Re:Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.
on
Wipout Essay Results
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· Score: 2, Insightful
and what about the person who contacts AIDS even though a condom was worn. What then sir? Enlighten us
Anyone who has wears a condom in hopes that he will be protected from STD exposure damn well should know that it is not 100% effective. So unless he is truly ignorant of the facts, he is willfully putting his life at risk, and should not whine "but I wore a condom!" if the roulette wheel lands on double-zero.
It is not an inalienable human right to have sex with another person free from any and all consequences.
This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. If the patent office doesn't get egg on its face over this one... oh by the way, first post (I think)
Their IEradicator works with W95 through WME, and also W2KSR1. Apparently they are working on versions for W2KSR2 and WXP. If they succeed, they would definitely be proving Microsoft wrong! I wonder if the judge knows about these guys?
Say what? How do you explain Japan's situation, which is unarguably a first world country with plenty of food to eat -- yet is facing an aging of its population and more and more people choosing to go childless?
Rather simply, actually: Japan has two things that developing/hurting countries don't: food and women's rights.
The advancement of women's education, rights, and the availability of birth control reduces the birth rate. (Basically, once women realize that they don't have to have kids, or at least have as many, they often don't.)
Developing countries lack the food to support more children, but also the social advancement needed to control childbirth. And I think it's obvious that the social improvements necessarily come after the food. "I tell you what, I'll give you this rice if you learn how to read."
"There is no rationality behind the government's distinction between unsolicited advertisements and other unsolicited faxes. The recipient still must bear the cost, and the fax can still interfere with the recipient's use of his or her facsimile machine for business purposes," U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh wrote...
Now this is very interesting, actually. What it suggests is that the current law is worded in such a manner that it does not ban all unsolicited faxes, only those unsolicited faxes that contain advertisements.
So in other words, Congress could pass a law banning all unsolicited faxes of any kind. But it didn't do that. Instead, it differentiated between faxes based on content. That is, in this judge's opinion, unconstitutional.
When put that way, it sounds reasonable. I'm all for the judicial branch making sure that our laws are properly and constitutionally written.
This practice does not eliminate the controversy of abortion, only reduces it. Don't forget that a large number of embryos were purposefully destroyed. In the view of many (but not all) pro-life advocates, life begins at fertilization, not implantation---so destroying embryos purposefully is no less wrong.
Check out this press release:
http://www.vistabroadband.com/news2.htm
They are using Nokia's 2.4GHz wireless technology, which uses a mesh topology to get over line-of-sight and distance limitations...
Great Britain: pissed = inebriated.
United States: pissed = angry.
Great Britain: football
United States: soccer
So a domain name that were to use the word "pissed" could certainly cause confusion even within the English-speaking world.
Same thing goes with "sucks". Now of course Great Britain might fall in line on that particular word, but what about the rest of the English-speaking world?
I'd say the vast, vast majority of people (90 percent or more) have no idea what MAPS is, how it works, or that it does work. So the option to "fight back" really isn't available for most, because most people don't know that there is an enemy.
Unfortunately the end user will often simply not be able to access a particular web site, and when that happens simply assume that it's the fault of the web site.
I'm not sure that it is possible or practical to educate the masses about this stuff. That's where I think that a good Internet watchdog organization or activist group can do a real service.
Re:Yeah, but can I drop it on the floor?
on
Apple releases iPod
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· Score: 1
For now, hard-drive based players are bulky for a reason -- tiny laptop drives are FRAGILE and need to be protected!
Umm, no. The reason hard-drive-based players are bulky is that the hard drives and the accompanying electronics are bulky. Period. The players I have seen (including the PJBox, which I own) have no special shock protection whatsoever. If you drop one of these things on the floor, that hard drive is going to suffer.
But all is not grim. Small hard drives are built for mobile use, and consequently are more rugged (and more expensive). The drive head control systems are tuned to favor protecting the platters. That's not to say that they can take the same abuse that a solid-state system could; they can't. But they do take more abuse than a desktop hard drive, particularly when the drive is not spinning and the heads are parked.
In addition, hard-drive-based players do not keep the drive spinning continuously, but rather buffer several minutes of music in memory, keeping the drive off in between. This not only reduces the chance of a head crash but greatly increases the battery life of the unit as well.
So with just a bit more care than your average solid-state player, you can carry enough tunes to keep a cross-country road trip from getting to monotonous. I'd say that's a good deal.
The futuristic city was San Francisco, not New York. The Transamerica building was in full view, and they made mention of the nearby city of Sausalito.
I don't think that white noise would be the only sound that would be easy to localize. Imagine an alarm that played the Mac Davis classic "Having My Baby". By sheer survival instinct alone, I think that you'd be able to pinpoint that sound immediately---but of course with the express purpose of running away from it...
