First mention I've seen of the CoCo. I had an original CoCo, the one with the chiclet keyboard. My dad splurged and got the just-released RAM upgrade, which took it up to 16 kB of memory. Later, it was upgraded to 64 kB and a modern keyboard - but the OS (Color Basic, or something like that) would only address the bottom 32 kB. Funny how familiar that sounds. So, we got the floppy drive (which plugged into the game port) and got, as a bonus, Extended Color Disk Basic (again, don't recall the exact phrasing), and a copy of OS9 which was, at the time, NOT an operating system for the Mac which itself did not exist, but was rather a Unix-like OS which could address the entire 64 kB and more.
Basically, I ran a Unix-alike on a 6809 in the early 80's. That sounds so geek.
Oh, now come on. I don't want to seem the pedant, but I believe that describing paperwork as "massive mountains" qualifies as exaggeration. Nine months, perhaps, may not be an exaggeration - but I'm seriously doubting that there is anything remotely resembling even a small hill.
No one died. Senator Charles Sumner was caned into unconsciousness on the floor of the Senate Chamber, but recovered and continued to serve thereafter. Additionally, it's worth noting that the senator in question was attacked, not for speaking against slavery, but for his personal (very personal, and fairly ugly) verbal attacks against the other two Senators.
I'm sure that you would love to be able to point to this as being an example of how rabid Southern senators were about keeping slavery, but really it's an example of the fact that some people can only be insulted so much before they react irrationally. Seriously - I don't think it matters whether you're a senator or not, I think that if you call enough people "noise-some, squat, and nameless animal . . . not a proper model for an American senator" that sooner or later one of them (or one of their friends) is going to beat the shit out of you. Does that excuse the attack? Of course not. But it wasn't about slavery, it was about pride - and no one died.
Yup. Haven't used any image acquisition under LabVIEW. That would be a dealbreaker there.
I thought that compiled LabVIEW was actually compiled into binaries. Java portability is possible because there is a JRE for each platform which deals with the "binaries", but it seems to me that expecting NI to write a complete binary interpretation layer for each platform just is a bit much. I know that my LabVIEW.vi 's execute in LabVIEW on multiple OS's, but I don't expect a compiled standalone binary to run in multiple OS's any more than I expect Office to run under Linux (without Wine). Are we talking about the same things?
My data analysis under Matlab tends to be image-oriented; I do optical analysis of lightning. While I am processing large datasets in computationally-intensive ways, I do also need to present those processed images. Sometimes, I need to process them interactively. At that point, MATLAB's handle graphics makes for a decent development platform to do such interactive processing. I don't really have the time or motivation to program that from the ground up in C or some such, so I try to use MATLAB's simplified implementation. But then I have to deal with the suckass interface... I'd thought about using Octave, which would do the processing, but the graphical output simply isn't up to snuff, nor is the image processing.
Someday, we'll have better ways to do all of this.
The LabVIEW thing is fairly complicated... I've had a pretty big LabVIEW application running on a Linux machine for 4.5 years now. It manages our research site unattended, so when I say 4.5 years I mean 4.5 years. We've had to shut it down for some hardware failures (Florida summers, hurricanes), but it basically runs unattended all the time. I use a National Instruments E-series DAQ card, and when I wrote the app NI didn't have Linux drivers at all. So I used the Comedi drivers. Since then, NI has released DAQ drivers for their PCI and USB DAQ, but I haven't bothered to try to use them - Comedi is working well. Things like the LabJack don't work under Linux because those 'tards wrote all the firmware to act as a HID, and so far efforts by the community with the assistance of the LabJack guys have (AFAIK) still failed to come up with a working driver. That's hardly NI's fault, nor Linux's as near as I can tell. NI seems to have managed it with their (externally identical) USB DAQ. If the damned LabJack worked, I could have done without the E-Series card.
I'm guessing that if you want to use LabVIEW under Linux that you already know about the Comedi project... so what is it that you need to have drivers for? I ask mostly for curiousity.
I think cross-platform binaries might be a bit much to ask for.
I'll tell you what *I* would like - I'd like a version of MATLAB for Linux that doesn't suck, and that doesn't use the GODAWFUL Athena widgets. I've bought 3 or 4 versions of MATLAB now, and I finally gave up and went with IDL, which at least seems reliable, if not yet attractive. A non-suck OS X version would be nice too.
Oh, and a double-dutch HELL YEAH for the Autodesk suite.
Wait a minute: you mean there a people who believe BOTH that the moon landings were faked AND that the Illuminati rule the world? Amazing. How can people be so right AND so wrong, at the same time?
Scientific Journals, like the various AGU publications, typically prefer photographs in.jpg, false-color data in.tiff, and charts, graphs, and other line-art suitable images as.eps..Png is acceptable for electronic versions. Photoshop.psd's are not acceptable, and.ai files are acceptable for review / draft stages only. In fact, the IEEE won't accept.jpg files at all. This may differ from what Redbook, Car and Driver, and Rolling Stone want; I've never been published in one of those. But considering that the images under discussion are scientific images, I'd say that.eps files are most definitely on the preferred format list.
If you want your meanings to be understood clearly every time, you'll need to state your points explicitly, as well as your conclusion. You either failed to or chose not to do so. With the benefit of your internal dialog, I'm sure every meaning you intended is as clear as the nose on your face. Since the rest of us don't have access to that internal dialog, we are left with the task of filling in the blanks and trying to glean your meaning from an insufficiency of words. Sometimes, we get that meaning wrong. SOMETIMES, WE APOLOGIZE FOR IT. I have no desire to twist your words into anything; what benefit to me? I (and others, I'm sure) simply failed to accurately understand exactly what you meant. Part of this is undoubtedly my fault. Part of this is equally undoubtedly your fault. Sometimes, my friend, both the pot and kettle are black.
It's clear to me that we both believe that Franklin would not have supported those wiretaps; in this, we both appear to disagree with the premise of the opinion piece excerpted and linked to by some Anonymous Coward. I'd like to point out that using the revolution as an example of Franklin's willingness to break laws assumes that 1) said aforementioned revolution was illegal - this is a matter of viewpoint; and 2) that Franklin's willingness to flout British law by revolting and founding a new nation, with a separate legal system, somehow implies that Franklin would then be as willing to break the new laws of the new nation that he, himself, had just helped found. That said, I feel that Franklin would probably have broken American law if it was necessary to do what he felt was right. I know that I would. It still is not clear to me what relevance Franklin's probable willingness to break the law under the right circumstances has to do with illegal wiretaps, since you and I both agree (at least, I think you agree - it's what you seemed to say) that Franklin would likely NOT have considered that to be right. You may have a connection that you think is obvious; however, since you have not explicitly stated it, I don't know what that connection might be.
