I can't speak for the Apple and Atari, but on the Amiga and C64, screen scrolling was quite different than the technique Carmack had to use on the PC. Both Amiga and C64 had hardware scrolling, and just by incrementing a single register the screen could be scrolled in single pixel imcrements both horizontally and vertically. The point was that Carmack found a way to achieve the same effect on hardware that was not intended to do that.
I think you totally overthought my response. My point was that specifically for film and TV scores, that electronic techniques are "good enough" to replace an orchestra in most mid and low budget productions, and even some high budget productions. Specifically, the bulk of the "Sum of All Fears" score was performed by a workstation similar to the one I lined above and a very, very, very expensive library of orchestral samples (the library, over 30 CDs in all, runs a little over $25,000). It's good enough to fool 99% of the ears out there, especially when it's supposed to be in the background in the first place.
I'll try and find a link to the company that makes that sample library. They have a bunch of A/B tests comparing their stuff put together by a skilled arranger vs. a real orechestra playing the same piece.
Well, Flugtag is not about advancing the field of Aviation. It's about drinking until crashing into the Bay in a "glider" made of milk cartons and bailer twine while wearing a chicken costume sounds like a good idea.
Funny you should say that. When I read the X86-64 documention, I was struck by how similar it was to the way PPC scaled from 32 to 64 bits. Now, I still think PPC is the better architecture, but your pat dismissal of X86-64 is off target IMHO.
POWER and PowerPC are mostly the same, but not quite. There are something like 10 to 15 instructions that either have different semantics or are present in one arch but not the other. IIRC all of those instructions are fairly esoteric supervisor mode instructions, so they'd likely only affect the OS and not user-space programs.
How about a more obscure movie reference... Marathon Man, the 1976 classic.
Dr. Szell (Lawrence Olivier): So tell me, is it... safe?
Babington (Dustin Hoffman): Is what safe?
Szell: I'll ask the questions here. Is it safe?
(Puts dentist laser drill in Babingtons mouth)
(**ZORCH**)
Babington: Ahhh! What do you want?
Szell: I asked you a simple question. Is it safe?
(**ZORCH**)
Babington: (Screaming) I don't know what you're talking about!
(**ZORCH**)
Babington: (Frantic) It's safe! It's safe! Dear god it's safe!
(**ZORCH**)
I rented that movie ten years ago, and I still get flashbacks of that scene whenever I go to the dentist.
When I was in high school, one of the teachers had a small Jacob's ladder (basically what you just described). He would use insulated tongs to put an uncooked hot dog inbetween the rods. The spark would climb to the level of the hot dog hover there cooking the hot dog for a few seconds until the hot dog exploded in a shower of carbon and meat. It also detonated pickels. I'd hate to see what it would do to a finger.
Or, given that the source is MSNBC and they, like most journalists - print, web, and broadcast - must target audience with the collective average of a sixth grade education, it is possible that such details were ommited.
It's not easy to get that accurate. Or cheap either. It requires a very expensive GPS theodolite rig. When these things first showed up, they didn't work in real time either. You had to dump a bunch of observation data a computer and combine it with obersvation data from a special base station receiver (that had to be placed on a surveyed spot) and let it finish the number crunching before you would get usuable location fixes. Those first units were claiming sub-centimeter accuracy, don't know how well they delivered though.
A quarter mile is kind of harsh, but I could see that happening on that vintage of a GPS if it was having problems getting a lock on 4 satellites. Low signal strength, especially indoors, or interferrence can cause the receiver to go into a degarded accuracy mode. Usually the receiver will indictate this by displaying a estimated error or figure of merit number.
You had it right on up until the end. Four satellites are enough for any receiver regardless of clock type. You need three if you have a disciplined atomic clock available to the reciever.
Also, if you have an atomic clock and can make an assupmtion about your altitude you only need 2. Early GPSs on Navy submarines used that trick, since subs always carry (multiple) atomic clocks and since they could only get a GPS track on the surface their altitude was always 0 MSL. They could surface or get to periscope depth and get a super-accurate position fix in just 3 or 4 seconds then dive again.
