One of my favourite special effects stories is that back when "Escape from New York" was being made, it was too difficult/expensive to do the computerized 3D wire-frame rendering of Manhattan digitally that was to be displayed on Snake Plissken's glider, so they just made black miniature models of the buildings with gridlines painted on them, and then "flew" a camera over them to get the footage that ended up being displayed on the screen. Back in those days, practical effects based on painted wood were still cheaper than CGI!
The same happened way back on the original TRON as well - most of the effects were really just practical effects. There was some CGI in it, but very little (the producers remarked how the show was about computers and such, but they mostly did everything old-school).
Stuff like the glowing highlight lines on the suits and environment were all done by practical effects. In fact, one of them was an error - while they were producing the effect, they accidentally used the boxes of film in the wrong order (the film was specially made by Kodak, and as it was a special order batch, Kodak labelled them in the order of production. Film, it turns out, may have irregularities in its behavior, but these generally change gradually over the film. When the long film strips are cut and reeled, they're numbered so the end of one is the beginning of the other, so if you use it in order, there won't be visual discontinuities caused by the film having slightly different behavior). The end result was one of the buildings throbbed because the film's sensitivities suddenly jerked. It was left in the movie as a happy accident.
And there were other older movies (Robocop?) where they asked about doing things using CGI and doing things practically - the CGI was going to take longer and cost more money so they did things practically (Robocop used matte paintings to enlarge buildings and backgrounds, stop-motion animation and a few other tricks).
Even today, the director often weighs in on doing stuff practically versus CGI. CGI is really good these days, but it still takes time and is harder to work with. And a lot of directors love that practical effects often give a sense of authenticity to the scene because it's being done by real people right there.
I have always found it funny that Apple gives away all these Macs to television shows and movie production, but 9 times out of 10 when they show the screen it is something completely made up and looks nothing like OS X.
It harks back to Apple's business model - they sell hardware. Software like OS X, iOS, iTunes Stores (music, movies, books, TV shows, apps), and other Apple software (iWork, iLife, Aperture, Logic, Final Cut) are really only used to promote that.
So Apple will happily let people run Windows on their computers - the money's been made, Apple really doesn't care you don't use OS X. Or in the movies, Fake MovieOS.
The real irony is when shows and movies cover up the Apple logo or the text labels (e.g., "MacBook Pro"). Apple's computer designs are distinct enough that you can recognize them anywhere. Likewise with their phones - they may look like slates, but there are various accents that tell you the tablet is an iPad, the phone is an iPhone, etc. (Of course, the iOS look also generally gives it away).
What's the output voltage and impedance? Crosstalk? Noise? THD? Dynamic range? If I plug to charge via USB while I'm playing it, will it isolate the noisy power line? You're trying to sell something "audiophile" without mentioning any of this? Really?
He makes a big deal about 192kHz audio. If you're targeting human ears, this is just a waste of space. I'd say the perfect format would be 48kHz/24bit. 48kHz to have plenty of room for a nice frequency cutoff, and 24-bit for music with a high dynamic range, like film scores and orchestral.
Not to mention, 3.5mm TRS jacks.
Good sets of headphones from the big audiophile companies (e.g., Grado) have 1/4" TRS jacks. The "consumer" level Grados (SR-60i, SR-80i) have 3.5mm TRS jacks, and a 1/4"-to-3.5mm adapter (and we're still talking about headphones costing less than the Beats crap you can get at any store). The next step up, the SR-125i, is still below the price of the Beats crap, but only 1/4" TRS. (Great, did I just mention audiophile class headphones costing less than consumer level crap? Sure you can get $2000 Grados, but damn the low end is well priced).
Next - it has line level analog outputs. But again, 3.5mm TRS?! At a minimum, you'd want traditional RCA jacks for linelevel (better channel isolation than TRS).
And above all, you'd think it would have true audiophile features like XLR balanced (differential) outputs - less noise than line level.
USB isolation is interesting, because well, USB chargers are crap. They can emit tons of noise - so much so that poor quality ones disable touchscreens on phones from all the noise.
And some other problems - they don't have a list of what music they have - I mean, there's a few soundtracks I'd love to have in higher quality, but I can't browse what they have because their site isn't up yet. So far, all I see is a bunch of music that I'm honestly not interested in.
And face it - the music audiophiles listen to is classical (or for me, soundtrack scores, which are orchestral). I better expect some dynamic range to the thing. Classical music is hard to reproduce - you've got delicate sounds of instruments mixed in with others. A common place rock or pop song well, high res audio doesn't really improve things at all.
I don't know that Drupal is necessarily immune, to does have send pingback in the XMLRPC API. Unless it has something to secure this against unauthorised callers then it could be vulnerable too.
I'm sure there are ways to mitigate the problem - a pingback is merely a mention. No one said it couldn't be rate-limited or anything (and if the queue gets too big, well, start dropping requests or ignoring them - is it really important that some popular article has a billion pingbacks over a billion and one?). And the rate limit could also apply to source site - there really shouldn't be more than a few pingbacks from some site (at most one per post per site).
The slashvertisement did mention the technology used in AF 447: ACARS. MH 370 may have been equipped with ACARS as well, but if it was, it would not be transmitting via satellite as there is no sat antenna on the vanished plane (9M-MRO). In fact, Malaysia Air has been pretty cagey about whether or not 9M-MRO had ACARS. If 9M-MRO *did* have ACARS installed, and the information *could have been* received/recorded there's still the question of whether or not Malaysia Air was paying for upkeep. If Malaysia Air (who's been in financial trouble for a while now) was too cheap to pay for ACARS, why would they pay for the slashvertised product?
