Before we can even think that our VCR, Radio, computer, and internet are going to interact, someone has to lay down some rules as to how they interact.
It's been done. Check out the HAVi Consortium website. All the major manufacturers have created the specification for A/V device interoperability.
Just ask the British government officials from World War II what their policy was when the German Enigma was cracked
Yes, they knowingly sacrificed 1000's of allied troops to maintain the pretense that Enigma wasn't cracked; otherwise spotter planes turning up in just the right places all the time would have given the game away. Are you willing to die for your beliefs?
No, that's how Microsoft tries to cope with some truely abysmal hardware out there, something which Linux doesn't do. For example, any fool can throw together a sound card from one or two chips and some analogue glue these days - the results are sold NEW for $15-20. No-one in their right minds would try to use one, and the WHQL exists to speed up the process of finding out which are the turkeys.
What are you gibbering about? Windows is perfectly happy with a command line build system, and if you really don't like using NMAKE, CL, LINK etc. then get CygWin and use UNIX style development tools.
What's really cool is that MS developer tools are quite happy with '/' instead of '\' in things like include paths, so there's no problems using CL.EXE from Cygwin bash.
Pity Sun's JDK can't do the same trick. Or gcc, for that matter.
Re:Cost for commercial use
on
GPG vs. PGP?
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· Score: 1
The 6% revenue is for developing products that leverage PGP code, not for using PGP in a corporate setting.
Microsoft did some of us a big favour, by pulling together all the hardware-oriented APIs under one umbrella product, DirectX. In common with a lot of posters you seem to be too short-sighted to see why that's valuable, or why OpenGL doesn't fit into that framework.
There _is_ such a thing as a digital speaker. It doesn't EVER convert the bitstream to an analogue waveform that you can sample. It's sometimes called class 'E' amplification, and relies on the mass & compliance of the speaker cone to low-pass filter a stream of digital pulses.
The frequency response is usually poor (currently it's mostly used for sub woofers) but it's very power-efficient.
You can still mike them up, but as an ex-sound engineer, I don't think many consumers are that skilled with a stereo pair of mikes to make a half decent recording. It's difficult enough in ideal conditions. Besides, (lack of) watermarking will make such copies painfully obvious, or unplayable on the equipment (which will of course be heavily subsidised by the music companies. Don't believe me? Check out price per megabyte for secured and unsecured storage cards. Last time I looked, memory stick was cheaper than compact flash at the 64 MB point)
And what have you got against documentation? At least the Windows APIs have got decent, indexed, searchable documentation with a reasonable update and distribution system.
Some of the samples aren't bad either. Have you ever used the MSDN?
Had you considered file systems? Most filesystems these days easily fill 32 bit pointers. 4GB is not a lot in the world of storage, video editing etc.
A 64 bit processor will be able to handle the pointer arithmetic needed to handle large files natively. Your 32 bit code is stuck with structs and unions and all manner of horrible things. Talk to a kernel filesystem developer sometime about the horrors of writing portable 64 bit code for Solaris, AIX, Linux et al.
Only because of power dissipation and ion-migration issues. For a FET device, more voltage = faster switching speed, but power dissipation increases as the square of the voltage... (and linearly with frequency and gate capacitance)
P ~ f * C * V^2
Jon.
Re:Zero-ohm resistor? WTF?
on
Linux BIOS
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· Score: 1
Yes, you read correctly. It's a zero ohm wire link, with the same body style as a resistor. The point is so automated pick-and-place machines can fit them.
Sometimes it's impossible to design a board that doesn't need a jumper link; there just aren't enough layers.
Jon.
Re:Sorry, but I don't see that this is very useful
on
Berlin 0.2.0 Released
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· Score: 2
Present displays, and future ones for that matter, still have pixels that are big enough to see...
I think this is why pixel independence is so important - think anti-aliasing (and we all know how good X is at that). Represent the data as unlimited (or very large) resolution and resample to the actual display. This would be very cool for CAD, wireframe 3D (i.e. all the content creation apps), proper AA fonts, etc.
Well, one could argue that the lamprey isn't "dead", since they removed the entire brain stem; I don't know whether that makes it better or worse.
unless they are subject ot democratic control including the power for elected representatives to close down all research in this field forever
Are you really saying you want politicians to have the power of life or death over research? Might I remind you where the driving force behind the Manhatten Project came from? Hint: it wasn't from Bohr, Rutherford et al.
In the end, it comes down to a simple axiom: Those who do not partake of the new fruits of the vine will suffer, wither, and die, while those who do, who move, who evolve, transmutate, transcend, will not. In the end, its that simple.
A little humility would be good, if indeed you are working to try and make human existance better, healthier, and more whole. Seems to be something that some people forget when looking into the dazzling light of opportunity through innovation.
It's a fascinating study in robotics, and an interesting experiment, but what about when they start trying this with mammals? Mice, chimps, dogs, cats
They already have - BBC News carried a story a while back talking about an experiment where experimenters reconstructed the images a cat sees on a monitor screen by tapping into the optic nerve.
I don't know what I feel about this. I'm mildly opposed to animal testing of cosmetics, because I think the same effort poured into culturing human tissue samples would give much better results without the necessity to use entire animals. However, I think the Frankenstein lobby would completely veto that... It is a difficult question.
I offer a more cynical prediction. Aforementioned friendly IT director will love the new licensing scheme because it provides a good excuse for restricting what hardware they need to support.
