Agreed. One reason I'll rather have front projection is the ability to put the center speaker right at the center where it belongs (i.e. behind the screen).
Hmmm, perhaps that's part of the story. I personally believe that a complicated enough machine could be built to essentially surpass us on every intellectual level, but there are many people who don't think a machine could ever have what we have: a soul. Given the religious undertones of the movie, this seems like a plausible suggestion... they are enslaving our souls.
That idea was made more apparent in the movie Dark City that I saw recently. It was made around the same time as Matrix, so neither is a ripoff of the other even though they are quite similar.
SF should not be taken literally, after all it's F for fiction. However, The Matrix has many interesting philosophical points and it's a lot more than just technofetishist action. It makes you think about things from different angles than what we're used to in our boring, 9 to 5 working lives. (and that's for the fortunate ones who have a job. *sigh*)
This is becoming almost a FAQ, but here goes anyway. AFAIK the initial script used humans in a computing cluster, which would make more sense, but it was considered too difficult for the mundane masses, and it was changed for the final movie.
I'm not sure if that's true though, might be just a rumour. In fact, using human brains in a Beowulf cluster does present some problems, because people would probably find more hints of the reality through the calculations going on in their subconscious minds.
On the other hand, it's marginally possible that humans can be used to extract energy from food such as carbohydrates, even if some entropy is increased in the process. Maybe the alternatives for using that particular fuel were not that efficient or practical. Then again, the food had to be produced somehow, and in the absence of sunlight it would have meant even more wasted energy.
Users who need easy point n' click installations should not be installing servers.
Moreover, your scenario is the complete antithesis of choice, which is a major driving force for using Linux. People choose Linux or another OS for a variety of reasons, and they choose their applications accordingly. For example, when choosing Linux because it performs well on slower hardware, you'll also want to choose leaner applications. If we didn't have choice we could just as well consider this:
Would you like to use a computer? (Yes or No for installing the one and only OS)
People who like the ability to tinker with formatting codes in WP will probably LOVE to use LaTeX. At least that's how it's happened for me. I used WP5.1 on DOS (on a 286) for a long time, then had a brief interlude with Windows 3.1 Word 2.0, until finally discovering the joys of Linux and LaTeX.
Porting to MMX/SSE/3DNow is not that simple, because they require parallelity in the code. Depending on the language and compiler, it can be automated to some extent, but usually the coder must explicitly state when it's OK to calculate some things in parallel.
On the other hand, if your code is 64-bit clean (as Linux should be, as it runs on many platforms including SPARC and Alpha), it's mainly a matter of recompilation to take advantage of 64-bit processors. AFAIK, there are no new instructions introduced with AMD's 64-bit procs, although I'm not sure if 64-bitness will affect the vector extensions in any way.
While I may agree that a big part of blogging is egotistic crap, those people are still writing and hopefully developing their writing skills. Some people (including myself) might be better off with a personal diary, though. Nevertheless I find it hard to believe that some kind of writing is bad for your writing career, and other kinds are good.
Re:Bah, I developed this myself....
on
High Density CDs
·
· Score: 1
Why not go all they way to analog? You could represent any data by a
single decimal number, for example between 0 and 1, and store it on a
magnetic tape or a vinyl record.
Re:64 characters != filesystem limit
on
High Density CDs
·
· Score: 1
These days people use extensions to ISO9660 which allow longer
filenames, such as Rock Ridge on Unix and Joliet on Windows. I think
the intrinsic filename limit of ISO9660 is much shorter than 64 chars,
probably closer to good old 8.3.
As the other reply pointed out, it's possible but not advisable to use
other filesystems, as long the OS supports it.
AFAIK, the extensions use a special file which stores the ISO9660
filenames along with the longer ones. It's not unlike the long and
short filenames in DOS/Windows.
No, he was most definitely a civil engineer! I mean, who else would
run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?
Re:Bah, I developed this myself....
on
High Density CDs
·
· Score: 5, Funny
You should now notice that the CD only contains ones, which means huge redundancy. You can do a lossless compression of these ones into a single 4-byte number, which only tells the number of ones. It doesn't make the read portion any harder, but you'll save a lot of space.
In a lot of music, certain instruments/voices have fixed panning so there's no need to encode them separately for L and R channels. Especially if they are panned to the middle (equally to L and R), which is usually the case for bass, percussion and lead voice. It makes a lot of sense to single out these redundancies when encoding, it leaves more bitrate for the rest of the song.
I have used various 'alternative' speaker systems which utilize signals like L+R (center speaker) and L-R (surround speakers). Sometimes an mp3 sounds horrible this way, because the channel difference contains nothing but artifacts. Most mp3s pass the test fine, as do all the Oggs I've tried. So, in general, I find Oggs better when it comes to the stereo field.
The 'easy' names of commercial applications are mostly generic terms
such as windows, word, dialup networking. It's simple propaganda to
make people believe that computing == using MS products. Of course we
could have products like Gnu Word (because word is a generic term,
only MS Word is a trademark) but we want to be a little more creative
and original than MS droids, don't we?
Mozilla is a lot more original than Firebird. Also, the Mozilla name
dates back to the early days of Netscape so it's not that easy to give up.
Re:3 words: Car Ogg Player
on
Mini-Box M-100
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I assume we're talking about Vorbis, the audio codec of the Ogg family. AFAIK, the integer-only codec is separate from the main Vorbis code and called Tremor (I hope the name has nothing to do with sound quality). There are good reasons why these codecs are mainly developed for FP math; for example modern processors are faster with FP as they are optimized for modern software (a kind of reverse chicken and ogg problem:-).
