It was part of a "Nova" miniseries called "Secrets of Lost Empires". Personally, I felt the episodes focused too much on the theorist's constant bickering. They also had some really strange theories:
"I believe the Incas used thermo-deagregation to build their stone walls, said one such theorist. He then proceeded to use a concave mirror in an attempt to "melt" the stones into place.
I suppose it might be possible to keep the controls activated at all times-- some DVDs actually disable fast forward (so that you're forced to watch their commercials or the FBI warnings.) "Shadow of the Vampire" does not make use of this dubious "feature".
The menus essentially serve as a (fairly elaborate) interafce to all of the DVD's special features. For instance, "Shadow of the Vampire opens with a elaborate painted backdrop with four menu choices: Scenes, Bonus Materials, Languages, and Play. Meanwhile, an overture plays on my speakers.
If I click on "Scenes," I am presented with thumnail images of 18 different chapter, ranging from "Main Titles" and "The Great Director" to "The final Frame" and "Credits." Clicking on any of those thumbnails allows me to jump to the appropriate scene in the movie.
If I click on Bonus materials, I can view several interviews, featurettes and associated movie trailers.
"Languages" allows me to select alternate soundtracks-- DTS, AC-3, Director's Commentary, or a French dub.
Finally, clicking on "Play" simply plays the movie (preceeded, alas, by a 60 second montage of Universal's other DVD releases).
Menus are simply a nice feature to have-- and are a userfriendly method of orgainizing a often bewildering array of special features and supplementary meterial. It is technically possible to access this material without menus--but it's difficult and cumbersome.
The menu specifications also allow for simple games (e.g. Dragon's Lair).
The Tower Records down the street has stopped renting Videotapes. They still sell tapes, but I expect the selction will diminish.
They still group all the DVD stogether, which makes browsing difficult.
Didn't NBCi try to hawk a similar feature called QuickClick? Those ads were quite annoying.
Finally, the sheep brayed all in unison, "See a word, Click it, get Information." And their new corporate masters were happy.
I'm not sure whether Smarttags are intended to "compete" with QuickClick, or whether NBCi has some incestuous relationship with Microsoft beyond the MSNBC partnership.
My Soyo motherboard (6BA-III+) has a boot up scren that announces "your computer is PhoenixNet enabled." I think I aquired this feature in a BIOS update that I installed to fix a Matrox related bug. Am I slightly paronoid about PhoenixNet? Yes. Do I reget that I flashed my BIOS, thus "enabling" my computer? No. The bug was rather nasty, reducing hard drive speed to 600 kbs.
In one of the CSS licenses, one of the clauses essentially bound the licensees to offer "security upgrades" to the user only as part of a enticing upgrade. Thus, the security fixes would get installed along with whatever flshy multimedia "upgrade" a licensee had advertised to the end-user/mark.
Now, I don't think Soyo delibrately intended to be dishonest, but be prepared to accept bugfixes packaged alongside unwanted (or even malicious) features.
Of course, if you use open source software, this can be avoided. One does not always have to accept the evil along with the good.
Re:Moral Issues Abound
on
Protein Music
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· Score: 2
Companies that have already patended certain DNA sequences could sue you for divulging trade secrets.
A patent (properly) discloses the inner workings of an invention. In theory, anyone can, after the monopolistic term has expired, can create a duplicate of the original invention, simply by following the instructions laid out in the patent. This is quite different from trade secrets, which, naturally, involve no public disclosure.
If one uses CD's to play music (rather than to store and retrieve data) timing becomes extremely important. The musical bits simply must arrive at exactly the right time-- hence the need for extremely accurate clocks. Most clocks, are, to a certain extent, sensitive to vibration-- thus, the supposed need for vibration free equipment.
In addition, CD-Audio is not random access. (I think the resolution is limited to one second-- 88200 bytes). This is why "rippers" usually have anti-jitter routines.
First, "bash" is not Linux. It's a GNU utility. A Linux machine need not have "bash" installed. Linux is only the kernel, and presumably, could be used as the basis for a "smart bomb", athough a real time/low latency OS would probably be more appropriate.
