I.e. A couple characters for a line number, a single character for a command (goto, print, for, DIM etc) another single character for the parameters for that command, or several characters for a line number.
It's called tokenization-a memory saving technique used by many 8 bit machines for their interpreted BASICs.
Unfortunately, the article seems to have been written by a Mac using hack who thinks an OS release is a 'cultural event'. But what would you expect of media-industry types who use Macs? What really bothered me was that aside from all the pretentious rhetoric, the main argument was "Mac OS X looks pretty. This is culturally significant".
I appreciate good design (heck, I own a NeXTstation) but some of the arguments made here about how Apple makes UNIX pretty are really pointless. On the other hand, where design really should count, Apple has done a poor job at the UI design of OS X-it appears few, if any human factors issues were considered in trade for an interface "one would want to lick".
Technically, OS X is a big achievement: They managed to migrate an application base to a new platform, while doing it better than other UNIX vendors. Culturally though, this is equivalent to release of a new Backstreet Boys album.
How in the world can the manner in which it is projected alter the resolution of what's recorded on the film? An "unhappy teenager" will might make it dimmer, out-of-focus, or misaligned, but they can't reduce the number of grains on the print! The resolution of the film is fixed once it is printed in the lab. Poor projection does not change it.
That's true, it doesn't change the recorded resolution, but the comparison (at least by proponents of digital) has always been the entire system, teenage operator and all, scratchy prints and all. Yes, it's not an ideal argument, but it's what sells projectors, cameras and HD suite time.
There's certainly a market for 1080P24, definetly.
Now, how could I be seeing that stuff if it weren't for the fact that film retains greater than 2000 lines resolution even after going through all the steps to get to a release print? What more proof do I need? Film holds more than 2000 lines of resolution, even in a release print! And with continued improvements in film stocks and printing processes, it's only going to get better.
While it really wasn't the focus of the thesis, film certainly does record more than 2000 lines, that's not the problem: There's just too many variables: optical processing, proper projection etc. Digital systems will reduce the variances but may introduce others (DCT artifacting being one of the ones I worry about)
You're not going to get 4K when the thing is being projected by an unhappy teenager working for $6.85 an hour at the local megaplex or on a run down print. Solid state projection and digital storage will get you that.
In the end, what I'm finding HD as replacement for is really the 16mm market and the telefilm market (often 35, but the target is NTSC/480i). There's a lot of evidence already in the Toronto market for that, several shows are now shooting on HDCAM or even DBeta.
Again, if you're in the Toronto area this weekend.
on
Lego Mindstorms DJ
·
· Score: 2
...and you think Lego robotics is cool, then come out and visit for Fear of a Bot Planet, the 6th Annual, Lego Robotics Contest-an unofficial, unsponsored event...
Calum
If you're in the Toronto area this weekend...
on
Linux Powered Robots
·
· Score: 2
...come on out to Fear of a Bot Planet, the 6th Annual Lego Robotics competition, an unofficial, unsponsored enthusiast event...
Yes, this is slightly offtopic, but still a lot of fun.
It was our nice little secret until they hit big Stateside, but like Celine and Shania, BNL has sort of disappeared off our own radars...and every American college kid thinks they've hit something big.:)
What kind of crack was I on? Let me rephrase that. Like Celine and Shania, BNL have become internationally known, so we don't seem to care about them anymore in Canada. Now, every college kid in America thinks they've hit something big.
Calum
PS-phew. College kids aren't allowed to like AOR stuff!
Perhaps these files will become collectable, sort of like the yellow indie tape BNL released in the early 90's? They probably won't propagate on the network because people want the full songs, but I could see some fans wanting to collect them, sort of like how I have several versions of the same DMB song in various live renditions.
Offtopic though, their popularity has died down here in Canada. It was our nice little secret until they hit big Stateside, but like Celine and Shania, BNL has sort of disappeared off our own radars...and every American college kid thinks they've hit something big.:)
So don't support it. Go and build your own worldwide standard for MPEG2 distribution and set up tooling to build your own players. Companies can only sell DVD players if people buy them and support the format.
It's perfectly legal for a company (or group of companies) to make a product that suits their profit motive. This is capitalism. All sorts of other firms do this too. Car companies build autos with planned obsolescece. Glade Plugins only work with Glade perfume cartridges. HP printers only use HP toner-unless you buy a reengineered cart. (like DeCSS!)
The alternative is to build a market full of 'open' standards which can all fail because there are no market differentiators. Have a government force a standard (like MITI and NHK's HiVision analog HDTV format in Japan in the 80's).
You can be angry about it, but if you keep supporting DVD manufacturers, then you'll never stop it.