ACARS is pretty standard nowadays for airliners as a way to communicate with crews beyond radio range, especially to warn them about sudden changing weather and other things.
Heck, I would be surprised if the 777 didn't already have it built into the FMS avionics by default - the value alone for not having to physically get a Quick Access Recorder (QAR - basically a flight data recorder meant for quick access to flight data for maintenance crews) every flight is often worth it.
Of course, if Malaysia Airlines is really in financial trouble that they've stopped paying service providers, then the caginess is probably expected - it's Malaysian Airlines. The pride and joy of Malaysia and its national airline. If it gets revealed it's in trouble it would be very embarrassing to the people who run it, and to the Malaysian government. Enough so that heads may literally roll over it (while Malaysia doesn't have the guillotine, they may decide the embarrassment is worth the sentence).
It's part of what makes this case so fascinating. I mean even the reports of the Malaysian military tracking its flight after it left radar is interesting (standard protocol worldwide is to intercept UFOs - a fighter escort to at least identify and potentially shoot down unknown aircraft). Or that it turned around - when the seatbelt sign goes off, the airplane is being flown by autopilot (because only it can really maintain the flight profile - the window of airspeed is really small - 10 kts or less - too slow you stall, too fast you overspeed, and only the autopilot can maintain safe flight) which is programmed by the flight management system on the ground per the flight plan. It was the reason why that Greek flight a number of years back (everyone incapacitated by pressurization problems) simply flew to its holding position until it ran out of fuel.
It seems likely to me that the probably reason this device isn't required is engineering conservatism. Before something like this is required, you have to convince people that (a) it's a good idea, and (b) this is a good implementation of that good idea.
Don't forget the politics.
First off - that device presumably transmits to a satellite. Who owns the satellite? Very important question - is it owned by an American company? Russian? etc. etc. etc.
Secondly, the satellite beams data back to the ground. Who owns that ground station? The company? Is it run by a country?
Thirdly, who owns the data? Is it stored on an American server? Russian server? Malaysian server?
It's very easy to say that every plane should be equipped with this. But the politics are what are likely to derail it first.
If it's an American satellite going to an American owned ground station and American servers, well, the US government might use it as a "right" to know the passenger details of every flight it records. The US does it for every flight that overflies its airspace, even if it doesn't stop in the US. Boeing and others actually start designing their planes to have enough range to go from Canada to Mexico AROUND US airspace so those flights don't have to give the US any information at all.
Then there are the countries that distrust the US. Snowden, anyone?
Then there are questions about data longevity, whether it reports voice (i.e., it does cockpit voice recording) which brings up its OWN can of worms (why do you think we have fligth data recorders with thousands of channels of information and storage for tens, if not hundreds, of flights, and CVRs haven't gone beyond 30 minutes of recording? (Granted, the modern CVR now has around 6+ channels of audio recorded simultaneously on solid state media)
In fact, it's the whole politics that makes ICAO move so slowly - it takes many years to implement rules across the board.
In a particular case like this, it may be possible for much of the transport work to be done by volunteers from the local ham community.
I think that's probably a good way to go - hams generally love to help others, especially other hams. And nothing's better than helping emergency preparedness either.
Put the call out, and earmark some money for beer and pizza and stuff at the end and you may find that you'll have lots of help - not to pay for the transport, but to actually do it. And I'm sure lots of hams would love to have the chance to actually put up a tower or to learn how to put one up (a good skill to have).
Heck, have workshops as well - turn this not into a "let's get a tower" event but into a whole community involvement and relations thing. After all, you'll get curious onlookers wondering what's going on. It's the perfect time to also do outreach and explain what ham radio is about, what they're good for, and why in an emergency it's good to know a few of 'em.
users dont like registration dialogs. Enforcing good passwords will make users stop the registration process and go away. And a compromised user account is the users problem, not the companies. That is current management thinking.
Well, the first question I have is... why?
I mean, I run into websites that declared themselves so important that the password HAD to be complex. Which is great, except I only accessed it once every few months, and ended up clicking "Forgot Password" anyways because they wouldn't accept a simple one.
No, all the site had were software downloads.
So really - it's another case of "web site is SOOOOOOOOOOO IMPORTANT!" syndrome where the website believes it's the be-all-end-all of websites and wants everyone to use a strong password. User sees it as just a web site that they don't care much about and wants to use a simple crappy one, because well, who really cares?
This is especially true if it's a one-off purchase. I mean, I run into many places that require you to register so you can buy from them. Except that the product I bought was all I needed and all I was going to need. So now I have to create an account and come up with a strong password that I'll never bother using again?
Face it, the only country that keeps pushing for IP protections is the largest IP producer of them all - the United States. If the US was involved in the trade talks, IP would've been on the table.
But between South Korea and Canada? Both aren't really well known heavy IP producers - sure there are plenty of content produced, but it's but a tiny part of the economies, and people don't generally associate various IP products with Canada. Think of movies, you think Hollywood. Etc. The US is all about exporting its culture through IP products.
After all, what's there to protect? Samsung can steal the latest design for the Blackberry for what anyone really cares about. Unless you orient your keys a certain way, that is.
They should not take a good article and edit it to be more positive for them or their employers, but if something is missing they should add it.
Unfortunately, such editing is extremely common, especially around times of great discussion. Usually what happens are things like "Controversies" get edited down or completely deleted. Then someone puts it back, and then a PR editor removes it again and the edit war continues.
It's been shown a lot of those edits have been done by people associated with the page - be it a company wanting to remove "black marks" and legal troubles from their page, to people removing controversial opinions or negative information.
