It does make you scratch your head about the whole issue though-- why would MSFT work so hard at keeping others from developing alternate file systems? FS drivers are akin to video drivers for a video card (except for use with storage devices), so I'm not seeing the great advantage in forcing everyone to NTFS if someone, say Maxtor, wanted to write special FS drivers to take advantage of known physical characteristics of their disks. (And really, to Joe Nobody, a file system is about as abstract as a video driver, or any other driver under their OS. As long as it's 1) reliable and 2) not visibly different from NTFS/FAT32, he won't care.)
Yeah but two features of Windows XP easily set it head and shoulders ABOVE Windows 2000--
1) Rollback Drivers (yay!)
2) System Restore Points
Install an evil BSOD driver? Roll it back, easy.
Do something that makes the system unstable or for whatever reason, can't be undone? Go back to your last system restore point (they're done nightly, by default, and I believe it basically does a diff against the PREVIOUS system restore point, so it doesn't consume gigs of drive space doing it).
Plus XP has a better version of Defrag (and hell, even NOTEPAD is superior under XP). You can disable the skinned GUI to an extent as well, avoiding some of the complications it brings to the table...
Jesus, normally I'm a big fan of Microsoft's relations with developers (being able to download the PlatformSDK for free for example, is nice), but this is the biggest ripoff in the history of big ripoffs. $1000 for something they probably send ONE CD-ROM out for? What a joke! The weird thing is, I *think* the regular DDK has enough information to build a file system driver with (I've seen some open source/GPL'd file system drivers that were hacked together on the net, usually on a Google search).. too bad really, I'd been toying with the idea of writing a file system, but never got the time to investigate it beyond said previous Google hits. Damn MS sucks.
I guess the lesson here is not to use reserved words in your C code if you might compile it under C++, hm? Older code should stick out like a sore thumb as well-- the C++ compiler will knock out the specific line and column position that the error was seen at, making it simple work to rename variables that have improper names, or remove improper comments (as another example in this thread showed).
That's pretty damn vague-- what, precisely, is your application? Depending upon what you're doing, Borland's compiler could be faster/better than the alternatives (VC++ or GCC).
I dunno, Undiscovered Country dealt with some key issues and resolved some of the things dealt with in TNG at the time (for example, how Worf became a member of the 1701-D's crew). Sure, they mentioned that peace had been made with Klingons for the most part, but The Undiscovered Country cleared the issue right up. =)
Regarding 'favorite' Trek flics, mine would have to be II, III, IV, VI, Generations, and First Contact. The duds being I and V, generally speaking though, the evened numbered ones tend to be better.;)
You mean "the one with the whales"? (This is a joke-- girls I've talked to, the non-geek type girls anyways, can't rattle off the titles of Trek flics as quickly (if at all) as us geeks. One girl I knew, when asked about her feelings on Trek, off-handedly stated she liked "the one with the whales". That's stuck in my head for ages.)
As for movies making it to IV/4, you're right, most IV/4 movies do suck (and Trek IV is pretty decent, far better than that steaming pile of shit Shatner had his mittens in with Star Trek V!).. I'm reminded of seeing Superman IV in theatres and wishing I'd been dead. I didn't have the heart to tell my dad that though, I believe it was the first movie we'd ever seen together.;)
Somehow, regarding this Indiana Jones flic, I doubt they could make a nasty IV. The franchise really doesn't have a situation where it could bomb/suck, there's just too many good stories that can be told (contrast this to the Aliens/Alien franchise, or the Superman franchise (though there are plenty of Superman stories worth telling, the comics prove it, it's just that the studios lost their mind after Superman II))... Anyways, I hope they make it and bring back Ford for the role.
Easy-- this is where proxies come in, and proxies that talk to other proxies across the world (ie: proxies that intentionally look for and connect to other proxies, essentially sharing information across a larger umbrella). I think you're referring to the issue of TTL in query packets, and a proxy can solve that problem as well (especially, as my other post in this same thread indicated, the proxy and protocol can be extended to immediatly poll clients upon connection for what files they're sharing (and thus, never pass queries on to clients directly)).
