Thanks for the enlightening "sip from the fire hose," Forever Wondering. I appreciate the explanation.
You're quite welcome. It's refreshing to get a thank you on slashdot--and much appreciated.
It seemed like you had shelled out good money for a multicore system and were concerned that you weren't getting your money's worth.
In fact, Intel/AMD cores work even harder for you than that using several techniques:
Hyperthreading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading)
out of order execution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-order_execution)
Because of this and the sheer speed of a 3+ GHz CPU, the main bottleneck is actually fetching/storing to/from DRAM.
That's right--16 cores/chip X 100 chips for a total of 160 cores.
16 * 100 = 160?
You must be a hardware engineer. Did you work for Intel on the early Pentium floating point unit?
Yep, I caught the math error, too, but only after posting. I was debating a one-liner reply to correct it, but didn't want to clutter things up with a reply just to correct the typo.
I'm a computer engineer, which is 50% software, 50% hardware. While I could forgive a hardware engineer, a software engineer never makes misteaks [pun intended].
I'll try to keep this brief as I've responded to others on all these points in other parts of the subthread. I'm a computer engineer and am in the H.264 high def video encoding/compression business [thus, I have inside information that you're not privy to]. We were investigating 3D in 2007, two years before Avatar came out.
It's in the process of failing rapidly. Avatar had the advantage of novelty, it was the first non-creature feature to be done in 3D for quite a while. To get the real picture, you have to see the results for the follow-on efforts. Those seem to have been a yawn.
It only takes one film to prove the market/concept/technology is worth doing [to studios]. "The Jazz Singer" for sound [studios stopped silent film productions even before the films were completed]. "The Adventures Of Robin Hood" [Error Flynn] for color.
Meanwhile, 3D TVs aren't exactly flying off the shelves. Figures for purchases of extra 3D glasses for existing 3D TVs show that few seem interested in the 3D even when they do buy a 3D capable TV.
"3D capable" can [merely] mean that the TV monitor can display at a frame rate of 120 fps (vs. ~60 fps which is what a lot of computer monitors use). Also, the first true market is theaters as you need a [minimum] 100" diagonal monitor to get the same effect as you do in theaters.
From Avatar, studios, producers, directors, equipment manufacturers, etc. all know the following: the technology works [well enough] and can be improved; they can make money with it. They are in it for the long term, because they know what will be possible in 10 years. They really don't care what you think [now]. They're really more concerned about what you will think 10 years from now.
Color TV didn't require funky and expensive goggles to watch.
The Japanese have already demonstrated systems that don't need the glasses.
B&W TV offered no perception of color at all, but there IS some depth information in a 2D picture. We do perceive some depth in it, so 3D is a mere enhancement rather than adding a new perceptual dimension.
Not at all true. The mind's perception of 3D from 2D is completely different from presenting the human eye with 3D information. That is accomplished by providing parallax.
Sounds like you never saw Avatar [in 3D]. I did, and at several points in the screening, I took off the glasses to see the difference for the same scene/view. The difference is like seeing a still photograph vs. actually being there.
*IF* 3D catches on this time, it will be when the glasses are no longer required and it costs no more than 2D.
As I mentioned before, glasses are a non-issue. Color TV was phased in over a long time, based on its relative cost. Many people held back on buying an early color TV set, because the quality wasn't that great, and it cost too much, relative to B&W. People seem to think that color TV was adopted/embraced by viewers en masse. In actual fact, there were quite a few laymen pundits: the quality is terrible, the equipment is too expensive, there isn't enough color content to justify the purchase. The video industry ignored this because they knew the roadmap and the potential. If they had listened, we'd still be watching B&W (or just listening to radios as TV itself would have been stillborn).
Consider, the color filter based 3D has been available for over half a century and it works on a color TV as well. Nobody bothers with it.
Trying to compare the red/blue glasses tech to the techniques available now is like comparing an old AM tube radio from the 1930's to modern 7.1 surround sound. The red/blue technique had noticeable side effects on color quality. The modern polarization technique [not available back then] does not suffer from this defect [neither does the rapid shutt
I admit that despite being a technical user, I was not aware that only 2 chips are allowed to "talk" at a given time. I had (erroneously, it would seem) assumed that in order for a 3+-core chip to be fully useful, such a switch/router would have to already be in place.
For [most] current designs, Intel/AMD have multilevel cache memory. The cores run independently and fully in parallel and if they need to communicate they do so via shared memory. Thus, they all run full bore, flat out, and don't need to wait for each other [there are some exceptions--read on]. They have cache snoop logic that keeps them up-to-date. In other words, all cores have access to the entire DRAM space through the cache hierarchy. When the system is booted, the DRAM is divided up (so each core gets its 1/N share of it).
Let's say you have an 8 core chip. Normally, each program gets its own core [sort of]. Your email gets a core, your browser gets a core, your editor gets one, etc. and none of them wait for another [unless they do filesystem operations, etc.] Disjoint programs don't need to communicate much usually [and not at the level we're talking about here].
But, if you have a program designed for heavy computation (e.g. video compression or transcoding), it might be designed to use multiple cores to get its work done faster. It will consist of multiple sections (e.g. processes/threads). If a process/thread so designates, it can share portions of its memory space with other processes/threads. Each thread takes input data from a memory pool somewhere, does some work on it, and deposits the results in a memory output pool. It then alerts the next thread in the processing "pipeline" as to which memory buffer it placed the result. The next thread does much the same. x86 architectures have some locking primitives to assist this. It's a bit more complex than that, but you don't need a "router". If the multicore application is designed correctly, any delays for sync between pipeline stages occur infrequently and are on the order of a few CPU cycles.
This works fine up to about 16-32 cores. Beyond that, even the cache becomes a bottleneck. Or, consider a system were you have a 16 core chip (all on the same silicon substrate). The cache works fine there. But now suppose you want to have a motherboard that has 100 of these chips on it. That's right--16 cores/chip X 100 chips for a total of 160 cores. Now, you need some form of interchip communication.
x86 systems already have this in the form of Hypertransport (AMD) or the PCI Express Bus (Intel) [there are others as well]. PCIe isn't a bus in the classic sense at all. It functions like an onboard store-and-forward point-to-point routing system with guaranteed packet delivery. This is how a SATA host adapter communicates with DRAM (via a PCIe link). Likewise for your video controller. Most current systems don't need to use PCIe beyond this (e.g. to hook up multiple CPU chips) because most desktop/laptop systems have only one chip (with X cores in it). But, in the 100 chip example, you would need something like this and HT and PCIe already do something similar. Intel/AMD are already working on any enhancements to HT/PCIe as needed. Actually, Intel [unwilling to just use HT], is pushing "Quick Path Interconnect" or QPI.
Hold on a second. Saying James Cameron wouldn't want to ruin his legacy might make some sense, but then you compare him to George Lucas? Lucas has ruined his legacy many times over with his horrible edits to his older movies (e.g., Greedo shooting first), plus his horrible prequels. George has shown many times he has no qualms doing anything to make a fast buck.
Okay, fair enough about George and Greedo. Or did you mean George being like Greedo?:-) As to the prequels, I really can't say as I've never seen them--which says a lot, I guess.
As you probably already know, the "Special Edition" had to be done, because the original VistaVision negatives were badly faded (going grayish which is the fade mode for the VistaVision process). So, to start with, they cleaned up the prints to restore the original color.
The Greedo edit is univerally reviled as an act of cowardice [on the part of George]. But, as far as I know, it's the only serious plot deviation. From the documentary "the making of...", most of the additional material was to improve the landscape, clean up obvious mistakes where object matte errors occurred so that objects behind another object were being seen transparently. Also, they redid spaceship battle sequences with 3D CGI that didn't exist when the original was made.
Personally, in IV, when the land speeder is whipping across the desert to the spaceport, the original special effect was done in camera with vaseline on the lens to blur out the wheels under the model. This is the famous "force field" under the speeder. When redone, they replaced the entire sequence with a CGI wireframe construction that looks even more phony. In the redo for Jedi, they added a beak/worm part to the Sarlacc pit. To me, it was much more menacing in the original when it was passive (like a Venus Fly Trap or Pitcher Plant).
As for transforming the industry overnight, well, Avatar's been out since 2009 IIRC, and I don't see the industry being transformed yet. All I see is a bunch of really crappy 2D-to-3D conversion movies
As I've said, new [made for] 3D material will be forthcoming. When Avatar was in theaters, they had trailers for Shrek 3D. It will take some time, so be patient. Animation lends itself well to the 3D process. So, the initial true 3D releases are likely to come from there.
