I notice artifacts on MP3s I've encoded with LAME. Maybe that just means I'm a clueless user:-).
First 128-bit encodings sounded fine, but then I started noticing swishy noises in the high frequencies. For a while I was encoding, listening, and re-encoding at higher bitrates or VBR until it sounded good.
I encoded the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I had to take it to 256-bit encoding before it sounded good.
With Vorbis, I can just fire and forget.
The Xiph folks will say that MP3 is a comparatively old technology, and that Vorbis uses recent advances so it can sound better at the same bitrates.
Obviously, you haven't gotten sick of MP3 artifacts like I have. Back in the day when everyone here was promoting mp3 ("It sounds just like a CD"), I thought it was perfect, too. But now, I can pick out MP3 artifacts pretty easily. MP3s bug me now.
I've never figured out what Vorbis artifacts sound like. To me, Vorbis still sounds perfect. This is why I rip to Vorbis now.
(* IIRC, [patterns] manage the *instantiating* of something *)
No, there are "Structural" and "Behavioral" patterns as well as "Creational". It's only the Creational that focus on instantiation, though pretty well all of them are OO.
Okay, so if I understand right, you're advocating moving control of program or object behaviour into data. That makes sense to me. Our program flow is controlled by data. Our user interface is a mix of templates, functions, and data.
And using data to control behaviour is complementary to patterns like Factory Method, Interpreter, State, and Template Method.
Regarding excess, the tradeoff between pure code and data-based control has to be made based on the need for flexability versus the complexity of programming for data control.
(* Well, GOF is repeatedly "sold" as the be-all-end-all of everything. If they are only meant for building text editors, then they should say so. *)
It wouldn't say Gof is the answer to everything. I would say that it's a useful thing to add to your toolkit. The fact that they use GUI systems and text editors as examples should show that databases aren't necessarily a 1:1 replacement for design patterns. And they do use other examples, such as networking libraries. We're using some design patterns with our software which bears no resemblance to a text editor or GUI system. Frankly, I don't see a lot of overlap here: design patterns are about how you structure your code, and databases are about how you manage your data.
Anyhow, I wasn't pushing Design Patterns as some kind of holy writ, just a resource that might trigger inspiration.
(*I have used databases for all kinds of (self-used) utilities, including editors. I just find it easier to organize, find, view, filter, sort stuff when in relational databases.*)
More power to you. Sounds like you use databases the way they're meant to be used. And your familiarity with them helps you avoid reinventing the wheel.
(*Putting the "noun model" in code is a recipe for speggetti in my book.*)
Hardly anything that's good in moderation is still good in excess. Even vitamin C can kill you if you take enough of it.
Whether or not it's approved by management, reworking code to make it cleaner is the only way to keep the program from turning into a Big Ball of Mud.
One of us is seriously wrong about GoF patterns, since IMHO, hardly any of them are better handled with databases. Representing a resource as a single, constructed-when-needed object (Singleton)? Distributing functionality by method rather than subclass (Visitor)? Having a collection of objects expose the same interface as any one of those objects(Composite)? None of these seem to involve databases. Most of the examples in the GoF book are of GUI systems and text editors, and these don't imply databases.
The solution to this sort of problem is easy to say: Refactor.
You will get feature requests, and sometimes you'll just have to bolt them on. But look for the general case that this new feature is a specific instance of. Sure the feature may be "change the text on the cover page", but the general case may be "make it easy to customize the text on the cover page".
Sometimes the generalizations aren't easy to find, even though you intuit a connection between things. Flip through Design Patterns, and see if anything sparks. You may have to just bolt it on for now, but keep thinking.
Refactoring will reduce the number of lines in your code. And it will make the code easier to understand and maintain.
In the first place, CRTs are analog, so they aren't limited in the number of colours they display. Or rather, they are limited, but only if you start counting each individual electron. That's right: a CRT can display far more than 16.7M colours using only, say, its green electron gun.
The 256-bit-per-channel limitation you describe is in the video adapter hardware, not in the monitor. And video adapters address pixels, not subpixels.