Perhaps you didn't intend to draw that parallel. Grandparent poster (A/C) and his citation certainly did, and then you jumped in and disagreed with my assertion that Franklin's revolution was legal; unfortunately, I didn't make any such assertion. You then said that Franklin's actions were admirable because he ignored the law to do what was right, which of course is exactly what grandparent poster implicitly credited Bush with doing. That could easily be seen to imply agreement with the original poster's statements; in fact, I think it suggests it rather strongly.
Perhaps your intent was not to support such a parallel; in that case, I shall apologize - honestly and abjectly - for misunderstanding your intent. You might wish to be charitable and interpret my continued discussion of the poor fit of such a comparison as being partially based on a response to your comment, and partially as a continued refutation of grandparent's comment.
I'd also suggest that if you intend to be touchy about people who misunderstand your comments, you yourself might want to take more care with understanding the comments to which you respond. I asserted that keeping the details of French aid secret from the Continental Congress was not in violation of any existing legislation (contrary to the Bush wiretapping), and you somehow interpreted that to mean that the legality of the entire revolution was the subject under discussion. As Mr. Bush is not currently involved in a revolution, I fail to see the relevance to this discussion. The topic of whether revolution is inherently legal or not would undoubtedly make for a worthwhile philosophical discussion, but I'm not really interested in being drawn into such a discussion at this time. Now, if you have any light to shed on the legality of Franklin, French aid, and not telling the Continental Congress about it, I'd be interested in continuing that line of discourse.
In light of your statement that you intended no parallel between Franklin and Bush, and the fact that your first comment's subject must then necessarily be limited to refuting an assertion that I never made nor implied... I have to wonder exactly what it was that you were trying to say.
I'd also like to note that as an American and as a lightning researcher, I hold Mr. Franklin in the highest esteem; he is not only one of the more important figures in my nation's history, he is practically THE founding father of my area of academic pursuit. Like any human being, perfection is not one of his characteristics; he is undoubtedly endowed with a (figurative) wart or two. Comparing him to W, however, strikes me as being an especially repugnant comparison. Chalk the vigor of my discussion up to that, if you will.
"...In 1776 he and his four colleagues on the Continental Congress's foreign affairs committee..." I'm certain that the Continental Congree didn't have any laws against aid from France, or against the Revolution for that matter. Any assertion you make regarding the legality of revolution has absolutely no bearing at all on the matter of Franklin's secrets or on the matter of Bush's secrets.
Franklin: kept French aid secret from Congress. Was getting French aid illegal? Not that anyone's aware of. And, since he was sent to France on behalf of the American Government, I kinda doubt that it was.
Bush: Authorized wiretaps on American citizens by the NSA, without warrants, in direct contravention of laws enacted to govern such wiretaps. Kept it a secret from Congress.
The best that you could say about the Franklin actions was that it set a precedent for American citizens keeping secrets from Congress - remember, Franklin was not a President at any time. His actions did not and do not set any sort of precedent for Presidents contravening the laws enacted by Congress.
Thus, saying that Franklin's activities are parallel to Bush's activities is, at best, a gross misunderstanding of the events involved... and at worst (and more likely) is a dishonest attempt to deceive and confuse the readers. There is no basis whatsoever for the contention that Franklin would have supported secret, unlawful wiretaps based on one incident in which he kept a secret. Revolution is just a red herring. And, quite frankly, to drag Franklin's name into this discussion is to do him and his works a great dishonor. He deserves better from his successors.
Re:Problems with the VoIP sellers
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I read his post as saying that he bought an unlocked phone, separately, on his own, WITHOUT AT&T, and that the AT&T rep locked his phone to their service. Is that not what you read? Was that somehow his fault as well? Are you saying that AT&T's contract said they would lock his phone to their service? Can you post a copy of his contract for us all to read?
Lift: May I ask you if you've considered all the possibilities that down might offer you?
Zaphod: Like what?
Lift: Well, er, there's the basement, the microfiles, the heating system... um. Nothing particularly exciting I'll admit, but they are alternative possibilities.
Zaphod: Ah, Zarquon's knees, did I ask for an existential elevator? What's the matter with the thing?
Marvin: It doesn't want to go up. I think it's afraid.
But that's a question of whether to keep secrets, which is why we have things like the Intelligence Oversight Committees. That's not an issue. What's an issue is whether bounds were overstepped re: legality. Many things are done which require secrecy but which are legal, such as maintaining the anonymity of undercover agents... but enlisting the aid of France wasn't illegal. The need to keep secret whose calls we tap isn't under debate; the legality of it is.
You and your citation's author gloss over the gap between doing something legal which needs to be kept secret and doing something illegal and not telling anyone about it. You're both either too stupid to know the difference, or you're hoping the rest of us are.
Except that no study has ever - EVER - been able to reproduce that interference. Boeing even *bought* a passenger's laptop and put it in the same seat, on the same plane, on the same route, and were unable to reproduce the interference.
I'd be willing to believe cell phone interference, but I'm just not buying the CD player thing. Note that those are all anecdotal reports made by non-technical flight crew, along the lines of "Hey, the nav system is screwy! Check the cabin!" "Oh, yes sir, we found a guy with a CD player on and castrated him!" "Hey, the nav system works again!" No consideration is apparently made for the possibility that it was a glitch unrelated to the CDplayer, or to the fact that you can almost always find someone using a PED whether there's an avionics problem or not. Correlation != causality.
OTOH, if the aircraft's avionics are SO susceptible to interference that a CD player's motor (although it's more likely to be the clock for the D/A converter than the motor) 30 feet away on the other side of a metal bulkhead will screw them up, then that's crappy design of the avionics and the goddamned thing's not safe to fly under any circumstances. And yes, I am an EE.
Apple seem to be doing a pretty competent job of developing the OS and drivers for this machine. Not my problem.
