No. There's plenty of examples of one species acting as a surrogate mother for another's offspring. In fact in plenty of sci-fi books, movies, and games creatures are birthed through artificial mechanical "wombs".
This is awesome if it comes to pass, but I wonder first, will I have to finally get a Series 2 or one of the Pioneer DVD-Rs? Also, how much bandwidth will it use? Hard drive space?
I have a Philips Series 1 with Turbonet and an extra hard drive (only 50 GB total, but that seems good enough for me.) However, I'm noticing there are image quallity problems, lots of stuff just isn't as sharp as live is. And I have it set to use Highest quality.
My setup: Tivo, DirecTV, 5.1 Koss DVD unit, 27" Sony Wega, using composite cables. Yeah, I know S-Video would be better (component even better) But I also use a selector box for my XBox, GameCube and PS2, which are all composite. But thats not problem. If I go direct from DirecTV to the Koss, it looks better.
So it makes me wonder how a movie is going to look. I have 8mbit DSL, so bandwidth isn't an issue for me, (unless this thing is going to do what TiVo does to TV input, watch it all the time...), but I figure they're going to need to compress the stream, maybe using an advanced mpeg4 codec (how about that new H.264 that Apple and DVD Forum is touting?
Mainly I've noticed the quality problems since I "inherited" the Wega from my Dad. Before I was using an older TV, so maybe its just that the Wega is so much crisper anyway that it brings out the flaws in the TiVo video codec?
Is there anything that can be done about that? Would a new TiVo box (either DirecTivo or DVD-R) have better quality? Do the newer boxes have better codecs?
Whats it going to be like with this Netflix over broadband to TiVo?
I know nothing about this codec, but the website says the Tolly Group did independent tests on it. I read the pdf, it looks legit. This is the same group that conducted bandwidth tests for my company, GWI. http://www.gwi.net/images/tollyreport.pdf
I bought an AlBook 1.25Ghz G4 15" last year. I love it, often using it solely, and only powering up my Athlon box for games.
I chiefly use it on the desk, with my 19" LCD connected for a 2nd screen. But occasionally I use it elsewhere as a portable.
The one thing that I don't like about it is the heat. Even just doing web browsing and e-mail it gets warm. But when I do something that taxes the CPU for a period of time, the top of the keyboard and the area on the underside near the screen hinge gets downright hot! I can't stand to touch it for more than a few seconds.
I know this is an issue with all modern laptops, but is there anything even in theory that can be done about it? Besides slowing down the CPU and GPU, putting in a big noisy fan, for example.
Are there any technologies that can cool something like a laptop better? Some kind of micro liquid cooling system? Maybe we'll have liquid nitrogen (or something else, dry-ice?) capsules you plug in and when they're used up you recycle?
Or are we stuck with this situation? And I assume it'll only get worse as clock speeds get higher? Will there come a point where we just can't make highend laptops anymore because they get too hot?
Not sure what you're talking about, but the ping command (ICMP echo reply) got its name from the sound sonar systems make in submarines. Sends a loud blast of sound, then waits for the echo to measure distance.
I have no idea what cooling liquid silicon sounds like, but I imagine it'd be similar to the sound a car makes after your turn it off.
(How in the hell does any of this have anything to do with a new human input device?)
I have a 1.25 GHz AlBook, and it doesn't seem to have temperature sensors. Are you getting those figures from the 'book itself or an external thermometer?
Actually, I bet with that much CPU horsepower, you could have a raytracing graphics engine instead of texturized polygons, and it would be real time still.
Hmm, and you know if you add in just a few more megs, you might be able to have 2 CDs in there (148MB)...And well, hey, that's getting pretty close to 256 MB, and in any case they don't make flash RAM in anything but powers of 2...so there's your 256 MB...Gee, wouldn't it be great if you could also fit your photo library on there and show everyone you walk by how cute your kitty is? I'd say that should be 512 MB...Wow, thats awfully close to 1 GB, heck, yeah let's make it an even gig. Then again 4 GB is even better so...
Well I decided to give Gentoo a try on my PB. It works except for a few very nagging caveats:
1. Sleep does not work. This makes it next to useless for a laptop OS.
2. There's only 2D support for the Radeon 9600 Mobility. ATI, to my knowledge, doesn't have an accelerated driver for Mac Linux.
3. The Airport Extreme card (Broadcom rebranded) is completely unsupported. This means you'd have to use a PC-Card or USB wireless adapter if you want wireless.
Those are my big three complaints. Its neat to fiddle with, but until those are addressed, I won't be using it regularly.