CRTs don't even have subpixels, because subpixels are addressable, and the red/green/blue subcomponents of CRT display (phosphor dots) are not addressable.
So the monitor supports an infinite number of colours. The video card supports 16.7M colours per pixel.
Yes, there is colour mixing going on. No one wants to see 16.7M shades of spectral green. Shove a magnifying glass up against your monitor, and you'll see those red, blue and green phosphor dots.
But the same thing happens with colour photographs, and printing, and pretty well anything that uses a pigment to produce different shades of colour. Everyone agrees that when the mixing below addressable resolution, it's called "a colour", and when mixing at addresable resolution, it's called "a dither pattern".
I have no problem with Palm's original mistake. They happen. But Palm's way of dealing with it has been absolutely atrocious. If they had originally advertised the device as supporting 937,936 colours, they might be justified in claiming its true colour depth was 58,621.
But no one advertises a 16-bit display as supporting 937,936 colours, because it's nonsense. The only reason Palm cares about these "colour mixing" numbers is because Palm's trying to spin this as a 10% reduction in colour depth, instead of a 94% reduction.
Does "nukes controlled by George W. Bush" make you feel any better?
Seriously, if I was taking bids for nuclear power plant software, I'd insist that it be open-source. The bigger the goldfish bowl, the better. Plus, it's more likely you won't have someone else starting from scratch in five years.
Well, I was going to propose that the way to activate it would simply be to go to the secret URL. Then I realized that activating it by going to its URL was functionally equivalent to leaving it on. Legally, I guess it would be better if the owner was presented with an activation screen. And alternate activation (and deactivation, while we're at it) methods would be good too.
I do wonder though, whether you can sue a caching service/organization. I haven't used IRCache, but I think I'll give it a try. Maybe it can route around the Slashdot Effect by itself.
To extend your idea a little further, Slashdot could generate a unique token for each cached site and email it to the site admin. If the admin wants to give permission, they can set up a simple Redirect directive which will send the user back to Slashdot, eg: Redirect / http://cache.slashdot.org/token32568 It's probably impossible to overload a site that's just doing redirects.
Another alternative would be for Slashdot to join IRCache, which is a distributed cache network, so that the sites they visit could be cached.
Oh, I agree that VNC is great. But if all you want is one app, you want a rootless X server. That way, you can run 2 windows apps and one X app on the same desktop, at the same time. The X app behaves basically like a normal windows app. You can resize it, maximize it, minimize it, move it around, etc, using the standard Windows controls.
Besides, you can set up a shortcut to an SSH client that automagically runs your X-app-of-choice.
Yeah, well, I've been using CDex on Windows for months now. Even has FreedDB and CDDB support, and can rip wav's and Vorbis and MP2 and VQF and WMA and AAC and supports multiple MP3 encoders, including LAME. In fact, it's so good that other companies are repackaging it as their own. Enjoy!
I'd say the odds are very good. The person asking for help is the original developer, and the others are new. Even good programmers take some time to adapt to your problem domain and existing code. You can't just shove someone in the slot and expect brilliance.
Re:will anybody ever figure it out???
on
Shuttle SS51 Reviewed
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Only ports that people need frequent access to belong in the front. If you're constantly changing your keyboard and mouse, you should stop eating soup over your computer.
Some, perhaps all of the projects you mentioned don't require Java. We're working with Xerces in C++ at my workplace. If Java were destroyed, it wouldn't affect us. . .
Slashdot Mirror
I notice artifacts on MP3s I've encoded with LAME. Maybe that just means I'm a clueless user :-).
First 128-bit encodings sounded fine, but then I started noticing swishy noises in the high frequencies. For a while I was encoding, listening, and re-encoding at higher bitrates or VBR until it sounded good.
I encoded the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I had to take it to 256-bit encoding before it sounded good.
With Vorbis, I can just fire and forget.
The Xiph folks will say that MP3 is a comparatively old technology, and that Vorbis uses recent advances so it can sound better at the same bitrates.