Well, compact flash already had a huge advantage over the other formats - the interface is just IDE. You can buy a $10 part and use compact flash like a (slow) solid state hard drive.
it was starting to feel a little too much like California
Yeah, 'cause here in Califronia we're all huddled in the dark trying to cook food with power from the rationed 9-volt batteries that FEMA hands out once a month.
You are overstating the requirements a bit. WebDAV is part of Apache 2, and Apache 2 is only required for remote access to the repository. The only real dependancies are Neon, BerkelyDB 4, which, at least for linux, will likely be included in the next generationj of distributions as Berkeley DB 3 and 2 are now. A neon is justa small shared library, not that big of a deal.
Look at it this way, by the time Subversion is released the packages it depends on will be standard parts of most Linux distributions and will be staples in the *BSD ports system if they aren't already. Subversion will just snap right in.
And I have to disagree about administrative overhead. By integrating with Apache, it's one less network service to configure, plus you get to take advantage of Apache's authentication modules, and you get web repository access with no extra setup.
That's standard lawyer-speak on pretty much every software license out there. It's about liability not quality. If you really, really wanted to use software like that for such purposes, assuming you could get regulatory approval, you would have to negotiate a custom contract.
What about counter-rotating media and heads. The media spins in one direction as fast as it can, and the heads spin the other way as fast as they can. I gotta go patent that...
But anyway wouldn't a stationary media/stationary laser like you're suggesting still require some sort of spinning mirror to position the beam?
Slashdot Mirror
Just be sure you take the time to note the difference between a phone cable and a power cable. That's one thing you don't want to learn the hard way.
Yeah, but a voice T1 hardly qualifies as an analog phone line.
I'm sure that would be a last resort. First, it would attempt to deduct the appropriate royalties from your bank account.
I can't speak for the Apple and Atari, but on the Amiga and C64, screen scrolling was quite different than the technique Carmack had to use on the PC. Both Amiga and C64 had hardware scrolling, and just by incrementing a single register the screen could be scrolled in single pixel imcrements both horizontally and vertically. The point was that Carmack found a way to achieve the same effect on hardware that was not intended to do that.
I think you totally overthought my response. My point was that specifically for film and TV scores, that electronic techniques are "good enough" to replace an orchestra in most mid and low budget productions, and even some high budget productions. Specifically, the bulk of the "Sum of All Fears" score was performed by a workstation similar to the one I lined above and a very, very, very expensive library of orchestral samples (the library, over 30 CDs in all, runs a little over $25,000). It's good enough to fool 99% of the ears out there, especially when it's supposed to be in the background in the first place.
I'll try and find a link to the company that makes that sample library. They have a bunch of A/B tests comparing their stuff put together by a skilled arranger vs. a real orechestra playing the same piece.
You be surprised by the number of film scores that are produced by something like this instead of an actual orchestra.
Well, I never kept a notebook. That's just more evidence they can use against you at the trial.
Well, Flugtag is not about advancing the field of Aviation. It's about drinking until crashing into the Bay in a "glider" made of milk cartons and bailer twine while wearing a chicken costume sounds like a good idea.
Just tell 'em you would have done better if you hadn't had to stop to fix that flat tire.
Funny you should say that. When I read the X86-64 documention, I was struck by how similar it was to the way PPC scaled from 32 to 64 bits. Now, I still think PPC is the better architecture, but your pat dismissal of X86-64 is off target IMHO.
POWER and PowerPC are mostly the same, but not quite. There are something like 10 to 15 instructions that either have different semantics or are present in one arch but not the other. IIRC all of those instructions are fairly esoteric supervisor mode instructions, so they'd likely only affect the OS and not user-space programs.
You think that's bad? The .NET code samples play The Imperial March.
No no no, it's the DMCA. You can remeber it by the old Village People song:
D - M - C - A ( It's fun to violate the )
D - M - C - A ( You'll do more time than Manson )
D - M - C - A!