Conversion of 2D material into 3D is actually a much more difficult problem than working with true 3D material. The algorithms are improving as we speak. This is not unlike early DVD encodings. The early ones look terrible because the encoding algorithms were not anywhere as sophisticated as are used for current releases.
It just so happens I'm a computer engineer and write software for HD H.264 realtime broadcast quality video encoders (e.g. AT&T U-Verse high def). So, as part of that I've seen demos of 3D tech in the lab in 2007 that are only starting to emerge at the consumer level today.
Currently, there are 2 or 3 competing standards for 3D in the home. Polarized glasses vs. shuttered glasses. How to transmit: left frame then right frame, or interlaced left/right frame, full or half resolution, etc. How to lay this over the top of the current HDMI [cable] spec without requiring retrofit/incompatibility. How does the decoder/player [when negotiating with the monitor] detect whether the monitor is 3D capable (and if so, what tranmission schemes does it support). If fallback/conversion to 2D is required by the decoder/player, using what algorithm? Use left eye only (easiest), blend left/right, or other? There is quite a bit of technical work to be done, and it is being done--behind the scenes.
Technical plus/minus aside, it's a political battle between the various high volume consumer products giants. The companies that produce the encoder equipment for this are waiting until the dust settles to avoid a repeat of the "Betamax"
First, as the other poster said, Avatar was shown in both 2D and 3D, so it being successful doesn't say much about the successfulness of 3D. Further, one single successful film does not equate to 3D being successful in general.
Most 3D movies have been the crappy 2D conversion type.
Please see my reply to coribus. Actually, I seem to have set off a small firestorm. I've got about five replies out to others on this responding to each in kind.
I've seen Avatar in 3D and I own a 2D copy. The 3D was far more immersive. Although, Avatar was screened in 2D alongside the 3D screenings, most people saw the 3D versions (regular or IMAX). Some did both (or all three), just to see the difference. I had been told beforehand that the regular 3D was actually better than IMAX 3D, so that is what I chose.
While Avatar is fine in 2D, it was meant to be seen in 3D. Seeing it in 2D is like colorizing Casablanca simply because you don't like B&W films.
We'll have to wait and see if "Titanic 3D" lives up to the advance press. Cameron knows more than most what is possible because of what he learned making Avatar. Since he's already working on the two Avatar sequels, I don't think he'd waste his time "sullying" his own creation unless he was pretty sure he could make it work well. Also, it appears that George Lucas is going to transform "Star Wars" (4-6) into 3D. Seriously, these guys [more than most] know what they're doing and really have no need to do this to make a fast buck if it ended up ruining their legacy.
Most films are being shot digitally now because it's cheaper than editing/mastering/distributing in film stock. The [incremental] cost of shooting in 3D is small compared to the overall production costs (e.g. licensing a rock and roll song to use in the movie score might be [say] $1M which is 10 days worth of shooting). So, most films in the future are going to be shot in 3D regardless of whether the film is distributed 3D or 2D.
As I've already mentioned shooting in 3D has distinct advantages. You can do a lot in editing/post-production to improve the quality of a film that will be presented in 2D. Having broad depth of focus (which usually has to be done with a wide angle lens), reduction of smearing in high action scenes, etc.
3D tech will have a vast audience in video games like Doom/Quake.
There have been a number of transformational films. "The Jazz Singer" killed off silent movies almost immediately. Virtually every studio stopped silent movies in mid-production to "retool" them for sound. Although, there had been some color films before, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" [Error Flynn/Olivia DeHaviland], shot in Technicolor, validated color films with its instant success. Because it was so vastly superior to other color technologies at the time, Technicolor had a virtual monopoly lasting 20 years. Thus, in both cases, a single film transformed the entire industry virtually overnight. Avatar is that film for 3D technology.
There have been many color films since. Many are forgettable. A few are grand. But, nobody these days is trashing the use of color film (which did happen in the early days--Carole Lombard, for example, thought color was a terrible idea, artistically speaking).
I mentioned "Good Night And Good Luck" on another part of the thread. They wanted to make a B&W film (because that's how we remember Edward R. Murrow). But, they shot it in color, partly because it's harder to get B&W film stock these days and if you can, it's more expensive to purchase and process. They digitally removed the color in post-production to produce the final B&W film that went to theaters. They also chose to shoot the film in spherical rather than anamorphic so that the film portions would match the 4:3 aspect ratio of the in-film TV clips for artistic reasons.
So, eventually, if you're a filmmaker, you won't be able to find a 2D camera, only 3D. You'd just use the footage of the "left eye" if you only wanted 2D.
If you adjusted the color for one station/network so that flesh tones were natural, they were yellow on other channels because there was no agreed upon standard on which to base this and each network did its own thing.
There WAS a standard: NTSC color. It's just that most television sets did not stick to it because of technological limitations in CRTs. Once color-correction circuitry was added, this could be worked around.
The NTSC color standard [1953] largely covered such things as how the color subcarrier was modulated, the 8 cycle burst during the horizontal blanking interval, etc.
While NTSC had colorimetry in it, it was largely ignored when producing camera equipment to produce more brightness from the phosphors. This is because the human eye is far more sensitive to changes in luminosity than it is in chroma. It wasn't until the SMPTE "C" colorimetry standard [1969] came along that restored some order. It was SMPTE's effort to define "standard phosphors" and encourage manufacturers to add the color correction circuitry to the camera that stabilized things.
I think it's fair to point out that people were saying the same thing about color TV in the 1960's: It's a fad--who needs it.
I was only a child in the 60s, but I don't remember anyone saying about color TV that it's a fad, who needs it.
I was a teen in the 60s, so I might remember more.
I do remember getting a color TV, which we got not because it was color, but because our more than 10-year old old black-and-white TV set needed constant adjustment to keep the horizontal and vertical hold on target. Around that same time, NBC was the first station to go "all" color, hence the peacock logo, though I think it still had a lot of black and white for reruns and local affiliate shows.
Sorta makes my point. Your family bought a B&W TV at a time before it was perfected (e.g. the V/H hold problems). You were an early adopter. Buying a color set at the time you did (if only to fix the V/H hold problem) was being an early adopter of color (you could just as easily have bought a new B&W to fix the hold).
NBC was the first to go all color because RCA (which owned/started NBC) invented color TV. For a time, they had a bit of a vertical monopoly on it, until the other networks were able to catch up. Color equipment was initially more expensive. As it matured, the costs came down. Initially, it was a chicken-and-the-egg problem. Why transmit in color if nobody has a color TV set? Why buy a color TV set if not many programs are broadcast in color? Since the FCC mandated that color broadcasts be backward compatible with B&W, this solved the problem. Broadcasters phased in color even if not all sets could see color. Eventually, with enough color material available, more people started buying color sets
By the way, there were also a slew of "3D" stereoscopic movies every once in a while back then, but it never caught on for mainstream movies.
Whatever people are saying about current 3D technology, the 50's era 3D was based on the old blue/red glasses technology and it was far worse.
How many current new movies are stereoscopic 3D? How many current theaters are equipped to deal with them? Until it's most movies and most theaters, it's not much less of a fad than it was in the 50s and 60s.
Actually, most new movies are already shot digitally rather than film. Editing is far easier. Lighting is not as tricky. And they can still derive film prints for those theaters that can't project directly from digital [yet]. Or, the converse: you can create a digital print from a film master. But, the costs of digital have dropped so much, that it's actually more expensive to shoot and distribute on film
In fact, most movies will be shot in 3D. This is already happening. Beyond cost of camera equipment, it costs pretty much the same. A location shoot is $100K/day 3D or not. The benefit is that the choice to release in 3D or 2D can be made later [depending upon the quality of the story and the film's potential]. For example, "The Dark Knight" would have been an ideal candidate for 3D. If, however, it had been bungled by the director, they would have released it in 2D to save the cost of 3D distribution.
With digital projection, it doesn't take much to convert a theater to 3D. You use the same projectors for 2D or 3D. The only difference [currently] is that you're given the glasses when you walk in. So, most theaters are already "3D ready"
This is far less traumatic than the 50's era conversion to anamorphic widescreen. There you had to physically change the screen when going from spherical 35mm to anamorphic 35mm. You also needed to switch to special anamorphic lenses on the projectors. This all took time/effort while you were waiting.
