice.
So you would have programmers write one body of code to display an image, and an entirely different body of code to print the same image? That seems quite silly and redundant when the two operations can be done with the same body of code. Why have ten apps with code to draw its stuff twice, to the screen and to the printer, when you can have ten apps that have code to draw its stuff once? Its a nice way to cut out that bloat.
Although this may not have been obvious, I ment that the GUI should provide a printing interface. Thus, the basic GUI itself should only provide the archetecture for printing. It makes perfect sense that a seporate module, commonly known as a printer driver, is where the actual implementation of translating a GUI screen to printer specific output would be. How it is implemented isn't a concern of the GUI.
As for OS vs just a GUI, the OS's I mentioned come with a GUI, and it is that GUI which I am referencing. I don't know the name of the GUI that comes with Windows v3.0, I don't think there is a name for the GUI of Mac's System whatever, but I do know OS/2's is called Presentation Manager, but most people here wouldn't have recognized that name. I know with absolute certainty that OS/2 and Windows v3.0 and later, both have printing calls within the GUI. OS/2 can be run without the GUI, and then will not provide the printing services I'm talking about (which makes perfect sense).
It seems that X can't do printing (correct me if I'm wrong). Pretty much all other GUIs (Win 3.1, OS/2, Mac, etc) handle printing. This makes printing very convinent because the software can use the same method to display stuff on the screen as it does to print. In fact, that makes perfect sense to do. It puts all the non-trival printing stuff in one spot and lets all software make use of it.
Thats an obvious problem facing a safty concious industry. The solution is simple -- differnt computer systems. One runs the networked Java stuff, the other runs the car. The two may communicate, but the communication will be well defined and purposely limited.
Thus, the system running Java/Windows/whatever will not be able to operate the breaks because the computer operating the car will not recognize a command to operate the breaks other than the break pedal.
The Java/Windows/network thingy could crash, and the car will continue to run just fine.
This is why the Electronic Troubleshooting Manual for your car can be your friend -- rip the $%#* thing out!!
But seriously, manufacturers are not going to put much on the windsheild because that could distract the driver. Viruses and other things might mess with the system, but that system is seporate from the one that actually runs the car.
And most of all: If I'm going to drive a car with ads, then I excpect to pay a low price for that car because someone else will make enough money so that the price can go down. Even so, I'll pay regular price for a car without ads. Or maybe I'll just keep my nifty Honda:-)
I'm working on a HUD for my car ( http://ro.com/~jeffj/car/) that will read data from the car, like speed and RPM, and relay the information back to a computer and to the HUD. I even found some cheap GPS hardware. All this, coupled with the mapping software thats being worked on at the autoLinux project means that you could have your own custom built system, even with some Java interfaces, in your current car in a few months. Thats much better than on your next car you'll have in a decade. Of course, you'll be able to tweak all the software and interface some low level hardware if you want. That's hard to do with a factory package.
Slashdot Mirror
MPEG-4, and Windows Media may well do great with low bit rate video, but that means it is more compressed. MPEG-2 does very well with higher bit rates and is designed for high quality video, not reasonable quality at a low data rate.
Any new format to replace DVD will likely have to deal with HDTV, a high bit rate high resolution video format. What MS is doing is positioning themelves to supply that new format; they aren't really trying to replace DVD. That'll put them in control of a very lucritive format for decades.
I can't trust people like Wontsombodypleasehel to run governments; I prefer democray. Sure, it has its problems, but it makes an excellent attempt at keeping people from gaining too much power and creating a true tyrrany / dictatorship.
Democray is the best attempt in all of human history to move away from conquest and move toward harmony and freedom. Let us not foolishly destory democracy on the basis of a few mistakes. Let us instead work with our governments by making ourselves heard by our elected representatives (and others) in government.
It looks like Pioneer's drive is now cheaper than the new HP one, and I think the disks are cheaper, too. Plus, it is readily available, and so are the DVD-R's and DVD-RW's. It also works with Linux, at least to write CD's. I've done it.
S-VHS didn't fail, but it isn't used much by people who aren't demanding of video quality. S-VHS VCR's are no longer very expensive (under $150 at entry level), and the tapes aren't anywhere near $50, try $5.
I use S-VHS, and I like it very much. It records an S-Video signal, which likely has something to do about the S-VHS S-Video confusion.
BTW: VHS sucks. S-VHS is much better.
Before we get to 0.09 microns, lets start using nanometers to get rid of those preceding decimal places. Plus, unlike micron, a nanometer is an accepted SI unit (see http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html). Strange the PR people should use it first -- could this be a sign of the Apocalypse?
What's this about too slow refresh rates for LCDs? 60Hz vertical refresh on an LCD is just fine.