If it turns out donors are doing it to appear more positive by removing negative listings in their page, and they're getting away with it without confrontation, that is the worrying trend. Because normally someone challenges removal of negative information and the section gets locked down.
To me, the most impressive part is that he claims they have very accurate focusing. I believe he said "micron" focusing. I'm not sure how that works, but the paper is cut to a very accurate shape (the video showed some sort of computer-controlled cutter, it might even have been a laser cutter).
The device being used to "draw" the lines *and* cut the paper in the video is an Epilog laser engraver. Hint: Not cheap (5-digit USD range).
If you're making high-five-digit numbers of these microscopes - and the test run itself is into that range - that only raises the cost from $0.50 to $1.50.
Or, you go for the traditional printing press which you can use a standard offset print with die-cut and die-mark techniques. At 50,000 copies, this is an extremely cost-efficient way of making the things, uses no special technology (printing presses and die cutters are readily available at your bulk print shop).
We traditionally use them to produce the fancy boxes you see for packaging of products - boxes, displays, etc.
That's what makes this cool - there's no real fancy technology needed, and aside from minor setup costs, it's really, really, really efficient. The printers can even remove the excess paper, leaving you with just the cut out parts (though if you go this way, they can even nest the pieces so you can use a sheet roll of cardboard with very little waste).
Why use fancy laser cutters and such when the technology and means to mass produce them cheaply already exists?
The temperature is irrelevant (except perhaps for oils to grease the ball bearings, so I assume they use bearings that don't need grease).
One of the interesting things is how things interact. If the wind dies down during the summer and picks up during the winter, the motion of the turbines itself generates friction, even with bearings. Depending on how things are, such friction may be enough to keep the grease in a usable temperature range so it's kept at more or less the same temperature year round.
How do I log in to my account from a new device? What if I'm travelling and I don't have my computer with me, how do I use an internet cafe?
As you always would - with your username and password.
What these guys propose doing is server side - you enter a password, the server hashes it, it's sent to the box which signs it, then the resulting hash is spit back out and stored in the database. When you log in, you provide the password, it's hashed by the server, send to the box, and the resulting signed hash is compared with the stored hash.
The reason for this is to make breaches of websites that much less useful - if the attackers get the database, they won't have the HMAC key so they can't really run through and crack the hashes. The website can regenerate a new HMAC key and force everyone to recreate their passwords (which can be the same) and they'll end up different in the database again because they are signed with the new key.
Since the key never leaves the hardware box, it's impossible to extract it when you're grabbing the user database.
The big problem is, well, it protects the user with less benefit and more cost tot he website in question, meaning few, if any, would actually implement it because the benefits go solely to the user.
Android is the same in that respect. With either OS, the attacker can open the device and read out the flash directly, however.
In the other areas you mention Android needs to improve.
Nope, Starting with the iPhone 3GS, the flash is encrypted. The encryption key used is encrypted with a per-device key that's known only by the device (and I guess, Apple). If you do a remote wipe, the encrypted key is deleted (making the data inaccessible), and a new key is created. The device then encrypts that key with the device key and puts it in flash.
This is why iPhone and iPhone 3G take several hours to wipe, while every iPhone since the 3GS onwards only takes seconds. As a result, the flash is always encrypted and removing it gets you nothing if you don't know the device key to recover the media key. (AFAIK, the device key is only known to hardware - software cannot access it, other than commanding the device key be loaded into the key cache RAM at a certain index).
Android also has the ability to encrypt the flash (starting with 4.0 I think) - you have to enable it though - by default it's off. I believe it uses a form of TrueCrypt so it takes about an hour to encrypt the flash, and it cannot be disabled unless you reflash the device.
Yes. And where that all that snow come from? It came from precipitation (rain/snow) from water held up in the clouds in storm systems. Where did the water in those clouds come from? It all evaporated into the sky from the water in the Pacific Ocean.
At least that's what they taught me about the water cycle back in the 70's. Do they not teach this in school anymore? Is the next argument from these geniuses that we can solve this problem by irrigating crops with Brawndo?
The problem is not the water itself, is that freshwater is a very limited resource. Water is not limited - 2/3rds of the surface is covered in it. Freshwater is very limited though - under 1% of water is fresh and usable for growing, drinking, etc. A lot of it is in various lakes - Russia has a very deep lake along the Trans-Siberian Railroad that's all freshwater and considered the world's largest supply. The Great Lakes make up another huge chunk of it as well.
The problem is again one of distribution - for those areas don't typically grow or raise much food, while areas like California raise a lot but also are in drought conditions.
So no, the water is not lost, but climate change and such is leading to desertification and loss of prime agricultural land, and having to bring in water from elsewhere is energy-intensive.
This suprises you somehow? A landline provides a lot more bandwidth without any worries of signal interferance from walls or other radio sources. The switches were also analog, no need for converting analog sound into digital bits, compressing and then sending them in discreete packets.
Analog phone service sounds better than digital landline - because it was all analog and very little filtering happened. Then in the mid-70's or so AT&T was switching to digital systems. They did research (heavily) into finding out what bandwidth they could limit to and still have intelligible speech, which was decided that the good chunk of human vocalizations exist below 4kHz or so.
This gave rise to the 8KHz sampling with 8 bits (or a 64kbps channel), uncompressed. Which is why our phone systems use 64kbps channel allocations. (56k modems were derived from the fact that every 8th byte or so, a bit was robbed from the audio and used for control purposes. Since you could never tell when this happened, they assumed you only had a 7-bit channel).