I think it's fair to point out that people were saying the same thing about color TV in the 1960's: It's a fad--who needs it.
Please see my reply to coricus for additional background.
It's not quite the same; the difference is, there's actual, tangible complaints about 3D, and there were tangible benefits to using color.
Did you read my comment in my original post about using 3D in mastering to achieve control of depth of focus? Another benefit is reducing smearing in high action scenes
You don't need special glasses to watch movies in color, for instance, and color doesn't give some people headaches (well, no more than black and white would have).
The Japanese are already demonstrating prototype systems that do not require special glasses. The headaches occur because the amount of parallax chosen is too much for some people. However, eventually, you'll have 3D systems that allow each individual to dial their own preferences for this.
Furthermore, color can actually be used to make a better movie. Even Avatar, one of the best 3D movies so far, was about as enjoyable in the 2D version. I doubt you could say the same thing about color versus black and white.
Actually, I did in my reply to coricus regarding Hitchcock's "Rebecca". As I said, it used techniques in B&W that could not have been done in color.
Basically, it seems like 3D is full of downsides and simply doesn't offer enough of a benefit to the viewer to be useful;
That is exactly what was said of color TV when it first came out. Some people refused to buy a color TV for decades afterwards because they considered it an unnecessary boondoggle with significant downsides (e.g. Having to adjust the tint if you changed a channel. Having to adjust the tint when a new program on the same channel came on. Having to adjust the tint if a commercial came on)
color, on the other hand, had basically no downsides and offered significant benefits.
When color TV first arrived that was simply not true. Early [cheap] color TV receivers could not maintain color lock even in the same program.
It took decades to achieve what you are [obviously] taking for granted and assuming always existed.
I watched Avatar in 2D as that was all that was on offer and I suggest an alternative reason Avatar was successful.
It was a well directed, acted, scripted, and paced movie telling a time old tale that was fun and enjoyable.
I'm sure you won't agree as in your world view only technology dictates how good cinema is.
I saw Avatar in 3D in the theater. But, I also liked the story so much that I bought the 2D DVD. It is still enjoyable. But, some scenes are unbelievably vivid in 3D. For example, there is a scene from a narrow ledge looking out on a huge expanse. In 3D, you actually feel the danger of falling off. For Avatar, with 2D, you're watching a good movie. In 3D, you forget you're watching a movie and feel like you're a side-by-side observer in the world that was created.
So, if you ever get the chance for a 3D viewing of Avatar, take it. You'll appreciate the film as it was meant to be seen.
As to my "world view"... My favorite film is "Casablanca". My favorite hero is Atticus Finch in "To Kill A Mockingbird". My favorite heroine is Mrs de Winter in "Rebecca" or "Mrs. Miniver". Favorite cinematography is for "Rebecca"
Speaking of Rebecca, there are scenes/techniques (e.g. use of shadow) that work precisely because it was B&W. These would not have been effective in color. Hitchcock knew this. In particular, there is a scene with Mrs. Danvers where her face is cast in half shadow. It is what they teach in film schools.
3D is a tool in the arsenal, as is B&W. The decision to master "Good Night And Good Luck" in color and then digitally "bleach" it to B&W was done after testing various techniques. They chose the "right tool for the job" after examining alternatives.
Exactly. 3D has failed big time, but Titanic 3D is attracting lots of people. I made a separate comment about it: Is it because it's Titanic the movie or is it that it is in 3D? Would a re-release of the original movie be a big hit?
3D has not failed big time. Avatar at $1.6B is one of the most successful films of all time.
I think it's fair to point out that people were saying the same thing about color TV in the 1960's: It's a fad--who needs it.
If you adjusted the color for one station/network so that flesh tones were natural, they were yellow on other channels because there was no agreed upon standard on which to base this and each network did its own thing. Eventually, the standards were developed and each station/network adopted them, which is why, today, you can channel surf and never need to adjust it [if you even can on a modern TV set].
It took at least a decade to achieve this, perhaps longer.
The same thing happened when "colorization" technology first arrived. Originally, it was used [badly] to colorize B&W movies because someone [Ted Turner] thought that people would not watch B&W movies anymore. A particularly horrific attempt was the colorization of the [original] Edmund O'Brien version of D.O.A.
Eventually, it was realized that this was a solution in search of a problem. And the true problem to be solved by this technology was eventually discovered: restoral of faded color films. In fact, even B&W films benefit from this. Look at any recent DVD releases of classic films and you'll usually see that the entire film has been "digitally remastered".
I can assure you that there are many players in the video technology field that are placing heavy longterm investments on 3D.
Also, there are advantages to shooting a movie in 3D, even you only ever intend to release it in 2D (e.g. better control of depth of focus, etc.). Thus, 3D will be here to stay [as will shooting digitally vs film], if only for mastering/editing.
Something that was once known as "Seward's Folly" is now known as something called "Alaska"...
An alternate method is to add the PAM pam_access module to/etc/pam.d/sshd. You set up/etc/security/access.conf to allow logins from console, secure tty, and local LAN and deny all others. Each user's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file has his/her public key from the systems they want to login from (e.g. each user sets up a separate key pair for each system they have and adds the public key from each key pair to authorized_keys)
---
When an attempt is made to login, sshd first checks authorized_keys and if the public key proffered matches an entry, access is granted (with no password challenge). This is standard PKI authentication for sshd.
If no such match, sshd proceeds with PAM authentication and a password challenge will be issued. But, since the/etc/pam.d/sshd file has the pam_access module active, pam_access will deny the login after giving the password challenge. Even if the password given is correct, the authentication will fail.
Thus, a system so configured to the remote world will look like it's ordinary and wide open but will be completely immune to the hail mary attack.
Even if you don't (or can't) configure your systems in this manner, since sshd login by root is disabled by default in most/etc/ssh_config/sshd_config files, the hail mary is only effective with a valid [non-root] user/pw combo. If you use a different username/pw on each system, this reduces the odds on a successful attempt dramatically.
The reason I say this is that I added an additional wrinkle to my PAM stack. After securing it as described above, I created an additional PAM authentication module that logs all incorrect attempts. I also enabled root ssh login, and modified sshd so that it would pass the actual password along.
The normal sshd action is if either root is attempting to login (with root access configured off) or an invalid userid is given, sshd will replace the password with a fixed string of INCORRECT. This is supposed to prevent timing measurements that might give a clue as to whether a given userid is valid. I compensate for this by adding my own random delay that overshadows any response time measurement.
With the mods, I now have a log of time/IP/user/pw attempts. For my home system, I have a dynamic IP with no DNS entry, so it's low profile. Still, after four months in operation, my log has netted some 6000 entries.
The attempts fall into several categories:
(1) user/id where they are the same (e.g. userid is mary and password is mary).
(2) several different userids (e.g. a list of 10) and several different passwords (e.g. a list of 9) that are all tried against each other for a total of 90.
(3) very specific userid/pw combos that come from a database of already cracked user/pw combos. These are repeated from far flung IP addresses from time to time indicating that somebody is passing around the database. Some are such specific one shot combos (e.g. root with the same password 439812uioewruiey19283793487123 [an actual password from my log]) that they actually form a signature for the crackers themselves.
You're still full of shit. I have never heard that term use to refer to Obama, and I hang around with a lot of people who call him names. That strikes me as a "macaca" charge: and attempt to create racial animosity where none exists by inventing new terms or new meanings for them.
I had never heard the term until seeing this posting/reply [by Anonymous Coward]. This is probably because I do not "hang around" with people who call Obama names. While I generally agree with many of the current administration's policies, some I do not, but I confine my appraisals to the policy specifics.
So, I was curious. A Google search of "obongo obama" converts this to "abongo obama". [Malik] Abongo Obama was Barack Obama's half brother and died in 1982.
If you press Google to produce results for "obongo obama", you will indeed find references to the term as described by the original poster. In particular, theurbandictionary.com has three definitions.
Many of the pages returned by the second search are an obvious misspelling of "abongo" as they are clearly referring to the brother. But, others are clearly highlighting the racist definitions/usage.
So, the original AC poster [apparently] didn't invent the term. You may well be right to villify AC for promulgating the term, but, by the same token, wouldn't someone want to villify you for promulgating "macaca"?
Just like the Zimmerman case itself, only here it was NBC creating new meaning by deliberate selective editing.