Yes there are chances to optimize the protocol, but it's all fairly basic-- Kazaa's technology isn't that far removed from Gnutella. Supernodes (which is basically what I described above, a 'proxy/cache') are the next logical step to the Gnutella spec.
It has historical value but it no longer has any value as a file sharing protocol.
You're either an idiot, a karma whore, or both. Go ahead, download Bearshare (or any Gnutella based client) and look at the number of query responses you get to common queries-- oh look, most of them are RIGHT. Sure, you get some dead hits, but most of the time this is someone who's behind a firewall that doesn't have their client setup to work behind said firewall (or can't, because of a non-static IP address).
Saying it's "historical" is just flamebait though, but I guess I answered the call like an idiot. As the original poster said, it's all FUD-mongering. As your post is.
Plus the author ignores (mostly due to the fact that they didn't exist back when it was written, this IS an old article) the innovations made with Gnutella (and other, newer competing technologies). Specifically, there are now 'search proxies' that exist on Gnutella that cache and return common queries, thus not saturating the network with redundant queries. For a modem user, this makes the network usable if they limit their connections to proxy servers, because the number of searches hitting their client directly shrinks as common queries are sifted through.
Not to mention there's still room for improvement to the protocol itself-- there's no reason a proxy couldn't cache a list of all files shared by a connected client, then answer queries directly, NEVER sending a query directly to a client. (Ultimately, as people run proxies like this more and more, you'd end up having proxies talking directly to eachother.) The ultimate Gnutella proxy would cache commonly requested files and make them available over a bigger pipe.
No money in it, but for the Gnutella enthusiast, I could see them running this kind of thing from work off of a QA box, for example, or from their support desk at an ISP. =)
The thing about the current design of PCs and PC components (specifically, ATX and the size of attached components) is that it makes for an extremely modular system. Once you downsize the case, you lose a lot of space to do modular things in, and suddenly you find yourself telling yourself to "be careful what you wish for".
Shrug, the problem isn't with their video encoding method, the problem is with the numerous audio tracks packed along-- had they left only the bare minimum in audio tracks (and subsequently offered a seperate DTS release) the whole damn thing would have likely fit. Hell, here's what I got from DVD Empire for an audio track listing--
Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 [CC]
ENGLISH: DTS 5.1 [CC]
FRENCH: Dolby Digital 5.1
So, they included the DTS version of the audio and the FRENCH version of the DD 5.1 audio.. both of which could have easily been dropped in favor of 1) a seperate DTS release (other DVDs do this, why not this one?) and 2) a seperate French release for Canadians that might be buying it.
I haven't done the math, but I'm willing to guess that with those dropped, the other discs content might have fitted (that and a less liberal use of bitrate). Dual sided would have made more sense, I agree, but when you can fit 4 hours of high quality video on a single-sided dual layer DVD, it makes no sense to span sides OR discs...
Also, one man's quite good is another's unacceptably poor - just look at all the posts in this (or any other/. DVD discussion) thread where people are happy with either Off-Air VHS or DiVX;-) encodings.
Agreed on this point entirely-- I think the FAQ author is a good judge of MPEG2 compression quality though, but as you said, this is an objective issue with some people.