But I did try out Mac-On-Linux. Its really cool. But again no hardware accelerated video so can't play games, and iTunes won't recognize my iPod within MOL.
I've never owned a PDA, but I do have an iPod which sees heavy use, and a prepaid cellphone which sees light use. I don't like carrying both devices. And both are a few years old, I can't see a good enough reason to upgrade at the moment.
But if Apple (or even someone else) were to come out with a combo hard drive music-player that worked well with a program like iTunes, cell phone, and PDA (and whose price wouldn't force me to amputate..), I'd buy one on the spot.
This entire season, since I switched to DirecTV, the only way for me to watch Enterprise (or any show that airs on the big national networks) is by downloading pirated copies from the Internet. DirecTV has been promising local channels for months but nothing seems to be happening. (I'm in Maine if you're curious.)
I guess you mean this one.
Right now I'm sharing a 19" Planar LCD (1280x1024) with my Powerbook and PC using a cheap Compucable VGA & USB KVM. Its cheap in both senses of the word, but it works OK.
But I'd prefer to use DVI. There don't seem to be any for less than the Belkin one
I'd like to find one for less than $100, cables included, because the only difference for me would be a slight increase in clarity and less fuss, and no having to push the "adjust" button on the monitor when I switch between the two computers because the video is blurry or off center.
This monitor also has both DVI and VGA, and you can switch between them, but it takes at least 3 button presses (depending on the mode you are in no less!), and of course that means that one computer is DVI and one is VGA.
I've been searching for months for a KVM that'll meet my needs and wallet. Help?
First they find the cure for cancer is the common cold, and now they can put metal in a microwave!!
Maybe next they'll find the cause of belly button lint.
I've thought that a great sequel to GTA would be where you play from the cops' perspective. You could start as a rookie out of the academy, and they'd stick you with a partner and you'd have a beat.
At first it'd be just simple stuff like traffic violations, and work up to more serious stuff like robberies, gang fights, murders, etc. Maybe your partner could be just a tinge on the bad cop side, and you'd get to choose whether to play it by the book or bend the rules.
It would be sort of like the way "Knights of the Old Republic" does it with Light/Dark Points. If you accept a bribe to let a speeder off, you'd get a "bad cop" point for instance.
There could be several paths for your character. The good cop path might lead to you becoming police commisioner, and the bad cop one might lead to being a drug lord or mafioso type.
So many possibilities. Wish I was a video game designer... 8-)
Now if only they made a board like this with the fastest Athlon and video chip available, good 5.1 sound chip, then you could build a kick-ass gaming PC thats the same size as a Game Cube.:-)
Then again, you'd need a monster heatsink and fan.
Why do we still use samples?
on
Free Sound Samples?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Why do we still use sound samples? It seems to me that a sound engine or chip that could generate sounds by using physical laws to simulate real materials producing sound in a computer would be able to create a far wider range and more unique sounds.
For instance, instead of recording the sound of a door slamming, the device could simulate a large wooden slab turning on hinges and hitting the door jamb. In most games that have doors slamming, its a prerecorded sound that doesn't vary. A simulation could produce the sound of the door a various velocities and types of material, ie. if you slam a door really hard versus just nudging it, it'll produce a very different sound, and the same goes for a metal door versus a big heavy oak one.
I have no idea if this is possible, but it just seems odd that we're still using recorded samples, and PC gaming audio technology doesn't seem to have advanced very much, especially with respect to the pace of graphics development.
Close. The student was in college, taking some sort of physics class. He did prove that CF works, and after being failed built not just a reactor, but bombs as well.
He blew up the clock tower of the college as a demonstation, and held a classroom of students hostage. He insisted the materials were readily available and it was easy to build, and said something to the effect of "I think I know why SETI has failed...all civilizations that discover CF destroy themselves because any idiot can built a multi-megaton bomb."
He gave a bomb as another demonstration to the military to explode as proof. They didn't believe it actually worked, and a few dozen people were killed. Then they took him seriously.
He ended up getting shot, and the government tried to cover everything up by instituting a massive disinformation campaign saying that CF was impossible and every schoolkid had to learn about that.
The show ended with another physics student taking an exam on why CF was impossible, but instead proved it was...
Makes you think. Thats what I love about Outer Limits...are they still producing it? Seems to be just old reruns from mid-90's.
CF would solve all the world's energy problems, you could take your house off the grid, and maybe even have CF powered cars (or at least electric ones that you charged at home.)
But if indeed it can make a bomb as well...that's a very scary prospect.