Both Linux, and GNU bash are licensed under the GPL as "free software." Stallman has stated that free software stems from "Freedom Zero", namely "the freedom to run the program for any purpose, any way you like. "
To my knowledge, use restrictions would violate both the GPL and Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition.
Decryption brings the DMCA into play only if the decryption involves an "effective access control," that is, an 8-bit or longer key.
Got a source for that? I'd be interested in reading the legal definition of "effective", in re access control. Obviously, eight bit is far from effective-- but so is the CSS (a lame version of a 40 bit system).
If Australian libel law is anything like British libel law, then Dow Jones and Company will have a much harder time defending its actions. US Libel law is much friendlier to journalists.
Copyright is mainly a good thing. After all, If we didn't have copyright, everything we write would be in the public domain. Books would not be sellable, so not as many would get written and published. You couldn't release Linux under GPL. So copyright has good aspects.
The public domain only exists in opposition to "private domain"-- material under copyright. Books would have commercial value, but publishers would probably reap most of the profits. Authors might serve under contract--similar to Hollywood's "studio system," perhaps. The right to read might be governed by contract law. Who knows?
One case for radically restructuring copyright is found in Stephen Breyer, The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs, 84 Harv. L. Rev. 281 (1970).
Yes, that Stephen Breyer, otherwise known as "Supreme Court Justice Breyer"
nVidia's integrated GForce2 chip communicates with the rest of the chipset at the equivalent of 6x AGP. Yet the integrated chip is not "top of the line"--if you want to upgrade your graphics capability (to say, a GForce3) you'll have to use a slower 4x AGP interface... A difficult tradeoff?
Man, I'd love to see an open source OS that realizes that recompiling the kernel to add new features is the fucking stupidest idea that anyone has ever come up with - no wonder Linux is getting it's ass kicked in real markets. Buh-bye VA linux and eazel - thanks for all the free shit.
Use kernel modules, then. Want to use a new feature? Just compile the module, and set up the appropriate config in modules.conf... I use ALSA sound modules to configure my sound card, for instance.
The single unified driver that nVidia is promoting may help with copatibility issues, but it practically guarentees that this motherboard will be Linux incompatible. nVidia has long sinced closed the GForce drivers, and I bet that Dolby will have some reservations about opening up the APU. A partial doc/source release may staisfy GPL and kernel requirements, but the performance is likely to stink...
The public radio program "On the Media" did a recent story on how the studios manipulate quotes in film related advertising. Apparently, Jeff Craig of "60 second preview" is quoted a great deal. Maybe he's a shill for the movie industry.
I've never quite trusted film marketers-- but these are outright lies, and might interest the FTC.
On an interesting sidenote: it seems that the film revenues for "R rated" films have gone down ever since the movie industry started "enforcing" their ratings. It used to be, of course, that "Rated R" was a draw for certain types of violent films, but now the MPAA has "learned" that such restrictive ratings tend to reduce profits. I'm not sure who to support. (I believed that a trademarked "NC-17" rating might free the artistic impulses of directors--but I guess marketing considerations will probably doom us all to kiddie safe films. sniff)
You're right about at least one thing. I did oversimplify.
However, this whole set of semantics has been one oversimpification after another.
1. At one time, a supercomputer was extremely helpful in designing nuclear weaponry--the faster the better, whether that was an Eniac or a Beowolf.
2. So the Commerce department defined a supercomputer in terms of whether one could design a bomb on it-- and failed to recognize that PCs could catch up to that standard.
3. Apple designs a system with commendable floating point performance-- which approached the theoretical limits of a Cray (don't ask me which one). Much as Intel tried to hype the i860 as a "Cray on a chip" (albeit a very slow one), Apple hyped up the "Banned in Iraq" angle.
As a student in computational science, I recognize that certain problems demand more that just fast fp units. Some Bioinformatics problems, as you mentioned, are essentially memory intensive-- multiple alignment, etc. Others, such as tertiary structure prediction, may be more floating point intensive.