Obviously, you haven't gotten sick of MP3 artifacts like I have. Back in the day when everyone here was promoting mp3 ("It sounds just like a CD"), I thought it was perfect, too. But now, I can pick out MP3 artifacts pretty easily. MP3s bug me now.
I've never figured out what Vorbis artifacts sound like. To me, Vorbis still sounds perfect. This is why I rip to Vorbis now.
(* IIRC, [patterns] manage the *instantiating* of something *)
No, there are "Structural" and "Behavioral" patterns as well as "Creational". It's only the Creational that focus on instantiation, though pretty well all of them are OO.
Okay, so if I understand right, you're advocating moving control of program or object behaviour into data. That makes sense to me. Our program flow is controlled by data. Our user interface is a mix of templates, functions, and data.
And using data to control behaviour is complementary to patterns like Factory Method, Interpreter, State, and Template Method.
Regarding excess, the tradeoff between pure code and data-based control has to be made based on the need for flexability versus the complexity of programming for data control.
Anyhow, interesting discussion.
(* Well, GOF is repeatedly "sold" as the be-all-end-all of everything. If they are only meant for building text editors, then they should say so. *)
It wouldn't say Gof is the answer to everything. I would say that it's a useful thing to add to your toolkit. The fact that they use GUI systems and text editors as examples should show that databases aren't necessarily a 1:1 replacement for design patterns. And they do use other examples, such as networking libraries. We're using some design patterns with our software which bears no resemblance to a text editor or GUI system. Frankly, I don't see a lot of overlap here: design patterns are about how you structure your code, and databases are about how you manage your data.
Anyhow, I wasn't pushing Design Patterns as some kind of holy writ, just a resource that might trigger inspiration.
(*I have used databases for all kinds of (self-used) utilities, including editors. I just find it easier to organize, find, view, filter, sort stuff when in relational databases.*)
More power to you. Sounds like you use databases the way they're meant to be used. And your familiarity with them helps you avoid reinventing the wheel.
(*Putting the "noun model" in code is a recipe for speggetti in my book.*)
Hardly anything that's good in moderation is still good in excess. Even vitamin C can kill you if you take enough of it.
Our customers get perpetual upgrades, too. And since it's a web-based service, everyone gets upgraded to the latest version at the same time!
Whether or not it's approved by management, reworking code to make it cleaner is the only way to keep the program from turning into a Big Ball of Mud.
One of us is seriously wrong about GoF patterns, since IMHO, hardly any of them are better handled with databases. Representing a resource as a single, constructed-when-needed object (Singleton)? Distributing functionality by method rather than subclass (Visitor)? Having a collection of objects expose the same interface as any one of those objects(Composite)? None of these seem to involve databases. Most of the examples in the GoF book are of GUI systems and text editors, and these don't imply databases.
The solution to this sort of problem is easy to say:
Refactor.
You will get feature requests, and sometimes you'll just have to bolt them on. But look for the general case that this new feature is a specific instance of. Sure the feature may be "change the text on the cover page", but the general case may be "make it easy to customize the text on the cover page".
Sometimes the generalizations aren't easy to find, even though you intuit a connection between things. Flip through Design Patterns, and see if anything sparks. You may have to just bolt it on for now, but keep thinking.
Refactoring will reduce the number of lines in your code. And it will make the code easier to understand and maintain.
In the first place, CRTs are analog, so they aren't limited in the number of colours they display. Or rather, they are limited, but only if you start counting each individual electron. That's right: a CRT can display far more than 16.7M colours using only, say, its green electron gun.
The 256-bit-per-channel limitation you describe is in the video adapter hardware, not in the monitor. And video adapters address pixels, not subpixels.
CRTs don't even have subpixels, because subpixels are addressable, and the red/green/blue subcomponents of CRT display (phosphor dots) are not addressable.
So the monitor supports an infinite number of colours. The video card supports 16.7M colours per pixel.