Of course, that voice is carried at a full 64kbps. GSM and other digital mobile telephony only really have datarates of 4kbps or lower, necessitating use of highly compressed, highly distorting codecs meant to get the most out of every bit - and let the brain do a lot of the error correction and such (speech has low enough entropy that the powerful organic audio processor running rather advanced wet software can do very good forward error correction to extract out what is being said, despite all the distortion).
Of course, with 3G and LTE and such, codecs are available that let you use more bandwidth to get higher audio quality, but like all things, it requires both ends to support it.
Well if you read any of the articles, there is no real information or than the contention that pressure from Google has delayed the release of this tablet.
Thing is, the pieces are all there.
First, the OHA agreement (which you must sign in order to get Google Apps, including Google Play) prohibit releasing "Android compatible" devices. It's a blanket ban, too - sign the agreement and you CANNOT release anything Android compatible anymore. If you're someone wanting to release an AOSP phone alongside your Google version? You can't.
Second, Google has already reminded OEMs of that obligation and blocked the launch of the Aliyun phone. Rather emphatically, too, forcing the sudden cancellation of the launch event and release at the last minute.
Android is Free alright. However, sign the OHA agreement and you're really Google's bitch. The ironic part is that this comes from the freedom Android provides.
It all stems from the success of the Kindle - prior to that, well, any Android device not running the Google Market was pretty worthless. But with the Kindle, well, there's suddenly a very compelling piece of Android hardware NOT tied to Google, and that Google cannot exert control over.it. Amazon now has control over the entire thing, and the Amazon App Store is considered to be third most lucrative (by money - first is Blackberry, second (close behind) is Apple, third (with about half as much as Apple) is Amazon. Google Play is a very, very, very distant way back (probably anywhere from a tenth to a fifth of Amazon)).
Basically the OHA agreements are used to "lock up" Android OEMs so Amazon can't use them for design help or manufacturing, etc.
Granted, it has been a while since I worked for the part of Motorola that became Freescale, but I am fairly certain there were rules against the maximum number of employees that could take any one flight. I think it was 2 for executives and 6 or 8 for regular employees. Situations like this, rare as they are, was the reason. I wonder if Freescale still has those rules and ignored them, or didn't copy them over.
Most likely it was scrapped - plane crashes being rare things, it's easier and cheaper to book a single flight for everyone. I mean, that could mean booking easily 4-5 flights for something that probably only happens once a year or less, and the chances of that flight being "the one" is so low that the added expense isn't worth the cost.
Planes are highly reliable pieces of equipment, much more so than even just 30+ years ago. We understand risks much better, and airspace is generally well controlled and monitored. So that policy might've been necessary back in the days, but these days, it's so unlikely that the company would rather save the money.
Just this time, unfortunately, they lost the bet.
Pffff. I flew into KL a few weeks ago and I gotta say security was ridiculous. My plane had to stop to refuel and about five times before landing they warn you over the air that if you have any drugs on you when they land you'll be executed (the plane WAS from Amsterdam). Everyone had to disembark (and we weren't allowed to take any baggage). Then through metal detector + xray + pat down for everyone. Seemed a tad overkill for a plane refueling. I mean, I get security before entering a plane, but landing midlfight and asking everyone to disembark for another security screening?!?!?!?
Well, technically, the plane is in Malaysia and they'll treat even a fuel stopover as entering the country.
And Singapore and Malaysia are pretty much drug free - they execute anyone carrying any drugs. Zero tolerance - get caught and it's to the firing squad. Very quick, swift justice. You might get a few extra days with some consular assistance.
They treat drug smuggling very seriously. Every vehicle passing through gets inspected.
Is SoftImage responsible for all the incredibly unrealistic inertia and gravity models we've seen in EVERY film that ever used CGI? Why is nobody talking about this? Why was Gollum in LOTR so realistic when motionless, but as soon as he jumped off a ledge, his CGI nature was instantly revealed, due to the unrealistic inertia and gravity models?
No, practically all CGI is motion captured - actors in suits covered in reflective balls act out the actions.
The "unrealistic" nature of the motion and gravity is almost always because the actor is under the influence of real gravity and has real inertia - you cannot tell a 150 lb actor to act like someone who weighs 50lbs because of inertia and gravity effects are different. If you map the motions directly, it'll act heavier and slower. if you try to make ti more nimble and speed it up, well, it looks more fake.
Accurately simulating inertia and gravity is very difficult in hand animation and very tedious, and it still has the potential to look wrong. Motion capture lets you be far more fluid and be done in a much shorter period of time, and in general the action looks less animated and more realistic.
Sure, the data might be safe from a government's prying eyes, but will it be safe from a government who kindly asks for the data, with the company acquiescing between it wants to maintain its lucrative business links with the authorities?
No, all Google did was protect the data against FREE access.
Remember Google's in the business of selling user information. Government access for free isn't in the business plan. So they closed the loophole that allowed it.
Now the government needs to pay for it. Like everyone else. Yes, the same information the government asks for is probably for sale by Google freely on the open market. You just have to pay for it.
Sounds like it is compiling it's own audio filters. Many of these drivers allow individual audio effects like echo, reverberation) to be chained together to form a complex pipeline. To get optimum performance the driver would compile these directly into assembler.
Exactly. There's a ton of work required to play a sound. It's not just calling an API to play a file - that's good for simple games, but modern games with multichannel audio require a LOT of calculations. Sounds are played in a 3D volume, with walls and other reflective surfaces in it and a "multichannel microphone" is used to record the audio and send it out to the actual speakers. This lets you position the audio anywhere (e.g., a gunshot will be played from the muzzle) and the audio effects be calculated based on available geometry and surface reflections.
