Amen to that. It's important to remember that neither the FCC nor PacBell have any real interest in the customers. They're merely a neccessary evil that has to be put up with in order to make money. (For a corporation, this is profits, for a governmental agency, this is votes.) If they could simply get the money without having to do any work (a.k.a. the IRS), they'd happily screw us all over.
Once you understand this principle, though, you can pit the two sides against each other, with hopefully the common man getting something out of the whole deal.
It's a dangerous thing to fight with giants, but we are many and it is our only chance.
Solar sails are cool, but their power (and by extension, usefulness) is largely a function of how far they are from the sun.
For sending stuff between the inner 4 planets, they're a solution that will need to be explored more in the future.
To send a probe to Pluto? You can get good speeds out of a solar probe, but then you have to drag along some other form of engine to stop somehow once you get there.
Ion propulsion is probabally a better researched/preforming choice for this mission.
Should we rape rapists? Morals and law are two totally different concepts.
The problem with your argument is that you ignore the true purpose of punishment: discouragement. The purpose of the penal system is to essentially produce a Pavlovian response towards 'bad' behavior in the subject. Unfortunately, given the structure of most prisons, the 'justice' system does more to reinforce said behaviors than prevent them.
If one man kills another, he has already violated the covenant of society. No number of speeches by defenders or flowery declerations of sorrow by the accused can bring the dead man back to life. It may not be impossible for a sinner to repent, but fear of punishing one should not overcome the dangers of his actions encouraging others.
Will raping rapists discourage others from doing the same? Therein lies the question.
You act as though doubling transistor count each year is a parlor trick.
Study modern processor design. Watch as quantum mechanics beats the crap out of frequency interference and then the two of them gang up on chemistry. After a certain point, the science involved becomes magic.
Recognize Moore's work for how it helps Intel focus on the future. Board meeting: "We have an invention that will multiply preformance by 10x in 5 years." Back of envelope: 2^5 = 32. "I'm sorry, but that's not impressive enough. You'll need to boost preformance by 30x if you want funding."
AMD: "If we want to surpass Intel in the next five years, this is where we must be."
Sure, you could start subsidising the manufacture of silicon on the side and jump into the industry. However, if you want to make it profitable, if you want to succeed on an engineering basis, then you're going to have to play by Moore's rules.
Think you can do it? Today? Tomorrow? Intel has for the last thirty years.
I've gotten both extremely good and extremely bad results out of untrained actors.
Yes, DeNiro using method acting in Taxi Driver is a seemingly unstoppable force.
However, we each wander through our lives attempting to solve the same basic problems. If you ask a manic-depressive guy to play a gregarious politician, you're going to have problems. However, if you ask him to play himself, you can get interesting results.
The main trick to directing is picking the right people to do the right things and then not getting in the way.
So, go ahead. Try it. Out of all the people pursuing these things, eventually something will congeal into an interesting piece of art.
And that, ultimately, is what it is all about. Attempting to understand the thing that is humanity.
The thing is that many in the industry do not wish to see their films as mere technical achievements.
Pixar, in particular, is very proud of the fact that many of the postive reviews for "Toy Story" only mentioned in passing that it as a computer-animated film.
On the other hand behind the scenes interviews, although they break the filmic universe the movie is attempting to create, help encourage fandom and boosting revenues.
A movie written by a programmer about the glory of programming would probabally make half the audience want to shoot themseleves. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it would take William Goldman.
Historically, custom-written solutions on propietary hardware has been the norm in the VFX industry.
However, Hollywood has always been focused on the bottom line. VFX studios are always looking for cheaper solutions for creation of visual effects.
Companies that have locked themselves into SGI, for example, have found themselves having to cut prices to compete with other botiques using cheaper solutions on commodity hardware.
Embracing the linux/open-source movement has gained remarkable popularity in recent years. A few small studios each contributing a small amount to a project such as film-gimp have produced a product superior to Adobe Photoshop for film work. (PS does not properly support 16-bit color, a neccessity in modern pipelines.)