I can't find any sources which definitively state that Yonah will use significantly more power than the G4, and several that suggest the opposite.
I've heard this rant about the cruft and unwieldiness of the x86, and I can't disagree with it philosophically. But it's clear that Apple tried very hard to make a break with x86, tried to make it work, and it just didn't. More elegant architecture is a great idea, so long as it performs reasonably. The G4 would have to be a MIGHTY elegant chip to outweigh a 5X improvement in performance. Apple tried to get a G5 in a PowerBook, and couldn't make it work for power reasons - and the Yonah is twice as fast as a single G5, according to Apple.
So the question remains: is there any reason why I, a user of computers, shouldn't get a MacBook Pro?
OK, I'll bite: what's the point of architecturally superior if it's 4-5 times slower? If I can buy a MacBook Pro that looks the same as this PowerBook G4, works the same, uses the same OS, but isn't as goddamned slow - why shouldn't I? What advantage does the alleged superiority of the PPC give me?
This is a serious question. I have a PowerBook G4. My next purchase will probably be a MacBook Pro. Why shouldn't I? What about that notebook will make me say, "Man, I wish I'd kept that G4?"
"...TWO channels are encoded into ONE analog track."
Well, that's an oversimplification. Two separate audio tracks are recorded, with their waveforms impressed into the walls of a two-sided groove - like a valley. If the walls of this groove are at 45 degrees from the vertical, then they are at 90 degrees from each other and thus are orthogonal. If the stylus which tracks in the groove has two axes of sensitivity, also at 90 degrees from each other, then in theory any variation normal to one wall of the groove will result in no perturbation of the sensor for the other wall. The reality is much more complicated, of course. Any error in orthogonality at any point will result in crosstalk, effectively a reduction of stereo separation. Crosstalk in the magnetics of the cartridge, resonances or unsufficient rigidity in the stylus, etc., etc. - you could think up error sources for days, and still not get all of them that vinyl engineers worry about. Here is a fairly informative link, for those interested.
Possibly interesting aside: the entire point of the RIAA filter (well, half of the point) was to reduce the possibility that heavy bass encoded (monaurally) into both walls would cause the needle to literally pop out of the groove, and so the signal going down to vinyl has reduced bass content which is then corrected post-cartridge. High frequencies are boosted on the vinyl in an effort to improve S/N, lifting the smaller variations up above the noise floor caused by dust, scratches, and the granularity of the vinyl itself.
However, there is no analog encoding of two signals into one, at least not electrically. Two physical channels are maintained throughout, albeit poorly separated. There's simply no effective way to maintain proper separation for physical reasons.
The net effect is that stereo separation and frequency response linearity of vinyl are known weaknesses in the medium. One possible improvement for the separation issue might be to use a square channel like 78's used. You'd recode the L, R signals into L+R and L-R just like FM radio, and then record the L+R (mono) part as lateral displacement of the groove. You'd then embed the L-R (stereo separation) part of the signal as the vertical displacement of the bottom of the groove. This has the advantage of putting the part of the signal with the least bass (bass is typically more monaural, especially in vinyl, and the L-R signal will cancel a great deal of that) in the part of the physical medium where it's less likely to result in mistracking, and leave the mono part (which typically has much more bass) in the part of the medium where it can't cause mistracking. You'd probably lose some track time, though, as you'd have to space the tracks further apart for bass-heavy material. When recovering, you then recombine the L+R and L-R signals to get L and R, with the bonus of dramatically improved stereo separation and possibly the elimination of the RIAA filter altogether...
... or you could just encode everything digitally at 24/96, and exceed both the resolution of the source material and of the human hearing system by so much that anyone who was still unsatisfied could be quite definitively considered to be a lunatic.
Just as LPs represented a remarkable leap from tolerable (78's) to hi-fidelity, DVD represented a leap from suck-ass (VHS) to decent quality. And there are still plenty of people who like LPs. But just as CD's were introduced and turned out to be better than LPs in most ways, so too does HD video represent an overall improvement over SD video. It's not just a few lines of resolution, either - it's six times the pixel count and an improvement in color space, and it's still not as good as the source material in most cases (35mm).
HD looks better. DVDs don't do HD. That makes DVDs not good enough.
The same movies that are on DVD can easily be on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, in true HD format. Neither you or grandparent will have to get rid of anything. You won't have to sell your little 19" TV, and the Obsolete Format Police won't come and confiscate your collection of DVD's. No one will force you to buy a larger TV than you want, or drive a larger car than you want. No harm will come to you from allowing others to watch movies that look better than yours. I still don't see why it's so wrong to enjoy better quality video, nor what there is to be proud of for not wanting HD. Techno glitches? Format instability? Don't know what you're talking about. Haven't seen any of it. My HD looks great all the time.
Important to a person's life? If TV is anything more than an occasional pastime, worry. If TV of any kind is important to your life, you've got bigger problems than SD or HD. Read a book. Watch a sunset. Have sex with your partner. Find a partner, if you don't have one. Bounce your baby on your knee. Visit your grandmother. Make someone else's life better. Quit worrying about what kind of TV I have. Quit trying to tell me why I'm a fuckhead for wanting a better image on my wall.
Polishing a turd? Yes. That's right. 90% of the content available on DVD or VHS or fucking carved stone tablets is, at best, mindless dreck. That's because Hollywood keeps making money by paying people like Ahnold $70 million to make a single shitty movie. Where's the real revolution in entertainment? Aha. Now we're getting somewhere. I'll tell you what *I* think, and you can feel free to wipe your ass with my opinion: the real revolution in entertainment has it's roots in TRON, and can count LOTR as a failed genetic offshoot. We have, for the first time in history, the ability to create photorealistic imagery of anything we can imagine with digital rendering. Storytellers are free to tell any story they want, in any way they want, if they can only think of it. LOTR proved this, and showed also where the weakness is: Hollywood. Peter Jackson and Weta Digital did a phenomenal job of bringing a complete fantasy universe to life... but couldn't storytell their way out of a wet paper bag. Now, I personally like the books, not because of the plot line, which is bested every weekend by thousands of AD&D games around the world, but because of the characters, the depth of the detail in people and places and such, and because of the way that people interacted. The best Jackson could do was to take Tolkein's completed story, dumb it down and sex it up for the sheeple, and see how pretty they could make it. Well, they made it pretty... but now it's time for a real storyteller to take the reins and make a *good* movie. Imagination is now the only limitation. That, and getting anything worthwhile past Hollywood. As long as Hollywood keeps regurgitating remakes and emasculating literature, movies will continue to suck.