Oh yeah, let's not forget that you're going to want to process 64+ sounds simultaneously. One will be used for music playback, while others are just individual sound effects, of which many may be playing at once - footsteps, narration, other audio tracks, sound effects that loop, etc.
Then there's programmatic audio - where the track is altered and played dynamically. Easiest way is to compile down some audio processing and call it through some function pointers periodically.
An effective slide show should not: Be primary source of information Exceed 7 words on 4 lines Contain unrelated graphs and images Discourage discussion of the slides contents
This is my example of an effective powerpoint slide. This slide while only containing 22 words should probably take a few minutes to talk about. A powerpoint of maybe 10 slides for me often ends up being about an hour long. I build in a degree of Q/A and questions directed to the audience to keep them engaged and interested in the content. A presentation should be a discussion and not a group reading exercise. Clearly these scientists are great at science, but terrible at sharing it if they can't use a slide show effectively.
Two other points - The rate of slides shown should be approximately one per minute or slower. A presentation going for 10 minutes must max out at 10 slides. (Yes, 7 words on 4 lines on a slide to last one minute is challenging, but doable). - Generally, use only for short presentations.
The real problem with powerpoint and slide-heavy presentations is it turns into a glorified low-motion TV. People end up tuning out and become really passive and the information starts to fly over their heads because they're really like watching a live taping of a TV show and become a part of the studio audience blindly following orders.
It's great if that's your point - you just want to present something to a passive audience (e.g., keynote speeches to show off new products, etc) where interaction is minimal, beyond "oooh"s and "ahhh"s.
But when a transferral of knowledge is required, interaction is a necessity, and passive TV watching does not lead to effective learning. There were many studies done to show the retention of information is only around 10% or so with slides. Interaction is required to fix the knowledge in the mind.
I was recently the Fiduciary, or executor, or an estate where an iPad was involved. I sent a letter, as the Fiduciary, along with my appointment papers, requesting the password, in order that a proper value of the iPod could be determined, which included the data on the iPad. Apple refused. I immediately made an appointment with the Judge of the Probate, and explained the situation. She immediately sent a letter to Apple, demanding that they supply or clear the password, or be charged with contempt of court. They sent the password. Thankfully, this is not a large area, population-wise, that this could be handled quickly. I can only imagine how difficult it could be in a large city.
And guess what? Apple is demanding that in this case!. You went to the Probate Court, the judge sent a letter to Apple (presumably confirming that the deceased owned that specific iPad and all that and to release details on the account).
And Apple complied.
In this case, the family is complaining they have to go to court to get a court order to get Apple to unlock it. No surprise, you ran into the same problem, which is why you went to the Court to see the judge.
In other words, Apple is following the same procedure with this family as what you did - the Court issued an order demanding release of the account information. Apple complied. This family didn't, and Apple requested that they get the Court to do so.
And yes, Apple is absolved or all liability should it turn out said iPad was stolen - it meant someone lied to the Court under oath and committed perjury, which generally is far worse than the few hundred bucks you get for the iPad.
If they charge to add Firefox, will they give a refund for leaving off Windows?
Yes they will. However, because the cost of the Windows license is less than the amount of sponsorship your computer gets from all the preloaded software (i.e., crapware), the price of your PC rises.
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The same happened way back on the original TRON as well - most of the effects were really just practical effects. There was some CGI in it, but very little (the producers remarked how the show was about computers and such, but they mostly did everything old-school).
Stuff like the glowing highlight lines on the suits and environment were all done by practical effects. In fact, one of them was an error - while they were producing the effect, they accidentally used the boxes of film in the wrong order (the film was specially made by Kodak, and as it was a special order batch, Kodak labelled them in the order of production. Film, it turns out, may have irregularities in its behavior, but these generally change gradually over the film. When the long film strips are cut and reeled, they're numbered so the end of one is the beginning of the other, so if you use it in order, there won't be visual discontinuities caused by the film having slightly different behavior). The end result was one of the buildings throbbed because the film's sensitivities suddenly jerked. It was left in the movie as a happy accident.
And there were other older movies (Robocop?) where they asked about doing things using CGI and doing things practically - the CGI was going to take longer and cost more money so they did things practically (Robocop used matte paintings to enlarge buildings and backgrounds, stop-motion animation and a few other tricks).
Even today, the director often weighs in on doing stuff practically versus CGI. CGI is really good these days, but it still takes time and is harder to work with. And a lot of directors love that practical effects often give a sense of authenticity to the scene because it's being done by real people right there.
It harks back to Apple's business model - they sell hardware. Software like OS X, iOS, iTunes Stores (music, movies, books, TV shows, apps), and other Apple software (iWork, iLife, Aperture, Logic, Final Cut) are really only used to promote that.
So Apple will happily let people run Windows on their computers - the money's been made, Apple really doesn't care you don't use OS X. Or in the movies, Fake MovieOS.
The real irony is when shows and movies cover up the Apple logo or the text labels (e.g., "MacBook Pro"). Apple's computer designs are distinct enough that you can recognize them anywhere. Likewise with their phones - they may look like slates, but there are various accents that tell you the tablet is an iPad, the phone is an iPhone, etc. (Of course, the iOS look also generally gives it away).
Not to mention, 3.5mm TRS jacks.
Good sets of headphones from the big audiophile companies (e.g., Grado) have 1/4" TRS jacks. The "consumer" level Grados (SR-60i, SR-80i) have 3.5mm TRS jacks, and a 1/4"-to-3.5mm adapter (and we're still talking about headphones costing less than the Beats crap you can get at any store). The next step up, the SR-125i, is still below the price of the Beats crap, but only 1/4" TRS. (Great, did I just mention audiophile class headphones costing less than consumer level crap? Sure you can get $2000 Grados, but damn the low end is well priced).
