The story has now made it to Excite and makes refrence to/. as well. The link may be stale later but you should be able to find the page easily enough.
While I don't know exactly how things work in the US I have shown many commercial films for a student film society and been given tours of a number of commercial cinemas so I speak from a position of some knowledge.
A movie is normally distributed as a number of approximately 2000 foot sections (approx 20 minutes). The start and end of these sections normally coincide with scene changes and thus they can vary in length.
When a film arrives at a cinema the projectionist has to splice all these reels together into one continuous length of film (anything up to 5km long).
All multiplex cinemas I have seen use a platter system for holding the film. A platter system is basically three large discs arranged on top of each other which hold anything up to four hours of film each. When a film is shown the end at the centre of one platter is lifted out, fed through the projector and then ends up on a different platter, filling it from the outside in.
This means that once a film has been shown is is ready almost immediately to be shown again (all that needs to be done is the film needs to be re-laced through the projector).
Interlocking refers to the practice of having a film play from the platter system for projector A, through projector A, across the projection box to projector B, through projector B and ending on on the platter system for projector B. This means only one print is needed to show the same film on screen A and screen B and they have almsot simultaneous start times.
The big problem with this (other than the obvious one that if the film breaks it stops in both cinemas) is the fact that film tends to attract dirt and get scratched and if it is running for 20+ metres across a projection box there is far more chance of this happening.
I would be extremely surprised if any commercial cinema of significant size still uses a reel to reel system (such as sklib describes above). Here each screen requires two separate projectors which are linked together such that opening the dowser on one automatically closes the dowser on the other. The other problem with showing such a film on two screens simultaneously is that once one reel has been shown it will have to be rewound before it can be shown on another.
Kithran
Convservation over Evolution?
on
Gene Leakage
·
· Score: 1
The problem is that we are doing things with GM foods that can't occur through normal evolution. E.G. it is possible to use the genes from one strain of wheat with another and this is something that could alos occur via evolution without any human intervention. The problems occur when you do things that 'natural' evolution would not allow in a single step such as using the genes from an artic animal in a tomato to protect from frost. If such a thing could occur through 'natural' evolution it would be via a vast number of intermediate steps which would allow everything that depended on the tomtao to also evolve. If mankind takes a shortcut there is a possibility that every not every creature and plant dependant on a quality of the tomato that has been removed would not be able to evolve in time and thus die out. This in turn could lead to a domino effect with unpredictable consequences.
Actually if you read the article closely you'll notice the less than $15 more than $2 price refers to the price the new registration companies pay to network solutions. Netowrk Solutions will continue to hold the main database of domain names and the new companies will pay them a fee for this job. The cost to the end user will definitely be higher than the price these companies pay to network solutions.
Kithran
How about increase the use of X comments below?
on
Need a Job?
·
· Score: 1
I don't know if it would be possible but I think it would be nice if the main screen had "Y Comments (X below threshold). While (at least on the default settings) most messages are above the threshold it would certainly prove useful to those who have a high threshold - they will then be able to avoid topics with _no_ comments above their threshold and thus simultaneously save themselves time and reduce server load.
Having read the article I can't help wondering how hard the original virus writer would find it to change the GUID in his original file. If someone can extract the GUID from files on a website what is to stop the original author creating the original infected document and then changing its GUID to that belonging to a different instance of Office. And given the prevelence of AOL free membership CD's and the ease with which a poster to USENET can fake their address is it any wonder the original source appears to be an AOL (l)user.
So when are those of us in the UK going to get to see this (assuming any UK broadcaster has picked it up)?
And on a related subject when is the Dilbert cartoon due over here (assuming it hasn't turned out to be rubbish - I haven't seen any comments on any bar the first episode)
Slashdot Mirror
The story has now made it to Excite and makes refrence to /. as well. The link may be stale later but you should be able to find the page easily enough.
Kithran
While I don't know exactly how things work in the US I have shown many commercial films for a student film society and been given tours of a number of commercial cinemas so I speak from a position of some knowledge.
A movie is normally distributed as a number of approximately 2000 foot sections (approx 20 minutes). The start and end of these sections normally coincide with scene changes and thus they can vary in length.
When a film arrives at a cinema the projectionist has to splice all these reels together into one continuous length of film (anything up to 5km long).
All multiplex cinemas I have seen use a platter system for holding the film. A platter system is basically three large discs arranged on top of each other which hold anything up to four hours of film each. When a film is shown the end at the centre of one platter is lifted out, fed through the projector and then ends up on a different platter, filling it from the outside in.
This means that once a film has been shown is is ready almost immediately to be shown again (all that needs to be done is the film needs to be re-laced through the projector).
Interlocking refers to the practice of having a film play from the platter system for projector A, through projector A, across the projection box to projector B, through projector B and ending on on the platter system for projector B. This means only one print is needed to show the same film on screen A and screen B and they have almsot simultaneous start times.
The big problem with this (other than the obvious one that if the film breaks it stops in both cinemas) is the fact that film tends to attract dirt and get scratched and if it is running for 20+ metres across a projection box there is far more chance of this happening.
I would be extremely surprised if any commercial cinema of significant size still uses a reel to reel system (such as sklib describes above). Here each screen requires two separate projectors which are linked together such that opening the dowser on one automatically closes the dowser on the other. The other problem with showing such a film on two screens simultaneously is that once one reel has been shown it will have to be rewound before it can be shown on another.
Kithran
The problem is that we are doing things with GM foods that can't occur through normal evolution. E.G. it is possible to use the genes from one strain of wheat with another and this is something that could alos occur via evolution without any human intervention. The problems occur when you do things that 'natural' evolution would not allow in a single step such as using the genes from an artic animal in a tomato to protect from frost. If such a thing could occur through 'natural' evolution it would be via a vast number of intermediate steps which would allow everything that depended on the tomtao to also evolve. If mankind takes a shortcut there is a possibility that every not every creature and plant dependant on a quality of the tomato that has been removed would not be able to evolve in time and thus die out. This in turn could lead to a domino effect with unpredictable consequences.
Kithran
Actually if you read the article closely you'll notice the less than $15 more than $2 price refers to the price the new registration companies pay to network solutions. Netowrk Solutions will continue to hold the main database of domain names and the new companies will pay them a fee for this job. The cost to the end user will definitely be higher than the price these companies pay to network solutions.
Kithran
I don't know if it would be possible but I think it would be nice if the main screen had "Y Comments (X below threshold). While (at least on the default settings) most messages are above the threshold it would certainly prove useful to those who have a high threshold - they will then be able to avoid topics with _no_ comments above their threshold and thus simultaneously save themselves time and reduce server load.
Kithran
Having read the article I can't help wondering how hard the original virus writer would find it to change the GUID in his original file. If someone can extract the GUID from files on a website what is to stop the original author creating the original infected document and then changing its GUID to that belonging to a different instance of Office. And given the prevelence of AOL free membership CD's and the ease with which a poster to USENET can fake their address is it any wonder the original source appears to be an AOL (l)user.
Kithran
So when are those of us in the UK going to get to see this (assuming any UK broadcaster has picked it up)?
And on a related subject when is the Dilbert cartoon due over here (assuming it hasn't turned out to be rubbish - I haven't seen any comments on any bar the first episode)
Kithran