Re:What the parent poster meant...
on
MythTV 0.20 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
1) Better software for them to personally use 2) Experience/enjoyment of devel.
Neither of these are any better or worse based on number of people using the software,
That's not strictly true.
1) The more people using the software, the more likely (though still a low percentage) it is that some of them will contribute back suggestions (or maybe even patches) for improving the software.
2) That enjoyment is enhanced, at least for some developers, by the knowledge that other people find the software useful.
If neither of those were a factor, why make the project open source in the first place? Just quietly develop it for yourself and don't bother telling anyone.
Yeah. I almost mentioned that (and just checking termination in general) but figured "nah, that's so obvious he has to have checked it first". But you have a point, some things are so obvious that they are overlooked.
("Did you check that it was plugged in?" "Don't be silly, of course I ch... Oh, oops.")
Not at all. I don't see how admitting that your personal optic wetware can't handle processing an anamorphic image could be considered "elitist". Mine adjusts pretty quickly, actually.
Stanley Kubrick (the directory) preferred the 4:3 aspect ratio, and shot most of his movies in that format.
Not quite so. Most of them were shot to negative at 1.37:1 (which is 4.11:3) on 35mm, typically with an Arriflex camera. This was a fairly popular format (and camera). The negative image was then cropped to print at 1.66:1 (5:3), wider than 4:3 but not quite "wide screen". The relatively light weight of the Arriflex made it easier to get some of the unique shots that Kubrick was known for.
At least two of his biggest productions -- "Spartacus" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- were shot at 2.20:1 on 70mm film (and in Cinerama for "2001"). The 35mm prints of Spartacus were cropped to 2.35:1.
is to eventually have a 2160 line movie at 120fps.
Is that lines vertical (as in scanlines) or horizontal? Assuming the former, that'd give you a 3840x2160 screen for 16x9. At a ten foot viewing distance, a screen about 14.8 feet diagonal would still give you a visual resolution at about the human eye's limits (300 lines/inch at a viewing distance of 10 inches, as I recall). Not bad.
The 120fps is perhaps on the high side. Doug Trumbulls experiments with film at 60 and 70 fps showed that to be plenty adequate. (Or perhaps 120fps is fields per second, ie 60 frames per second interlaced?)
They buy music so that they can do something else and not get so bored doing it.
Back when I bought music, it was mostly so that I could listen to it, and the radio was for background. That was back before the web and before video/DVD. Who "just listens" to music anymore? (And if I am just listening to music, it won't be to some compressed crap on tinny earbuds, but to vinyl or CD over real speakers.)
Nowadays, I fill the "do something else and not get bored" niche with books-on-tape (or disc), from the library. (Mostly fiction, and some non-fiction that I wouldn't otherwise take the time to read.) Works great for those hour-long commutes or just doing clean-up around the house. Music still works though as background for reading or writing, because it's harder to do either of those and listen to a story at the same time.
the drives were no longer recognized by the SCSI controller,
A problem with the SCSI controller, or with the drive's on-board electronics?
If the former, just replace the controller. Check this by moving the drives to a box with a working controller.
If the problem is the on-board drive electronics, then using a working drive of the exact same make and model, carefully undo the 3 or 4 screws holding the circuit board to the drive and swap the board from the good drive with the board from the bad drive. If this was the problem you should now be able to access the data on the old drive.
I've done this with a Seagate Barracuda that had its electronics fried because of a catastrophic power supply failure (detonated one of the chips and vaporized a couple of circuit traces). Swapping the board from an identical drive (I had a bunch around) let me recover the data. Not knowing the condition of any circuitry within the drive itself, I retired the drive after copying off the data. I would have erased it too but I was planning on disassembling it anyway.
(NB - even the same make an model number doesn't guarantee interchangable parts -- I had a similar problem with a Western Digital 80GB drive that I didn't happen to have a duplicate of, although that model was still on the market. Alas there's another 4-character code after the model number (ie, the "real" model number, except you need to see the faceplate to find it out) and in the year or so since buying the first one, there were enough minor changes that the circuit boards weren't interchangeable.)
Hispanic isn't a race (despite the little checkboxes on various government forms). Ricky and Lucy were both Caucasoid. Hispanic is a cultural term, Hispanic people can range from blonds to blacks.
That episode may or may not have been (US) TV's first interracial kiss, but you'll have to find a better counter-example than "I Love Lucy".
watch the movie, "Forbidden Planet" and then Watch the first two, filmed, episodes of Star Trek: "The Cage" ie the original pilot, and , "Where No Man has Gone Before."