Of course, that last paragraph - none of which has anything to do with HD or SD - is all my opinion. Yours may vary, and hopefully does. It would be a boring world otherwise.
Oh, sure. You are exactly correct. I've still got all my vinyl records, most of which I took care of from day 1 and thus still sound good. I'm actually rather fond of the sound of vinyl through good tube amplification (Luddite!) But, I prefer color TV to B&W, and really stopped reading books with pictures a while back:-) I guess I was a bit snarky, but then GP made some really stupid arguments (throw away all my DVDs? Huh?) and I don't have much patience for that. Probably shouldn't have responded so quick to the other guy, who says that anyone with an HD set just wants to brag. I bet that one won't get me any nice guy points, either.
Honest truth is that LPs really don't have the dynamic range, s/n, or stereo separation of CD. It's a limitation of the medium, not the format. They do have the advantage of being all-analog, which I believe is a point in their favor when compared to 16/44.1, and which should result in better frequency response; well, wider response, anyway - between the variations of the cartridge, preamp, and RIAA filter the linearity of an LP's frequency response is marginal at best. However, I don't think that technically there's *any* way for an LP's performance to exceed something like 24/96, if done correctly - which, incidentally, early CD's weren't. Done well, I mean. Early players often had only 14-bit A/Ds, and 16/44.1 was a compromise anyway. That said, of the few albums I have both CD and good vinyl copies of, the vinyl is usually better.
Err... sorry. That was off-topic. I could expound for hours about audio formats, quite a bit of which would be subjective, and I'll bet you've heard most of it before anyway
Dissing HD because it isn't as much better than DVD as DVD is better than VHS is truly damning with faint praise. The thing is, VHS sucks ass and can't do even a halfway decent job of reproducing a mediocre format - NTSC. DVD does a good (not perfect, but good) job of reproducing content in that mediocre format. HD, however, is a noticeably superior format. It remains to be seen whether HD-DVD or Blu-Ray do an acceptable job of reproducing content in that superior format... but since they're both basically DVD extended to HD spec, I see no reason to think that they'll do any worse at reproducing HD than DVD-SD does at reproducing NTSC.
I have 10 years experience in broadcast video engineering, and a few video component designs in my portfolio. I have a true HD (1080i native) set, and an HD DVR to go with it. I can easily tell the difference between HD content and DVD-SD content, and I don't give a shit what Maximum PC has to say about it. Given the choice between a DVD of some movie and a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD of the same movie, I'd rather watch the HD version. I have no reason to feel embarrassed at preferring higher-quality video. If you can't tell the difference or don't think it's worth it, that's your problem and not mine. I don't need an excuse to brag, but I think perhaps you have some inadequacy problems to deal with.
"Can somebody please explain to me what's so awful about DVD that it should prompt millions upon millions of consumers to throw away billions of dollars' worth of discs and players in favor of some new format? Honestly, I just don't see the urgency. A few extra lines of resolution had better not be the answer."
Amen, brother! You tell 'em!
I tried to say the same thing when this newfangled "CD" thing came out. We had all these hundreds of millions of vinyl records out there, and record players that could do a pretty good job of reproducing the music on 'em. Sure, there were some clicks and pops, and the dynamic range wasn't as good as it could have been, and maybe the stereo separation wasn't the best, and OK, yes, there were some problems with media durability - but was it really worth replacing all of that just for 30 or 40 dB of dynamic range and stereo separation? I just didn't see the urgency. One of these days, I'm going to get one of those things just to see what all the fuss is about. Who do I call to schedule an appointment with the Obsolete Format Police, so they can come confiscate all my cassette tapes? I *DO* have to throw away all my old format content when I buy a new player, right?
While on the subject of TV: frankly, I think color is overrated. You can say damn near everything you need to in B&W, without need for color - OR sound, which frankly has put hundreds of movie theater musicians out of work. It's a travesty.
Just because some bleeding-edge early adopters have TVs with 6 times the number of pixels that standard def DVD can produce and improved color gamut, and even sometimes doubled framerates, isn't any reason to actually introduce a new format capable of providing source content that good. Just because the 35mm masters that those movies are made from have resolution and dynamic range exceeding either SD *OR* HD isn't any reason to allow consumers to actually watch them with that level of quality. Or, God forbid, multichannel audio. No, no, give me a plain ol' 5" B&W mono TV and a bag of pork rinds, and I'm a happy Luddite.
I yearn for the days when a "moving picture" was when Grampa waved the book around the room so we could all see the illustrations.
[sarcasm mode OFF]
Is there some reason you DON'T want to watch movies in HD? And why do you hate America? [dammit, I said sarcasm mode OFF!] Having a Hi-Def set at the house and having watched several movies in HD from cable, I completely support the introduction of a format capable of supplying such movies in purchaseable disc form. I've watched movies from DVD on the same set, and they just don't look as good. That's not very surprising, I guess. So, the answer to your question is, unfortunately, that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will provide improved picture quality and thus an improved experience. For me and many others, that is sufficient reason to want to purchase a player in one or both formats. I'm sorry if that isn't the answer you wanted, but you knew that was it. We all know that DVD won't do HD, and we all know that HD looks better - so why shouldn't we introduce a disc format that CAN do HD? Since we DON'T have to throw away a damned thing, and since you can STILL get VHS at Blockbuster, I don't see why having a better medium will overnight mean that you can't watch your DVD collection. I honestly don't see what you're so pissed about.
Pfft. If it can kill Keith Richards, roaches don't stand a chance. Then again, any force actually strong enough to kill or even injure Keith Richards would probably have to be based in interstellar space to avoid cracking the Earth like a quail's egg.
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I wish I had mod points today. Instead, I shall have to content myself with praising you via the typewritten word.
You go, dog.
