We don't already have 128MB for video memory. By your own claims, it's there for the task of storing and manipulating 3D object primitives, not to fit a bigger framebuffer.
It's general purpose. The larger capacities in the latest cards are primarily there for textures, not primitives. And guess what? Textures are often at > 8 bit per channel color precision.
DVD's are just a higher-density data format disc than CD's. The format for the movie files contained *on* those DVD's is a seperate issue from the gigabyte capacity of a DVD filesystem.
You've missed the point. You can't change the movie format for DVDs. DVD players won't know what to do with the new format. The only way you can change the format is to issue a new standard, DVD+ or whatever. If you're doing that you might as well use the higher capacity discs that are virtually here now, e.g. Blu-Ray. DVD capacity is not an issue because DVDs can't support higher precision and remain compatible with existing hardware. That aside, I still maintain that a 50% increase in size due to increased color precision could be handled by DVD discs, capacity-wise.
A much better argument against it would be to point out that the lossy compression algorithms used with both video and still images should strip out that extra precision anyway.
I concede that more color resolution (and floating point representation) is useful while performing the calculations to manipulate it, so as not to lose information from cascading errors. But much like the way a Photoshop or Gimp image needs to be many times larger than a JPEG or GIF to store the information about the editing layers, the output format for the final result can be flatter and less precise than the format used to edit the image in memory, and nobody would notice.
You've missed the point again. If I adjust the constrast, brightness, and gamma on my monitor I am manipulating the colors in the image. It could make single increment differences between colors obvious. Higher precision in displays would be useful, not just during processing. Not necessary, but useful, and you've not given me any good reason not to do it. You're argument about the increased memory requirement is silly - a 1600x1200 pixel 8 bit color image uses 7.3M of RAM. Even going to full 32 bit floating point precision will only increase it to 30M. Who can't spare and extra 23M of RAM these days? And I'm not saying we need 32 bit per channel color, just that an improvement would be useful at little cost.
I'm referring to the difference between moving chunks of video memory around. The framebuffers have to be bigger for the same size image, and that impacts everything, including graphics formats (like Jpeg, PNG, etc), and bitblts, and, yes, movie files.
In the last 5 years mainstream video card memory capacities have gone from 32MB to 128MB. In the same time the resolutions we use on the desktop have not changed. The required additional capacity is already there. It had to be for 3D games. You're arguing we can't afford something we've already got.
For another way this would impact things, going from 8 bits per color to 24-bits per color, or in other words from 24 bits per pixel to 72 bits per pixel, would mean movies don't fit on DVD's anymore.
DVDs can't store higher color, it's not supported by the format. A new format would have a higher capacity disc. HDTV resultion movies won't fit on a DVD either, but so what? Anyway I was suggesting an increase from 8 bit to 12 bit - only 50%. Most movies would still fit.
The fact is that 8 bit precision is right on the borderline where color transitions can be seen. Any manipulation of the colors in an image can make 8 bit inadequate. A 50-100% increase is storage and bandwidth requirements for images is not going to cause a problem given the rapid improvement of equipment in these areas. There is no reason not to use a slightly higher color resolution.
Because once it reaches the point where you can't tell the difference, then speed is more important, and increasing the memory needed to store an image automatically makes it take more computing power to keep up with all the memory moving.
Modern GPUs already use more than 8 bits per color. They have to because transformations on the image require higher precision that the resulting output to avoid artifacts. Nvidia's latest cards support up to 32 bit floating point color precision, for example. There is a performance hit, but developers like John Carmack have been asking for 32 bit fp because 16 bit fp isn't good enough quality-wise, let alone 8 bit integer.
What we are talking about here is not processing color precision, it's output precision. What the display device can handle. And since display devices are all analogue there is virtually no cost in going from 8 bit color to 16 bit or higher. It simply requires a different D to A converter.
Longer strings make isolating the correct original easier, as there are fewer possible correct permutations according to syntax and context (which you know or have an idea of).
But it's not enough, because you still can't tell which variation is correct. E.g. a 19 character message can be decoded as both:
"I killed John Smith"
"I did not kill John"
There is no way to tell which is the real plaintext. Since every single 19 character sequence will appear, every 19 character English sentence and every 19 character sentence in every other language that uses the same character set needs to be checked. You can eliminate as many garbage results as you like, there'll still be a huge number of non-garbage results that you have no way of choosing between. In fact, you might as well not even look at the cipher text - it can tell you nothing. Just enumerate all 19 character sentences and work from there.