Next - it has line level analog outputs. But again, 3.5mm TRS?! At a minimum, you'd want traditional RCA jacks for linelevel (better channel isolation than TRS).
And above all, you'd think it would have true audiophile features like XLR balanced (differential) outputs - less noise than line level.
USB isolation is interesting, because well, USB chargers are crap. They can emit tons of noise - so much so that poor quality ones disable touchscreens on phones from all the noise.
And some other problems - they don't have a list of what music they have - I mean, there's a few soundtracks I'd love to have in higher quality, but I can't browse what they have because their site isn't up yet. So far, all I see is a bunch of music that I'm honestly not interested in.
And face it - the music audiophiles listen to is classical (or for me, soundtrack scores, which are orchestral). I better expect some dynamic range to the thing. Classical music is hard to reproduce - you've got delicate sounds of instruments mixed in with others. A common place rock or pop song well, high res audio doesn't really improve things at all.
I'm sure there are ways to mitigate the problem - a pingback is merely a mention. No one said it couldn't be rate-limited or anything (and if the queue gets too big, well, start dropping requests or ignoring them - is it really important that some popular article has a billion pingbacks over a billion and one?). And the rate limit could also apply to source site - there really shouldn't be more than a few pingbacks from some site (at most one per post per site).
ACARS is pretty standard nowadays for airliners as a way to communicate with crews beyond radio range, especially to warn them about sudden changing weather and other things.
Heck, I would be surprised if the 777 didn't already have it built into the FMS avionics by default - the value alone for not having to physically get a Quick Access Recorder (QAR - basically a flight data recorder meant for quick access to flight data for maintenance crews) every flight is often worth it.
Of course, if Malaysia Airlines is really in financial trouble that they've stopped paying service providers, then the caginess is probably expected - it's Malaysian Airlines. The pride and joy of Malaysia and its national airline. If it gets revealed it's in trouble it would be very embarrassing to the people who run it, and to the Malaysian government. Enough so that heads may literally roll over it (while Malaysia doesn't have the guillotine, they may decide the embarrassment is worth the sentence).
It's part of what makes this case so fascinating. I mean even the reports of the Malaysian military tracking its flight after it left radar is interesting (standard protocol worldwide is to intercept UFOs - a fighter escort to at least identify and potentially shoot down unknown aircraft). Or that it turned around - when the seatbelt sign goes off, the airplane is being flown by autopilot (because only it can really maintain the flight profile - the window of airspeed is really small - 10 kts or less - too slow you stall, too fast you overspeed, and only the autopilot can maintain safe flight) which is programmed by the flight management system on the ground per the flight plan. It was the reason why that Greek flight a number of years back (everyone incapacitated by pressurization problems) simply flew to its holding position until it ran out of fuel.
Don't forget the politics.
First off - that device presumably transmits to a satellite. Who owns the satellite? Very important question - is it owned by an American company? Russian? etc. etc. etc.
Secondly, the satellite beams data back to the ground. Who owns that ground station? The company? Is it run by a country?
Thirdly, who owns the data? Is it stored on an American server? Russian server? Malaysian server?
It's very easy to say that every plane should be equipped with this. But the politics are what are likely to derail it first.
If it's an American satellite going to an American owned ground station and American servers, well, the US government might use it as a "right" to know the passenger details of every flight it records. The US does it for every flight that overflies its airspace, even if it doesn't stop in the US. Boeing and others actually start designing their planes to have enough range to go from Canada to Mexico AROUND US airspace so those flights don't have to give the US any information at all.
Then there are the countries that distrust the US. Snowden, anyone?
Then there are questions about data longevity, whether it reports voice (i.e., it does cockpit voice recording) which brings up its OWN can of worms (why do you think we have fligth data recorders with thousands of channels of information and storage for tens, if not hundreds, of flights, and CVRs haven't gone beyond 30 minutes of recording? (Granted, the modern CVR now has around 6+ channels of audio recorded simultaneously on solid state media)
In fact, it's the whole politics that makes ICAO move so slowly - it takes many years to implement rules across the board.
I think that's probably a good way to go - hams generally love to help others, especially other hams. And nothing's better than helping emergency preparedness either.
Put the call out, and earmark some money for beer and pizza and stuff at the end and you may find that you'll have lots of help - not to pay for the transport, but to actually do it. And I'm sure lots of hams would love to have the chance to actually put up a tower or to learn how to put one up (a good skill to have).
Heck, have workshops as well - turn this not into a "let's get a tower" event but into a whole community involvement and relations thing. After all, you'll get curious onlookers wondering what's going on. It's the perfect time to also do outreach and explain what ham radio is about, what they're good for, and why in an emergency it's good to know a few of 'em.
Well, the first question I have is... why?
I mean, I run into websites that declared themselves so important that the password HAD to be complex. Which is great, except I only accessed it once every few months, and ended up clicking "Forgot Password" anyways because they wouldn't accept a simple one.
No, all the site had were software downloads.
So really - it's another case of "web site is SOOOOOOOOOOO IMPORTANT!" syndrome where the website believes it's the be-all-end-all of websites and wants everyone to use a strong password. User sees it as just a web site that they don't care much about and wants to use a simple crappy one, because well, who really cares?
This is especially true if it's a one-off purchase. I mean, I run into many places that require you to register so you can buy from them. Except that the product I bought was all I needed and all I was going to need. So now I have to create an account and come up with a strong password that I'll never bother using again?