Amusing: The FBI warning on the Fight Club disc is a treat. Completely ignored it the first time around, then on the second time around I noticed.
Just use a DigitalCamcorder as a VCR replacement, you can record full quality.
Except digital camcorders like Digital8 and MiniDV have built in Macrovision detection. If you input a Macrovision encoded signal, the camcorder will refuse to continue recording after ten seconds.
What happens to all the cases and monitors? I presume they're not getting the logic boards from Apple, as their press release makes no mention of this, so they must be buying them in bulk and stripping them...
And why does having the cluster next to you make development easier? Why a need for portability? Don't you just log in remote and run your program?
Calum
This reminds me of a story I read in AppleDesign-a very nice book about Apple's product design and industrial design group.
A number of designers and engineers developed a modular Macintosh called Jonathan, which could have x86, 68K and Apple II modules, around the mid eighties. The idea was that the PC module could run MSDOS but make it easy to upgrade into the Mac module, where people would find the Mac OS much more enjoyable.
In the end, the project was killed inside Apple for the same reasons Star Trek was-people feared that more customers would find the PC side better, and the Mac OS wasn't enough to keep them. The hardware element of Apple has always been such a strong, strong force in that company-the same mindset that killed clone Macs, modular Macs, and anything else that would jeopardize the Macintosh's purity through commoditizing its hardware.
Hell, custom hardware is a strong force in any specialized firm-SGI, Sun, HP, IBM...I suppose.
If anyone's in the GTA/Southern Ontario area and is interested in Lego robotics (building or just watching), I invite you to visit the 6th Annual Lego Robotics Event later this month.
For those interested in the concepts/theories behind teamplay, strategy etc for Robocup entrants, a few months ago, AI Magazine had an excellent article about the competition plus indepth articles from CMU and other teams.
It also had an article about the Sony Aibo league as well.
It turns out there's a simulator league, an Aibo league (which was demonstration only) and a handbuilt league-of interest, the Aibo league used vision systems integrated in the Sony testbed-the article mentioned that the dogs can recognize and track points in space using YUV colour processing. One handbuilt entrant included custom chasses with built in Toshiba Librettos as main processors, others used embedded boards.
Anyways, an interesting read if you can find at your local university library. It's published by the AAAI, but they're not online...:(
Soon it may not be the video itself, but the digital signature on it, that carries veracity and inspires trust. Maybe tamper-proof (or at least tamper-evident) digital video cameras will each have a unique private key and will sign the video with the reputation of the manufacturer; maybe the operator will provide his key to the camera and sign the data himself.
Unfortunately, due to the hundreds of devices which alter video signals, digital or otherwise, this would be very very very hard to do. Even in an event that is "live", there are literally tens of devices which process and alter the signal. For example, in the nightly news, you'd have cameras, their CCU's (which colour and time the camera signals), which feed into a SEG/Switcher (which cuts between cameras) which is keyed with graphics and text (for titles etc), then the entire thing may be adjusted in a proc amp, plus the sequence of transmission, compression (MPEG2, DVB) and distribution systems that come after the pipe.
Finally something I can comment on with some degree of expertise!:)
Someone mentioned Mindstorms control of the layout. First off, Lego 9V train systems run off of a single power source controlled by what appears to be a crude stepped power supply (the 4548 Regulator). DC is fed into the entire track, and the Train Motor pack picks up that DC and drives its wheels. You can put as many packs as you like on the same track, but they'll all go forward and backwards at the same time because the entire track is electrified.
A Mindstorms RCX 1.0 could be used to power up these tracks in place of the 4548 and execute control on one of its motor ports. The other two ports could be used to drive cranes, scenery, gates etc or another isolated track system. That's kinda boring though.
The first option is to use what's called cab/block control. Fans of model trains (HO etc) will recognize this as powering on sections of track from a cab, or one power supply/regulator. So any given section of track could be fed separately by Cab A or Cab B, effectively meaning two motor packs are independently. As a train approachs a section of track, you power it up with the given Cab you are controlling, and unpower the section you're coming off of. But this means only one motor pack can be travelling within that section.
If you wanted to use Mindstorms to automate here, there's probably some cool application of using one motor to do the switching of block sections, and one output to power the track.
Another option is to isolate the motor pack from the track and power it solely using an onboard RCX. This has been tried by Matthew Bates and others. However, the draw of the motor pack soon drains the 1.0/1.5 RCX's six AA's. This would be one way to have a "ghost train" drive by itself without any connection to the 4548 powered track. You need to hack the motor to remove the pickups from the metal wheels.