*sigh* Ever heard of trilogies? For instance, LoTR is a single story which is split into three volumes/films because it happens to be quite long. the same goes for The Matrix, Star Wars (two trilogies), Back to the Future.. etc.
The second/third part of a trilogy is definitely not a rehash of an old idea. Or, if you think it that way, surely the second hour of any movie is a rehash of the first hour's old idea;-)
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Agreed. One reason I'll rather have front projection is the ability to put the center speaker right at the center where it belongs (i.e. behind the screen).
That idea was made more apparent in the movie Dark City that I saw recently. It was made around the same time as Matrix, so neither is a ripoff of the other even though they are quite similar.
SF should not be taken literally, after all it's F for fiction. However, The Matrix has many interesting philosophical points and it's a lot more than just technofetishist action. It makes you think about things from different angles than what we're used to in our boring, 9 to 5 working lives. (and that's for the fortunate ones who have a job. *sigh*)
I'm not sure if that's true though, might be just a rumour. In fact, using human brains in a Beowulf cluster does present some problems, because people would probably find more hints of the reality through the calculations going on in their subconscious minds.
On the other hand, it's marginally possible that humans can be used to extract energy from food such as carbohydrates, even if some entropy is increased in the process. Maybe the alternatives for using that particular fuel were not that efficient or practical. Then again, the food had to be produced somehow, and in the absence of sunlight it would have meant even more wasted energy.
There have been 64-bit laptops.. or at least portables, AGES ago. One was called Tadpole Alphabook, and it also ran Linux.
..at least the BSD software industry. ;-)
Moreover, your scenario is the complete antithesis of choice, which is a major driving force for using Linux. People choose Linux or another OS for a variety of reasons, and they choose their applications accordingly. For example, when choosing Linux because it performs well on slower hardware, you'll also want to choose leaner applications. If we didn't have choice we could just as well consider this:
Would you like to use a computer? (Yes or No for installing the one and only OS)
People who like the ability to tinker with formatting codes in WP will probably LOVE to use LaTeX. At least that's how it's happened for me. I used WP5.1 on DOS (on a 286) for a long time, then had a brief interlude with Windows 3.1 Word 2.0, until finally discovering the joys of Linux and LaTeX.
On the other hand, if your code is 64-bit clean (as Linux should be, as it runs on many platforms including SPARC and Alpha), it's mainly a matter of recompilation to take advantage of 64-bit processors. AFAIK, there are no new instructions introduced with AMD's 64-bit procs, although I'm not sure if 64-bitness will affect the vector extensions in any way.
While I may agree that a big part of blogging is egotistic crap, those people are still writing and hopefully developing their writing skills. Some people (including myself) might be better off with a personal diary, though. Nevertheless I find it hard to believe that some kind of writing is bad for your writing career, and other kinds are good.
Why not go all they way to analog? You could represent any data by a single decimal number, for example between 0 and 1, and store it on a magnetic tape or a vinyl record.
As the other reply pointed out, it's possible but not advisable to use other filesystems, as long the OS supports it.
AFAIK, the extensions use a special file which stores the ISO9660 filenames along with the longer ones. It's not unlike the long and short filenames in DOS/Windows.
No, he was most definitely a civil engineer! I mean, who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?
You should now notice that the CD only contains ones, which means huge redundancy. You can do a lossless compression of these ones into a single 4-byte number, which only tells the number of ones. It doesn't make the read portion any harder, but you'll save a lot of space.
Note: there's a warning page for those not clicking from the main article page. Just click through.
In a lot of music, certain instruments/voices have fixed panning so there's no need to encode them separately for L and R channels. Especially if they are panned to the middle (equally to L and R), which is usually the case for bass, percussion and lead voice. It makes a lot of sense to single out these redundancies when encoding, it leaves more bitrate for the rest of the song.
I have used various 'alternative' speaker systems which utilize signals like L+R (center speaker) and L-R (surround speakers). Sometimes an mp3 sounds horrible this way, because the channel difference contains nothing but artifacts. Most mp3s pass the test fine, as do all the Oggs I've tried. So, in general, I find Oggs better when it comes to the stereo field.
yeah, and for securing your music files, don't put all your oggs in one basket.
There's definitely a connection between April 1 and this. I mean, there must be a connection because one happened 28 days later than the other...
BTW, if this isn't the Killer App, I don't know what is.
The 'easy' names of commercial applications are mostly generic terms such as windows, word, dialup networking. It's simple propaganda to make people believe that computing == using MS products. Of course we could have products like Gnu Word (because word is a generic term, only MS Word is a trademark) but we want to be a little more creative and original than MS droids, don't we?
Mozilla is a lot more original than Firebird. Also, the Mozilla name dates back to the early days of Netscape so it's not that easy to give up.
I assume we're talking about Vorbis, the audio codec of the Ogg family. AFAIK, the integer-only codec is separate from the main Vorbis code and called Tremor (I hope the name has nothing to do with sound quality). There are good reasons why these codecs are mainly developed for FP math; for example modern processors are faster with FP as they are optimized for modern software (a kind of reverse chicken and ogg problem :-).
The second/third part of a trilogy is definitely not a rehash of an old idea. Or, if you think it that way, surely the second hour of any movie is a rehash of the first hour's old idea ;-)
From the article: "The Matrix" films won't have to be shortened, as Imax reel units can now support film lengths of 150 minutes.
If you're searching for intelligence, Slashdot is not the best place to start..