The primary reason for having high refresh rates on CRTs is to reduce flicker. The flicker exists because a CRT only lights a point on the screen at any given time and scans horizontal lines from top to bottom.
In contrast, an LCD lights the entire image at all times, so there is no flicker and no need to go faster than 60Hz vertical refresh. A CRT, however, will benifit greatly from a higher refresh rate.
BTW: I have a Nokia branded Sony Triniton CRT display sitting next to an SGI 1600SW LCD (Mitsbishi made display, like the Apply Cinima Display). The SGI LCD has superior focus and notably less flicker than the CRT when the CRT is used at 85Hz (which I do think is far better than the CRT at 60 or 70HZ).
I also do video work with the SGI LCD. It is plenty fast enough for that, so I gather it's fast enough for most games.
6DOF tracking, good finger position pickup, and gesture recognition where all demonstrated at Siggraph 94 (I was there). This stuff has just been taking a long time to get to PCs probably because people are having trouble finding ways to use it that will convince buisness people to spend money to fund a project.
To set things staight, I used a Power Glove in my last high school science project (6 years ago), and it had 4DOF tracking (x,y,z plus wrist rotation along the axis of the arm (which didn't work very well)) and gesture recognition. The Power Glove sends 2-bits for each of 4 fingers (excludes the small one that isn't the thumb) to describe how far the whole finger is bent.
The project I displayed those 6 years ago used simple gestures to move through the enviornment and to select, move, and rotate objects in the environment. It also allowed moving by use of the directional pad.
In Huntsville, Alabama, the members of UAH SEDS (University of Alabama in Huntsville Students for the Exporation and Development of Space) for sometime held a pumpkin launch around Holloween night (technically, UAH SEDS had nothing to do with the event for liability reasons). Several people attached model rocket engines to hollowed out pumpkins and launched them. The results? Usually an unpredicable object that never got far from the ground. But once, a large pumpkin was hurled maybe 150 feet into the air on a parabolic trajectory. The crowd began to run for cover once the pumpkin started on its way down. It splatered into many peices and became completely flat. Much fun :-)
It seems to me that things like these loathsome flames are a product of irrationality. I would like to see people give their reasons to force them to state a rational argument, but that often doesn't happen.
Furthermore, it seems that rationality is in short supply. On Slashdot, for instance, there is an overwhelming bias in favor of Linux and like of everything free, and a not so good to evil bias of everything that costs money. Technical mertits are only secondary. For instance, Windows has some nice ideas in its GUI, like its ability to handle printing so that any program that can draw with the GUI can print to a printer -- no completely dissimilar GUI and printer code required (less code, less complexity, less time needed to make printing work, etc). Yet, when I mention this in a discusion about GUIs and X on Slashdot, I get flamed. Flamed for mentioning some wonderful technical benfits of another API probably because no one here likes the API so they aren't willing to acknowledge a few benifits it has that X doesn't.
The parts of Java that are slowest, from my experiance, are:
- GUI
- Object creation
- Poor programming
And yes, as computers get faster Java's speed will be less relavent. But that is true of anything. You probably don't care how long it takes for your email client to do anything, nor do you care how long your computer takes to deal with number crunching for your undergraduate college classes. That is because your computer can do these things so fast that you don't wait long, if at all. Thus, if those actions became twice as fast, you probably wouldn't care becasue you wouldn't notice.It still needs work, and I'm not sure that JFC will improve it much. Java software that doesn't use a GUI usually isn't very slow.
Making a new object takes time. A bit much time. Minimize usage of the new operatator to maximize performance.
Admit it -- this is the cause of most problems for almost anything.
E-commerce servers now often includes Windows NT and commercial UNIX's. If you only have to write it once, then all your clients who do e-commerce can use whatever platform they like without giving you huge amounts of grief in portability problems.
I also got to do some server side Java. It is fast and works great. Using JSP's is much better than ASP's because of the language -- Java is a full language while the ASP stuff is for scripting. VB is just full of inconsistant syntax. Furthermore, the Java Servlet API is very well done. There are a few things that ASPs make difficult to code and JSPs make almost trivial, like a file upload over HTTP (I don't why they were insistant about not using FTP).
Java has other nice & cool things, too, like the communications API. It works with serial and parallel ports. Like most Java API's it is very well written an easy to use.
For a poorly done Java API, look at the InfoBus. It sucks! I made a better one, but its more basic in function (part of the reason I think its better). Its on my web page, if you're interested. I call it the dataBus. All free with LGPL, of course.
Mosaic 2000 isn't out to get the geeks; the school adiministators are. They are buying into Mosaic 2000. If Mosaic 2000 performs as well as claimed, it should help to vindicate the geeks. However, since Mosaic 2000 comes from dealing with trained law enforcement, it'll likely have some trouble adjusting to clueless school administators who will add their own bias to any of Mosaic's questions (which will be revised to limit bias). Of course, with the records already kept on students, that has been a problem -- its not new.