First mention I've seen of the CoCo. I had an original CoCo, the one with the chiclet keyboard. My dad splurged and got the just-released RAM upgrade, which took it up to 16 kB of memory. Later, it was upgraded to 64 kB and a modern keyboard - but the OS (Color Basic, or something like that) would only address the bottom 32 kB. Funny how familiar that sounds. So, we got the floppy drive (which plugged into the game port) and got, as a bonus, Extended Color Disk Basic (again, don't recall the exact phrasing), and a copy of OS9 which was, at the time, NOT an operating system for the Mac which itself did not exist, but was rather a Unix-like OS which could address the entire 64 kB and more.
Basically, I ran a Unix-alike on a 6809 in the early 80's. That sounds so geek.
Oh, now come on. I don't want to seem the pedant, but I believe that describing paperwork as "massive mountains" qualifies as exaggeration. Nine months, perhaps, may not be an exaggeration - but I'm seriously doubting that there is anything remotely resembling even a small hill.
OK, so I'm pedantic. Sue me.
No one died. Senator Charles Sumner was caned into unconsciousness on the floor of the Senate Chamber, but recovered and continued to serve thereafter. Additionally, it's worth noting that the senator in question was attacked, not for speaking against slavery, but for his personal (very personal, and fairly ugly) verbal attacks against the other two Senators.
I'm sure that you would love to be able to point to this as being an example of how rabid Southern senators were about keeping slavery, but really it's an example of the fact that some people can only be insulted so much before they react irrationally. Seriously - I don't think it matters whether you're a senator or not, I think that if you call enough people "noise-some, squat, and nameless animal . . . not a proper model for an American senator" that sooner or later one of them (or one of their friends) is going to beat the shit out of you. Does that excuse the attack? Of course not. But it wasn't about slavery, it was about pride - and no one died.
Yup. Haven't used any image acquisition under LabVIEW. That would be a dealbreaker there.
.vi 's execute in LabVIEW on multiple OS's, but I don't expect a compiled standalone binary to run in multiple OS's any more than I expect Office to run under Linux (without Wine). Are we talking about the same things?
I thought that compiled LabVIEW was actually compiled into binaries. Java portability is possible because there is a JRE for each platform which deals with the "binaries", but it seems to me that expecting NI to write a complete binary interpretation layer for each platform just is a bit much. I know that my LabVIEW
My data analysis under Matlab tends to be image-oriented; I do optical analysis of lightning. While I am processing large datasets in computationally-intensive ways, I do also need to present those processed images. Sometimes, I need to process them interactively. At that point, MATLAB's handle graphics makes for a decent development platform to do such interactive processing. I don't really have the time or motivation to program that from the ground up in C or some such, so I try to use MATLAB's simplified implementation. But then I have to deal with the suckass interface... I'd thought about using Octave, which would do the processing, but the graphical output simply isn't up to snuff, nor is the image processing.
Someday, we'll have better ways to do all of this.
The LabVIEW thing is fairly complicated... I've had a pretty big LabVIEW application running on a Linux machine for 4.5 years now. It manages our research site unattended, so when I say 4.5 years I mean 4.5 years. We've had to shut it down for some hardware failures (Florida summers, hurricanes), but it basically runs unattended all the time. I use a National Instruments E-series DAQ card, and when I wrote the app NI didn't have Linux drivers at all. So I used the Comedi drivers. Since then, NI has released DAQ drivers for their PCI and USB DAQ, but I haven't bothered to try to use them - Comedi is working well. Things like the LabJack don't work under Linux because those 'tards wrote all the firmware to act as a HID, and so far efforts by the community with the assistance of the LabJack guys have (AFAIK) still failed to come up with a working driver. That's hardly NI's fault, nor Linux's as near as I can tell. NI seems to have managed it with their (externally identical) USB DAQ. If the damned LabJack worked, I could have done without the E-Series card.
I'm guessing that if you want to use LabVIEW under Linux that you already know about the Comedi project... so what is it that you need to have drivers for? I ask mostly for curiousity.
I think cross-platform binaries might be a bit much to ask for.
I'll tell you what *I* would like - I'd like a version of MATLAB for Linux that doesn't suck, and that doesn't use the GODAWFUL Athena widgets. I've bought 3 or 4 versions of MATLAB now, and I finally gave up and went with IDL, which at least seems reliable, if not yet attractive. A non-suck OS X version would be nice too.
Oh, and a double-dutch HELL YEAH for the Autodesk suite.
Wait a minute: you mean there a people who believe BOTH that the moon landings were faked AND that the Illuminati rule the world? Amazing. How can people be so right AND so wrong, at the same time?
Scientific Journals, like the various AGU publications, typically prefer photographs in .jpg, false-color data in .tiff, and charts, graphs, and other line-art suitable images as .eps. .Png is acceptable for electronic versions. Photoshop .psd's are not acceptable, and .ai files are acceptable for review / draft stages only. In fact, the IEEE won't accept .jpg files at all. This may differ from what Redbook, Car and Driver, and Rolling Stone want; I've never been published in one of those. But considering that the images under discussion are scientific images, I'd say that .eps files are most definitely on the preferred format list.
If you want your meanings to be understood clearly every time, you'll need to state your points explicitly, as well as your conclusion. You either failed to or chose not to do so. With the benefit of your internal dialog, I'm sure every meaning you intended is as clear as the nose on your face. Since the rest of us don't have access to that internal dialog, we are left with the task of filling in the blanks and trying to glean your meaning from an insufficiency of words. Sometimes, we get that meaning wrong. SOMETIMES, WE APOLOGIZE FOR IT. I have no desire to twist your words into anything; what benefit to me? I (and others, I'm sure) simply failed to accurately understand exactly what you meant. Part of this is undoubtedly my fault. Part of this is equally undoubtedly your fault. Sometimes, my friend, both the pot and kettle are black.
It's clear to me that we both believe that Franklin would not have supported those wiretaps; in this, we both appear to disagree with the premise of the opinion piece excerpted and linked to by some Anonymous Coward. I'd like to point out that using the revolution as an example of Franklin's willingness to break laws assumes that 1) said aforementioned revolution was illegal - this is a matter of viewpoint; and 2) that Franklin's willingness to flout British law by revolting and founding a new nation, with a separate legal system, somehow implies that Franklin would then be as willing to break the new laws of the new nation that he, himself, had just helped found. That said, I feel that Franklin would probably have broken American law if it was necessary to do what he felt was right. I know that I would. It still is not clear to me what relevance Franklin's probable willingness to break the law under the right circumstances has to do with illegal wiretaps, since you and I both agree (at least, I think you agree - it's what you seemed to say) that Franklin would likely NOT have considered that to be right. You may have a connection that you think is obvious; however, since you have not explicitly stated it, I don't know what that connection might be.