Myself, I'm not pleased with DiVX;-) or Off-air VHS recording quality-- in the former case, the image simply loses too much quality and the frame size is too small (usually).. (although there's a question in the DVD-FAQ about MPEG4 and how it affects DVD video-- he notes that it's intended for streaming video (as well as some other uses), but that at the bitrates MPEG2 uses MPEG4 can perform better).. as for VHS, blech... I've pretty much sworn off recording TV, and haven't bought a movie on VHS since I bought my first DVD player (two years ago). If there's something on TV worth re-watching or showing to someone else, I'll download it off of Gnutella and burn it to an (S)VCD. (Not as good quality as NTSC broadcast, but sharper IMHO than VHS). Just some afterthoughts on the subject. =)
Shrug, the guy only wrote the DVD-FAQ, and the books been copyrighted for 2001. His FAQ is updated regularly, and has in fact been updated in the past week or so. I direct you to these FAQ entries, and you can decide from there if I'm right or wrong (I really could care less either way, I'm happy ST:TNG is making it out on DVD, be it 3 episodes per disc, 4, or 5)--
Yes, there are situations where this is false, after all, it IS VARIABLE BIT RATE encoding; but generally speaking, four hours of high quality video is possible on a single side dual layer DVD. If The X-Files has poor quality, I'd lay this at the feet of poor encoding practices (or simply someone lazy at Fox). As you said, it's definately not something that's easy (encoding MPEG2 properly) but it has been done. Plus, and I've noticed this on a number of DVD titles (movies and TV shows), for whatever reason, MPEG2 ruins dark sequences (which I imagine The X-Files has a lot of-- I stopped watching after the sixth season or so). This might be the nature of the beast, or it might be lazy encoders. =) I'm not going to pretend to know.
I HOPE when they do this movie that they AVOID what was done with Pearl Harbor-- splitting the movie across two discs. That was inexcusable in my mind, and could have been avoided (there's what, three audio tracks for Pearl Harbor? DROP one or two of them, and include only the Dolby Digital 5.1 and the Dolby Stereo 2.0 (release a seperate DTS DVD, if need be)). Blech, icky.
Why the heck would they want to region-protect STTNG DVDs anyway? The industry claims that region coding is there so that they can control the release of movies, etc. -- but STTNG is no movie. If they use region coding on something like this, the MPAA's argument for having region coding gets flushed down the drain. It becomes quite apparent (as if it wasn't already) that region coding is there for more than what they claim it is.
One of the reasons *I* always heard given, along with the MPAA reasons, were that it would allow studios to implement price controls for different regions of the world (obviously, regions with low income and so forth will be priced differently than the USA, where people (except for right now, anyways) make oodles of cash). Sucks, but there's no legal reason I can think of for them to NOT do this. Of course, I don't see that there's a legal reason for people NOT to hax0r their DVD player to play all regions/etc. Ditto for firmware hacks and so forth..
Uh, the BOOK (which is what I was referencing) says "four hours of high quality video". He was, in that context, discussing high-quality DVD-quality video (the 720x480 variety at a good bitrate). Four hours, with my friend Math, is very reasonable and still uses a decent bitrate (only if you're using CBR, not VBR, would you only be able to fit 107 minutes of content at 10.08 Mbps). VBR takes into account the large amount of static content that can sometimes appear in video, and reduces the bitrate to conserve space.
A dual layer DVD can (according to DVD Demystified) hold over 4 hours of high quality video-- each episode was 45 minutes (commercial free). 240 minutes / 45 minutes = 5.333. They could have fit 5 episodes per disc, with room to spare for the teaser commercials as a per-disc extra. And actually, the author says "over 4 hours" but not by how much.. if it was 4.5 hours, they could have fit 6 episodes possibly per disc. =)
The only problem is that dual layer discs have that 'layer transition' effect on certain older or low-cost DVD players (the images freezes for a split second while it switches layers).
This is where you need one of Pioneer's 301 DVD changers, so you can plop in all of the discs and just watch them as the mood strikes (the only inconvenience might be trying to find a specific episode amidst all of the discs). Plus, if this is like their 301 CD changers, you can link them together for a total of 602 DVD's. I agree though, normally when I buy TV shows on DVD, I usually might watch one or two episodes + all the extras, but I figured I'd provide the other option above for those who want to make their investment worthwhile. =)
(Oh and BTW, the MSRP on that 301 changer is $1100 right now, but I'm sure you can a) find it cheaper on StreetPrices.com or b) wait for them to realize that the technology is the same as they used in their 301 CD changer, and lower the price accordingly.)