Of course it that's how it works. If you're stupid enough to screw it up, you get a new install GHOSTed onto the hard disk. No time, no effort. Of course, you do keep all your data on the central server, so there's no data loss either.
We DO deserve it; as a software developer I understand exactly why they're annoyed with the level of piracy of their products.
Unfortunately, the result so far has been the escalation of prices for software (which hurts the small user most, businesses don't give a shit. At a half-decent rate you could pay off a copy of Photoshop in a day.)
Now things are set to get a lot worse - for the small user. Big business often already has an IT infrastructure in place which just re-installs the entire machine to brand-new - you screw your machine up, someone comes and Ghosts you a new install.
Make no mistake, Adobe & co. aren't doing this because they think they're losing revenue (they don't make all that much on new Photoshop sales anyway, and many pirate software users wouldn't buy it). They're doing it because the attitude (what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine also) pisses them off. It pisses me off, too.
I want to see software like the GIMP succeed for many reasons, but recently I'd love to see the pirates move to a different platform so those of us that make a living using commercial software don't pay the price for their actions.
Slashdot Mirror
It's been done. Check out the HAVi Consortium website. All the major manufacturers have created the specification for A/V device interoperability.
Yes, they knowingly sacrificed 1000's of allied troops to maintain the pretense that Enigma wasn't cracked; otherwise spotter planes turning up in just the right places all the time would have given the game away. Are you willing to die for your beliefs?
No, that's how Microsoft tries to cope with some truely abysmal hardware out there, something which Linux doesn't do. For example, any fool can throw together a sound card from one or two chips and some analogue glue these days - the results are sold NEW for $15-20. No-one in their right minds would try to use one, and the WHQL exists to speed up the process of finding out which are the turkeys.
What's really cool is that MS developer tools are quite happy with '/' instead of '\' in things like include paths, so there's no problems using CL.EXE from Cygwin bash.
Pity Sun's JDK can't do the same trick. Or gcc, for that matter.
The 6% revenue is for developing products that leverage PGP code, not for using PGP in a corporate setting.
Microsoft did some of us a big favour, by pulling together all the hardware-oriented APIs under one umbrella product, DirectX. In common with a lot of posters you seem to be too short-sighted to see why that's valuable, or why OpenGL doesn't fit into that framework.
The frequency response is usually poor (currently it's mostly used for sub woofers) but it's very power-efficient.
You can still mike them up, but as an ex-sound engineer, I don't think many consumers are that skilled with a stereo pair of mikes to make a half decent recording. It's difficult enough in ideal conditions. Besides, (lack of) watermarking will make such copies painfully obvious, or unplayable on the equipment (which will of course be heavily subsidised by the music companies. Don't believe me? Check out price per megabyte for secured and unsecured storage cards. Last time I looked, memory stick was cheaper than compact flash at the 64 MB point)
Some of the samples aren't bad either. Have you ever used the MSDN?
A 64 bit processor will be able to handle the pointer arithmetic needed to handle large files natively. Your 32 bit code is stuck with structs and unions and all manner of horrible things. Talk to a kernel filesystem developer sometime about the horrors of writing portable 64 bit code for Solaris, AIX, Linux et al.
Jon.
P ~ f * C * V^2
Jon.
Sometimes it's impossible to design a board that doesn't need a jumper link; there just aren't enough layers.
Jon.
I think this is why pixel independence is so important - think anti-aliasing (and we all know how good X is at that). Represent the data as unlimited (or very large) resolution and resample to the actual display. This would be very cool for CAD, wireframe 3D (i.e. all the content creation apps), proper AA fonts, etc.
Jon.
unless they are subject ot democratic control including the power for elected representatives to close down all research in this field forever
Are you really saying you want politicians to have the power of life or death over research? Might I remind you where the driving force behind the Manhatten Project came from? Hint: it wasn't from Bohr, Rutherford et al.
A little humility would be good, if indeed you are working to try and make human existance better, healthier, and more whole. Seems to be something that some people forget when looking into the dazzling light of opportunity through innovation.
Balance in all things is good.
They already have - BBC News carried a story a while back talking about an experiment where experimenters reconstructed the images a cat sees on a monitor screen by tapping into the optic nerve.
I don't know what I feel about this. I'm mildly opposed to animal testing of cosmetics, because I think the same effort poured into culturing human tissue samples would give much better results without the necessity to use entire animals. However, I think the Frankenstein lobby would completely veto that... It is a difficult question.
Does anyone ever get hit by these? I've not noticed any problems in the past.
Of course it that's how it works. If you're stupid enough to screw it up, you get a new install GHOSTed onto the hard disk. No time, no effort. Of course, you do keep all your data on the central server, so there's no data loss either.
Unfortunately, the result so far has been the escalation of prices for software (which hurts the small user most, businesses don't give a shit. At a half-decent rate you could pay off a copy of Photoshop in a day.)
Now things are set to get a lot worse - for the small user. Big business often already has an IT infrastructure in place which just re-installs the entire machine to brand-new - you screw your machine up, someone comes and Ghosts you a new install.
Make no mistake, Adobe & co. aren't doing this because they think they're losing revenue (they don't make all that much on new Photoshop sales anyway, and many pirate software users wouldn't buy it). They're doing it because the attitude (what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine also) pisses them off. It pisses me off, too.
I want to see software like the GIMP succeed for many reasons, but recently I'd love to see the pirates move to a different platform so those of us that make a living using commercial software don't pay the price for their actions.