I'm sure I'll lose karma for being so nitpicky, but... if there's more noise than signal, the signal-to-noise ratio will be between 0 and 1. Not negative.
Signal to noise ratios are normally expressed in decibels, which are logarithmic scale. Whenever there is more noise than signal, the SNR will be negative. Indeed, on the non-logarithmic scale it will be between 0 and 1, but nobody ever talks about SNR in that way.
The best reason for Super CD (or DVD or whatever) is higher bit depth, NOT higher sampling rate; going from 16/44.1 (CD quality) to 24/44.1 takes just 50% more space, for nontrivially better quality, while going from 16/44.1 to 16/88.2 brings minimal benefit at a 100% space penalty.
Actually, the SACD is only 2.82Mbps per channel, which is exactly four times the rate of a normal CD. Plus, I think it uses a lossless compression method to achieve about a 2:1 compression rate, brining it down to 1.41Mbps. That's not much of a space penalty.
And frankly, since it's on a DVD-capacity disc, who cares if it takes a bit more space? In fact, an SACD can store a 2-channel AND a 6-channel version of the same 74-minute session that is stored on it's 16bit/44.1kHz CD layer.
The SACD has a sampling rate of 2.82 MHz. This means that theoretically you could accurately (AD/DA converters and such aside) reproduce the frequencies up to 1.41 MHz (1410000 Hz).
Sorry, SACD is a lot more complex than a simple application of Nyquist can handle. The key to SACD's high fidelity is all in the quantization theory.
Yes, an SACD has a sample rate of 2.82MHz, but that's with one bit per sample (per channel). Yep, that's right---a single bit per sample. In fact, the signal-to-noise ratio on a SACD is very likely negative--there is more noise than signal.
Now before you blow your top with how absurd that sounds, let's clarify one thing: the SACD format jumps through serious technical hoops to insure that the vast majority of that noise is in the completely inaudible range. And, the vast majority of the signal is, of course, within the audible range. The technique is, not surprisingly, called "noise shaping".
So once you limit your measurements to, say, 0-20kHz, you're back to where you would hope: the astronomical dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio of a high-fidelity audio format. (In fact, SACD is designed to provide ultra-low noise and 120dB of dynamic range all the way out to 100kHz, from what I understand.)
For those of you who remember, or perhaps own, CD players with "1-bit D/A"s, you're using a similar version of this technology. The difference is that the SACD recording process can decide at the mastering stage how to get down to 1 bit per sample, and that's a much better place to make that decision.
OK, here's a potential application for handling PCI over CStation. Imagine a DVD setup that uses a the main CPU in a room separate from the viewing area---in order to reduce the noise level. The CStation technology could connect this unit to a small box containing a decoder card and a remote control receiver.
Now that might seem a little inconvenient, having to go to a different room to pop in the DVD, but maybe it's just a sound-dampened closet or something similar.
Besides, maybe in a couple of years I'll have centralized mass storage for all your multimedia: music, movies, etc. After all, we have that now for MP3s.
Slashdot Mirror
and what about the person who contacts AIDS even though a condom was worn. What then sir? Enlighten us
Anyone who has wears a condom in hopes that he will be protected from STD exposure damn well should know that it is not 100% effective. So unless he is truly ignorant of the facts, he is willfully putting his life at risk, and should not whine "but I wore a condom!" if the roulette wheel lands on double-zero.
It is not an inalienable human right to have sex with another person free from any and all consequences.
This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. If the patent office doesn't get egg on its face over this one... oh by the way, first post (I think)
Their IEradicator works with W95 through WME, and also W2KSR1. Apparently they are working on versions for W2KSR2 and WXP. If they succeed, they would definitely be proving Microsoft wrong! I wonder if the judge knows about these guys?
Rather simply, actually: Japan has two things that developing/hurting countries don't: food and women's rights.
The advancement of women's education, rights, and the availability of birth control reduces the birth rate. (Basically, once women realize that they don't have to have kids, or at least have as many, they often don't.)
Developing countries lack the food to support more children, but also the social advancement needed to control childbirth. And I think it's obvious that the social improvements necessarily come after the food. "I tell you what, I'll give you this rice if you learn how to read."
"There is no rationality behind the government's distinction between unsolicited advertisements and other unsolicited faxes. The recipient still must bear the cost, and the fax can still interfere with the recipient's use of his or her facsimile machine for business purposes," U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh wrote...
Now this is very interesting, actually. What it suggests is that the current law is worded in such a manner that it does not ban all unsolicited faxes, only those unsolicited faxes that contain advertisements.
So in other words, Congress could pass a law banning all unsolicited faxes of any kind. But it didn't do that. Instead, it differentiated between faxes based on content. That is, in this judge's opinion, unconstitutional.
When put that way, it sounds reasonable. I'm all for the judicial branch making sure that our laws are properly and constitutionally written.
sigh. Let's have that lesson again.
mHz = 'millihertz', 1 cycle every 1000 seconds.