Shrug, I actually preferred DS9 episodes (mid to end series run, the first one or two seasons weren't that great) to Voyager episodes and was sad to see it go. Voyager only had a handful of episodes I *truely* loved, and once the met the Borg it went uphill from there. =)
I always thought it was odd, in Borland Pascal 7, when the license stated you could not use the product in any work involving compiling an operating system.. I considered this strange given that Borland has never (AFAIK) been involved with operating systems directly. They don't have that clause now I believe, however.
See, and that's the way I feel about it too, but go play some CTF or DM today, and be a rail-whore-- watch the idiots almost instantly start ragging on you about 'camping' (even though you've only been still for maybe half a minute, if that), then make it their point in life to take their frustration with the rail-gun out on you.
I haven't really played UT all that much, but if what some other posters have said (in reply to my original post) it already sounds like a better environment for the wannabe sniper. =)
Nothing pleases me more than the idiots who complain, at length, when someone uses a rail gun in Quake III Arena for what it's SUPPOSED to be used for-- sniping. Heaven forbid anyone should sit in one place, laying waste to their enemies (be it in CTF, or DM).
NT4 workstation and Win2k Pro both support 2 processors. Server (IIRC) supports up to 4, Advanced Server supports up to 8, and Datacenter supports up to 32. No fuss, no muss. Out-of-the-box SMP support.
You're telling me things I already know. =)
Also, it is not just a matter of enabling dual-processor configurations; it is a matter of modifying single-processor-specific sections of the kernel, as well as (again) adding locking in the appropriate places.
Which Microsoft has already done, hence the different drivers in Device Manager depending on if you're running a dual CPU system or a single CPU system (or a quad, eight-way and so forth).
I can think of no reason that Microsoft would change their plan now instead of before the release date, and I find the idea of Microsoft releasing a service pack to add functionality that was taken out for the release of XP Home unlikely. if you want dual-processor support, buy Pro. (They get more money that way, you see.)
You can't think of one because I already GAVE YOU one. WXP (and really, 2000/NT) were released prior to Intel releasing CPU's with SMT capabilities. As SMT CPU's come into the consumer level (likely in the next year or so) people will wonder why their system isn't benefitting from these new features-- Microsoft will likely bump the Home Edition to dual processors, the Pro version to 4 processors and so on and so forth through Server and Advanced Server to Datacenter Server. WXP Home still won't have the ability to connect to an NT domain or Active Directory, which is part of the reason businesses avoid WXP Home Edition.
Scheduling prioritites aside, if a long operation (say, blocking I/O) happens in the thread that has the message pump, the UI will become unresponsive.
Which is as good a reason as any to design future and current applications as multi-threaded; breaking it up so applications can remain responsive even during blocking-events. (By blocking, one instantly thinks of Winsock API calls, though this could easily apply to anything using Semaphores or Critical Sections.)
The kernel has to ensure it does not break itself (hence, the locking), which creates overhead, regardless if two user threads are being silly or not.
I might be wrong, but Windows XP (and 2000/NT) have a pluggable kernel model-- ie: different USER32.DLL's and so forth are loaded depending on if you're running an SMP (and likely SMT) or single processor environment. I assume Microsoft takes care to avoid using bus-locking instructions in the single-processor environment simply due to the lack of any need.
Do you think that CPU power is the major bottleneck for the average XP user?
I think the lack of an ability to execute multiple threads is a bottle-neck, yes-- CPU power isn't the issue, for a word processor a 200 MHz processor is really just about all you need (or ideally, to make everything respond quickly, a 450 MHz CPU should suffice). However, the issue I'm discussing (and have been trying to explain) is RESPONSIVENESS-- an SMT enabled processor running at 200 MHz would be more responsive than a 450 MHz processor that didn't have SMT (with properly multi-threaded applications). The end user cares about one thing-- how fast the computer responds to their commands. When the UI doesn't refresh (or worse, is overwritten by other UI elements and doesn't refresh it's own), the user believes (rightly) that the application isn't responding. (Hell, even Task Manager uses this as a method of telling if an app is hung-- when an app isn't responding to messages, it's considered dead to the OS.)