A third, and much more elegant option is inband signalling, or DCC . Model train fans have long enjoyed the NMRA DCC (Digital Cab Control) standard, which sends a coded pulsewidth modulation signal along a powered common track. DCC motorpacks pick up power and pick up the control signal. When they get a command intended for itself, it powers the wheels. In effect, the track becomes a common bus where power and signal come from but the operation of the motors is dependent on the commands issued in the signal. What's also cool is that switches, scenery, etc can be latched into the track bus and controlled with automation or remotely.
Attempts have been made to put DCC into Lego trains-some experiments to isolate the track pickups/motors, then solder in a DCC decoder/controller into the pack have been successful. However, problems with voltage (9V vs normal 12V model train power) have hampered this. The cost is also hard to deal with-you're looking at least $400USD, when most people have tons of spare 4548's from trainsets.
There's also a lot of other cool stuff you can do with Mindstorms-using the IR, you can have a proximity to set something off (like gates on a road) and play a warning bell when a train nears. It's a $110USD track crossing, but...:)
You stupid fuck, you claim not to care about Apple rumors but here you are.
Dude, I think you read it wrong, or I wrote it wrong. What I'm asking is why Apple makes such a fuss over squelching rumours, not why/. makes such a fuss over rumours.
I, for one, love reading about the rumours. They make me want to see and buy the product even more. What I'm saying is Apple should (and probably does) know this and probably works it to build the hype.
I don't really understand why they make such a fuss over rumours: I've heard the argument it steals their thunder at introductions, but these leaks really do help them.
The only people who love reading these rumours are Mac fanatics who hang on any word. Hang out in any Mac newsgroup, listserv, and they'll be debating this tidbit over that tidbit.
This is Apple's core market: it's the only reason why they can maintain such a share against Microsoft and i386 arch machines. Why would you cut off hype built up by your biggest customers?
My guess is that Apple obviously knows this and just makes the play legally to make rumours seem even more rogue and juicy.
say, looking at the terminal, isn't Atex the firm which was sued for their non ergonomic keyboard? I remember the design of the keyboard was particularily clunky...
From reading their website, Compaq is retiring off the VAX hardware architecture, which from my memories is based on the PDP-11, and was the foundation for processor architectures like 68K.
However, VMS is not dead, so there really is a transition to new hardware with the same software infrastructure. If you're a VAX shop, buy an Alpha box, put OpenVMS on, and you're good to go.
On the desktop, a comparison could be Apple ditching 68K for PPC-you can't buy anymore 680x0 boxen, but you can certainly still buy MacOS.
If Linux users despise how corporate IT has been sold into indenture by pervasive marketing from the folks from Redmond, they've got a lot coming in the gaming market.
The gaming market is all marketing and hype. Yes, there are technological innovations every day, but what consoles are about is marketing, marketing, advertising and more marketing-just note how the ages old R3000 Playstation keeps selling billions of titles against the technologically superior N64 and Dreamcast. All about ads on TV, gaming magazines and viral marketing intended to get youngsters into buying more.
Worse, there are no developers. If you look at firms that failed like Atari (Jaguar), Commodore (CD32) and 3DO, all had put in significant developer relations in SDK's, copublicity, etc. Hell, CD32/CDTV had the fscking Amiga to copy games off.
Put Indrema into this market without the developer support of hundreds of games, plus no marketing engine the way Sony, Sega, Nintendo or Microsoft have, and that's the end.
Unfortunately, most Linux firms these days don't seem to get the idea of marketing, period. They take great software technology, throw it into commodity hardware and watch it flop. You can't keep selling to the converted!
This is exactly like the Amiga market about five years ago. Applications like the Toaster, go BEYOND and open new markets up. Linux vendors have to really start building something more than what any guy would run make on some beat up old box in his closet...especially with early adopters who will tear things apart and judge value on sight of the thing:)
Slashdot Mirror
It's called tokenization-a memory saving technique used by many 8 bit machines for their interpreted BASICs.
Calum
Variants of the Z80 are embedded EVERYWHERE.
Calum
I appreciate good design (heck, I own a NeXTstation) but some of the arguments made here about how Apple makes UNIX pretty are really pointless. On the other hand, where design really should count, Apple has done a poor job at the UI design of OS X-it appears few, if any human factors issues were considered in trade for an interface "one would want to lick".
Technically, OS X is a big achievement: They managed to migrate an application base to a new platform, while doing it better than other UNIX vendors. Culturally though, this is equivalent to release of a new Backstreet Boys album.
Calum
That's true, it doesn't change the recorded resolution, but the comparison (at least by proponents of digital) has always been the entire system, teenage operator and all, scratchy prints and all. Yes, it's not an ideal argument, but it's what sells projectors, cameras and HD suite time.