It is unclear at this point whether the editing mistake was deliberate or not. It could just as easily have been a screwup [albeit a careless/foolish one]. In either case, it is a violation of journalistic ethics [if it was deliberate] or journalistic standards [if it was as mistake]. The truth will emerge in time [along with appropriate disciplinary action for the people involved].
However, this is the second time that you have leapt to a conclusion that is not supported by the facts at hand. And, the third time that you have used inflammatory language/wording. Perhaps, your outlook would improve if you changed who you hang around with?
Yeah I did a LOT of installs from the Mid '80s on using mostly Wyse 50 or 60 terminals hanging off SCO boxes ( back when SCO was a real company not a lawsuit factory)
And I was supporting software running on old SCO boxes 20 years later
When I was an engineer at Altos Computer Systems, the engineers were asked to evaluate an early model Wyse terminal. This was because Don Valentine [Sequoia Capital] was an Altos investor and on the board and he was interested in investing in Wyse. The model we got was a bit boxy/clunky (it predated the later WY-30/55/60's that sold like hotcakes) but we felt it had potential. Eventually, a Wyse terminal was usually paired with an Altos system. In particular, the Altos ACS 586.
SCO didn't manufacture hardware. They did ports of Xenix (Microsoft's version of Unix--in those days, this was a hedge against MS/DOS not being as successful as it was) to various microsystems. Altos did its own port of Xenix to the 586 [but may have used SCO later on???].
Just curious... What was the hardware vendor for the systems you were using?
An old friend of mine used to work at Wang. He was emphatic about that. "I do not work for Wang. I work at Wang!"
An old friend of mine used to for (er... at) Wang. Everybody had Wang word processors in their cubicles. So, people used to walk around and say "Show me your Wang"...
Are they? This work is some 40+ years old. The copyright term probably expired. Did CBS renew it? There would have to be a record of this at the USPTO. Although, they have [and need to] renew copyrights on the series episodes that are well known, a script that was never made into an episode probably slipped under the "renewal radar".
Copyright laws changed about the time the original Star Trek television series was aired and produced. For earlier television series, the networks and/or the production studios which owned the show. This is also a change that happened about the time Star Trek was produced... it was Desilu Productions (aka Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz) which actually owned the show, and was "sold" to Paramount Pictures when the studio closed and through some other buy-outs and mergers ended up in the hands of CBS, rather than the network that originally broadcast the show which was in fact NBC (which is now owned by General Electric... well half of it at least... the other half is now owned by Walt Disney, Inc. as the American Broadcasting Company). The ownership by CBS is even relatively recent so it wasn't even theirs to renew when it was eligible even had the laws stayed the same.
I'm a long time Trekkie so I know Star Trek aired on NBC originally as I watched episodes in network first run. I'm also familiar with Desilu because that was formed in the 1950's by Desi to do "I Love Lucy". He was able to convince CBS that Desilu should own "I Love Lucy" as most shows at that time were owned by the networks and not production houses. By the 1960's, Lucy and Desi were divorced and Lucy was running Desilu. I was just saying "CBS" to simplify the history.
BTW, I should also note that it isn't the USPTO that even deals with copyright.
You are correct--I should have said "US Copyright Office" [which is part of the LOC].
I know you are under the mistaken notion that there is something called "intellectual property". I'm sorry you've bought into the myth, and it is unfortunate that such miseducation exists.
You are quite incorrect as my "notion" has always been against "intellectual property". I'm not sure how you could so completely misinterpret this. I've even been known to cut-and-paste the part of the Constitution that deals with copyright on other Slashdot posts regarding the "limited time" aspect. BTW, I'm a computer engineer and I'm also against software patents--just in case you were wondering...
Copyright is something administered by the Librarian of Congress, which is not just in another agency but a whole different branch of the U.S. government (as the Librarian of Congress reports directly to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, not the President of the Untied States). The "record" that something was copyrighted would be finding a copy of the script in the Library of Congress and a catalog record of that item.
No! You have copyright protection from the moment you create the work. If you never publish the work, you are protected. If you publish, you have protection by merely slapping a copyright notice on the work. If you want a registered copyright [which most studios/publishers do], you need to file a form with the copyright office. They will give you back a certificate.
That is sort of how the Library of Congress has become one of the largest archives in the world as you are required to give a copy of your creative work to the library if you want copyright protection in the United States.
No! You do not have to give a copy of the work to the Library of Congress. The LOC has a vast collection because that is part of its mandate [so Congress has a vast resource to use when researching
Breaking glass has a very distinctive sound signature. It is what professional services use to detect intrusions (My last company had this and it did detect breakins). Also, thieves are quite noisy when doing a breakin (e.g. they talk/yell, make a lot of noise while searching through drawers, etc). This is also used as the basis of some pro systems (e.g. Sonitrol)
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Sending sound information to your phone would be a lot less bandwidth than video. It would be easier for you to respond in real time. That is, system detects a [possible] breakin sound signature, sends a text alert to your phone. You then connect to real time monitoring of the microphones. You would be able to confirm what is happening. Then, you can call police and say that a human has verified the breakin. They would be more likely to respond (vs. false alarm)
Are they? This work is some 40+ years old. The copyright term probably expired. Did CBS renew it? There would have to be a record of this at the USPTO. Although, they have [and need to] renew copyrights on the series episodes that are well known, a script that was never made into an episode probably slipped under the "renewal radar".
The workaround for this bug might be that the compiler has to put a nop at the start of all function epilogs
More likely it'll be "fixed" in microcode and made available in a firmware update by motherboard manufacturers. It's a fairly small subset of all available CPUs.
I know that with modern Intel CPU chips, some have a processor microcode patch capability. But, this must be reloaded on every reboot, and [usually] it's done by the OS [from disk] in direct communication with the CPU. The BIOS (and thus the motherboard vendor) is not involved. Under linux, the utility is/sbin/microcode_ctl and the patch file is/etc/microcode.dat
When I did my first post, I was not aware that AMD had also implemented an update capability but I just checked the kernel source and it has references to AMD having it as well. So, yes, you're right. That is the preferred way to handle the problem.
But, Intel/AMD processors are not fully microprogrammable the way IBM mainframe architectures are. So, it also depends upon whether the bug can be fixed by an update.
The ability of the wealthy to afford large hard drives does not mean file sizes aren't an issue for other less fortunate people. My hard drive is 75 GB and most of that is taken with important stuff, as is my external drive, so there's not much room for music and compression matters quite a lot.
I think it's time for you to reacquaint yourself with current disk drive pricing. About six months ago, I got some 2TB drives at about $200 each. The 1TB models were half that and the 500GB even less. And, it you can't retrofit internal SATA drives, they have equivalent [self-powered] USB ones. So, I'm guessing $75 would allow you to upgrade your present system.
Matt Dillon, desperate after chasing unsuccessfully mary in Something about Mary radically changed jobs and started to study computer science...
Matt Dillon and Cameron Diaz had been dating for three years prior to "There's Something About Mary", but split up shortly thereafter. So, maybe, not totally unsuccessful [from a certain point of view--Obiwan]...
Though, it's still very serious. At least it generally causes your program to crash rather than spitting out a wrong answer. And it sounds like the sequence of instructions that causes it is not commonly found.
I can well understand the guy who found it being all excited. The CPU is the last place you'd look for a bug, and finding one is pretty impressive, especially a really elusive one like this.
Actually, it could be occurring in other places/programs that aren't crashing but are [silently] producing bad results. The floating point bug, once isolated, could be probed for, and compensated for.
From what I can tell from reading the assembly code, the function is unremarkable except for the fact that it's recursive. It isn't doing anything exotic with the stack (e.g. just pushes at prolog and pops at epilog). The epilog is starting at +160 and the only thing I notice is that there are several conditional jumps there and just above it is a recursion call with a fall through. But, from the AMD analysis, it appears that it's the specific order of the push/pops that is the culprit. In this instance, it's r14, r13, r12, rbp, rbx
The workaround for this bug might be that the compiler has to put a nop at the start of all function epilogs (e.g. a nop before the pop sequence) on every function because you can't predict which function will be susceptible. Or, you have to guarantee that the push/pop sequence doesn't emit the sequence that causes the problem (e.g. move the rbp push to the first in sequence as I suspect that putting it in the middle is what is causing the problems)
Actually, Moto has been negotiating with Apple over this patent since 2007--to no avail.
Generally, the German courts have been much more level headed than Eastern Texas.