Exactly, I'm in the same boat as you. I just bought the Lord of the Rings books back in January. Four books, The Hobbit plus FoTR, TTT, RoTK. I had seen an animated version of the Hobbit way back when I was in 2nd Grade, but never read any of the books until this year.
And yes, I wholeheartedly agree that the books can be very tedious at times. All the travelling, and the silly songs and poems, some of which are pretty bad if you ask me, but then again I'm not into poetry.
I finished TTT a few months ago, but haven't gotten to RoTK yet. I am noticing that there's a lot of dialog that was either omitted or just shorted in the movies, and I can't remember off hand, but there were some instances where some lines were spoken by one person in the book and someone else in the movie.
Don't get me wrong though, I absolutely loved the movies. I even bought the soundtracks and have them on my iPod. The music is just so beautiful. Kind of like the way the original Star Wars series had great music (one thing that really annoys me about the new SW movies and all the friggin' video games, except KOTOR, is that they pretty much kept the exact same 25 year old music. "Duel of the Fates" was nice, but the rest of soundtracks for Ep 1 and 2 are utterly forgettable for the most part.)
I digress...
LoTR: Great music, great movies. Wish a few scenes weren't changed from the books (for instance Arwen saves Frodo when he's running from the Ringwraiths instead of the elf lord Glorfindel.)
I'd love it if they'd release the extended versions of all 3 movies in a DVD set, but we'll probably have to wait a whole year for that.
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No. There's plenty of examples of one species acting as a surrogate mother for another's offspring. In fact in plenty of sci-fi books, movies, and games creatures are birthed through artificial mechanical "wombs".
This is awesome if it comes to pass, but I wonder first, will I have to finally get a Series 2 or one of the Pioneer DVD-Rs? Also, how much bandwidth will it use? Hard drive space?
I have a Philips Series 1 with Turbonet and an extra hard drive (only 50 GB total, but that seems good enough for me.) However, I'm noticing there are image quallity problems, lots of stuff just isn't as sharp as live is. And I have it set to use Highest quality.
My setup: Tivo, DirecTV, 5.1 Koss DVD unit, 27" Sony Wega, using composite cables. Yeah, I know S-Video would be better (component even better) But I also use a selector box for my XBox, GameCube and PS2, which are all composite. But thats not problem. If I go direct from DirecTV to the Koss, it looks better.
So it makes me wonder how a movie is going to look. I have 8mbit DSL, so bandwidth isn't an issue for me, (unless this thing is going to do what TiVo does to TV input, watch it all the time...), but I figure they're going to need to compress the stream, maybe using an advanced mpeg4 codec (how about that new H.264 that Apple and DVD Forum is touting?
Mainly I've noticed the quality problems since I "inherited" the Wega from my Dad. Before I was using an older TV, so maybe its just that the Wega is so much crisper anyway that it brings out the flaws in the TiVo video codec?
Is there anything that can be done about that? Would a new TiVo box (either DirecTivo or DVD-R) have better quality? Do the newer boxes have better codecs?
Whats it going to be like with this Netflix over broadband to TiVo?
I know nothing about this codec, but the website says the Tolly Group did independent tests on it. I read the pdf, it looks legit. This is the same group that conducted bandwidth tests for my company, GWI. http://www.gwi.net/images/tollyreport.pdf
I bought an AlBook 1.25Ghz G4 15" last year. I love it, often using it solely, and only powering up my Athlon box for games.
I chiefly use it on the desk, with my 19" LCD connected for a 2nd screen. But occasionally I use it elsewhere as a portable.
The one thing that I don't like about it is the heat. Even just doing web browsing and e-mail it gets warm. But when I do something that taxes the CPU for a period of time, the top of the keyboard and the area on the underside near the screen hinge gets downright hot! I can't stand to touch it for more than a few seconds.
I know this is an issue with all modern laptops, but is there anything even in theory that can be done about it? Besides slowing down the CPU and GPU, putting in a big noisy fan, for example.
Are there any technologies that can cool something like a laptop better? Some kind of micro liquid cooling system? Maybe we'll have liquid nitrogen (or something else, dry-ice?) capsules you plug in and when they're used up you recycle?
Or are we stuck with this situation? And I assume it'll only get worse as clock speeds get higher? Will there come a point where we just can't make highend laptops anymore because they get too hot?
I thought Apple had claimed that H.264, which they made a big deal out of as part of Tiger, and that was the "official" codec for HD-DVD.
So are there in fact 2 camps? DVD Forum and H.264 and Blu-Ray and this Microshaft drivel?