I too can easily differentiate between 002900 and 002A00. I'm using a laptop (LCD screen). I can also differentiate between greys at several levels (e.g. 505050 v 515151, 808080 v 818181, 202020 v 212121). And if you're applying gamma correction to a monitor that'll increase the difference in some parts of the range, making it easier to see the difference.
I don't see the value in making the color resolution any better than 255 units per color. I doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference.
8 bit is fine generally, but it's right on the edge of human precision, why not make it 12 or 16 bit and be absolutely sure that no-one can tell the difference?
I'm not a big fan of the Taliban but they did indeed say what both these posts claim -- extradite him to a neutral country and evidence.
But what is the justification for extraditing Bin Laden to a neutral country? What's a "neutral" country in this case anyway? He commited a crime in the US, no other country was involved. It looked like that requirement was simple stonewalling: the Taliban knew the US would never agree. The call for evidence was reasonable, but only to a degree. Bin Laden is not a Afghan, he's a Saudi Arabian. It was not the Taliban's job to protect him from the US. There is also plenty of publically available evidence that he is a terrorist. Why would a reasonable government (even a Muslim goverment) want to keep him in the country?
The fact is that there was no evidence that the Taliban had any intention of handing him over, no matter what the US did to convince the world that he was guilty.
That's not the point though. This particular post is asking for people's opinions, and poor taste or not, his opinion is just as valid as yours is. You can't ask for somebody's opinion and then mod them down for giving it simply because you don't agree with it.
Even opinions can be wrong, and not worth reading. To choose an extreme example, someone may hold the view that rape is perfectly acceptable. That opinion would be wrong and a post expressing it should get modded down. Don't forget that the point of the mod system is to filter out posts that most readers would find not worth reading. The opinion that Shrek is the worst movie ever fits that situation: very few people will be interested in that view. The only way the opinion can even be true in the mind of poster is if he or she has seen so few movies that their opinion is irrelevant to the discussion.
Problems in extrapoliating recent trends - for example, Neuromancer by William Gibson (written in 1983/4) is supposed to be set sometime in 2020 (I think), but there are no cell phones, despite the fact that cells are ubiquous devices and will certainly be around in the *real* 2020. He didn't see that one coming. this is the problem that the article is talking about.
It has never been the goal of science fiction to predict specific technological advances. SF is about exploring the consequences of advances, regardless of whether the advance is likely or even possible. Sometimes SF has predicted real advances, sometimes because the fiction provides inspiration to the inventors, but those cases are more of a happy coincidence than any deliberate attempt to anticipate the future. A few authors have attempted to predict possible advances, Arthur C Clarke being the obvious one, but when they do so it's usually in essay or editorial form rather than as a story.
The basic point I suspect the article is trying to make is thus: the field of speculative science fiction is no longer what it once was.
The field of speculative fiction was never what it once was. It was never very good at predicting the impact of new technology. But that's ok, because that's not really the point anyway. The point is to tell a good story with plausible premise.
It always amazes me how many people believe in evolution, yet still believe major climate change must spell disaster.
From a human point of view the important disaster factor is the economic cost of climate change, not how many species do or don't survive. Still, it is absolutely certain that at least some species will not survive major climate change (either warmer or cooler). That may be natural, but it could still be considered a disaster.
A successful steganographic embedding is one in which a third party would not be
able to find out if it is there. If you gave him two files, one with an embedded message and the other unprocessed, he should not be able to tell them apart.
Close, but not quite. He should not be able to tell which one contains the message. Important distinction, and what you meant I think.
I doubt that this new method passes the test. Generally, while there are many synonyms possible in code, both in single instructions and in short sequences of instructions, the statistics of how these are distributed in unprocessed files are probably not random. Chances are that one synonym is used more than another. If you embed random data in a straightforward way, you will then have equal usages of both alternatives. This is a highly unusual condition, and to someone in the know, files like these will be easily distinguished.