Oh, very much so. Fun drinking game -- watch Forbidden Planet and take a drink for everything that Star Trek later ripped off. For even further inebriation, take a drink for everything any 1960s SF series ripped off from it. (Eg, "Lost In Space"s robot, the Project TicToc facility in "Time Tunnel", etc.) Ah well, as one of my writer friends used to say, if you're gonna steal, steal from the best. (Many of the elements of "Forbidden Planet" were of course stolen from Shakespeare's "The Tempest".)
MS is trying to work in the ideas that made one of the largest most successful companies in the history of business.
What, find an existing monopoly (such as, the world's largets computer manufacturer) that's branching into a new market niche (say, PCs), sell them a product you don't own yet but know where to steal^H^H^H^H^Hbuy (an OS, for example), and retain the rights to market said product to original companies competitors in that market niche?
And then leverage the new monopoly that said original company just handed you on a platter and leverage it to wipe out the competition in any new market niches (oh, say, web browsers) that pop up?
Not sure how that applies to high school, but I can see where some of their other techniques might. (Plagiarize other people's homework and proclaim it your own "innovation", form strategic "partnerships" with other students where they do the work and you take the credit, etc, etc....)
Yeah, I'd complain about DirectX too, because I'd prefer OpenGL compliant, but it doesn't do any good. I bet they even passed that through a spell checker, because they did it twice.
So, if changing CO2 levels caused glaciation or glacier melting -- what caused the changing CO2 levels? Is someone trying to argue that burning fossil fuels contributed to CO2 levels 500,000 (or whatever) years ago? CO2 contributes a fraction of the greenhouse effect that good old H2O does.
On the other hand, the mechanism for changing CO2 levels as a result of glaciation or melting is pretty straightforward: gases dissolve better in cold water and decay processes are slower when it's colder, so cold temperatures would tend to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, and vice versa. The temperature changes that cause this (rather than vice versa) are easily explained by very tiny fluctuations in solar output.
Interesting that with the drop-off in solar activity since the peak last year, the arctic icecap didn't melt back as much this summer as it did last.
There just isn't any such clean division between planets, dwarf planets and asteroids.
I've got one for you, but it isn't necessarily determinable from just external observation. The line between planets (dwarf or otherwise) and asteroids is the self-gravitation one: if it's more spherical than not, then it's a planet. Potatoe shaped or otherwise irregular, it's an asteroid. For roughly spherical bodies, if it has undergone sufficient melting and differentiation that it has a distinct core, it's a planet. Otherwise it's a dwarf planet.
Melting, differentiation and core formation are pretty objective characteristics, just like fusion in defining stars. (The heat for melting is a combination of gravitational energy from initial condensation and radioactive heating from short-lived isotopes.)
The planetary geologists would probably favor that one. I think the dynamicists care more about the orbit. Maybe we just need to add a qualifier (eg 'gravitationally dominant', or GD) to keep the latter happy. Thus Ceres, Vesta, Pluto, etc. are planets, but the original 8 are GD planets.
Once upon a time, Ceres was a planet. Then other asteroids were discovered.
Exactly. And since the KBO's (including Pluto) are probably as much (or more) ice as rock, we can call them iceteroids. Otherwise why not just call them big asteroids. The term "plutons" pissed of the geologists who had prior claim, and "dwarf planet" sounds like something from a "Star Wars: The Lord of the Rings" pastiche. (Besides, then we'd have to rename Ceres, Pluto etc with names like Gimli, Balin, Thorin, etc.)
Say what? The HP nc6000 on my desk (beside the monitor to this Linux box) has volume up/down buttons, AND a mute button, right on the front. Glances around office. One old IBM Thinkpad has a thumbwheel on the side, the other has it just above the keyboard. OK, the Twinhead uses (meta)-F8 and (meta)-F9, so that might not work at boot.
Not that any of those could run Vista (well, the HP might.)
What are you talking about? Who said anything about any Lagrange (not "la-grange") point (there are five of them, btw -- none of which is "half way to the moon"). Just a slightly higher orbit than geosync to leave the slot open for a new satellite.
As for atmospheric drag-- as I said, it isn't going to affect them. (Atmospheric drag has a lot to do with it in lower orbits, up to a few hundred miles. Geosync is twenty two thousand miles beyond that).
What I don't understand is why they should turn off objects already on the moon?
NASA management mentality -- and for that matter any management mentality. As long as it's still sending out signal, somebody can keep coming back and bugging you for budget to listen to it. That means your decision can be reversed, making you look bad.