How about a more obscure movie reference... Marathon Man, the 1976 classic.
Dr. Szell (Lawrence Olivier): So tell me, is it... safe?
Babington (Dustin Hoffman): Is what safe?
Szell: I'll ask the questions here. Is it safe?
(Puts dentist laser drill in Babingtons mouth)
(**ZORCH**)
Babington: Ahhh! What do you want?
Szell: I asked you a simple question. Is it safe?
(**ZORCH**)
Babington: (Screaming) I don't know what you're talking about!
(**ZORCH**)
Babington: (Frantic) It's safe! It's safe! Dear god it's safe!
(**ZORCH**)
I rented that movie ten years ago, and I still get flashbacks of that scene whenever I go to the dentist.
When I was in high school, one of the teachers had a small Jacob's ladder (basically what you just described). He would use insulated tongs to put an uncooked hot dog inbetween the rods. The spark would climb to the level of the hot dog hover there cooking the hot dog for a few seconds until the hot dog exploded in a shower of carbon and meat. It also detonated pickels. I'd hate to see what it would do to a finger.
It's too bad we can'r interview a US patent official. My first question then would be "Does it hurt to have your head that far up your ass?".
Or, given that the source is MSNBC and they, like most journalists - print, web, and broadcast - must target audience with the collective average of a sixth grade education, it is possible that such details were ommited.
It's not easy to get that accurate. Or cheap either. It requires a very expensive GPS theodolite rig. When these things first showed up, they didn't work in real time either. You had to dump a bunch of observation data a computer and combine it with obersvation data from a special base station receiver (that had to be placed on a surveyed spot) and let it finish the number crunching before you would get usuable location fixes. Those first units were claiming sub-centimeter accuracy, don't know how well they delivered though.
A quarter mile is kind of harsh, but I could see that happening on that vintage of a GPS if it was having problems getting a lock on 4 satellites. Low signal strength, especially indoors, or interferrence can cause the receiver to go into a degarded accuracy mode. Usually the receiver will indictate this by displaying a estimated error or figure of merit number.
You had it right on up until the end. Four satellites are enough for any receiver regardless of clock type. You need three if you have a disciplined atomic clock available to the reciever.
Also, if you have an atomic clock and can make an assupmtion about your altitude you only need 2. Early GPSs on Navy submarines used that trick, since subs always carry (multiple) atomic clocks and since they could only get a GPS track on the surface their altitude was always 0 MSL. They could surface or get to periscope depth and get a super-accurate position fix in just 3 or 4 seconds then dive again.
Well, compact flash already had a huge advantage over the other formats - the interface is just IDE. You can buy a $10 part and use compact flash like a (slow) solid state hard drive.
Yeah, 'cause here in Califronia we're all huddled in the dark trying to cook food with power from the rationed 9-volt batteries that FEMA hands out once a month.
You are overstating the requirements a bit. WebDAV is part of Apache 2, and Apache 2 is only required for remote access to the repository. The only real dependancies are Neon, BerkelyDB 4, which, at least for linux, will likely be included in the next generationj of distributions as Berkeley DB 3 and 2 are now. A neon is justa small shared library, not that big of a deal.
Look at it this way, by the time Subversion is released the packages it depends on will be standard parts of most Linux distributions and will be staples in the *BSD ports system if they aren't already. Subversion will just snap right in.
And I have to disagree about administrative overhead. By integrating with Apache, it's one less network service to configure, plus you get to take advantage of Apache's authentication modules, and you get web repository access with no extra setup.
That's standard lawyer-speak on pretty much every software license out there. It's about liability not quality. If you really, really wanted to use software like that for such purposes, assuming you could get regulatory approval, you would have to negotiate a custom contract.
What about counter-rotating media and heads. The media spins in one direction as fast as it can, and the heads spin the other way as fast as they can. I gotta go patent that...
But anyway wouldn't a stationary media/stationary laser like you're suggesting still require some sort of spinning mirror to position the beam?