You're right about that. Those sorts of statistics have been useful in attempting to determine which compiler (and sometime even which version) was used for a particular executable so they'll certainly give away an executable with an encoded message. However there is a way around it. Run every executable on your machine through this system. Encode most of them with random data. That way the distirubtion of synonyms will be random for your machine, and this system does become a valid steganographic system.
I'll lose the mods I've made by posting, oh well...
You took something of value, that obviously had value for you (since you copied it).
Air has value. That doesn't mean I should pay for it. And you still missed the point: nothing was taken.
The point is that the person who CREATED THE WORK doesn't want you to copy it
Um, no, not generally. The person who created the work often has no say. The person who owns the copyright has the say, as evidenced by labels suing artists who created music and then offered it for download on their websites (e.g. Offspring). That is really the big disconnect with "intellectual property" law, it is intended to reward the creators, but in practice is used by others (publishers, descendents, etc) to make a living without contributing.
It's intrinsically immoral to say "F*** YOU" to the artist and take their work when they specifically tell you not to.
It's not that black and white, and if you think it is then your position is just as fanatic as those who defend piracy as being morally correct (which I'm not, but I object to the "piracy is theft" and "think of the artists" straw-men).
Also, seing as how it is powered by solar wind, what happens when the craft is between 2 or more stars which are all exerting equal force on the sails. With no fuel it is doomed to slow down and be 'blown' around in space.
As others have pointed out, they are directional. But aside from that, when you are halfway from one star to the next you'll want to start slowing down anyway.
Whow, boy, slow down. Let's not imply the other Katie is the bad one. She was also, and to a much greater extent, a victim. Repeat after me. I am not my publisher.
Katie T has consistently denied any responsibility for the name, claiming it was all the publisher, yet from the press release:
"In an effort to avoid an association between the book originally tiltled Katie.com and the websote Katie.com, Plume and the author decide to make this title change."
That may be just a courtesy to Katie T by the publisher, but they repeat it in the body of the press release.
Yes I do, and nobody is flying in it. Once they have it working then they'll test it manned. The WildFire guys seem to think that since their vehicle's been simulated it's safe to fly manned to the edge of space. All they've done is some drop tests. Even Carmack's done more than that. Frankly I think that making an X-Prize shot the first manned flight of the vehicle is risking to the point of negligence.
I mean, there's no comparison with people like Carmack who are just strapping pieces of metal together on a "try it as you go" fashion;
Still, I'd feel much safer in Carmack's tested vehicle than Wild Fire's simulated one. Don't underestimate the value of knowing what works and what doesn't in practice, as opposed to knowing merely in theory.
The same place we got the n-zillion dollars to develop the software in the first place. Not all that support OSS/FS write code.
What n-zillion dollars? OSS software may be highly valued, and expensive to replace in a corporate scenario, but don't confuse that value with the cost of development. Very little money has gone into the development of OSS software, and there is little evidence that OSS' corporate benefactors will also want to donate or fund patents.
And the second front, equally important: Until the rules change in our favor, we need to build up a portfolio of patents, to share and trade with our friends (which anyone in business will tell you is the true purpose of a patent).
The article brings up another point that you may have missed: that company was spending $50,000-$200,000 per patent. Where is the OSS community supposed to get that sort of money?
I call on Occam's Razor, and deduce that it's much more likely that the flagellum was created in place, rather than evolved through a bizarre sequence of highly improbable random events.
Since you bought it up, let's use Occam's Razor. Let us assume there is an omnipotent being who wants to create and populate a universe. Which is more likely:
The omnipotent creator individually designs each and every creature and individually, and makes it look like they were evolved, or
The ominipotent creator creates one process - evolution - and lets it run it's course.
Occam's Razor says the simplest solution is the right one, so therefore the design theories are bunk.
Also, it is possible that our organs aren't capabale of handling blood in a constant stream and they need those precious milliseconds of rest in between beats.
If that's the case then the problem certainly isn't a severe one. According to TFA, the six patients who have received this device were all so sick that they could not have a transplant and had life expectancies of less than a year. I'm sure those patients organs were in a pretty delicate state. 3 of them have since died, but the others are doing very well. One of them is living at home 13 months later.
As an aside, there are an awful lot of posts here looking for problems and generally being pretty negative on the whole idea. It really says something depressing about the general tone of Slashdot at the moment. I wonder if it has occurred to any of those posters that the developers will have thought of these problems too, and either solved them or determined that they are not significant?
my comments on this subject fall on deaf ears here
That's because you're wrong.