In this particular case, the German court determined that Apple had been negotiating in bad faith, and thus, Moto was entitled to a special injunction (because of Apple's egregious/scofflaw behavior). When Apple saw the handwriting on the wall, they rushed to [the court to] "pay up", but the court said "too little, too late".
Considering how much of a patent bully Apple is, this is one of the few places where they've been properly spanked.
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Thanks for the enlightening "sip from the fire hose," Forever Wondering. I appreciate the explanation.
You're quite welcome. It's refreshing to get a thank you on slashdot--and much appreciated.
It seemed like you had shelled out good money for a multicore system and were concerned that you weren't getting your money's worth.
In fact, Intel/AMD cores work even harder for you than that using several techniques:
Hyperthreading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading)
out of order execution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-order_execution)
Because of this and the sheer speed of a 3+ GHz CPU, the main bottleneck is actually fetching/storing to/from DRAM.
That's right--16 cores/chip X 100 chips for a total of 160 cores.
16 * 100 = 160?
You must be a hardware engineer. Did you work for Intel on the early Pentium floating point unit?
Yep, I caught the math error, too, but only after posting. I was debating a one-liner reply to correct it, but didn't want to clutter things up with a reply just to correct the typo.
I'm a computer engineer, which is 50% software, 50% hardware. While I could forgive a hardware engineer, a software engineer never makes misteaks [pun intended].
It's in the process of failing rapidly. Avatar had the advantage of novelty, it was the first non-creature feature to be done in 3D for quite a while. To get the real picture, you have to see the results for the follow-on efforts. Those seem to have been a yawn.
It only takes one film to prove the market/concept/technology is worth doing [to studios]. "The Jazz Singer" for sound [studios stopped silent film productions even before the films were completed]. "The Adventures Of Robin Hood" [Error Flynn] for color.
Meanwhile, 3D TVs aren't exactly flying off the shelves. Figures for purchases of extra 3D glasses for existing 3D TVs show that few seem interested in the 3D even when they do buy a 3D capable TV.
"3D capable" can [merely] mean that the TV monitor can display at a frame rate of 120 fps (vs. ~60 fps which is what a lot of computer monitors use). Also, the first true market is theaters as you need a [minimum] 100" diagonal monitor to get the same effect as you do in theaters.
From Avatar, studios, producers, directors, equipment manufacturers, etc. all know the following: the technology works [well enough] and can be improved; they can make money with it. They are in it for the long term, because they know what will be possible in 10 years. They really don't care what you think [now]. They're really more concerned about what you will think 10 years from now.
Color TV didn't require funky and expensive goggles to watch.
The Japanese have already demonstrated systems that don't need the glasses.
B&W TV offered no perception of color at all, but there IS some depth information in a 2D picture. We do perceive some depth in it, so 3D is a mere enhancement rather than adding a new perceptual dimension.
Not at all true. The mind's perception of 3D from 2D is completely different from presenting the human eye with 3D information. That is accomplished by providing parallax.
Sounds like you never saw Avatar [in 3D]. I did, and at several points in the screening, I took off the glasses to see the difference for the same scene/view. The difference is like seeing a still photograph vs. actually being there.
*IF* 3D catches on this time, it will be when the glasses are no longer required and it costs no more than 2D.
As I mentioned before, glasses are a non-issue. Color TV was phased in over a long time, based on its relative cost. Many people held back on buying an early color TV set, because the quality wasn't that great, and it cost too much, relative to B&W. People seem to think that color TV was adopted/embraced by viewers en masse. In actual fact, there were quite a few laymen pundits: the quality is terrible, the equipment is too expensive, there isn't enough color content to justify the purchase. The video industry ignored this because they knew the roadmap and the potential. If they had listened, we'd still be watching B&W (or just listening to radios as TV itself would have been stillborn).
Consider, the color filter based 3D has been available for over half a century and it works on a color TV as well. Nobody bothers with it.
Trying to compare the red/blue glasses tech to the techniques available now is like comparing an old AM tube radio from the 1930's to modern 7.1 surround sound. The red/blue technique had noticeable side effects on color quality. The modern polarization technique [not available back then] does not suffer from this defect [neither does the rapid shutt
I admit that despite being a technical user, I was not aware that only 2 chips are allowed to "talk" at a given time. I had (erroneously, it would seem) assumed that in order for a 3+-core chip to be fully useful, such a switch/router would have to already be in place.
For [most] current designs, Intel/AMD have multilevel cache memory. The cores run independently and fully in parallel and if they need to communicate they do so via shared memory. Thus, they all run full bore, flat out, and don't need to wait for each other [there are some exceptions--read on]. They have cache snoop logic that keeps them up-to-date. In other words, all cores have access to the entire DRAM space through the cache hierarchy. When the system is booted, the DRAM is divided up (so each core gets its 1/N share of it).
Let's say you have an 8 core chip. Normally, each program gets its own core [sort of]. Your email gets a core, your browser gets a core, your editor gets one, etc. and none of them wait for another [unless they do filesystem operations, etc.] Disjoint programs don't need to communicate much usually [and not at the level we're talking about here].
But, if you have a program designed for heavy computation (e.g. video compression or transcoding), it might be designed to use multiple cores to get its work done faster. It will consist of multiple sections (e.g. processes/threads). If a process/thread so designates, it can share portions of its memory space with other processes/threads. Each thread takes input data from a memory pool somewhere, does some work on it, and deposits the results in a memory output pool. It then alerts the next thread in the processing "pipeline" as to which memory buffer it placed the result. The next thread does much the same. x86 architectures have some locking primitives to assist this. It's a bit more complex than that, but you don't need a "router". If the multicore application is designed correctly, any delays for sync between pipeline stages occur infrequently and are on the order of a few CPU cycles.
This works fine up to about 16-32 cores. Beyond that, even the cache becomes a bottleneck. Or, consider a system were you have a 16 core chip (all on the same silicon substrate). The cache works fine there. But now suppose you want to have a motherboard that has 100 of these chips on it. That's right--16 cores/chip X 100 chips for a total of 160 cores. Now, you need some form of interchip communication.
x86 systems already have this in the form of Hypertransport (AMD) or the PCI Express Bus (Intel) [there are others as well]. PCIe isn't a bus in the classic sense at all. It functions like an onboard store-and-forward point-to-point routing system with guaranteed packet delivery. This is how a SATA host adapter communicates with DRAM (via a PCIe link). Likewise for your video controller. Most current systems don't need to use PCIe beyond this (e.g. to hook up multiple CPU chips) because most desktop/laptop systems have only one chip (with X cores in it). But, in the 100 chip example, you would need something like this and HT and PCIe already do something similar. Intel/AMD are already working on any enhancements to HT/PCIe as needed. Actually, Intel [unwilling to just use HT], is pushing "Quick Path Interconnect" or QPI.
Hold on a second. Saying James Cameron wouldn't want to ruin his legacy might make some sense, but then you compare him to George Lucas? Lucas has ruined his legacy many times over with his horrible edits to his older movies (e.g., Greedo shooting first), plus his horrible prequels. George has shown many times he has no qualms doing anything to make a fast buck.
Okay, fair enough about George and Greedo. Or did you mean George being like Greedo? :-) As to the prequels, I really can't say as I've never seen them--which says a lot, I guess.
As you probably already know, the "Special Edition" had to be done, because the original VistaVision negatives were badly faded (going grayish which is the fade mode for the VistaVision process). So, to start with, they cleaned up the prints to restore the original color.
The Greedo edit is univerally reviled as an act of cowardice [on the part of George]. But, as far as I know, it's the only serious plot deviation. From the documentary "the making of ...", most of the additional material was to improve the landscape, clean up obvious mistakes where object matte errors occurred so that objects behind another object were being seen transparently. Also, they redid spaceship battle sequences with 3D CGI that didn't exist when the original was made.
Personally, in IV, when the land speeder is whipping across the desert to the spaceport, the original special effect was done in camera with vaseline on the lens to blur out the wheels under the model. This is the famous "force field" under the speeder. When redone, they replaced the entire sequence with a CGI wireframe construction that looks even more phony. In the redo for Jedi, they added a beak/worm part to the Sarlacc pit. To me, it was much more menacing in the original when it was passive (like a Venus Fly Trap or Pitcher Plant).