This trend has advanced to the point where the VFX community is afraid of even Apple asorbing shake and cutting its price in half. Would you spend 250k on shake licenses for linux x86 if you cannot get a firm answer on whether or not the program will be supported in 2005? Or, would you dump 100k into supporting the development of Cinelerra?
It's important to remember that the VFX companies are a totally different aspect of Hollywood than Jack Valenti and his minions.
At the end of the day, a computer is a tool. If a 10k program can help a 150k/year VFX artist work even 10% faster, it is worth its cost.
If a free program cannot produce such a speed-up, it will not penetrate the upper echelon of VFX work.
However, if a free program can help a 2-3 man studio compete with the big boys, it's easy to understand why Film-GIMP has taken off in a big way. PS is now the second place runner, a position it has not had to be in in a long time.
Competition will continue with only better results (hopefully on the silver screen) as the result.
It has managed to survive by constantly evolving itself through appropriation of new theories. A hundred years from now, I believe that fundamentalist preachers will be espousing DNA from the pulpit and damning those who believe in quantum mechanics.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
-Brett
From the viewpoint of meme theory...
on
Saving Digital History
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The important information will save itself without outside help.
For example if talkorigins.org was wiped out of existance tomorrow, the theories it has created will live on in the minds of those who have read them. These essays can be easily recreated by re-reading the various creationist works. On the other hand, if the various creationist works were destroyed, they would probabally not be recreated because they have already been refuted.
The history of information is the history of massive portions of it being eliminated, but then either re-printed, re-discovered, or re-invented centuries later.
The Catholic church 'knew' the earth was the center of the universe.
Along came Copernicus with his helio-centric theory, and the popes tried to lock him in his house for his entire life.
Now, if the modern versions of these men were to make the same claim, they would be soundly laughed at.
So, while this is a noble effort, it is merely a collection of data. Time itself the bayesian filter that will determine which parts of the internet are important.
The popular people remain popular (if they keep doing what makes them popular) and the unpopular people remain unpopular (unless they stop doing what makes them unpopular).
Likewise, while "all railroad tracks in this country are the same standardized width," it's not the result of governmental regulation (I believe), but rather a holdout from England.
There was some reseach into using 8 shades of grey instead of burning pits into a CD. Each bit became a byte, essentially.
However, DVD-R already existed in larger sizes and had some sort of standard, so the tech flowed in that direction.
Optical storage is following the same path as hard drives, though. Increases in rotational capacity (52x CD-ROM's), information density (higher wavelengths/tighter tracks) and finally alternate methods of storing the data itself, such as your idea.
I know I've wanted to be able to just dump a mini-DV tape (about 13 GB) directly to a single disk file for later editing.
That's the way I edit. With the size of modern hard drives, it's a waste of time to do a traditional log/capture session. Instead, just dump everything to disk and then break it up from there. FCP even has a feature or two designed towards this direction (Start/stop detection). Hopefully they'll fix the subclip bug in version 4.
I tell FCP to parition my files, though. The only >2GB files I currently have are my toast DVD images. I try not to use >2GB files in general, though...there's still some mysterious HFS+ bugs floating around that I've been trying to avoid.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen to that. It's important to remember that neither the FCC nor PacBell have any real interest in the customers. They're merely a neccessary evil that has to be put up with in order to make money. (For a corporation, this is profits, for a governmental agency, this is votes.) If they could simply get the money without having to do any work (a.k.a. the IRS), they'd happily screw us all over.
Once you understand this principle, though, you can pit the two sides against each other, with hopefully the common man getting something out of the whole deal.
It's a dangerous thing to fight with giants, but we are many and it is our only chance.
-Brett
Solar sails are cool, but their power (and by extension, usefulness) is largely a function of how far they are from the sun.
For sending stuff between the inner 4 planets, they're a solution that will need to be explored more in the future.