That sort of thing often happens when projects are terminated. They're terminated with extreme prejudice. An example from Canadian aerospace history is the case of the Avro Arrow, a near Mach 2 interceptor designed and several prototypes built in the 1950s. One of the most advanced designs of its kind at the time. When Prime Minister Diefenbaker cancelled the project, he also ordered the plans destroyed and the prototypes cut up for scrap, guaranteeing that the project could never be restarted.
Sure the half-life matters. The voltage is generated by thermocouples. The temperature is going to be dependent upon the rate at which heat generated by the radioisotope vs the rate at which it is dissipated from the RTG unit. The longer the half-life, the longer the isotope can put out its heat (although the amount per unit time is lower than for a short lived isotope).
The Voyagers had and have much higher power requirements than the ALSEP packages. Their communications gear has to operate over hundreds of millions of miles vs the quarter of a million miles for a package on the Moon. They have internal heaters to keep instruments and electronics at proper operating temperatures at distances where the Sun is just another bright star.
Twenty years after launch, the Voyager RTGs were still putting out about 70% of their initial inital launch power (335W vs 470W). Twenty years after the ALSEP placements, they had been switched off for 12 to 15 years.
Yes, the Lunar environment is harsh -- although the temperature swings are much less frequent (but same range) than for any spacecraft in orbit close enough to pass through the nightside shadow. And (except for A14) the ALSEPs had been operating just fine for up to 8 years when switched off.
"Out of orbit" being relative. Geostationary orbit is prime real estate, as it were, so satellites nearing end-of-life up there are usually boosted to a higher "disposal" orbit. They're all high enough that atmospheric drag isn't going to affect them.
I wonder if any of the Apollo ASLEP packages are still up and running and whether they would detect the impact?
The ALSEP packages were turned off remotely when the budget for collecting data ran out. That was Sep 30, 1977. Although the Apollo 14 ALSEP had failed a year and a half earlier, the others (A12, A15-17) were still going strong -- and still would be, the RTG power source having about a 90-year half life. (Well, barring hardware failure.)
Their seismometers did detect the impact of the S-IVB upper stages and LM ascent stages that were targeted at the Moon's surface. The SMART probe is much smaller so it would depend on how close it hit.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Better software for them to personally use
2) Experience/enjoyment of devel.
Neither of these are any better or worse based on number of people using the software,
That's not strictly true.
1) The more people using the software, the more likely (though still a low percentage) it is that some of them will contribute back suggestions (or maybe even patches) for improving the software.
2) That enjoyment is enhanced, at least for some developers, by the knowledge that other people find the software useful.
If neither of those were a factor, why make the project open source in the first place? Just quietly develop it for yourself and don't bother telling anyone.
Yeah. I almost mentioned that (and just checking termination in general) but figured "nah, that's so obvious he has to have checked it first". But you have a point, some things are so obvious that they are overlooked.
("Did you check that it was plugged in?" "Don't be silly, of course I ch... Oh, oops.")
Maybe it's just elitist of me,
;-)
Not at all. I don't see how admitting that your personal optic wetware can't handle processing an anamorphic image could be considered "elitist". Mine adjusts pretty quickly, actually.
Stanley Kubrick (the directory) preferred the 4:3 aspect ratio, and shot most of his movies in that format.
Not quite so. Most of them were shot to negative at 1.37:1 (which is 4.11:3) on 35mm, typically with an Arriflex camera. This was a fairly popular format (and camera). The negative image was then cropped to print at 1.66:1 (5:3), wider than 4:3 but not quite "wide screen". The relatively light weight of the Arriflex made it easier to get some of the unique shots that Kubrick was known for.
At least two of his biggest productions -- "Spartacus" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- were shot at 2.20:1 on 70mm film (and in Cinerama for "2001"). The 35mm prints of Spartacus were cropped to 2.35:1.
is to eventually have a 2160 line movie at 120fps.
Is that lines vertical (as in scanlines) or horizontal? Assuming the former, that'd give you a 3840x2160 screen for 16x9. At a ten foot viewing distance, a screen about 14.8 feet diagonal would still give you a visual resolution at about the human eye's limits (300 lines/inch at a viewing distance of 10 inches, as I recall). Not bad.
The 120fps is perhaps on the high side. Doug Trumbulls experiments with film at 60 and 70 fps showed that to be plenty adequate. (Or perhaps 120fps is fields per second, ie 60 frames per second interlaced?)
They buy music so that they can do something else and not get so bored doing it.
Back when I bought music, it was mostly so that I could listen to it, and the radio was for background. That was back before the web and before video/DVD. Who "just listens" to music anymore? (And if I am just listening to music, it won't be to some compressed crap on tinny earbuds, but to vinyl or CD over real speakers.)