There's certainly a market for 1080P24, definetly.
Calum
While it really wasn't the focus of the thesis, film certainly does record more than 2000 lines, that's not the problem: There's just too many variables: optical processing, proper projection etc. Digital systems will reduce the variances but may introduce others (DCT artifacting being one of the ones I worry about)
You're not going to get 4K when the thing is being projected by an unhappy teenager working for $6.85 an hour at the local megaplex or on a run down print. Solid state projection and digital storage will get you that.
In the end, what I'm finding HD as replacement for is really the 16mm market and the telefilm market (often 35, but the target is NTSC/480i). There's a lot of evidence already in the Toronto market for that, several shows are now shooting on HDCAM or even DBeta.
Calum
Calum
Calum
Yes, this is slightly offtopic, but still a lot of fun.
Calum
What kind of crack was I on? Let me rephrase that. Like Celine and Shania, BNL have become internationally known, so we don't seem to care about them anymore in Canada. Now, every college kid in America thinks they've hit something big.
Calum PS-phew. College kids aren't allowed to like AOR stuff!
Offtopic though, their popularity has died down here in Canada. It was our nice little secret until they hit big Stateside, but like Celine and Shania, BNL has sort of disappeared off our own radars...and every American college kid thinks they've hit something big. :)
Calum
Calum
It's perfectly legal for a company (or group of companies) to make a product that suits their profit motive. This is capitalism. All sorts of other firms do this too. Car companies build autos with planned obsolescece. Glade Plugins only work with Glade perfume cartridges. HP printers only use HP toner-unless you buy a reengineered cart. (like DeCSS!)
The alternative is to build a market full of 'open' standards which can all fail because there are no market differentiators. Have a government force a standard (like MITI and NHK's HiVision analog HDTV format in Japan in the 80's).
You can be angry about it, but if you keep supporting DVD manufacturers, then you'll never stop it.
Amusing: The FBI warning on the Fight Club disc is a treat. Completely ignored it the first time around, then on the second time around I noticed.
Calum
Except digital camcorders like Digital8 and MiniDV have built in Macrovision detection. If you input a Macrovision encoded signal, the camcorder will refuse to continue recording after ten seconds.
Calum
What happens to all the cases and monitors? I presume they're not getting the logic boards from Apple, as their press release makes no mention of this, so they must be buying them in bulk and stripping them... And why does having the cluster next to you make development easier? Why a need for portability? Don't you just log in remote and run your program? Calum
A number of designers and engineers developed a modular Macintosh called Jonathan, which could have x86, 68K and Apple II modules, around the mid eighties. The idea was that the PC module could run MSDOS but make it easy to upgrade into the Mac module, where people would find the Mac OS much more enjoyable.
In the end, the project was killed inside Apple for the same reasons Star Trek was-people feared that more customers would find the PC side better, and the Mac OS wasn't enough to keep them. The hardware element of Apple has always been such a strong, strong force in that company-the same mindset that killed clone Macs, modular Macs, and anything else that would jeopardize the Macintosh's purity through commoditizing its hardware.
Hell, custom hardware is a strong force in any specialized firm-SGI, Sun, HP, IBM...I suppose.
Calum
Check out our webpage. http://peach.mie.ut oronto.ca/events/lego/lego-091600-rules.html
Calum
It also had an article about the Sony Aibo league as well.
It turns out there's a simulator league, an Aibo league (which was demonstration only) and a handbuilt league-of interest, the Aibo league used vision systems integrated in the Sony testbed-the article mentioned that the dogs can recognize and track points in space using YUV colour processing. One handbuilt entrant included custom chasses with built in Toshiba Librettos as main processors, others used embedded boards.
Anyways, an interesting read if you can find at your local university library. It's published by the AAAI, but they're not online... :(
--Calum
Unfortunately, due to the hundreds of devices which alter video signals, digital or otherwise, this would be very very very hard to do. Even in an event that is "live", there are literally tens of devices which process and alter the signal. For example, in the nightly news, you'd have cameras, their CCU's (which colour and time the camera signals), which feed into a SEG/Switcher (which cuts between cameras) which is keyed with graphics and text (for titles etc), then the entire thing may be adjusted in a proc amp, plus the sequence of transmission, compression (MPEG2, DVB) and distribution systems that come after the pipe.
--Calum
Finally something I can comment on with some degree of expertise! :)
Someone mentioned Mindstorms control of the layout. First off, Lego 9V train systems run off of a single power source controlled by what appears to be a crude stepped power supply (the 4548 Regulator). DC is fed into the entire track, and the Train Motor pack picks up that DC and drives its wheels. You can put as many packs as you like on the same track, but they'll all go forward and backwards at the same time because the entire track is electrified.