I hate it when that happens. I'm all for competition, but not when its from MS. They'll just FUD, lawyer, and beat you to death until you submit.
Not sure what you're talking about, but the ping command (ICMP echo reply) got its name from the sound sonar systems make in submarines. Sends a loud blast of sound, then waits for the echo to measure distance.
I have no idea what cooling liquid silicon sounds like, but I imagine it'd be similar to the sound a car makes after your turn it off.
(How in the hell does any of this have anything to do with a new human input device?)
I have a 1.25 GHz AlBook, and it doesn't seem to have temperature sensors. Are you getting those figures from the 'book itself or an external thermometer?
Actually, I bet with that much CPU horsepower, you could have a raytracing graphics engine instead of texturized polygons, and it would be real time still.
Hmm, and you know if you add in just a few more megs, you might be able to have 2 CDs in there (148MB)...And well, hey, that's getting pretty close to 256 MB, and in any case they don't make flash RAM in anything but powers of 2...so there's your 256 MB...Gee, wouldn't it be great if you could also fit your photo library on there and show everyone you walk by how cute your kitty is? I'd say that should be 512 MB...Wow, thats awfully close to 1 GB, heck, yeah let's make it an even gig. Then again 4 GB is even better so...
Well I decided to give Gentoo a try on my PB. It works except for a few very nagging caveats:
1. Sleep does not work. This makes it next to useless for a laptop OS.
2. There's only 2D support for the Radeon 9600 Mobility. ATI, to my knowledge, doesn't have an accelerated driver for Mac Linux.
3. The Airport Extreme card (Broadcom rebranded) is completely unsupported. This means you'd have to use a PC-Card or USB wireless adapter if you want wireless.
Those are my big three complaints. Its neat to fiddle with, but until those are addressed, I won't be using it regularly.
But I did try out Mac-On-Linux. Its really cool. But again no hardware accelerated video so can't play games, and iTunes won't recognize my iPod within MOL.
I've never owned a PDA, but I do have an iPod which sees heavy use, and a prepaid cellphone which sees light use. I don't like carrying both devices. And both are a few years old, I can't see a good enough reason to upgrade at the moment.
But if Apple (or even someone else) were to come out with a combo hard drive music-player that worked well with a program like iTunes, cell phone, and PDA (and whose price wouldn't force me to amputate..), I'd buy one on the spot.
Like a lot of you I've been wondering what they could possibly be doing with all that bandwidth.
:-)
Then I thought, hey, they could have streaming live video lectures and video-conferencing. No need to leave your room!
Or even video-on-demand recorded lectures. No need to wake up at 7 AM to make that 8 AM lecture on the other side of campus! Just TiVO it!
Think of the possibilities!
Anyone know what they're really using it for? Or is just a stupid bullet point on the recruitment brochure?
Internet access != better education. Only if you use the bandwidth for educational purposes such as the above will it enhance education.
This entire season, since I switched to DirecTV, the only way for me to watch Enterprise (or any show that airs on the big national networks) is by downloading pirated copies from the Internet. DirecTV has been promising local channels for months but nothing seems to be happening. (I'm in Maine if you're curious.)
I guess you mean this one. Right now I'm sharing a 19" Planar LCD (1280x1024) with my Powerbook and PC using a cheap Compucable VGA & USB KVM. Its cheap in both senses of the word, but it works OK. But I'd prefer to use DVI. There don't seem to be any for less than the Belkin one I'd like to find one for less than $100, cables included, because the only difference for me would be a slight increase in clarity and less fuss, and no having to push the "adjust" button on the monitor when I switch between the two computers because the video is blurry or off center. This monitor also has both DVI and VGA, and you can switch between them, but it takes at least 3 button presses (depending on the mode you are in no less!), and of course that means that one computer is DVI and one is VGA. I've been searching for months for a KVM that'll meet my needs and wallet. Help?
Damn you Mal. I saw the headline and the first thing I thought of was Cartman and the V-chip.
It's true! You're sick! You're dying at this very moment! In fact, everyone on the planet has got it! We're all doomed! Oh the humanity!
Oh yeah, forgot about the Gameboy. But I don't consider that a "console". I was talking more about the 8-bit, 16-bit, 64-bit etc. set top boxes.
AFAIK, Sony was the first to make a console that was backwards compatible with their previous model.
Nintendo consoles have never been backwards compatible, for instance.
(Not so sure about Atari, but then again they've been defunct for so long it doesn't matter.)
First they find the cure for cancer is the common cold, and now they can put metal in a microwave!! Maybe next they'll find the cause of belly button lint.