Nowadays, I fill the "do something else and not get bored" niche with books-on-tape (or disc), from the library. (Mostly fiction, and some non-fiction that I wouldn't otherwise take the time to read.) Works great for those hour-long commutes or just doing clean-up around the house. Music still works though as background for reading or writing, because it's harder to do either of those and listen to a story at the same time.
the drives were no longer recognized by the SCSI controller,
A problem with the SCSI controller, or with the drive's on-board electronics?
If the former, just replace the controller. Check this by moving the drives to a box with a working controller.
If the problem is the on-board drive electronics, then using a working drive of the exact same make and model, carefully undo the 3 or 4 screws holding the circuit board to the drive and swap the board from the good drive with the board from the bad drive. If this was the problem you should now be able to access the data on the old drive.
I've done this with a Seagate Barracuda that had its electronics fried because of a catastrophic power supply failure (detonated one of the chips and vaporized a couple of circuit traces). Swapping the board from an identical drive (I had a bunch around) let me recover the data. Not knowing the condition of any circuitry within the drive itself, I retired the drive after copying off the data. I would have erased it too but I was planning on disassembling it anyway.
(NB - even the same make an model number doesn't guarantee interchangable parts -- I had a similar problem with a Western Digital 80GB drive that I didn't happen to have a duplicate of, although that model was still on the market. Alas there's another 4-character code after the model number (ie, the "real" model number, except you need to see the faceplate to find it out) and in the year or so since buying the first one, there were enough minor changes that the circuit boards weren't interchangeable.)
The article is rather confusingly written, surprising for National G.
A better one (IMHO) can be found here, and mentions that that Raymond et al's paper is in the current issue of Science .
There's also a summary in Science Now .
good Star Trek books
Isn't that an oxymoron?
Hispanic isn't a race (despite the little checkboxes on various government forms). Ricky and Lucy were both Caucasoid. Hispanic is a cultural term, Hispanic people can range from blonds to blacks.
That episode may or may not have been (US) TV's first interracial kiss, but you'll have to find a better counter-example than "I Love Lucy".
watch the movie, "Forbidden Planet" and then Watch the first two, filmed, episodes of Star Trek: "The Cage" ie the original pilot, and , "Where No Man has Gone Before."
Oh, very much so. Fun drinking game -- watch Forbidden Planet and take a drink for everything that Star Trek later ripped off. For even further inebriation, take a drink for everything any 1960s SF series ripped off from it. (Eg, "Lost In Space"s robot, the Project TicToc facility in "Time Tunnel", etc.) Ah well, as one of my writer friends used to say, if you're gonna steal, steal from the best. (Many of the elements of "Forbidden Planet" were of course stolen from Shakespeare's "The Tempest".)
MS is trying to work in the ideas that made one of the largest most successful companies in the history of business.
What, find an existing monopoly (such as, the world's largets computer manufacturer) that's branching into a new market niche (say, PCs), sell them a product you don't own yet but know where to steal^H^H^H^H^Hbuy (an OS, for example), and retain the rights to market said product to original companies competitors in that market niche?
And then leverage the new monopoly that said original company just handed you on a platter and leverage it to wipe out the competition in any new market niches (oh, say, web browsers) that pop up?
Not sure how that applies to high school, but I can see where some of their other techniques might. (Plagiarize other people's homework and proclaim it your own "innovation", form strategic "partnerships" with other students where they do the work and you take the credit, etc, etc....)
From the hardware requirements:
and a DirectX 9.0 complaint [sic] Video
Yeah, I'd complain about DirectX too, because I'd prefer OpenGL compliant, but it doesn't do any good. I bet they even passed that through a spell checker, because they did it twice.
So, if changing CO2 levels caused glaciation or glacier melting -- what caused the changing CO2 levels? Is someone trying to argue that burning fossil fuels contributed to CO2 levels 500,000 (or whatever) years ago? CO2 contributes a fraction of the greenhouse effect that good old H2O does.
On the other hand, the mechanism for changing CO2 levels as a result of glaciation or melting is pretty straightforward: gases dissolve better in cold water and decay processes are slower when it's colder, so cold temperatures would tend to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, and vice versa. The temperature changes that cause this (rather than vice versa) are easily explained by very tiny fluctuations in solar output.
Interesting that with the drop-off in solar activity since the peak last year, the arctic icecap didn't melt back as much this summer as it did last.
1. Read. 2. Write reply. 3. Re-read. 4. Post.
5. ???
6. Profit!
There just isn't any such clean division between planets, dwarf planets and asteroids.