So, the problem is with the administators, not Mosaic 2000. Given time, Mosaic 2000 may actually help geeks by rating them as non-threats. Mosaic 2000 is made to be an objective tool. Its the administators that have been so unobjective as to bring it into the schools. Hopefully it'll show them just how wrong they really are.
Granted, ThinkPads have not had flashy colors, but I think the flat black, with the red button looks pretty cool. I got a ThinkPad, for reasons other than the looks, but I'm quite impressed with the looks. I guess, though, they were trying to make them look cool and be palatible to buisness users in black suits and red ties. Well, at least the ThinkPads look better than suits!
It has been suggested that physical constants indicate our lack of understanding of physics. What if the speed of light isn't constant? If you accept the emerging scalar physics, a new school that uses Maxwell's original euqations, than the speed of light should not be constant.
And I suppose its revolutionary, too. Somehow I doubt it.
Drop the marketing fluff -- we don't want any here. Just the facts.
Swing is a rather nice setup, and its lower level base, the AWT, is pretty logically laid out. Its a very nice system that is based on what Delphi uses. So why should one think Swing is nice, but Delphi bad? If you examine Delphi's GUI libraries and compare to Swing, you'll find the two are quite similar.
"Paving the way to space and laughing all the way" is the motto of HAL5, a chapter of the National Space Society. They're trying to be the first amatuer group to get a rocket in orbit. The motto comes from their hybrid rocket -- it uses asfault and laughing gas for the propellant and oxidizer. It really works! They've been at it for a few years.
Or at least was, but should children be sheilded from Zorak? Is Zorak objectionable to anyone? I think the results should be taken with a pinch of salt. Or a few salty crackers. Your choice.
So you would have programmers write one body of code to display an image, and an entirely different body of code to print the same image? That seems quite silly and redundant when the two operations can be done with the same body of code. Why have ten apps with code to draw its stuff twice, to the screen and to the printer, when you can have ten apps that have code to draw its stuff once? Its a nice way to cut out that bloat.
Although this may not have been obvious, I ment that the GUI should provide a printing interface. Thus, the basic GUI itself should only provide the archetecture for printing. It makes perfect sense that a seporate module, commonly known as a printer driver, is where the actual implementation of translating a GUI screen to printer specific output would be. How it is implemented isn't a concern of the GUI.
As for OS vs just a GUI, the OS's I mentioned come with a GUI, and it is that GUI which I am referencing. I don't know the name of the GUI that comes with Windows v3.0, I don't think there is a name for the GUI of Mac's System whatever, but I do know OS/2's is called Presentation Manager, but most people here wouldn't have recognized that name. I know with absolute certainty that OS/2 and Windows v3.0 and later, both have printing calls within the GUI. OS/2 can be run without the GUI, and then will not provide the printing services I'm talking about (which makes perfect sense).
It seems that X can't do printing (correct me if I'm wrong). Pretty much all other GUIs (Win 3.1, OS/2, Mac, etc) handle printing. This makes printing very convinent because the software can use the same method to display stuff on the screen as it does to print. In fact, that makes perfect sense to do. It puts all the non-trival printing stuff in one spot and lets all software make use of it.
And I suppose moving the mouse charges the battery, too? Must be an evil plot to get people to play Pac-Man to recharge their batteries.
Thats an obvious problem facing a safty concious industry. The solution is simple -- differnt computer systems. One runs the networked Java stuff, the other runs the car. The two may communicate, but the communication will be well defined and purposely limited.
Thus, the system running Java/Windows/whatever will not be able to operate the breaks because the computer operating the car will not recognize a command to operate the breaks other than the break pedal.
The Java/Windows/network thingy could crash, and the car will continue to run just fine.
This is why the Electronic Troubleshooting Manual for your car can be your friend -- rip the $%#* thing out!!
:-)
But seriously, manufacturers are not going to put much on the windsheild because that could distract the driver. Viruses and other things might mess with the system, but that system is seporate from the one that actually runs the car.
And most of all: If I'm going to drive a car with ads, then I excpect to pay a low price for that car because someone else will make enough money so that the price can go down. Even so, I'll pay regular price for a car without ads. Or maybe I'll just keep my nifty Honda
I'm working on a HUD for my car ( http://ro.com/~jeffj/car/) that will read data from the car, like speed and RPM, and relay the information back to a computer and to the HUD. I even found some cheap GPS hardware. All this, coupled with the mapping software thats being worked on at the autoLinux project means that you could have your own custom built system, even with some Java interfaces, in your current car in a few months. Thats much better than on your next car you'll have in a decade. Of course, you'll be able to tweak all the software and interface some low level hardware if you want. That's hard to do with a factory package.