Face it, the only country that keeps pushing for IP protections is the largest IP producer of them all - the United States. If the US was involved in the trade talks, IP would've been on the table.
But between South Korea and Canada? Both aren't really well known heavy IP producers - sure there are plenty of content produced, but it's but a tiny part of the economies, and people don't generally associate various IP products with Canada. Think of movies, you think Hollywood. Etc. The US is all about exporting its culture through IP products.
After all, what's there to protect? Samsung can steal the latest design for the Blackberry for what anyone really cares about. Unless you orient your keys a certain way, that is.
Unfortunately, such editing is extremely common, especially around times of great discussion. Usually what happens are things like "Controversies" get edited down or completely deleted. Then someone puts it back, and then a PR editor removes it again and the edit war continues.
It's been shown a lot of those edits have been done by people associated with the page - be it a company wanting to remove "black marks" and legal troubles from their page, to people removing controversial opinions or negative information.
If it turns out donors are doing it to appear more positive by removing negative listings in their page, and they're getting away with it without confrontation, that is the worrying trend. Because normally someone challenges removal of negative information and the section gets locked down.
Or, you go for the traditional printing press which you can use a standard offset print with die-cut and die-mark techniques. At 50,000 copies, this is an extremely cost-efficient way of making the things, uses no special technology (printing presses and die cutters are readily available at your bulk print shop).
We traditionally use them to produce the fancy boxes you see for packaging of products - boxes, displays, etc.
That's what makes this cool - there's no real fancy technology needed, and aside from minor setup costs, it's really, really, really efficient. The printers can even remove the excess paper, leaving you with just the cut out parts (though if you go this way, they can even nest the pieces so you can use a sheet roll of cardboard with very little waste).
Why use fancy laser cutters and such when the technology and means to mass produce them cheaply already exists?
One of the interesting things is how things interact. If the wind dies down during the summer and picks up during the winter, the motion of the turbines itself generates friction, even with bearings. Depending on how things are, such friction may be enough to keep the grease in a usable temperature range so it's kept at more or less the same temperature year round.
As you always would - with your username and password.
What these guys propose doing is server side - you enter a password, the server hashes it, it's sent to the box which signs it, then the resulting hash is spit back out and stored in the database. When you log in, you provide the password, it's hashed by the server, send to the box, and the resulting signed hash is compared with the stored hash.
The reason for this is to make breaches of websites that much less useful - if the attackers get the database, they won't have the HMAC key so they can't really run through and crack the hashes. The website can regenerate a new HMAC key and force everyone to recreate their passwords (which can be the same) and they'll end up different in the database again because they are signed with the new key.
Since the key never leaves the hardware box, it's impossible to extract it when you're grabbing the user database.
The big problem is, well, it protects the user with less benefit and more cost tot he website in question, meaning few, if any, would actually implement it because the benefits go solely to the user.
Nope, Starting with the iPhone 3GS, the flash is encrypted. The encryption key used is encrypted with a per-device key that's known only by the device (and I guess, Apple). If you do a remote wipe, the encrypted key is deleted (making the data inaccessible), and a new key is created. The device then encrypts that key with the device key and puts it in flash.
This is why iPhone and iPhone 3G take several hours to wipe, while every iPhone since the 3GS onwards only takes seconds. As a result, the flash is always encrypted and removing it gets you nothing if you don't know the device key to recover the media key. (AFAIK, the device key is only known to hardware - software cannot access it, other than commanding the device key be loaded into the key cache RAM at a certain index).
Android also has the ability to encrypt the flash (starting with 4.0 I think) - you have to enable it though - by default it's off. I believe it uses a form of TrueCrypt so it takes about an hour to encrypt the flash, and it cannot be disabled unless you reflash the device.
The problem is not the water itself, is that freshwater is a very limited resource. Water is not limited - 2/3rds of the surface is covered in it. Freshwater is very limited though - under 1% of water is fresh and usable for growing, drinking, etc. A lot of it is in various lakes - Russia has a very deep lake along the Trans-Siberian Railroad that's all freshwater and considered the world's largest supply. The Great Lakes make up another huge chunk of it as well.
The problem is again one of distribution - for those areas don't typically grow or raise much food, while areas like California raise a lot but also are in drought conditions.
So no, the water is not lost, but climate change and such is leading to desertification and loss of prime agricultural land, and having to bring in water from elsewhere is energy-intensive.
Analog phone service sounds better than digital landline - because it was all analog and very little filtering happened. Then in the mid-70's or so AT&T was switching to digital systems. They did research (heavily) into finding out what bandwidth they could limit to and still have intelligible speech, which was decided that the good chunk of human vocalizations exist below 4kHz or so.
This gave rise to the 8KHz sampling with 8 bits (or a 64kbps channel), uncompressed. Which is why our phone systems use 64kbps channel allocations. (56k modems were derived from the fact that every 8th byte or so, a bit was robbed from the audio and used for control purposes. Since you could never tell when this happened, they assumed you only had a 7-bit channel).
Of course, that voice is carried at a full 64kbps. GSM and other digital mobile telephony only really have datarates of 4kbps or lower, necessitating use of highly compressed, highly distorting codecs meant to get the most out of every bit - and let the brain do a lot of the error correction and such (speech has low enough entropy that the powerful organic audio processor running rather advanced wet software can do very good forward error correction to extract out what is being said, despite all the distortion).
Of course, with 3G and LTE and such, codecs are available that let you use more bandwidth to get higher audio quality, but like all things, it requires both ends to support it.
Thing is, the pieces are all there.