As for transforming the industry overnight, well, Avatar's been out since 2009 IIRC, and I don't see the industry being transformed yet. All I see is a bunch of really crappy 2D-to-3D conversion movies
As I've said, new [made for] 3D material will be forthcoming. When Avatar was in theaters, they had trailers for Shrek 3D. It will take some time, so be patient. Animation lends itself well to the 3D process. So, the initial true 3D releases are likely to come from there.
Conversion of 2D material into 3D is actually a much more difficult problem than working with true 3D material. The algorithms are improving as we speak. This is not unlike early DVD encodings. The early ones look terrible because the encoding algorithms were not anywhere as sophisticated as are used for current releases.
It just so happens I'm a computer engineer and write software for HD H.264 realtime broadcast quality video encoders (e.g. AT&T U-Verse high def). So, as part of that I've seen demos of 3D tech in the lab in 2007 that are only starting to emerge at the consumer level today.
Currently, there are 2 or 3 competing standards for 3D in the home. Polarized glasses vs. shuttered glasses. How to transmit: left frame then right frame, or interlaced left/right frame, full or half resolution, etc. How to lay this over the top of the current HDMI [cable] spec without requiring retrofit/incompatibility. How does the decoder/player [when negotiating with the monitor] detect whether the monitor is 3D capable (and if so, what tranmission schemes does it support). If fallback/conversion to 2D is required by the decoder/player, using what algorithm? Use left eye only (easiest), blend left/right, or other? There is quite a bit of technical work to be done, and it is being done--behind the scenes.
Technical plus/minus aside, it's a political battle between the various high volume consumer products giants. The companies that produce the encoder equipment for this are waiting until the dust settles to avoid a repeat of the "Betamax"
First, as the other poster said, Avatar was shown in both 2D and 3D, so it being successful doesn't say much about the successfulness of 3D. Further, one single successful film does not equate to 3D being successful in general.
Most 3D movies have been the crappy 2D conversion type.
Please see my reply to coribus. Actually, I seem to have set off a small firestorm. I've got about five replies out to others on this responding to each in kind.
I've seen Avatar in 3D and I own a 2D copy. The 3D was far more immersive. Although, Avatar was screened in 2D alongside the 3D screenings, most people saw the 3D versions (regular or IMAX). Some did both (or all three), just to see the difference. I had been told beforehand that the regular 3D was actually better than IMAX 3D, so that is what I chose.
While Avatar is fine in 2D, it was meant to be seen in 3D. Seeing it in 2D is like colorizing Casablanca simply because you don't like B&W films.
We'll have to wait and see if "Titanic 3D" lives up to the advance press. Cameron knows more than most what is possible because of what he learned making Avatar. Since he's already working on the two Avatar sequels, I don't think he'd waste his time "sullying" his own creation unless he was pretty sure he could make it work well. Also, it appears that George Lucas is going to transform "Star Wars" (4-6) into 3D. Seriously, these guys [more than most] know what they're doing and really have no need to do this to make a fast buck if it ended up ruining their legacy.
Most films are being shot digitally now because it's cheaper than editing/mastering/distributing in film stock. The [incremental] cost of shooting in 3D is small compared to the overall production costs (e.g. licensing a rock and roll song to use in the movie score might be [say] $1M which is 10 days worth of shooting). So, most films in the future are going to be shot in 3D regardless of whether the film is distributed 3D or 2D.
As I've already mentioned shooting in 3D has distinct advantages. You can do a lot in editing/post-production to improve the quality of a film that will be presented in 2D. Having broad depth of focus (which usually has to be done with a wide angle lens), reduction of smearing in high action scenes, etc.
3D tech will have a vast audience in video games like Doom/Quake.
There have been a number of transformational films. "The Jazz Singer" killed off silent movies almost immediately. Virtually every studio stopped silent movies in mid-production to "retool" them for sound. Although, there had been some color films before, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" [Error Flynn/Olivia DeHaviland], shot in Technicolor, validated color films with its instant success. Because it was so vastly superior to other color technologies at the time, Technicolor had a virtual monopoly lasting 20 years. Thus, in both cases, a single film transformed the entire industry virtually overnight. Avatar is that film for 3D technology.
There have been many color films since. Many are forgettable. A few are grand. But, nobody these days is trashing the use of color film (which did happen in the early days--Carole Lombard, for example, thought color was a terrible idea, artistically speaking).
I mentioned "Good Night And Good Luck" on another part of the thread. They wanted to make a B&W film (because that's how we remember Edward R. Murrow). But, they shot it in color, partly because it's harder to get B&W film stock these days and if you can, it's more expensive to purchase and process. They digitally removed the color in post-production to produce the final B&W film that went to theaters. They also chose to shoot the film in spherical rather than anamorphic so that the film portions would match the 4:3 aspect ratio of the in-film TV clips for artistic reasons.
So, eventually, if you're a filmmaker, you won't be able to find a 2D camera, only 3D. You'd just use the footage of the "left eye" if you only wanted 2D.
There WAS a standard: NTSC color. It's just that most television sets did not stick to it because of technological limitations in CRTs. Once color-correction circuitry was added, this could be worked around.
The NTSC color standard [1953] largely covered such things as how the color subcarrier was modulated, the 8 cycle burst during the horizontal blanking interval, etc.
While NTSC had colorimetry in it, it was largely ignored when producing camera equipment to produce more brightness from the phosphors. This is because the human eye is far more sensitive to changes in luminosity than it is in chroma. It wasn't until the SMPTE "C" colorimetry standard [1969] came along that restored some order. It was SMPTE's effort to define "standard phosphors" and encourage manufacturers to add the color correction circuitry to the camera that stabilized things.
I was only a child in the 60s, but I don't remember anyone saying about color TV that it's a fad, who needs it.
I was a teen in the 60s, so I might remember more.
I do remember getting a color TV, which we got not because it was color, but because our more than 10-year old old black-and-white TV set needed constant adjustment to keep the horizontal and vertical hold on target. Around that same time, NBC was the first station to go "all" color, hence the peacock logo, though I think it still had a lot of black and white for reruns and local affiliate shows.
Sorta makes my point. Your family bought a B&W TV at a time before it was perfected (e.g. the V/H hold problems). You were an early adopter. Buying a color set at the time you did (if only to fix the V/H hold problem) was being an early adopter of color (you could just as easily have bought a new B&W to fix the hold).
NBC was the first to go all color because RCA (which owned/started NBC) invented color TV. For a time, they had a bit of a vertical monopoly on it, until the other networks were able to catch up. Color equipment was initially more expensive. As it matured, the costs came down. Initially, it was a chicken-and-the-egg problem. Why transmit in color if nobody has a color TV set? Why buy a color TV set if not many programs are broadcast in color? Since the FCC mandated that color broadcasts be backward compatible with B&W, this solved the problem. Broadcasters phased in color even if not all sets could see color. Eventually, with enough color material available, more people started buying color sets
By the way, there were also a slew of "3D" stereoscopic movies every once in a while back then, but it never caught on for mainstream movies.
Whatever people are saying about current 3D technology, the 50's era 3D was based on the old blue/red glasses technology and it was far worse.
How many current new movies are stereoscopic 3D? How many current theaters are equipped to deal with them? Until it's most movies and most theaters, it's not much less of a fad than it was in the 50s and 60s.
Actually, most new movies are already shot digitally rather than film. Editing is far easier. Lighting is not as tricky. And they can still derive film prints for those theaters that can't project directly from digital [yet]. Or, the converse: you can create a digital print from a film master. But, the costs of digital have dropped so much, that it's actually more expensive to shoot and distribute on film
In fact, most movies will be shot in 3D. This is already happening. Beyond cost of camera equipment, it costs pretty much the same. A location shoot is $100K/day 3D or not. The benefit is that the choice to release in 3D or 2D can be made later [depending upon the quality of the story and the film's potential]. For example, "The Dark Knight" would have been an ideal candidate for 3D. If, however, it had been bungled by the director, they would have released it in 2D to save the cost of 3D distribution.
With digital projection, it doesn't take much to convert a theater to 3D. You use the same projectors for 2D or 3D. The only difference [currently] is that you're given the glasses when you walk in. So, most theaters are already "3D ready"
This is far less traumatic than the 50's era conversion to anamorphic widescreen. There you had to physically change the screen when going from spherical 35mm to anamorphic 35mm. You also needed to switch to special anamorphic lenses on the projectors. This all took time/effort while you were waiting.
Please see my reply to coricus for additional background.
It's not quite the same; the difference is, there's actual, tangible complaints about 3D, and there were tangible benefits to using color.