Yes, there is colour mixing going on. No one wants to see 16.7M shades of spectral green. Shove a magnifying glass up against your monitor, and you'll see those red, blue and green phosphor dots.
But the same thing happens with colour photographs, and printing, and pretty well anything that uses a pigment to produce different shades of colour. Everyone agrees that when the mixing below addressable resolution, it's called "a colour", and when mixing at addresable resolution, it's called "a dither pattern".
I have no problem with Palm's original mistake. They happen. But Palm's way of dealing with it has been absolutely atrocious. If they had originally advertised the device as supporting 937,936 colours, they might be justified in claiming its true colour depth was 58,621.
But no one advertises a 16-bit display as supporting 937,936 colours, because it's nonsense. The only reason Palm cares about these "colour mixing" numbers is because Palm's trying to spin this as a 10% reduction in colour depth, instead of a 94% reduction.
That's the "real problem", IMHO.
It happens. I was maybe 12 and I was unplugging a wall wart, and managed to touch both prongs. Felt kinda funky, but no harm done.
You'll need to emulate the x86 architecture as well as the Win32 API. Not worth it. Now WINE on X-box Linux. . . bizarre, but it just might work.
Does "nukes controlled by George W. Bush" make you feel any better?
Seriously, if I was taking bids for nuclear power plant software, I'd insist that it be open-source. The bigger the goldfish bowl, the better. Plus, it's more likely you won't have someone else starting from scratch in five years.
"VHS was to Beta what Microsoft was to IBM back in the 80s -- the open architecture alternative"
Here's another one: VHS was to Beta what IBM PC was to C64, Amiga, Atari ST, and Mac -- the open architecture alternative.
Well, I was going to propose that the way to activate it would simply be to go to the secret URL. Then I realized that activating it by going to its URL was functionally equivalent to leaving it on. Legally, I guess it would be better if the owner was presented with an activation screen. And alternate activation (and deactivation, while we're at it) methods would be good too.
I do wonder though, whether you can sue a caching service/organization. I haven't used IRCache, but I think I'll give it a try. Maybe it can route around the Slashdot Effect by itself.
To extend your idea a little further, Slashdot could generate a unique token for each cached site and email it to the site admin. If the admin wants to give permission, they can set up a simple Redirect directive which will send the user back to Slashdot, eg:
Redirect / http://cache.slashdot.org/token32568
It's probably impossible to overload a site that's just doing redirects.
Another alternative would be for Slashdot to join IRCache, which is a distributed cache network, so that the sites they visit could be cached.
There's nothing wrong with running apt from a cron job. You do the downloads in a cron job, and you upgrade manually if and when it makes sense.
Oh, I agree that VNC is great. But if all you want is one app, you want a rootless X server. That way, you can run 2 windows apps and one X app on the same desktop, at the same time. The X app behaves basically like a normal windows app. You can resize it, maximize it, minimize it, move it around, etc, using the standard Windows controls.
Besides, you can set up a shortcut to an SSH client that automagically runs your X-app-of-choice.
Sounds like they never read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Yeah, well, I've been using CDex on Windows for months now. Even has FreedDB and CDDB support, and can rip wav's and Vorbis and MP2 and VQF and WMA and AAC and supports multiple MP3 encoders, including LAME. In fact, it's so good that other companies are repackaging it as their own. Enjoy!
Deep throught was IBM's predecessor to Deep Blue.i ne/33_f older/33_articles/33_kasparovibm.html
http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magaz
sh00perz, it's "sentences", not "sentances"
Rather hard to type out a EULA without reading it. . .
I'd say the odds are very good. The person asking for help is the original developer, and the others are new. Even good programmers take some time to adapt to your problem domain and existing code. You can't just shove someone in the slot and expect brilliance.
Only ports that people need frequent access to belong in the front. If you're constantly changing your keyboard and mouse, you should stop eating soup over your computer.
Some, perhaps all of the projects you mentioned don't require Java. We're working with Xerces in C++ at my workplace. If Java were destroyed, it wouldn't affect us. . .