First, the OHA agreement (which you must sign in order to get Google Apps, including Google Play) prohibit releasing "Android compatible" devices. It's a blanket ban, too - sign the agreement and you CANNOT release anything Android compatible anymore. If you're someone wanting to release an AOSP phone alongside your Google version? You can't.
Second, Google has already reminded OEMs of that obligation and blocked the launch of the Aliyun phone. Rather emphatically, too, forcing the sudden cancellation of the launch event and release at the last minute.
Android is Free alright. However, sign the OHA agreement and you're really Google's bitch. The ironic part is that this comes from the freedom Android provides.
It all stems from the success of the Kindle - prior to that, well, any Android device not running the Google Market was pretty worthless. But with the Kindle, well, there's suddenly a very compelling piece of Android hardware NOT tied to Google, and that Google cannot exert control over.it. Amazon now has control over the entire thing, and the Amazon App Store is considered to be third most lucrative (by money - first is Blackberry, second (close behind) is Apple, third (with about half as much as Apple) is Amazon. Google Play is a very, very, very distant way back (probably anywhere from a tenth to a fifth of Amazon)).
Basically the OHA agreements are used to "lock up" Android OEMs so Amazon can't use them for design help or manufacturing, etc.
Most likely it was scrapped - plane crashes being rare things, it's easier and cheaper to book a single flight for everyone. I mean, that could mean booking easily 4-5 flights for something that probably only happens once a year or less, and the chances of that flight being "the one" is so low that the added expense isn't worth the cost.
Planes are highly reliable pieces of equipment, much more so than even just 30+ years ago. We understand risks much better, and airspace is generally well controlled and monitored. So that policy might've been necessary back in the days, but these days, it's so unlikely that the company would rather save the money.
Just this time, unfortunately, they lost the bet.
Well, technically, the plane is in Malaysia and they'll treat even a fuel stopover as entering the country.
And Singapore and Malaysia are pretty much drug free - they execute anyone carrying any drugs. Zero tolerance - get caught and it's to the firing squad. Very quick, swift justice. You might get a few extra days with some consular assistance.
They treat drug smuggling very seriously. Every vehicle passing through gets inspected.
No, practically all CGI is motion captured - actors in suits covered in reflective balls act out the actions.
The "unrealistic" nature of the motion and gravity is almost always because the actor is under the influence of real gravity and has real inertia - you cannot tell a 150 lb actor to act like someone who weighs 50lbs because of inertia and gravity effects are different. If you map the motions directly, it'll act heavier and slower. if you try to make ti more nimble and speed it up, well, it looks more fake.
Accurately simulating inertia and gravity is very difficult in hand animation and very tedious, and it still has the potential to look wrong. Motion capture lets you be far more fluid and be done in a much shorter period of time, and in general the action looks less animated and more realistic.
No, all Google did was protect the data against FREE access.
Remember Google's in the business of selling user information. Government access for free isn't in the business plan. So they closed the loophole that allowed it.
Now the government needs to pay for it. Like everyone else. Yes, the same information the government asks for is probably for sale by Google freely on the open market. You just have to pay for it.
Exactly. There's a ton of work required to play a sound. It's not just calling an API to play a file - that's good for simple games, but modern games with multichannel audio require a LOT of calculations. Sounds are played in a 3D volume, with walls and other reflective surfaces in it and a "multichannel microphone" is used to record the audio and send it out to the actual speakers. This lets you position the audio anywhere (e.g., a gunshot will be played from the muzzle) and the audio effects be calculated based on available geometry and surface reflections.
Oh yeah, let's not forget that you're going to want to process 64+ sounds simultaneously. One will be used for music playback, while others are just individual sound effects, of which many may be playing at once - footsteps, narration, other audio tracks, sound effects that loop, etc.
Then there's programmatic audio - where the track is altered and played dynamically. Easiest way is to compile down some audio processing and call it through some function pointers periodically.
Audio ain't easy.
Don't forget the stipple pattern background!
Two other points
- The rate of slides shown should be approximately one per minute or slower. A presentation going for 10 minutes must max out at 10 slides. (Yes, 7 words on 4 lines on a slide to last one minute is challenging, but doable).
- Generally, use only for short presentations.
The real problem with powerpoint and slide-heavy presentations is it turns into a glorified low-motion TV. People end up tuning out and become really passive and the information starts to fly over their heads because they're really like watching a live taping of a TV show and become a part of the studio audience blindly following orders.
It's great if that's your point - you just want to present something to a passive audience (e.g., keynote speeches to show off new products, etc) where interaction is minimal, beyond "oooh"s and "ahhh"s.
But when a transferral of knowledge is required, interaction is a necessity, and passive TV watching does not lead to effective learning. There were many studies done to show the retention of information is only around 10% or so with slides. Interaction is required to fix the knowledge in the mind.
And guess what? Apple is demanding that in this case!. You went to the Probate Court, the judge sent a letter to Apple (presumably confirming that the deceased owned that specific iPad and all that and to release details on the account).
And Apple complied.
In this case, the family is complaining they have to go to court to get a court order to get Apple to unlock it. No surprise, you ran into the same problem, which is why you went to the Court to see the judge.
In other words, Apple is following the same procedure with this family as what you did - the Court issued an order demanding release of the account information. Apple complied. This family didn't, and Apple requested that they get the Court to do so.
And yes, Apple is absolved or all liability should it turn out said iPad was stolen - it meant someone lied to the Court under oath and committed perjury, which generally is far worse than the few hundred bucks you get for the iPad.
Yes they will. However, because the cost of the Windows license is less than the amount of sponsorship your computer gets from all the preloaded software (i.e., crapware), the price of your PC rises.