Did you read my comment in my original post about using 3D in mastering to achieve control of depth of focus? Another benefit is reducing smearing in high action scenes
You don't need special glasses to watch movies in color, for instance, and color doesn't give some people headaches (well, no more than black and white would have).
The Japanese are already demonstrating prototype systems that do not require special glasses. The headaches occur because the amount of parallax chosen is too much for some people. However, eventually, you'll have 3D systems that allow each individual to dial their own preferences for this.
Furthermore, color can actually be used to make a better movie. Even Avatar, one of the best 3D movies so far, was about as enjoyable in the 2D version. I doubt you could say the same thing about color versus black and white.
Actually, I did in my reply to coricus regarding Hitchcock's "Rebecca". As I said, it used techniques in B&W that could not have been done in color.
Basically, it seems like 3D is full of downsides and simply doesn't offer enough of a benefit to the viewer to be useful;
That is exactly what was said of color TV when it first came out. Some people refused to buy a color TV for decades afterwards because they considered it an unnecessary boondoggle with significant downsides (e.g. Having to adjust the tint if you changed a channel. Having to adjust the tint when a new program on the same channel came on. Having to adjust the tint if a commercial came on)
color, on the other hand, had basically no downsides and offered significant benefits.
When color TV first arrived that was simply not true. Early [cheap] color TV receivers could not maintain color lock even in the same program.
It took decades to achieve what you are [obviously] taking for granted and assuming always existed.
I watched Avatar in 2D as that was all that was on offer and I suggest an alternative reason Avatar was successful.
It was a well directed, acted, scripted, and paced movie telling a time old tale that was fun and enjoyable.
I'm sure you won't agree as in your world view only technology dictates how good cinema is.
I saw Avatar in 3D in the theater. But, I also liked the story so much that I bought the 2D DVD. It is still enjoyable. But, some scenes are unbelievably vivid in 3D. For example, there is a scene from a narrow ledge looking out on a huge expanse. In 3D, you actually feel the danger of falling off. For Avatar, with 2D, you're watching a good movie. In 3D, you forget you're watching a movie and feel like you're a side-by-side observer in the world that was created.
So, if you ever get the chance for a 3D viewing of Avatar, take it. You'll appreciate the film as it was meant to be seen.
As to my "world view" ... My favorite film is "Casablanca". My favorite hero is Atticus Finch in "To Kill A Mockingbird". My favorite heroine is Mrs de Winter in "Rebecca" or "Mrs. Miniver". Favorite cinematography is for "Rebecca"
Speaking of Rebecca, there are scenes/techniques (e.g. use of shadow) that work precisely because it was B&W. These would not have been effective in color. Hitchcock knew this. In particular, there is a scene with Mrs. Danvers where her face is cast in half shadow. It is what they teach in film schools.
3D is a tool in the arsenal, as is B&W. The decision to master "Good Night And Good Luck" in color and then digitally "bleach" it to B&W was done after testing various techniques. They chose the "right tool for the job" after examining alternatives.
Exactly. 3D has failed big time, but Titanic 3D is attracting lots of people. I made a separate comment about it: Is it because it's Titanic the movie or is it that it is in 3D? Would a re-release of the original movie be a big hit?
3D has not failed big time. Avatar at $1.6B is one of the most successful films of all time.
I think it's fair to point out that people were saying the same thing about color TV in the 1960's: It's a fad--who needs it.
If you adjusted the color for one station/network so that flesh tones were natural, they were yellow on other channels because there was no agreed upon standard on which to base this and each network did its own thing. Eventually, the standards were developed and each station/network adopted them, which is why, today, you can channel surf and never need to adjust it [if you even can on a modern TV set].
It took at least a decade to achieve this, perhaps longer.
The same thing happened when "colorization" technology first arrived. Originally, it was used [badly] to colorize B&W movies because someone [Ted Turner] thought that people would not watch B&W movies anymore. A particularly horrific attempt was the colorization of the [original] Edmund O'Brien version of D.O.A.
Eventually, it was realized that this was a solution in search of a problem. And the true problem to be solved by this technology was eventually discovered: restoral of faded color films. In fact, even B&W films benefit from this. Look at any recent DVD releases of classic films and you'll usually see that the entire film has been "digitally remastered".
I can assure you that there are many players in the video technology field that are placing heavy longterm investments on 3D.
Also, there are advantages to shooting a movie in 3D, even you only ever intend to release it in 2D (e.g. better control of depth of focus, etc.). Thus, 3D will be here to stay [as will shooting digitally vs film], if only for mastering/editing.
Something that was once known as "Seward's Folly" is now known as something called "Alaska" ...
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When an attempt is made to login, sshd first checks authorized_keys and if the public key proffered matches an entry, access is granted (with no password challenge). This is standard PKI authentication for sshd.
If no such match, sshd proceeds with PAM authentication and a password challenge will be issued. But, since the /etc/pam.d/sshd file has the pam_access module active, pam_access will deny the login after giving the password challenge. Even if the password given is correct, the authentication will fail.
Thus, a system so configured to the remote world will look like it's ordinary and wide open but will be completely immune to the hail mary attack.
Even if you don't (or can't) configure your systems in this manner, since sshd login by root is disabled by default in most /etc/ssh_config/sshd_config files, the hail mary is only effective with a valid [non-root] user/pw combo. If you use a different username/pw on each system, this reduces the odds on a successful attempt dramatically.
The reason I say this is that I added an additional wrinkle to my PAM stack. After securing it as described above, I created an additional PAM authentication module that logs all incorrect attempts. I also enabled root ssh login, and modified sshd so that it would pass the actual password along.
The normal sshd action is if either root is attempting to login (with root access configured off) or an invalid userid is given, sshd will replace the password with a fixed string of INCORRECT. This is supposed to prevent timing measurements that might give a clue as to whether a given userid is valid. I compensate for this by adding my own random delay that overshadows any response time measurement.
With the mods, I now have a log of time/IP/user/pw attempts. For my home system, I have a dynamic IP with no DNS entry, so it's low profile. Still, after four months in operation, my log has netted some 6000 entries. The attempts fall into several categories:
(1) user/id where they are the same (e.g. userid is mary and password is mary).
(2) several different userids (e.g. a list of 10) and several different passwords (e.g. a list of 9) that are all tried against each other for a total of 90.
(3) very specific userid/pw combos that come from a database of already cracked user/pw combos. These are repeated from far flung IP addresses from time to time indicating that somebody is passing around the database. Some are such specific one shot combos (e.g. root with the same password 439812uioewruiey19283793487123 [an actual password from my log]) that they actually form a signature for the crackers themselves.
You're still full of shit. I have never heard that term use to refer to Obama, and I hang around with a lot of people who call him names. That strikes me as a "macaca" charge: and attempt to create racial animosity where none exists by inventing new terms or new meanings for them.
I had never heard the term until seeing this posting/reply [by Anonymous Coward]. This is probably because I do not "hang around" with people who call Obama names. While I generally agree with many of the current administration's policies, some I do not, but I confine my appraisals to the policy specifics.
So, I was curious. A Google search of "obongo obama" converts this to "abongo obama". [Malik] Abongo Obama was Barack Obama's half brother and died in 1982.
If you press Google to produce results for "obongo obama", you will indeed find references to the term as described by the original poster. In particular, theurbandictionary.com has three definitions.
Many of the pages returned by the second search are an obvious misspelling of "abongo" as they are clearly referring to the brother. But, others are clearly highlighting the racist definitions/usage.
So, the original AC poster [apparently] didn't invent the term. You may well be right to villify AC for promulgating the term, but, by the same token, wouldn't someone want to villify you for promulgating "macaca"?
Just like the Zimmerman case itself, only here it was NBC creating new meaning by deliberate selective editing.
It is unclear at this point whether the editing mistake was deliberate or not. It could just as easily have been a screwup [albeit a careless/foolish one]. In either case, it is a violation of journalistic ethics [if it was deliberate] or journalistic standards [if it was as mistake]. The truth will emerge in time [along with appropriate disciplinary action for the people involved].
However, this is the second time that you have leapt to a conclusion that is not supported by the facts at hand. And, the third time that you have used inflammatory language/wording. Perhaps, your outlook would improve if you changed who you hang around with?