Yesterday I mentioned that nearly everyone who visits my site with Firefox are coming in from Slashdot URLs.
So what? Are you saying that since Firefox has low market share it's not an acceptable replacement for IE? That's ridiculous.
It may also come as a surprise to you but Firefox isn't exactly the best browser out there if you want 100% compatibility with the "broken" sites on the Internet. These same users that don't know of the issues w/IE are more concerned that they cannot reach their online banking, see their sites the way that the "broken" authors intended, and have a seamless browsing experience.
I bank with two different banks and they both work fine with Firefox. My non-geek wife uses Firefox and has had no complaints about it. It is an acceptable replacement for IE in most cases. The only sites I have problems with are small online retailers running bad Javascript, and the occasional layout disaster (again small personal sites - I've never had the legendary Slashdot layout problems). When I do I fire up IE I find it's painful to use. It pisses me off every time I touch it.
Is Linus Torvalds a great hacker? Apparently not because if he was he would have coded the kernel in Perl!!
Don't be so obtuse. Perl is clearly not the best choice for a kernel, and nowhere in the article did it suggest using tools that are not fit for the job (in fact it specifically mentioned the importance of tools). Besides Linus has written a number of tools in Perl.
The reason the article calls for a Pocket PC is because it can read ifrared signals and pass those to the headphone jack for output. If you just piped the IR port on a computer to the sound out device, you'd have the same solution, minus the Pocket PC. This is NOT like the stupid-ass iPod to iPod transfer "hack" from a while ago. This is an actual neat concept that I'd wish you'd stop shitting all over with your ignorance.
What the article hasn't explained (and you haven't either) is why they'd want to bother with the iPod? I mean, you've got a PocketPC so why not use that as the remote? Or do they need to use the iPod as the remote because they're using the PocketPC to play music?
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A much better argument against it would be to point out that the lossy compression algorithms used with both video and still images should strip out that extra precision anyway.
You've missed the point again. If I adjust the constrast, brightness, and gamma on my monitor I am manipulating the colors in the image. It could make single increment differences between colors obvious. Higher precision in displays would be useful, not just during processing. Not necessary, but useful, and you've not given me any good reason not to do it. You're argument about the increased memory requirement is silly - a 1600x1200 pixel 8 bit color image uses 7.3M of RAM. Even going to full 32 bit floating point precision will only increase it to 30M. Who can't spare and extra 23M of RAM these days? And I'm not saying we need 32 bit per channel color, just that an improvement would be useful at little cost.The fact is that 8 bit precision is right on the borderline where color transitions can be seen. Any manipulation of the colors in an image can make 8 bit inadequate. A 50-100% increase is storage and bandwidth requirements for images is not going to cause a problem given the rapid improvement of equipment in these areas. There is no reason not to use a slightly higher color resolution.
What we are talking about here is not processing color precision, it's output precision. What the display device can handle. And since display devices are all analogue there is virtually no cost in going from 8 bit color to 16 bit or higher. It simply requires a different D to A converter.
"I killed John Smith"
"I did not kill John"
There is no way to tell which is the real plaintext. Since every single 19 character sequence will appear, every 19 character English sentence and every 19 character sentence in every other language that uses the same character set needs to be checked. You can eliminate as many garbage results as you like, there'll still be a huge number of non-garbage results that you have no way of choosing between. In fact, you might as well not even look at the cipher text - it can tell you nothing. Just enumerate all 19 character sentences and work from there.
The fact is that there was no evidence that the Taliban had any intention of handing him over, no matter what the US did to convince the world that he was guilty.
I'd rather go with the tested solution, thanks.
- The omnipotent creator individually designs each and every creature and individually, and makes it look like they were evolved, or
- The ominipotent creator creates one process - evolution - and lets it run it's course.
Occam's Razor says the simplest solution is the right one, so therefore the design theories are bunk.As an aside, there are an awful lot of posts here looking for problems and generally being pretty negative on the whole idea. It really says something depressing about the general tone of Slashdot at the moment. I wonder if it has occurred to any of those posters that the developers will have thought of these problems too, and either solved them or determined that they are not significant?