To send a probe to Pluto? You can get good speeds out of a solar probe, but then you have to drag along some other form of engine to stop somehow once you get there.
Ion propulsion is probabally a better researched/preforming choice for this mission.
-Brett
Damn. I got played like a $2 slide whistle.
Should we rape rapists?
Morals and law are two totally different concepts.
The problem with your argument is that you ignore the true purpose of punishment: discouragement. The purpose of the penal system is to essentially produce a Pavlovian response towards 'bad' behavior in the subject. Unfortunately, given the structure of most prisons, the 'justice' system does more to reinforce said behaviors than prevent them.
If one man kills another, he has already violated the covenant of society. No number of speeches by defenders or flowery declerations of sorrow by the accused can bring the dead man back to life. It may not be impossible for a sinner to repent, but fear of punishing one should not overcome the dangers of his actions encouraging others.
Will raping rapists discourage others from doing the same?
Therein lies the question.
-Brett
You act as though doubling transistor count each year is a parlor trick.
Study modern processor design. Watch as quantum mechanics beats the crap out of frequency interference and then the two of them gang up on chemistry. After a certain point, the science involved becomes magic.
Recognize Moore's work for how it helps Intel focus on the future. Board meeting: "We have an invention that will multiply preformance by 10x in 5 years." Back of envelope: 2^5 = 32. "I'm sorry, but that's not impressive enough. You'll need to boost preformance by 30x if you want funding."
AMD: "If we want to surpass Intel in the next five years, this is where we must be."
Sure, you could start subsidising the manufacture of silicon on the side and jump into the industry. However, if you want to make it profitable, if you want to succeed on an engineering basis, then you're going to have to play by Moore's rules.
Think you can do it? Today? Tomorrow? Intel has for the last thirty years.
-Brett
Yes and no.
I've gotten both extremely good and extremely bad results out of untrained actors.
Yes, DeNiro using method acting in Taxi Driver is a seemingly unstoppable force.
However, we each wander through our lives attempting to solve the same basic problems. If you ask a manic-depressive guy to play a gregarious politician, you're going to have problems. However, if you ask him to play himself, you can get interesting results.
The main trick to directing is picking the right people to do the right things and then not getting in the way.
So, go ahead. Try it. Out of all the people pursuing these things, eventually something will congeal into an interesting piece of art.
And that, ultimately, is what it is all about. Attempting to understand the thing that is humanity.
-Brett
The thing is that many in the industry do not wish to see their films as mere technical achievements.
Pixar, in particular, is very proud of the fact that many of the postive reviews for "Toy Story" only mentioned in passing that it as a computer-animated film.
On the other hand behind the scenes interviews, although they break the filmic universe the movie is attempting to create, help encourage fandom and boosting revenues.
It's a difficult pair of desires to juggle.
-Brett
Amen, brother, amen.
A movie written by a programmer about the glory of programming would probabally make half the audience want to shoot themseleves. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it would take William Goldman.
Style may be all Hollywood has, but it sells.
Historically, custom-written solutions on propietary hardware has been the norm in the VFX industry.
However, Hollywood has always been focused on the bottom line. VFX studios are always looking for cheaper solutions for creation of visual effects.
Companies that have locked themselves into SGI, for example, have found themselves having to cut prices to compete with other botiques using cheaper solutions on commodity hardware.
Embracing the linux/open-source movement has gained remarkable popularity in recent years. A few small studios each contributing a small amount to a project such as film-gimp have produced a product superior to Adobe Photoshop for film work.
(PS does not properly support 16-bit color, a neccessity in modern pipelines.)
This trend has advanced to the point where the VFX community is afraid of even Apple asorbing shake and cutting its price in half. Would you spend 250k on shake licenses for linux x86 if you cannot get a firm answer on whether or not the program will be supported in 2005? Or, would you dump 100k into supporting the development of Cinelerra?
It's important to remember that the VFX companies are a totally different aspect of Hollywood than Jack Valenti and his minions.