In any case, as standard desktop applications (such as word processing or e-mail) do not contain much, if any, parallel code, and while having an extra processor to redraw all those icons in the system tray sounds nifty, it gives little increase to performance. Again, how much CPU usage do you think writing a letter (at 20 WPM) produces?
Microsoft Word is multi-threaded, actually. When you print, you can immediatly go back to working on your document, instead of waiting for it to finish the print job (by finish, I mean the act of spooling it into the print queue-- not the entire act of printing through the print driver). In a small 1 or 2 page document, you'll never notice or appreciate this, but when you're printing a 50-100 page document, you will. Word also uses multiple threads to spell-check and grammar check as you go. There are also certain graphics applications (NOT Adobe Photoshop-- Adobe has lackluster support for multiple threads) which take advantage of threading, applying filters to one document while allowing you to continue to work on other open documents. I'm not saying end users need 5 GHz processors, I'm saying they need a cheap way to have dual processor systems (and perhaps as SMT is rolled out, Intel will manage to allow more threads to execute at the same time (think 4, then 8, etc) all on one CPU) to make the system both more responsive and hence, more user friendly. And back to my original point, we need more software writers to realize the advantages of multiple threads and take advantage of it NOW, so when these processors arive we aren't waiting for software to be written to take advantage of them.
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It does make you scratch your head about the whole issue though-- why would MSFT work so hard at keeping others from developing alternate file systems? FS drivers are akin to video drivers for a video card (except for use with storage devices), so I'm not seeing the great advantage in forcing everyone to NTFS if someone, say Maxtor, wanted to write special FS drivers to take advantage of known physical characteristics of their disks. (And really, to Joe Nobody, a file system is about as abstract as a video driver, or any other driver under their OS. As long as it's 1) reliable and 2) not visibly different from NTFS/FAT32, he won't care.)
Very strange.
Yeah but two features of Windows XP easily set it head and shoulders ABOVE Windows 2000--
1) Rollback Drivers (yay!)
2) System Restore Points
Install an evil BSOD driver? Roll it back, easy.
Do something that makes the system unstable or for whatever reason, can't be undone? Go back to your last system restore point (they're done nightly, by default, and I believe it basically does a diff against the PREVIOUS system restore point, so it doesn't consume gigs of drive space doing it).
Plus XP has a better version of Defrag (and hell, even NOTEPAD is superior under XP). You can disable the skinned GUI to an extent as well, avoiding some of the complications it brings to the table...
Jesus, normally I'm a big fan of Microsoft's relations with developers (being able to download the PlatformSDK for free for example, is nice), but this is the biggest ripoff in the history of big ripoffs. $1000 for something they probably send ONE CD-ROM out for? What a joke! The weird thing is, I *think* the regular DDK has enough information to build a file system driver with (I've seen some open source/GPL'd file system drivers that were hacked together on the net, usually on a Google search).. too bad really, I'd been toying with the idea of writing a file system, but never got the time to investigate it beyond said previous Google hits. Damn MS sucks.
I guess the lesson here is not to use reserved words in your C code if you might compile it under C++, hm? Older code should stick out like a sore thumb as well-- the C++ compiler will knock out the specific line and column position that the error was seen at, making it simple work to rename variables that have improper names, or remove improper comments (as another example in this thread showed).
That's pretty damn vague-- what, precisely, is your application? Depending upon what you're doing, Borland's compiler could be faster/better than the alternatives (VC++ or GCC).
I dunno, Undiscovered Country dealt with some key issues and resolved some of the things dealt with in TNG at the time (for example, how Worf became a member of the 1701-D's crew). Sure, they mentioned that peace had been made with Klingons for the most part, but The Undiscovered Country cleared the issue right up. =)
;)
Regarding 'favorite' Trek flics, mine would have to be II, III, IV, VI, Generations, and First Contact. The duds being I and V, generally speaking though, the evened numbered ones tend to be better.
You mean "the one with the whales"? (This is a joke-- girls I've talked to, the non-geek type girls anyways, can't rattle off the titles of Trek flics as quickly (if at all) as us geeks. One girl I knew, when asked about her feelings on Trek, off-handedly stated she liked "the one with the whales". That's stuck in my head for ages.)