Some scientific problems truly stretch the limits of currently available computing power. It would be a waste of time and effort to cobble together a generic i386 or ppc bpinary, and slap them on a dual processor Macintosh with only one working processor, or a overclocked Athlon with a screwy IDE controller.
Yeah, well, the "Supercomputing" definition is based on whether you can process enough data to support the creation of nuclear weaponry. But it's not always relevant.
I really was not too impressed with the benchmarks presented here-- and not because they were anti-Apple. The fastest machine had poor disk performance-- but this is really very relevent to compilation and development. Because the benchmark was very specific-- cross compiling for MIPs machines-- (wtf?), I have no idea how far these benchmarks can be stretched.
I think he should have tried to optimize the binaries-- after all, he was compiling from source. And how do his compilers compare with the latest gcc releases (not snapshots, though)?
BTW, although I own both a Mac and a PC, my mac is old, and I mostly use my (faster) PC. I am not an advocate of either platform...
The comparisons of a G4 to a supercomputer are a bit disingenuous. At one time, 1 Gigaflop served as a criterion for Supercomputing status, and some documents pertaining to munitions sales may have used similar numbers. Theoretically, the G4 is capable of 4 GTOPs (billions of theoretical operations per second), which exceeds this government export standard Notice that the threshold is theoretical, not "sustained" or "real life."
In general, though, scientists don't care about integer results-- floating point is more important. I have heard that some Crays were notoriously slow at integer arithmatic.
Nasa administrator Dan Goldin has said that even with 5 Dennis Titos paying 20 million each, it "that ain't going to make skoosh of an impact. "
Goldin isn't neccesarily averse to selling rides-- it's just that his price would probably be about 60 million dollars-- whether this is more economically justifiable is beyond me. Of course, his largish price tag would be undercut by the Russians, who operate under different economic constraints.
Goldin has also been, strangely supportive of James Cameron, obstensibly because the director is not particularly pushy about a launch date. Of course, it is likely that Cameron will direct/produce a film stemming from his experience, both enhancing the reputation of NASA, and encouraging the profitable commercialization of space.
Pasting "billboards" on the space station isn't neccesarily crass-- after all, ceratin functional components already bear the logos of their manufacturer, but it is rather unimaginative. It promotes the idea of space as an exotic tourist destination, rather than as a a research and development center. Nasa has a website dedicated to commercialization.
Your're right. Senet is claimed as a trademark by IGT games. I wonder if Sierra/Impressions had to pay IGT so that it could incorporate "Senet Houses" in Pharoah.
Slashdot Mirror
It was part of a "Nova" miniseries called "Secrets of Lost Empires". Personally, I felt the episodes focused too much on the theorist's constant bickering. They also had some really strange theories:
"I believe the Incas used thermo-deagregation to build their stone walls, said one such theorist. He then proceeded to use a concave mirror in an attempt to "melt" the stones into place.
I suppose it might be possible to keep the controls activated at all times-- some DVDs actually disable fast forward (so that you're forced to watch their commercials or the FBI warnings.) "Shadow of the Vampire" does not make use of this dubious "feature".
The menus essentially serve as a (fairly elaborate) interafce to all of the DVD's special features. For instance, "Shadow of the Vampire opens with a elaborate painted backdrop with four menu choices: Scenes, Bonus Materials, Languages, and Play. Meanwhile, an overture plays on my speakers.
If I click on "Scenes," I am presented with thumnail images of 18 different chapter, ranging from "Main Titles" and "The Great Director" to "The final Frame" and "Credits." Clicking on any of those thumbnails allows me to jump to the appropriate scene in the movie.
If I click on Bonus materials, I can view several interviews, featurettes and associated movie trailers.
"Languages" allows me to select alternate soundtracks-- DTS, AC-3, Director's Commentary, or a French dub.
Finally, clicking on "Play" simply plays the movie (preceeded, alas, by a 60 second montage of Universal's other DVD releases).