I've thought that a great sequel to GTA would be where you play from the cops' perspective. You could start as a rookie out of the academy, and they'd stick you with a partner and you'd have a beat.
At first it'd be just simple stuff like traffic violations, and work up to more serious stuff like robberies, gang fights, murders, etc. Maybe your partner could be just a tinge on the bad cop side, and you'd get to choose whether to play it by the book or bend the rules.
It would be sort of like the way "Knights of the Old Republic" does it with Light/Dark Points. If you accept a bribe to let a speeder off, you'd get a "bad cop" point for instance.
There could be several paths for your character. The good cop path might lead to you becoming police commisioner, and the bad cop one might lead to being a drug lord or mafioso type.
So many possibilities. Wish I was a video game designer... 8-)
Now if only they made a board like this with the fastest Athlon and video chip available, good 5.1 sound chip, then you could build a kick-ass gaming PC thats the same size as a Game Cube. :-)
Then again, you'd need a monster heatsink and fan.
Why do we still use sound samples? It seems to me that a sound engine or chip that could generate sounds by using physical laws to simulate real materials producing sound in a computer would be able to create a far wider range and more unique sounds.
For instance, instead of recording the sound of a door slamming, the device could simulate a large wooden slab turning on hinges and hitting the door jamb. In most games that have doors slamming, its a prerecorded sound that doesn't vary. A simulation could produce the sound of the door a various velocities and types of material, ie. if you slam a door really hard versus just nudging it, it'll produce a very different sound, and the same goes for a metal door versus a big heavy oak one.
I have no idea if this is possible, but it just seems odd that we're still using recorded samples, and PC gaming audio technology doesn't seem to have advanced very much, especially with respect to the pace of graphics development.
Damn...that's gotta be depressing.
(at the water cooler, 1973)
"Hi, Bob, seen any gravity waves lately?"
"Nope, but we're real close now."
(in an instant message, 2003)
"Hi, Bob, seen any gravity waves lately?"
"Nope, but we're real close now."
You gotta wonder what gets these people out of bed day in and day out.
Close. The student was in college, taking some sort of physics class. He did prove that CF works, and after being failed built not just a reactor, but bombs as well.
He blew up the clock tower of the college as a demonstation, and held a classroom of students hostage. He insisted the materials were readily available and it was easy to build, and said something to the effect of "I think I know why SETI has failed...all civilizations that discover CF destroy themselves because any idiot can built a multi-megaton bomb."
He gave a bomb as another demonstration to the military to explode as proof. They didn't believe it actually worked, and a few dozen people were killed. Then they took him seriously.
He ended up getting shot, and the government tried to cover everything up by instituting a massive disinformation campaign saying that CF was impossible and every schoolkid had to learn about that.
The show ended with another physics student taking an exam on why CF was impossible, but instead proved it was...
Makes you think. Thats what I love about Outer Limits...are they still producing it? Seems to be just old reruns from mid-90's.
CF would solve all the world's energy problems, you could take your house off the grid, and maybe even have CF powered cars (or at least electric ones that you charged at home.)
But if indeed it can make a bomb as well...that's a very scary prospect.
Exactly, I'm in the same boat as you. I just bought the Lord of the Rings books back in January. Four books, The Hobbit plus FoTR, TTT, RoTK. I had seen an animated version of the Hobbit way back when I was in 2nd Grade, but never read any of the books until this year.
And yes, I wholeheartedly agree that the books can be very tedious at times. All the travelling, and the silly songs and poems, some of which are pretty bad if you ask me, but then again I'm not into poetry.
I finished TTT a few months ago, but haven't gotten to RoTK yet. I am noticing that there's a lot of dialog that was either omitted or just shorted in the movies, and I can't remember off hand, but there were some instances where some lines were spoken by one person in the book and someone else in the movie.
Don't get me wrong though, I absolutely loved the movies. I even bought the soundtracks and have them on my iPod. The music is just so beautiful. Kind of like the way the original Star Wars series had great music (one thing that really annoys me about the new SW movies and all the friggin' video games, except KOTOR, is that they pretty much kept the exact same 25 year old music. "Duel of the Fates" was nice, but the rest of soundtracks for Ep 1 and 2 are utterly forgettable for the most part.)
I digress...
LoTR: Great music, great movies. Wish a few scenes weren't changed from the books (for instance Arwen saves Frodo when he's running from the Ringwraiths instead of the elf lord Glorfindel.)
I'd love it if they'd release the extended versions of all 3 movies in a DVD set, but we'll probably have to wait a whole year for that.