;)
As for movies making it to IV/4, you're right, most IV/4 movies do suck (and Trek IV is pretty decent, far better than that steaming pile of shit Shatner had his mittens in with Star Trek V!).. I'm reminded of seeing Superman IV in theatres and wishing I'd been dead. I didn't have the heart to tell my dad that though, I believe it was the first movie we'd ever seen together.
Somehow, regarding this Indiana Jones flic, I doubt they could make a nasty IV. The franchise really doesn't have a situation where it could bomb/suck, there's just too many good stories that can be told (contrast this to the Aliens/Alien franchise, or the Superman franchise (though there are plenty of Superman stories worth telling, the comics prove it, it's just that the studios lost their mind after Superman II))... Anyways, I hope they make it and bring back Ford for the role.
Easy-- this is where proxies come in, and proxies that talk to other proxies across the world (ie: proxies that intentionally look for and connect to other proxies, essentially sharing information across a larger umbrella). I think you're referring to the issue of TTL in query packets, and a proxy can solve that problem as well (especially, as my other post in this same thread indicated, the proxy and protocol can be extended to immediatly poll clients upon connection for what files they're sharing (and thus, never pass queries on to clients directly)).
Yes there are chances to optimize the protocol, but it's all fairly basic-- Kazaa's technology isn't that far removed from Gnutella. Supernodes (which is basically what I described above, a 'proxy/cache') are the next logical step to the Gnutella spec.
You're either an idiot, a karma whore, or both. Go ahead, download Bearshare (or any Gnutella based client) and look at the number of query responses you get to common queries-- oh look, most of them are RIGHT. Sure, you get some dead hits, but most of the time this is someone who's behind a firewall that doesn't have their client setup to work behind said firewall (or can't, because of a non-static IP address).
Saying it's "historical" is just flamebait though, but I guess I answered the call like an idiot. As the original poster said, it's all FUD-mongering. As your post is.
Plus the author ignores (mostly due to the fact that they didn't exist back when it was written, this IS an old article) the innovations made with Gnutella (and other, newer competing technologies). Specifically, there are now 'search proxies' that exist on Gnutella that cache and return common queries, thus not saturating the network with redundant queries. For a modem user, this makes the network usable if they limit their connections to proxy servers, because the number of searches hitting their client directly shrinks as common queries are sifted through.
Not to mention there's still room for improvement to the protocol itself-- there's no reason a proxy couldn't cache a list of all files shared by a connected client, then answer queries directly, NEVER sending a query directly to a client. (Ultimately, as people run proxies like this more and more, you'd end up having proxies talking directly to eachother.) The ultimate Gnutella proxy would cache commonly requested files and make them available over a bigger pipe.
No money in it, but for the Gnutella enthusiast, I could see them running this kind of thing from work off of a QA box, for example, or from their support desk at an ISP. =)
The thing about the current design of PCs and PC components (specifically, ATX and the size of attached components) is that it makes for an extremely modular system. Once you downsize the case, you lose a lot of space to do modular things in, and suddenly you find yourself telling yourself to "be careful what you wish for".
Shrug, the problem isn't with their video encoding method, the problem is with the numerous audio tracks packed along-- had they left only the bare minimum in audio tracks (and subsequently offered a seperate DTS release) the whole damn thing would have likely fit. Hell, here's what I got from DVD Empire for an audio track listing--
Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 [CC]
ENGLISH: DTS 5.1 [CC]
FRENCH: Dolby Digital 5.1
So, they included the DTS version of the audio and the FRENCH version of the DD 5.1 audio.. both of which could have easily been dropped in favor of 1) a seperate DTS release (other DVDs do this, why not this one?) and 2) a seperate French release for Canadians that might be buying it.
I haven't done the math, but I'm willing to guess that with those dropped, the other discs content might have fitted (that and a less liberal use of bitrate). Dual sided would have made more sense, I agree, but when you can fit 4 hours of high quality video on a single-sided dual layer DVD, it makes no sense to span sides OR discs...