MHz = 'megahertz', 1000000 cycles per second.
mhz = wrong, but at best millihertz.
This practice does not eliminate the controversy of abortion, only reduces it. Don't forget that a large number of embryos were purposefully destroyed. In the view of many (but not all) pro-life advocates, life begins at fertilization, not implantation---so destroying embryos purposefully is no less wrong.
Check out this press release:
http://www.vistabroadband.com/news2.htm
They are using Nokia's 2.4GHz wireless technology, which uses a mesh topology to get over line-of-sight and distance limitations...
Great Britain: pissed = inebriated.
United States: pissed = angry.
Great Britain: football
United States: soccer
So a domain name that were to use the word "pissed" could certainly cause confusion even within the English-speaking world.
Same thing goes with "sucks". Now of course Great Britain might fall in line on that particular word, but what about the rest of the English-speaking world?
I'd say the vast, vast majority of people (90 percent or more) have no idea what MAPS is, how it works, or that it does work. So the option to "fight back" really isn't available for most, because most people don't know that there is an enemy.
Unfortunately the end user will often simply not be able to access a particular web site, and when that happens simply assume that it's the fault of the web site.
I'm not sure that it is possible or practical to educate the masses about this stuff. That's where I think that a good Internet watchdog organization or activist group can do a real service.
Umm, no. The reason hard-drive-based players are bulky is that the hard drives and the accompanying electronics are bulky. Period. The players I have seen (including the PJBox, which I own) have no special shock protection whatsoever. If you drop one of these things on the floor, that hard drive is going to suffer.
But all is not grim. Small hard drives are built for mobile use, and consequently are more rugged (and more expensive). The drive head control systems are tuned to favor protecting the platters. That's not to say that they can take the same abuse that a solid-state system could; they can't. But they do take more abuse than a desktop hard drive, particularly when the drive is not spinning and the heads are parked.
In addition, hard-drive-based players do not keep the drive spinning continuously, but rather buffer several minutes of music in memory, keeping the drive off in between. This not only reduces the chance of a head crash but greatly increases the battery life of the unit as well.
So with just a bit more care than your average solid-state player, you can carry enough tunes to keep a cross-country road trip from getting to monotonous. I'd say that's a good deal.
The futuristic city was San Francisco, not New York. The Transamerica building was in full view, and they made mention of the nearby city of Sausalito.
I don't think that white noise would be the only sound that would be easy to localize. Imagine an alarm that played the Mac Davis classic "Having My Baby". By sheer survival instinct alone, I think that you'd be able to pinpoint that sound immediately---but of course with the express purpose of running away from it...
Subject says it all.
Signal to noise ratios are normally expressed in decibels, which are logarithmic scale. Whenever there is more noise than signal, the SNR will be negative. Indeed, on the non-logarithmic scale it will be between 0 and 1, but nobody ever talks about SNR in that way.
Actually, the SACD is only 2.82Mbps per channel, which is exactly four times the rate of a normal CD. Plus, I think it uses a lossless compression method to achieve about a 2:1 compression rate, brining it down to 1.41Mbps. That's not much of a space penalty.
And frankly, since it's on a DVD-capacity disc, who cares if it takes a bit more space? In fact, an SACD can store a 2-channel AND a 6-channel version of the same 74-minute session that is stored on it's 16bit/44.1kHz CD layer.
Sorry, SACD is a lot more complex than a simple application of Nyquist can handle. The key to SACD's high fidelity is all in the quantization theory.
Yes, an SACD has a sample rate of 2.82MHz, but that's with one bit per sample (per channel). Yep, that's right---a single bit per sample. In fact, the signal-to-noise ratio on a SACD is very likely negative--there is more noise than signal.
Now before you blow your top with how absurd that sounds, let's clarify one thing: the SACD format jumps through serious technical hoops to insure that the vast majority of that noise is in the completely inaudible range. And, the vast majority of the signal is, of course, within the audible range. The technique is, not surprisingly, called "noise shaping".
So once you limit your measurements to, say, 0-20kHz, you're back to where you would hope: the astronomical dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio of a high-fidelity audio format. (In fact, SACD is designed to provide ultra-low noise and 120dB of dynamic range all the way out to 100kHz, from what I understand.)
For those of you who remember, or perhaps own, CD players with "1-bit D/A"s, you're using a similar version of this technology. The difference is that the SACD recording process can decide at the mastering stage how to get down to 1 bit per sample, and that's a much better place to make that decision.
Now that might seem a little inconvenient, having to go to a different room to pop in the DVD, but maybe it's just a sound-dampened closet or something similar.
Besides, maybe in a couple of years I'll have centralized mass storage for all your multimedia: music, movies, etc. After all, we have that now for MP3s.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things!
Oops, no, wait