I've got one for you, but it isn't necessarily determinable from just external observation. The line between planets (dwarf or otherwise) and asteroids is the self-gravitation one: if it's more spherical than not, then it's a planet. Potatoe shaped or otherwise irregular, it's an asteroid. For roughly spherical bodies, if it has undergone sufficient melting and differentiation that it has a distinct core, it's a planet. Otherwise it's a dwarf planet.
Melting, differentiation and core formation are pretty objective characteristics, just like fusion in defining stars. (The heat for melting is a combination of gravitational energy from initial condensation and radioactive heating from short-lived isotopes.)
The planetary geologists would probably favor that one. I think the dynamicists care more about the orbit. Maybe we just need to add a qualifier (eg 'gravitationally dominant', or GD) to keep the latter happy. Thus Ceres, Vesta, Pluto, etc. are planets, but the original 8 are GD planets.
Once upon a time, Ceres was a planet. Then other asteroids were discovered.
Exactly. And since the KBO's (including Pluto) are probably as much (or more) ice as rock, we can call them iceteroids. Otherwise why not just call them big asteroids. The term "plutons" pissed of the geologists who had prior claim, and "dwarf planet" sounds like something from a "Star Wars: The Lord of the Rings" pastiche. (Besides, then we'd have to rename Ceres, Pluto etc with names like Gimli, Balin, Thorin, etc.)
Exactly. Therefore, the neutron, or neutronium, is element zero. Chemically inert. Atomic mass 1.
(No, I'm not being serious.)
Laptop speakers don't have volume control!
Say what? The HP nc6000 on my desk (beside the monitor to this Linux box) has volume up/down buttons, AND a mute button, right on the front. Glances around office. One old IBM Thinkpad has a thumbwheel on the side, the other has it just above the keyboard. OK, the Twinhead uses (meta)-F8 and (meta)-F9, so that might not work at boot.
Not that any of those could run Vista (well, the HP might.)
"What a sad, strange little man. You have my pity."
What are you talking about? Who said anything about any Lagrange (not "la-grange") point (there are five of them, btw -- none of which is "half way to the moon"). Just a slightly higher orbit than geosync to leave the slot open for a new satellite.
As for atmospheric drag-- as I said, it isn't going to affect them. (Atmospheric drag has a lot to do with it in lower orbits, up to a few hundred miles. Geosync is twenty two thousand miles beyond that).
What I don't understand is why they should turn off objects already on the moon?
NASA management mentality -- and for that matter any management mentality. As long as it's still sending out signal, somebody can keep coming back and bugging you for budget to listen to it. That means your decision can be reversed, making you look bad.
That sort of thing often happens when projects are terminated. They're terminated with extreme prejudice. An example from Canadian aerospace history is the case of the Avro Arrow, a near Mach 2 interceptor designed and several prototypes built in the 1950s. One of the most advanced designs of its kind at the time. When Prime Minister Diefenbaker cancelled the project, he also ordered the plans destroyed and the prototypes cut up for scrap, guaranteeing that the project could never be restarted.
Sure the half-life matters. The voltage is generated by thermocouples. The temperature is going to be dependent upon the rate at which heat generated by the radioisotope vs the rate at which it is dissipated from the RTG unit. The longer the half-life, the longer the isotope can put out its heat (although the amount per unit time is lower than for a short lived isotope).
The Voyagers had and have much higher power requirements than the ALSEP packages. Their communications gear has to operate over hundreds of millions of miles vs the quarter of a million miles for a package on the Moon. They have internal heaters to keep instruments and electronics at proper operating temperatures at distances where the Sun is just another bright star.
Twenty years after launch, the Voyager RTGs were still putting out about 70% of their initial inital launch power (335W vs 470W). Twenty years after the ALSEP placements, they had been switched off for 12 to 15 years.
Yes, the Lunar environment is harsh -- although the temperature swings are much less frequent (but same range) than for any spacecraft in orbit close enough to pass through the nightside shadow. And (except for A14) the ALSEPs had been operating just fine for up to 8 years when switched off.
"Out of orbit" being relative. Geostationary orbit is prime real estate, as it were, so satellites nearing end-of-life up there are usually boosted to a higher "disposal" orbit. They're all high enough that atmospheric drag isn't going to affect them.
I wonder if any of the Apollo ASLEP packages are still up and running and whether they would detect the impact?
The ALSEP packages were turned off remotely when the budget for collecting data ran out. That was Sep 30, 1977. Although the Apollo 14 ALSEP had failed a year and a half earlier, the others (A12, A15-17) were still going strong -- and still would be, the RTG power source having about a 90-year half life. (Well, barring hardware failure.)
Their seismometers did detect the impact of the S-IVB upper stages and LM ascent stages that were targeted at the Moon's surface. The SMART probe is much smaller so it would depend on how close it hit.