Agreed on this point entirely-- I think the FAQ author is a good judge of MPEG2 compression quality though, but as you said, this is an objective issue with some people.
Myself, I'm not pleased with DiVX;-) or Off-air VHS recording quality-- in the former case, the image simply loses too much quality and the frame size is too small (usually).. (although there's a question in the DVD-FAQ about MPEG4 and how it affects DVD video-- he notes that it's intended for streaming video (as well as some other uses), but that at the bitrates MPEG2 uses MPEG4 can perform better).. as for VHS, blech... I've pretty much sworn off recording TV, and haven't bought a movie on VHS since I bought my first DVD player (two years ago). If there's something on TV worth re-watching or showing to someone else, I'll download it off of Gnutella and burn it to an (S)VCD. (Not as good quality as NTSC broadcast, but sharper IMHO than VHS). Just some afterthoughts on the subject. =)
Shrug, the guy only wrote the DVD-FAQ, and the books been copyrighted for 2001. His FAQ is updated regularly, and has in fact been updated in the past week or so. I direct you to these FAQ entries, and you can decide from there if I'm right or wrong (I really could care less either way, I'm happy ST:TNG is making it out on DVD, be it 3 episodes per disc, 4, or 5)--
http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.21 - [1.21] Why do some discs require side flipping? Can't DVDs hold four hours per side?
You might also find this question educational--
http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.3 - [3.3] What are the sizes and capacities of DVD?
Yes, there are situations where this is false, after all, it IS VARIABLE BIT RATE encoding; but generally speaking, four hours of high quality video is possible on a single side dual layer DVD. If The X-Files has poor quality, I'd lay this at the feet of poor encoding practices (or simply someone lazy at Fox). As you said, it's definately not something that's easy (encoding MPEG2 properly) but it has been done. Plus, and I've noticed this on a number of DVD titles (movies and TV shows), for whatever reason, MPEG2 ruins dark sequences (which I imagine The X-Files has a lot of-- I stopped watching after the sixth season or so). This might be the nature of the beast, or it might be lazy encoders. =) I'm not going to pretend to know.
I HOPE when they do this movie that they AVOID what was done with Pearl Harbor-- splitting the movie across two discs. That was inexcusable in my mind, and could have been avoided (there's what, three audio tracks for Pearl Harbor? DROP one or two of them, and include only the Dolby Digital 5.1 and the Dolby Stereo 2.0 (release a seperate DTS DVD, if need be)). Blech, icky.
One of the reasons *I* always heard given, along with the MPAA reasons, were that it would allow studios to implement price controls for different regions of the world (obviously, regions with low income and so forth will be priced differently than the USA, where people (except for right now, anyways) make oodles of cash). Sucks, but there's no legal reason I can think of for them to NOT do this. Of course, I don't see that there's a legal reason for people NOT to hax0r their DVD player to play all regions/etc. Ditto for firmware hacks and so forth..
Uh, the BOOK (which is what I was referencing) says "four hours of high quality video". He was, in that context, discussing high-quality DVD-quality video (the 720x480 variety at a good bitrate). Four hours, with my friend Math, is very reasonable and still uses a decent bitrate (only if you're using CBR, not VBR, would you only be able to fit 107 minutes of content at 10.08 Mbps). VBR takes into account the large amount of static content that can sometimes appear in video, and reduces the bitrate to conserve space.
The only problem is that dual layer discs have that 'layer transition' effect on certain older or low-cost DVD players (the images freezes for a split second while it switches layers).
(Oh and BTW, the MSRP on that 301 changer is $1100 right now, but I'm sure you can a) find it cheaper on StreetPrices.com or b) wait for them to realize that the technology is the same as they used in their 301 CD changer, and lower the price accordingly.)