Perhaps you didn't intend to draw that parallel. Grandparent poster (A/C) and his citation certainly did, and then you jumped in and disagreed with my assertion that Franklin's revolution was legal; unfortunately, I didn't make any such assertion. You then said that Franklin's actions were admirable because he ignored the law to do what was right, which of course is exactly what grandparent poster implicitly credited Bush with doing. That could easily be seen to imply agreement with the original poster's statements; in fact, I think it suggests it rather strongly.
Perhaps your intent was not to support such a parallel; in that case, I shall apologize - honestly and abjectly - for misunderstanding your intent. You might wish to be charitable and interpret my continued discussion of the poor fit of such a comparison as being partially based on a response to your comment, and partially as a continued refutation of grandparent's comment.
I'd also suggest that if you intend to be touchy about people who misunderstand your comments, you yourself might want to take more care with understanding the comments to which you respond. I asserted that keeping the details of French aid secret from the Continental Congress was not in violation of any existing legislation (contrary to the Bush wiretapping), and you somehow interpreted that to mean that the legality of the entire revolution was the subject under discussion. As Mr. Bush is not currently involved in a revolution, I fail to see the relevance to this discussion. The topic of whether revolution is inherently legal or not would undoubtedly make for a worthwhile philosophical discussion, but I'm not really interested in being drawn into such a discussion at this time. Now, if you have any light to shed on the legality of Franklin, French aid, and not telling the Continental Congress about it, I'd be interested in continuing that line of discourse.
In light of your statement that you intended no parallel between Franklin and Bush, and the fact that your first comment's subject must then necessarily be limited to refuting an assertion that I never made nor implied... I have to wonder exactly what it was that you were trying to say.
I'd also like to note that as an American and as a lightning researcher, I hold Mr. Franklin in the highest esteem; he is not only one of the more important figures in my nation's history, he is practically THE founding father of my area of academic pursuit. Like any human being, perfection is not one of his characteristics; he is undoubtedly endowed with a (figurative) wart or two. Comparing him to W, however, strikes me as being an especially repugnant comparison. Chalk the vigor of my discussion up to that, if you will.
"...In 1776 he and his four colleagues on the Continental Congress's foreign affairs committee..." I'm certain that the Continental Congree didn't have any laws against aid from France, or against the Revolution for that matter. Any assertion you make regarding the legality of revolution has absolutely no bearing at all on the matter of Franklin's secrets or on the matter of Bush's secrets.
Franklin: kept French aid secret from Congress. Was getting French aid illegal? Not that anyone's aware of. And, since he was sent to France on behalf of the American Government, I kinda doubt that it was.
Bush: Authorized wiretaps on American citizens by the NSA, without warrants, in direct contravention of laws enacted to govern such wiretaps. Kept it a secret from Congress.
The best that you could say about the Franklin actions was that it set a precedent for American citizens keeping secrets from Congress - remember, Franklin was not a President at any time. His actions did not and do not set any sort of precedent for Presidents contravening the laws enacted by Congress.
Thus, saying that Franklin's activities are parallel to Bush's activities is, at best, a gross misunderstanding of the events involved... and at worst (and more likely) is a dishonest attempt to deceive and confuse the readers. There is no basis whatsoever for the contention that Franklin would have supported secret, unlawful wiretaps based on one incident in which he kept a secret. Revolution is just a red herring. And, quite frankly, to drag Franklin's name into this discussion is to do him and his works a great dishonor. He deserves better from his successors.
I read his post as saying that he bought an unlocked phone, separately, on his own, WITHOUT AT&T, and that the AT&T rep locked his phone to their service. Is that not what you read? Was that somehow his fault as well? Are you saying that AT&T's contract said they would lock his phone to their service? Can you post a copy of his contract for us all to read?
Now that's funny. Wish I had mod points for ya.
Zaphod: Yeah? What else to you do besides talk?
Lift: I go up or down.
Zaphod: Good. We're going up.
Lift: Or down.
Zaphod: Yeah, ok, up please.
Lift: Down's very nice.
Zaphod: Oh yeah?
Lift: Super.
Zaphod: Good. Now will you take us up?
Lift: May I ask you if you've considered all the possibilities that down might offer you?
Zaphod: Like what?
Lift: Well, er, there's the basement, the microfiles, the heating system... um. Nothing particularly exciting I'll admit, but they are alternative possibilities.
Zaphod: Ah, Zarquon's knees, did I ask for an existential elevator? What's the matter with the thing?
Marvin: It doesn't want to go up. I think it's afraid.
But that's a question of whether to keep secrets, which is why we have things like the Intelligence Oversight Committees. That's not an issue. What's an issue is whether bounds were overstepped re: legality. Many things are done which require secrecy but which are legal, such as maintaining the anonymity of undercover agents... but enlisting the aid of France wasn't illegal. The need to keep secret whose calls we tap isn't under debate; the legality of it is.
You and your citation's author gloss over the gap between doing something legal which needs to be kept secret and doing something illegal and not telling anyone about it. You're both either too stupid to know the difference, or you're hoping the rest of us are.
Except that no study has ever - EVER - been able to reproduce that interference. Boeing even *bought* a passenger's laptop and put it in the same seat, on the same plane, on the same route, and were unable to reproduce the interference.
I'd be willing to believe cell phone interference, but I'm just not buying the CD player thing. Note that those are all anecdotal reports made by non-technical flight crew, along the lines of "Hey, the nav system is screwy! Check the cabin!" "Oh, yes sir, we found a guy with a CD player on and castrated him!" "Hey, the nav system works again!" No consideration is apparently made for the possibility that it was a glitch unrelated to the CDplayer, or to the fact that you can almost always find someone using a PED whether there's an avionics problem or not. Correlation != causality.
OTOH, if the aircraft's avionics are SO susceptible to interference that a CD player's motor (although it's more likely to be the clock for the D/A converter than the motor) 30 feet away on the other side of a metal bulkhead will screw them up, then that's crappy design of the avionics and the goddamned thing's not safe to fly under any circumstances. And yes, I am an EE.