Menus are simply a nice feature to have-- and are a userfriendly method of orgainizing a often bewildering array of special features and supplementary meterial. It is technically possible to access this material without menus--but it's difficult and cumbersome.
The menu specifications also allow for simple games (e.g. Dragon's Lair).
The Tower Records down the street has stopped renting Videotapes. They still sell tapes, but I expect the selction will diminish.
They still group all the DVD stogether, which makes browsing difficult.
Didn't NBCi try to hawk a similar feature called QuickClick? Those ads were quite annoying.
Finally, the sheep brayed all in unison, "See a word, Click it, get Information." And their new corporate masters were happy.
I'm not sure whether Smarttags are intended to "compete" with QuickClick, or whether NBCi has some incestuous relationship with Microsoft beyond the MSNBC partnership.
Just so you don't wonder what a graphics card has to do with hard drive speed: I erroneously typed "Matrox" for "Maxtor".
My Soyo motherboard (6BA-III+) has a boot up scren that announces "your computer is PhoenixNet enabled." I think I aquired this feature in a BIOS update that I installed to fix a Matrox related bug. Am I slightly paronoid about PhoenixNet? Yes. Do I reget that I flashed my BIOS, thus "enabling" my computer? No. The bug was rather nasty, reducing hard drive speed to 600 kbs.
In one of the CSS licenses, one of the clauses essentially bound the licensees to offer "security upgrades" to the user only as part of a enticing upgrade. Thus, the security fixes would get installed along with whatever flshy multimedia "upgrade" a licensee had advertised to the end-user/mark.
Now, I don't think Soyo delibrately intended to be dishonest, but be prepared to accept bugfixes packaged alongside unwanted (or even malicious) features.
Of course, if you use open source software, this can be avoided. One does not always have to accept the evil along with the good.
Companies that have already patended certain DNA sequences could sue you for divulging trade secrets. A patent (properly) discloses the inner workings of an invention. In theory, anyone can, after the monopolistic term has expired, can create a duplicate of the original invention, simply by following the instructions laid out in the patent. This is quite different from trade secrets, which, naturally, involve no public disclosure.
If one uses CD's to play music (rather than to store and retrieve data) timing becomes extremely important. The musical bits simply must arrive at exactly the right time-- hence the need for extremely accurate clocks. Most clocks, are, to a certain extent, sensitive to vibration-- thus, the supposed need for vibration free equipment.
In addition, CD-Audio is not random access. (I think the resolution is limited to one second-- 88200 bytes). This is why "rippers" usually have anti-jitter routines.
Both Linux, and GNU bash are licensed under the GPL as "free software." Stallman has stated that free software stems from "Freedom Zero", namely "the freedom to run the program for any purpose, any way you like. "
To my knowledge, use restrictions would violate both the GPL and Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition.
Got a source for that? I'd be interested in reading the legal definition of "effective", in re access control. Obviously, eight bit is far from effective-- but so is the CSS (a lame version of a 40 bit system).
If Australian libel law is anything like British libel law, then Dow Jones and Company will have a much harder time defending its actions. US Libel law is much friendlier to journalists.
The public domain only exists in opposition to "private domain"-- material under copyright. Books would have commercial value, but publishers would probably reap most of the profits. Authors might serve under contract--similar to Hollywood's "studio system," perhaps. The right to read might be governed by contract law. Who knows?
One case for radically restructuring copyright is found in Stephen Breyer, The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs, 84 Harv. L. Rev. 281 (1970).
Yes, that Stephen Breyer, otherwise known as "Supreme Court Justice Breyer"
Typically, one shouldn't apply font styles on a character by character b as iS.
nVidia's integrated GForce2 chip communicates with the rest of the chipset at the equivalent of 6x AGP. Yet the integrated chip is not "top of the line"--if you want to upgrade your graphics capability (to say, a GForce3) you'll have to use a slower 4x AGP interface... A difficult tradeoff?
Use kernel modules, then. Want to use a new feature? Just compile the module, and set up the appropriate config in modules.conf... I use ALSA sound modules to configure my sound card, for instance.