At the end of the day, a computer is a tool. If a 10k program can help a 150k/year VFX artist work even 10% faster, it is worth its cost.
If a free program cannot produce such a speed-up, it will not penetrate the upper echelon of VFX work.
However, if a free program can help a 2-3 man studio compete with the big boys, it's easy to understand why Film-GIMP has taken off in a big way. PS is now the second place runner, a position it has not had to be in in a long time.
Competition will continue with only better results (hopefully on the silver screen) as the result.
-Brett
Christianity is a meme, just as science is.
It has managed to survive by constantly evolving itself through appropriation of new theories. A hundred years from now, I believe that fundamentalist preachers will be espousing DNA from the pulpit and damning those who believe in quantum mechanics.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
-Brett
The important information will save itself without outside help.
For example if talkorigins.org was wiped out of existance tomorrow, the theories it has created will live on in the minds of those who have read them. These essays can be easily recreated by re-reading the various creationist works. On the other hand, if the various creationist works were destroyed, they would probabally not be recreated because they have already been refuted.
The history of information is the history of massive portions of it being eliminated, but then either re-printed, re-discovered, or re-invented centuries later.
The Catholic church 'knew' the earth was the center of the universe.
Along came Copernicus with his helio-centric theory, and the popes tried to lock him in his house for his entire life.
Now, if the modern versions of these men were to make the same claim, they would be soundly laughed at.
So, while this is a noble effort, it is merely a collection of data. Time itself the bayesian filter that will determine which parts of the internet are important.
-Brett
Forgot to inclue the KB article.
10.2.4 fixes:
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n107362
They fixed the bloody bug where everything on the desktop got moved when you dropped something on the edges.
OSeXy!
-Brett
Touche.
The easiest way for the masses to realize how screwed up the patent system is quality headlines such as the above.
Now, to get this out of the technosphere and onto the front page of the NY Times.
Ask Brutus.
This resolution is less an attempt by the ABA to stop a bad law as it is them making sure they have a loophole to sue.
What do you call a hundred lawyers in an airplane on the bottom of the ocean?
A good start.
The popular people remain popular (if they keep doing what makes them popular) and the unpopular people remain unpopular (unless they stop doing what makes them unpopular).
Yay!
Phrase for shocking the ladies when you're bored of talking with them.
Loosely: Flip around and I'll stick it in the...(something).
Of course, meant to be said in an outrageously lecherous French style.
-Brett
Just say something to sooth things over.
I'd suggest a phrase such as "enlève ta croute que je swingue dans l'pus."
-Brett
The day my state becomes the leader of the tech revolution is the day hell freezes over.
(goes to find a coat)
-Brett
Likewise, while "all railroad tracks in this country are the same standardized width," it's not the result of governmental regulation (I believe), but rather a holdout from England.
Anybody know for sure?
There was some reseach into using 8 shades of grey instead of burning pits into a CD. Each bit became a byte, essentially.
However, DVD-R already existed in larger sizes and had some sort of standard, so the tech flowed in that direction.
Optical storage is following the same path as hard drives, though. Increases in rotational capacity (52x CD-ROM's), information density (higher wavelengths/tighter tracks) and finally alternate methods of storing the data itself, such as your idea.
But you're welcome to put the mp4 versions of all my shorts on DC.
Download 'em here.
-Brett
I know I've wanted to be able to just dump a mini-DV tape (about 13 GB) directly to a single disk file for later editing.
That's the way I edit. With the size of modern hard drives, it's a waste of time to do a traditional log/capture session. Instead, just dump everything to disk and then break it up from there. FCP even has a feature or two designed towards this direction (Start/stop detection). Hopefully they'll fix the subclip bug in version 4.
I tell FCP to parition my files, though. The only >2GB files I currently have are my toast DVD images. I try not to use >2GB files in general, though...there's still some mysterious HFS+ bugs floating around that I've been trying to avoid.
-Brett