Lessee...
I'm not a programmer, I'm a user.
Apple seem to be doing a pretty competent job of developing the OS and drivers for this machine. Not my problem.
I can't find any sources which definitively state that Yonah will use significantly more power than the G4, and several that suggest the opposite.
I've heard this rant about the cruft and unwieldiness of the x86, and I can't disagree with it philosophically. But it's clear that Apple tried very hard to make a break with x86, tried to make it work, and it just didn't. More elegant architecture is a great idea, so long as it performs reasonably. The G4 would have to be a MIGHTY elegant chip to outweigh a 5X improvement in performance. Apple tried to get a G5 in a PowerBook, and couldn't make it work for power reasons - and the Yonah is twice as fast as a single G5, according to Apple.
So the question remains: is there any reason why I, a user of computers, shouldn't get a MacBook Pro?
OK, I'll bite: what's the point of architecturally superior if it's 4-5 times slower? If I can buy a MacBook Pro that looks the same as this PowerBook G4, works the same, uses the same OS, but isn't as goddamned slow - why shouldn't I? What advantage does the alleged superiority of the PPC give me?
This is a serious question. I have a PowerBook G4. My next purchase will probably be a MacBook Pro. Why shouldn't I? What about that notebook will make me say, "Man, I wish I'd kept that G4?"
You've obviously never been the meat in an Ewok sandwich. Why, I've seen an Ewok take a .... never mind. I've heard things, that's all.
"...TWO channels are encoded into ONE analog track."
... or you could just encode everything digitally at 24/96, and exceed both the resolution of the source material and of the human hearing system by so much that anyone who was still unsatisfied could be quite definitively considered to be a lunatic.
Well, that's an oversimplification. Two separate audio tracks are recorded, with their waveforms impressed into the walls of a two-sided groove - like a valley. If the walls of this groove are at 45 degrees from the vertical, then they are at 90 degrees from each other and thus are orthogonal. If the stylus which tracks in the groove has two axes of sensitivity, also at 90 degrees from each other, then in theory any variation normal to one wall of the groove will result in no perturbation of the sensor for the other wall. The reality is much more complicated, of course. Any error in orthogonality at any point will result in crosstalk, effectively a reduction of stereo separation. Crosstalk in the magnetics of the cartridge, resonances or unsufficient rigidity in the stylus, etc., etc. - you could think up error sources for days, and still not get all of them that vinyl engineers worry about. Here is a fairly informative link, for those interested.
Possibly interesting aside: the entire point of the RIAA filter (well, half of the point) was to reduce the possibility that heavy bass encoded (monaurally) into both walls would cause the needle to literally pop out of the groove, and so the signal going down to vinyl has reduced bass content which is then corrected post-cartridge. High frequencies are boosted on the vinyl in an effort to improve S/N, lifting the smaller variations up above the noise floor caused by dust, scratches, and the granularity of the vinyl itself.
However, there is no analog encoding of two signals into one, at least not electrically. Two physical channels are maintained throughout, albeit poorly separated. There's simply no effective way to maintain proper separation for physical reasons.
The net effect is that stereo separation and frequency response linearity of vinyl are known weaknesses in the medium. One possible improvement for the separation issue might be to use a square channel like 78's used. You'd recode the L, R signals into L+R and L-R just like FM radio, and then record the L+R (mono) part as lateral displacement of the groove. You'd then embed the L-R (stereo separation) part of the signal as the vertical displacement of the bottom of the groove. This has the advantage of putting the part of the signal with the least bass (bass is typically more monaural, especially in vinyl, and the L-R signal will cancel a great deal of that) in the part of the physical medium where it's less likely to result in mistracking, and leave the mono part (which typically has much more bass) in the part of the medium where it can't cause mistracking. You'd probably lose some track time, though, as you'd have to space the tracks further apart for bass-heavy material. When recovering, you then recombine the L+R and L-R signals to get L and R, with the bonus of dramatically improved stereo separation and possibly the elimination of the RIAA filter altogether...
"Are things good enough?"
No.
Just as LPs represented a remarkable leap from tolerable (78's) to hi-fidelity, DVD represented a leap from suck-ass (VHS) to decent quality. And there are still plenty of people who like LPs. But just as CD's were introduced and turned out to be better than LPs in most ways, so too does HD video represent an overall improvement over SD video. It's not just a few lines of resolution, either - it's six times the pixel count and an improvement in color space, and it's still not as good as the source material in most cases (35mm).
HD looks better. DVDs don't do HD. That makes DVDs not good enough.
The same movies that are on DVD can easily be on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, in true HD format. Neither you or grandparent will have to get rid of anything. You won't have to sell your little 19" TV, and the Obsolete Format Police won't come and confiscate your collection of DVD's. No one will force you to buy a larger TV than you want, or drive a larger car than you want. No harm will come to you from allowing others to watch movies that look better than yours. I still don't see why it's so wrong to enjoy better quality video, nor what there is to be proud of for not wanting HD. Techno glitches? Format instability? Don't know what you're talking about. Haven't seen any of it. My HD looks great all the time.
Important to a person's life? If TV is anything more than an occasional pastime, worry. If TV of any kind is important to your life, you've got bigger problems than SD or HD. Read a book. Watch a sunset. Have sex with your partner. Find a partner, if you don't have one. Bounce your baby on your knee. Visit your grandmother. Make someone else's life better. Quit worrying about what kind of TV I have. Quit trying to tell me why I'm a fuckhead for wanting a better image on my wall.
Polishing a turd? Yes. That's right. 90% of the content available on DVD or VHS or fucking carved stone tablets is, at best, mindless dreck. That's because Hollywood keeps making money by paying people like Ahnold $70 million to make a single shitty movie. Where's the real revolution in entertainment? Aha. Now we're getting somewhere. I'll tell you what *I* think, and you can feel free to wipe your ass with my opinion: the real revolution in entertainment has it's roots in TRON, and can count LOTR as a failed genetic offshoot. We have, for the first time in history, the ability to create photorealistic imagery of anything we can imagine with digital rendering. Storytellers are free to tell any story they want, in any way they want, if they can only think of it. LOTR proved this, and showed also where the weakness is: Hollywood. Peter Jackson and Weta Digital did a phenomenal job of bringing a complete fantasy universe to life... but couldn't storytell their way out of a wet paper bag. Now, I personally like the books, not because of the plot line, which is bested every weekend by thousands of AD&D games around the world, but because of the characters, the depth of the detail in people and places and such, and because of the way that people interacted. The best Jackson could do was to take Tolkein's completed story, dumb it down and sex it up for the sheeple, and see how pretty they could make it. Well, they made it pretty... but now it's time for a real storyteller to take the reins and make a *good* movie. Imagination is now the only limitation. That, and getting anything worthwhile past Hollywood. As long as Hollywood keeps regurgitating remakes and emasculating literature, movies will continue to suck.