The single unified driver that nVidia is promoting may help with copatibility issues, but it practically guarentees that this motherboard will be Linux incompatible. nVidia has long sinced closed the GForce drivers, and I bet that Dolby will have some reservations about opening up the APU. A partial doc/source release may staisfy GPL and kernel requirements, but the performance is likely to stink...
Everybody can attend a "G rated film ,but perhaps not everyone would wish to. Perhaps, this too, is marketing. "2001" (1968) was rated "G"
I've never quite trusted film marketers-- but these are outright lies, and might interest the FTC.
On an interesting sidenote: it seems that the film revenues for "R rated" films have gone down ever since the movie industry started "enforcing" their ratings. It used to be, of course, that "Rated R" was a draw for certain types of violent films, but now the MPAA has "learned" that such restrictive ratings tend to reduce profits. I'm not sure who to support. (I believed that a trademarked "NC-17" rating might free the artistic impulses of directors--but I guess marketing considerations will probably doom us all to kiddie safe films. sniff)
You're right about at least one thing. I did oversimplify.
However, this whole set of semantics has been one oversimpification after another.
1. At one time, a supercomputer was extremely helpful in designing nuclear weaponry--the faster the better, whether that was an Eniac or a Beowolf.
2. So the Commerce department defined a supercomputer in terms of whether one could design a bomb on it-- and failed to recognize that PCs could catch up to that standard.
3. Apple designs a system with commendable floating point performance-- which approached the theoretical limits of a Cray (don't ask me which one). Much as Intel tried to hype the i860 as a "Cray on a chip" (albeit a very slow one), Apple hyped up the "Banned in Iraq" angle.
As a student in computational science, I recognize that certain problems demand more that just fast fp units. Some Bioinformatics problems, as you mentioned, are essentially memory intensive-- multiple alignment, etc. Others, such as tertiary structure prediction, may be more floating point intensive.
Some scientific problems truly stretch the limits of currently available computing power. It would be a waste of time and effort to cobble together a generic i386 or ppc bpinary, and slap them on a dual processor Macintosh with only one working processor, or a overclocked Athlon with a screwy IDE controller.
Yeah, well, the "Supercomputing" definition is based on whether you can process enough data to support the creation of nuclear weaponry. But it's not always relevant.
I really was not too impressed with the benchmarks presented here-- and not because they were anti-Apple. The fastest machine had poor disk performance-- but this is really very relevent to compilation and development. Because the benchmark was very specific-- cross compiling for MIPs machines-- (wtf?), I have no idea how far these benchmarks can be stretched.
I think he should have tried to optimize the binaries-- after all, he was compiling from source. And how do his compilers compare with the latest gcc releases (not snapshots, though)?
BTW, although I own both a Mac and a PC, my mac is old, and I mostly use my (faster) PC. I am not an advocate of either platform...
In general, though, scientists don't care about integer results-- floating point is more important. I have heard that some Crays were notoriously slow at integer arithmatic.
Goldin isn't neccesarily averse to selling rides-- it's just that his price would probably be about 60 million dollars-- whether this is more economically justifiable is beyond me. Of course, his largish price tag would be undercut by the Russians, who operate under different economic constraints.
Goldin has also been, strangely supportive of James Cameron, obstensibly because the director is not particularly pushy about a launch date. Of course, it is likely that Cameron will direct/produce a film stemming from his experience, both enhancing the reputation of NASA, and encouraging the profitable commercialization of space.
Pasting "billboards" on the space station isn't neccesarily crass-- after all, ceratin functional components already bear the logos of their manufacturer, but it is rather unimaginative. It promotes the idea of space as an exotic tourist destination, rather than as a a research and development center. Nasa has a website dedicated to commercialization.
Or, just as likely, an obscure religious group: i.e. the Raelians...
Your're right. Senet is claimed as a trademark by IGT games. I wonder if Sierra/Impressions had to pay IGT so that it could incorporate "Senet Houses" in Pharoah.
But it's not a Bond Car. Real Bond cars are handmade by Aston Marton.