A Mindstorms RCX 1.0 could be used to power up these tracks in place of the 4548 and execute control on one of its motor ports. The other two ports could be used to drive cranes, scenery, gates etc or another isolated track system. That's kinda boring though.
The first option is to use what's called cab/block control. Fans of model trains (HO etc) will recognize this as powering on sections of track from a cab, or one power supply/regulator. So any given section of track could be fed separately by Cab A or Cab B, effectively meaning two motor packs are independently. As a train approachs a section of track, you power it up with the given Cab you are controlling, and unpower the section you're coming off of. But this means only one motor pack can be travelling within that section.
If you wanted to use Mindstorms to automate here, there's probably some cool application of using one motor to do the switching of block sections, and one output to power the track.
Another option is to isolate the motor pack from the track and power it solely using an onboard RCX. This has been tried by Matthew Bates and others. However, the draw of the motor pack soon drains the 1.0/1.5 RCX's six AA's. This would be one way to have a "ghost train" drive by itself without any connection to the 4548 powered track. You need to hack the motor to remove the pickups from the metal wheels.
A third, and much more elegant option is inband signalling, or DCC . Model train fans have long enjoyed the NMRA DCC (Digital Cab Control) standard, which sends a coded pulsewidth modulation signal along a powered common track. DCC motorpacks pick up power and pick up the control signal. When they get a command intended for itself, it powers the wheels. In effect, the track becomes a common bus where power and signal come from but the operation of the motors is dependent on the commands issued in the signal. What's also cool is that switches, scenery, etc can be latched into the track bus and controlled with automation or remotely.
Attempts have been made to put DCC into Lego trains-some experiments to isolate the track pickups/motors, then solder in a DCC decoder/controller into the pack have been successful. However, problems with voltage (9V vs normal 12V model train power) have hampered this. The cost is also hard to deal with-you're looking at least $400USD, when most people have tons of spare 4548's from trainsets.
There's also a lot of other cool stuff you can do with Mindstorms-using the IR, you can have a proximity to set something off (like gates on a road) and play a warning bell when a train nears. It's a $110USD track crossing, but... :)
--Calum
Dude, I think you read it wrong, or I wrote it wrong. What I'm asking is why Apple makes such a fuss over squelching rumours, not why /. makes such a fuss over rumours.
I, for one, love reading about the rumours. They make me want to see and buy the product even more. What I'm saying is Apple should (and probably does) know this and probably works it to build the hype.
--Calum
The only people who love reading these rumours are Mac fanatics who hang on any word. Hang out in any Mac newsgroup, listserv, and they'll be debating this tidbit over that tidbit.
This is Apple's core market: it's the only reason why they can maintain such a share against Microsoft and i386 arch machines. Why would you cut off hype built up by your biggest customers?
My guess is that Apple obviously knows this and just makes the play legally to make rumours seem even more rogue and juicy.
--Calum
--Calum
However, VMS is not dead, so there really is a transition to new hardware with the same software infrastructure. If you're a VAX shop, buy an Alpha box, put OpenVMS on, and you're good to go.
On the desktop, a comparison could be Apple ditching 68K for PPC-you can't buy anymore 680x0 boxen, but you can certainly still buy MacOS.
--Calum
The gaming market is all marketing and hype. Yes, there are technological innovations every day, but what consoles are about is marketing, marketing, advertising and more marketing-just note how the ages old R3000 Playstation keeps selling billions of titles against the technologically superior N64 and Dreamcast. All about ads on TV, gaming magazines and viral marketing intended to get youngsters into buying more.
Worse, there are no developers. If you look at firms that failed like Atari (Jaguar), Commodore (CD32) and 3DO, all had put in significant developer relations in SDK's, copublicity, etc. Hell, CD32/CDTV had the fscking Amiga to copy games off.
Put Indrema into this market without the developer support of hundreds of games, plus no marketing engine the way Sony, Sega, Nintendo or Microsoft have, and that's the end.
Unfortunately, most Linux firms these days don't seem to get the idea of marketing, period. They take great software technology, throw it into commodity hardware and watch it flop. You can't keep selling to the converted!
This is exactly like the Amiga market about five years ago. Applications like the Toaster, go BEYOND and open new markets up. Linux vendors have to really start building something more than what any guy would run make on some beat up old box in his closet...especially with early adopters who will tear things apart and judge value on sight of the thing :)
--Calum
And some of us like pastels! :)
--Calum