Of course, that last paragraph - none of which has anything to do with HD or SD - is all my opinion. Yours may vary, and hopefully does. It would be a boring world otherwise.
Oh, sure. You are exactly correct. I've still got all my vinyl records, most of which I took care of from day 1 and thus still sound good. I'm actually rather fond of the sound of vinyl through good tube amplification (Luddite!) But, I prefer color TV to B&W, and really stopped reading books with pictures a while back :-) I guess I was a bit snarky, but then GP made some really stupid arguments (throw away all my DVDs? Huh?) and I don't have much patience for that. Probably shouldn't have responded so quick to the other guy, who says that anyone with an HD set just wants to brag. I bet that one won't get me any nice guy points, either.
Honest truth is that LPs really don't have the dynamic range, s/n, or stereo separation of CD. It's a limitation of the medium, not the format. They do have the advantage of being all-analog, which I believe is a point in their favor when compared to 16/44.1, and which should result in better frequency response; well, wider response, anyway - between the variations of the cartridge, preamp, and RIAA filter the linearity of an LP's frequency response is marginal at best. However, I don't think that technically there's *any* way for an LP's performance to exceed something like 24/96, if done correctly - which, incidentally, early CD's weren't. Done well, I mean. Early players often had only 14-bit A/Ds, and 16/44.1 was a compromise anyway. That said, of the few albums I have both CD and good vinyl copies of, the vinyl is usually better.
Err... sorry. That was off-topic. I could expound for hours about audio formats, quite a bit of which would be subjective, and I'll bet you've heard most of it before anyway
Dissing HD because it isn't as much better than DVD as DVD is better than VHS is truly damning with faint praise. The thing is, VHS sucks ass and can't do even a halfway decent job of reproducing a mediocre format - NTSC. DVD does a good (not perfect, but good) job of reproducing content in that mediocre format. HD, however, is a noticeably superior format. It remains to be seen whether HD-DVD or Blu-Ray do an acceptable job of reproducing content in that superior format... but since they're both basically DVD extended to HD spec, I see no reason to think that they'll do any worse at reproducing HD than DVD-SD does at reproducing NTSC.
I have 10 years experience in broadcast video engineering, and a few video component designs in my portfolio. I have a true HD (1080i native) set, and an HD DVR to go with it. I can easily tell the difference between HD content and DVD-SD content, and I don't give a shit what Maximum PC has to say about it. Given the choice between a DVD of some movie and a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD of the same movie, I'd rather watch the HD version. I have no reason to feel embarrassed at preferring higher-quality video. If you can't tell the difference or don't think it's worth it, that's your problem and not mine. I don't need an excuse to brag, but I think perhaps you have some inadequacy problems to deal with.
"Can somebody please explain to me what's so awful about DVD that it should prompt millions upon millions of consumers to throw away billions of dollars' worth of discs and players in favor of some new format? Honestly, I just don't see the urgency. A few extra lines of resolution had better not be the answer."
Amen, brother! You tell 'em!
I tried to say the same thing when this newfangled "CD" thing came out. We had all these hundreds of millions of vinyl records out there, and record players that could do a pretty good job of reproducing the music on 'em. Sure, there were some clicks and pops, and the dynamic range wasn't as good as it could have been, and maybe the stereo separation wasn't the best, and OK, yes, there were some problems with media durability - but was it really worth replacing all of that just for 30 or 40 dB of dynamic range and stereo separation? I just didn't see the urgency. One of these days, I'm going to get one of those things just to see what all the fuss is about. Who do I call to schedule an appointment with the Obsolete Format Police, so they can come confiscate all my cassette tapes? I *DO* have to throw away all my old format content when I buy a new player, right?
While on the subject of TV: frankly, I think color is overrated. You can say damn near everything you need to in B&W, without need for color - OR sound, which frankly has put hundreds of movie theater musicians out of work. It's a travesty.
Just because some bleeding-edge early adopters have TVs with 6 times the number of pixels that standard def DVD can produce and improved color gamut, and even sometimes doubled framerates, isn't any reason to actually introduce a new format capable of providing source content that good. Just because the 35mm masters that those movies are made from have resolution and dynamic range exceeding either SD *OR* HD isn't any reason to allow consumers to actually watch them with that level of quality. Or, God forbid, multichannel audio. No, no, give me a plain ol' 5" B&W mono TV and a bag of pork rinds, and I'm a happy Luddite.
I yearn for the days when a "moving picture" was when Grampa waved the book around the room so we could all see the illustrations.
[sarcasm mode OFF]
Is there some reason you DON'T want to watch movies in HD? And why do you hate America? [dammit, I said sarcasm mode OFF!] Having a Hi-Def set at the house and having watched several movies in HD from cable, I completely support the introduction of a format capable of supplying such movies in purchaseable disc form. I've watched movies from DVD on the same set, and they just don't look as good. That's not very surprising, I guess. So, the answer to your question is, unfortunately, that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will provide improved picture quality and thus an improved experience. For me and many others, that is sufficient reason to want to purchase a player in one or both formats. I'm sorry if that isn't the answer you wanted, but you knew that was it. We all know that DVD won't do HD, and we all know that HD looks better - so why shouldn't we introduce a disc format that CAN do HD? Since we DON'T have to throw away a damned thing, and since you can STILL get VHS at Blockbuster, I don't see why having a better medium will overnight mean that you can't watch your DVD collection. I honestly don't see what you're so pissed about.
Pfft. If it can kill Keith Richards, roaches don't stand a chance. Then again, any force actually strong enough to kill or even injure Keith Richards would probably have to be based in interstellar space to avoid cracking the Earth like a quail's egg.