Yeah I did a LOT of installs from the Mid '80s on using mostly Wyse 50 or 60 terminals hanging off SCO boxes ( back when SCO was a real company not a lawsuit factory) And I was supporting software running on old SCO boxes 20 years later
When I was an engineer at Altos Computer Systems, the engineers were asked to evaluate an early model Wyse terminal. This was because Don Valentine [Sequoia Capital] was an Altos investor and on the board and he was interested in investing in Wyse. The model we got was a bit boxy/clunky (it predated the later WY-30/55/60's that sold like hotcakes) but we felt it had potential. Eventually, a Wyse terminal was usually paired with an Altos system. In particular, the Altos ACS 586.
SCO didn't manufacture hardware. They did ports of Xenix (Microsoft's version of Unix--in those days, this was a hedge against MS/DOS not being as successful as it was) to various microsystems. Altos did its own port of Xenix to the 586 [but may have used SCO later on???].
Just curious ... What was the hardware vendor for the systems you were using?
An old friend of mine used to work at Wang. He was emphatic about that. "I do not work for Wang. I work at Wang!"
An old friend of mine used to for (er... at) Wang. Everybody had Wang word processors in their cubicles. So, people used to walk around and say "Show me your Wang" ...
CBS is the current owner of the copyright.
Are they? This work is some 40+ years old. The copyright term probably expired. Did CBS renew it? There would have to be a record of this at the USPTO. Although, they have [and need to] renew copyrights on the series episodes that are well known, a script that was never made into an episode probably slipped under the "renewal radar".
Copyright laws changed about the time the original Star Trek television series was aired and produced. For earlier television series, the networks and/or the production studios which owned the show. This is also a change that happened about the time Star Trek was produced... it was Desilu Productions (aka Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz) which actually owned the show, and was "sold" to Paramount Pictures when the studio closed and through some other buy-outs and mergers ended up in the hands of CBS, rather than the network that originally broadcast the show which was in fact NBC (which is now owned by General Electric... well half of it at least... the other half is now owned by Walt Disney, Inc. as the American Broadcasting Company). The ownership by CBS is even relatively recent so it wasn't even theirs to renew when it was eligible even had the laws stayed the same.
I'm a long time Trekkie so I know Star Trek aired on NBC originally as I watched episodes in network first run. I'm also familiar with Desilu because that was formed in the 1950's by Desi to do "I Love Lucy". He was able to convince CBS that Desilu should own "I Love Lucy" as most shows at that time were owned by the networks and not production houses. By the 1960's, Lucy and Desi were divorced and Lucy was running Desilu. I was just saying "CBS" to simplify the history.
BTW, I should also note that it isn't the USPTO that even deals with copyright.
You are correct--I should have said "US Copyright Office" [which is part of the LOC].
I know you are under the mistaken notion that there is something called "intellectual property". I'm sorry you've bought into the myth, and it is unfortunate that such miseducation exists.
You are quite incorrect as my "notion" has always been against "intellectual property". I'm not sure how you could so completely misinterpret this. I've even been known to cut-and-paste the part of the Constitution that deals with copyright on other Slashdot posts regarding the "limited time" aspect. BTW, I'm a computer engineer and I'm also against software patents--just in case you were wondering ...
Copyright is something administered by the Librarian of Congress, which is not just in another agency but a whole different branch of the U.S. government (as the Librarian of Congress reports directly to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, not the President of the Untied States). The "record" that something was copyrighted would be finding a copy of the script in the Library of Congress and a catalog record of that item.
No! You have copyright protection from the moment you create the work. If you never publish the work, you are protected. If you publish, you have protection by merely slapping a copyright notice on the work. If you want a registered copyright [which most studios/publishers do], you need to file a form with the copyright office. They will give you back a certificate.
That is sort of how the Library of Congress has become one of the largest archives in the world as you are required to give a copy of your creative work to the library if you want copyright protection in the United States.
No! You do not have to give a copy of the work to the Library of Congress. The LOC has a vast collection because that is part of its mandate [so Congress has a vast resource to use when researching
It was a general comment on individual greed; i.e. "people will systematically overvalue their own money and undervalue others."
Change the word money to opinion in your reply and you'll be more in the spirit of the [humorous] subthread.
Husband gives his "two cent's worth"--rounds it up to a nickel. Wife rounds it down to zero. Appearance in divorce court ensues ...
And this is EXACTLY what happens when your nation issues currency that is backed by nothing!
Well, at least it's better than company scrip ...
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Sending sound information to your phone would be a lot less bandwidth than video. It would be easier for you to respond in real time. That is, system detects a [possible] breakin sound signature, sends a text alert to your phone. You then connect to real time monitoring of the microphones. You would be able to confirm what is happening. Then, you can call police and say that a human has verified the breakin. They would be more likely to respond (vs. false alarm)
CBS is the current owner of the copyright.
Are they? This work is some 40+ years old. The copyright term probably expired. Did CBS renew it? There would have to be a record of this at the USPTO. Although, they have [and need to] renew copyrights on the series episodes that are well known, a script that was never made into an episode probably slipped under the "renewal radar".
The workaround for this bug might be that the compiler has to put a nop at the start of all function epilogs
More likely it'll be "fixed" in microcode and made available in a firmware update by motherboard manufacturers. It's a fairly small subset of all available CPUs.
I know that with modern Intel CPU chips, some have a processor microcode patch capability. But, this must be reloaded on every reboot, and [usually] it's done by the OS [from disk] in direct communication with the CPU. The BIOS (and thus the motherboard vendor) is not involved. Under linux, the utility is /sbin/microcode_ctl and the patch file is /etc/microcode.dat
When I did my first post, I was not aware that AMD had also implemented an update capability but I just checked the kernel source and it has references to AMD having it as well. So, yes, you're right. That is the preferred way to handle the problem.
But, Intel/AMD processors are not fully microprogrammable the way IBM mainframe architectures are. So, it also depends upon whether the bug can be fixed by an update.
The ability of the wealthy to afford large hard drives does not mean file sizes aren't an issue for other less fortunate people. My hard drive is 75 GB and most of that is taken with important stuff, as is my external drive, so there's not much room for music and compression matters quite a lot.
I think it's time for you to reacquaint yourself with current disk drive pricing. About six months ago, I got some 2TB drives at about $200 each. The 1TB models were half that and the 500GB even less. And, it you can't retrofit internal SATA drives, they have equivalent [self-powered] USB ones. So, I'm guessing $75 would allow you to upgrade your present system.
Matt Dillon, desperate after chasing unsuccessfully mary in Something about Mary radically changed jobs and started to study computer science...
Matt Dillon and Cameron Diaz had been dating for three years prior to "There's Something About Mary", but split up shortly thereafter. So, maybe, not totally unsuccessful [from a certain point of view--Obiwan] ...
Though, it's still very serious. At least it generally causes your program to crash rather than spitting out a wrong answer. And it sounds like the sequence of instructions that causes it is not commonly found.
I can well understand the guy who found it being all excited. The CPU is the last place you'd look for a bug, and finding one is pretty impressive, especially a really elusive one like this.
Actually, it could be occurring in other places/programs that aren't crashing but are [silently] producing bad results. The floating point bug, once isolated, could be probed for, and compensated for.
From what I can tell from reading the assembly code, the function is unremarkable except for the fact that it's recursive. It isn't doing anything exotic with the stack (e.g. just pushes at prolog and pops at epilog). The epilog is starting at +160 and the only thing I notice is that there are several conditional jumps there and just above it is a recursion call with a fall through. But, from the AMD analysis, it appears that it's the specific order of the push/pops that is the culprit. In this instance, it's r14, r13, r12, rbp, rbx
The workaround for this bug might be that the compiler has to put a nop at the start of all function epilogs (e.g. a nop before the pop sequence) on every function because you can't predict which function will be susceptible. Or, you have to guarantee that the push/pop sequence doesn't emit the sequence that causes the problem (e.g. move the rbp push to the first in sequence as I suspect that putting it in the middle is what is causing the problems)
the new US District Court of Eastern Texas.
Actually, Moto has been negotiating with Apple over this patent since 2007--to no avail.
Generally, the German courts have been much more level headed than Eastern Texas.
In this particular case, the German court determined that Apple had been negotiating in bad faith, and thus, Moto was entitled to a special injunction (because of Apple's egregious/scofflaw behavior). When Apple saw the handwriting on the wall, they rushed to [the court to] "pay up", but the court said "too little, too late".
Considering how much of a patent bully Apple is, this is one of the few places where they've been properly spanked.