Shrug, I actually preferred DS9 episodes (mid to end series run, the first one or two seasons weren't that great) to Voyager episodes and was sad to see it go. Voyager only had a handful of episodes I *truely* loved, and once the met the Borg it went uphill from there. =)
I always thought it was odd, in Borland Pascal 7, when the license stated you could not use the product in any work involving compiling an operating system.. I considered this strange given that Borland has never (AFAIK) been involved with operating systems directly. They don't have that clause now I believe, however.
See, and that's the way I feel about it too, but go play some CTF or DM today, and be a rail-whore-- watch the idiots almost instantly start ragging on you about 'camping' (even though you've only been still for maybe half a minute, if that), then make it their point in life to take their frustration with the rail-gun out on you.
I haven't really played UT all that much, but if what some other posters have said (in reply to my original post) it already sounds like a better environment for the wannabe sniper. =)
Nothing pleases me more than the idiots who complain, at length, when someone uses a rail gun in Quake III Arena for what it's SUPPOSED to be used for-- sniping. Heaven forbid anyone should sit in one place, laying waste to their enemies (be it in CTF, or DM).
You're telling me things I already know. =)
Which Microsoft has already done, hence the different drivers in Device Manager depending on if you're running a dual CPU system or a single CPU system (or a quad, eight-way and so forth).
You can't think of one because I already GAVE YOU one. WXP (and really, 2000/NT) were released prior to Intel releasing CPU's with SMT capabilities. As SMT CPU's come into the consumer level (likely in the next year or so) people will wonder why their system isn't benefitting from these new features-- Microsoft will likely bump the Home Edition to dual processors, the Pro version to 4 processors and so on and so forth through Server and Advanced Server to Datacenter Server. WXP Home still won't have the ability to connect to an NT domain or Active Directory, which is part of the reason businesses avoid WXP Home Edition.
Which is as good a reason as any to design future and current applications as multi-threaded; breaking it up so applications can remain responsive even during blocking-events. (By blocking, one instantly thinks of Winsock API calls, though this could easily apply to anything using Semaphores or Critical Sections.)
I might be wrong, but Windows XP (and 2000/NT) have a pluggable kernel model-- ie: different USER32.DLL's and so forth are loaded depending on if you're running an SMP (and likely SMT) or single processor environment. I assume Microsoft takes care to avoid using bus-locking instructions in the single-processor environment simply due to the lack of any need.
I think the lack of an ability to execute multiple threads is a bottle-neck, yes-- CPU power isn't the issue, for a word processor a 200 MHz processor is really just about all you need (or ideally, to make everything respond quickly, a 450 MHz CPU should suffice). However, the issue I'm discussing (and have been trying to explain) is RESPONSIVENESS-- an SMT enabled processor running at 200 MHz would be more responsive than a 450 MHz processor that didn't have SMT (with properly multi-threaded applications). The end user cares about one thing-- how fast the computer responds to their commands. When the UI doesn't refresh (or worse, is overwritten by other UI elements and doesn't refresh it's own), the user believes (rightly) that the application isn't responding. (Hell, even Task Manager uses this as a method of telling if an app is hung-- when an app isn't responding to messages, it's considered dead to the OS.)
Microsoft Word is multi-threaded, actually. When you print, you can immediatly go back to working on your document, instead of waiting for it to finish the print job (by finish, I mean the act of spooling it into the print queue-- not the entire act of printing through the print driver). In a small 1 or 2 page document, you'll never notice or appreciate this, but when you're printing a 50-100 page document, you will. Word also uses multiple threads to spell-check and grammar check as you go. There are also certain graphics applications (NOT Adobe Photoshop-- Adobe has lackluster support for multiple threads) which take advantage of threading, applying filters to one document while allowing you to continue to work on other open documents. I'm not saying end users need 5 GHz processors, I'm saying they need a cheap way to have dual processor systems (and perhaps as SMT is rolled out, Intel will manage to allow more threads to execute at the same time (think 4, then 8, etc) all on one CPU) to make the system both more responsive and hence, more user friendly. And back to my original point, we need more software writers to realize the advantages of multiple threads and take advantage of it NOW, so when these processors arive we aren't waiting for software to be written to take advantage of them.