Dedicated hardware? For graphics? That's like having a dedicated multicore processor in your PC just to draw some 3D polygons on a 2D screen. Madness!
I appreciate you are being facetious, but I didn't mean not having any graphics hardware. What I meant is having "yet another" bit of dedicated hardware (i.e. sprites) for something that is rather trivial to do with the GPU.
And this isn't just about Flash, it's about anytime you need animation of "sprite-like" objects. Your OS could benefit from it with the mouse cursor for instance. I can use up 2-5% CPU on most machines just by wildly flailing the mouse around. That's an extreme example of course.
What hardware/OS are you using?! AFAIK, hardware cursors are pretty standard in graphics chips/DACs.
I agree especially since there was technology decades ago which allowed very primitive CPU's to animate little blocks in real-time... I'm not sure why it doesn't exist in more "modern" systems. http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Sprite
C64 sprites, IIRC, used dedicated hardware. That doesn't sound quite like the right solution to me.
Obviously, modern PCs and smart phones have graphics hardware too, but one problem is that Flash's rendering model doesn't fit modern GPUs all that well.
How about replacing the tiny windows with decent cameras and screens?
Some years ago, one airline my parents flew on had a camera looking forwards and down from the nose of the plane. You could get a (better than?) pilot's view of the take-off and landing.
It is also possible that you could have a device with an HD screen, but not the capability to watch HD movies.
Right, for example, it would be reeeeaaaally cheap if they gave you a screen with HD definition (and advertised as such) but the graphics chip couldn't churn that many pixels, or if the CPU+GPU choked on common codecs at those sizes. A single HD image != "HD screen for video."
However, in this case, I believe the GPU has full HW support for several video codecs. (This, of course, is assuming Wikipedia has got the details correct!)
is a really bad idea, i think the accelerator pedal should be run by a cable or linkage directly to the fuel injection or a throttle body directly (the old fashioned way) without any computer or electronics in between
That can still fail due to wear and tear. A car I used to drive would sometimes stay revving after I lifted my foot from the pedal and it usually took a couple of taps with my foot to get back to idle.
you're talking about two completely different things.
Nonsense. SAD is a direct alternative to DCT for macroblock comparison functions, and motion vector search. It appears most other encoders use DCT (at least by default), which has a serious negative effect on video quality
I don't know very much about video compression so excuse my ignorance, but what compressors use DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) to compare blocks? My understanding is that SAD (Sum of Absolute Differences i.e. Manhattan distance) is used to compare pixel blocks for "similarity" though some might use a cheap transform (e.g. Hadamard), on the block data prior to "SAD", to find better matching blocks whose residual, i.e. after differences are taken, would compress with DCT.
I don't buy the article's conclusions. Ghana has cats? fine. Turkey has mucho cats everywhere! A cat might even shit on your head while you eat in a fancy restaurant in Taksim. All middle eastern countries have oodles of cats, afaik. Yet they suck ass at soccer?
Germany is a dog country, very few cats here. Brazil doesn't have street cats like Turkey either. etc.
IIRC, Turkey reached the final 4 places in the last world cup and I think their top domestic teams often do reasonably well in the European Championship (?) league. I don't follow the game enough to know why they didn't qualify for this competition
AFFECT is a transitive verb. "I can affect your computer's operation with this sledgehammer."
EFFECT is an object of action. "The effect of my hitting your computer with my sledgehammer is a reduction in idiotic posts on the wacky."
please everybody to get this correct in the future.
Sorry to be a pedant, but "effect" can also be used as a verb in the sense of causing something. e.g. "To effect a change in the system we can swap the polarity".
Some environmental groups have warned these cables could be used instead to import non-renewable electricity from coal- and gas-fired power stations in north Africa.
At least the minister's response quoted in the article is positive. The summary butchered it:
"This is a good question but not a question to destroy our project," Oettinger said. "This question must be answered by a good answer and so we need ways to ensure that our import of electricity is from renewables."
Simple solution. All they need to do is put a big diode in the cables to stop any electricity going back the other way. 8-P
Woot! My full tower case PC, mixing desk and desktop montors are now a cell phone! Might skip taking it to work though, since the thing weighs about 50kgs thanks to the subwoofer.
You are talking about a DEVICE. No one here has a problem with patents for THINGS, but we do have a problem with patents on IDEAS. Software patents are just that, patenting an idea, an algorithm. Math..
You may not patent math per se, but you can patent a novel and non obvious application of it. RSA is a good example.
2. being allowed to patent something that has already been published (for up to 12 months)
It's my understanding that only the US has that "feature".
4. non-immediate disclosure of the patent at the time of submission (eg. submarine patents - disclosure that occurs after numerous other parties have 'innovated' along the same line.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's pretty much universal that patent applications become public after about a 18 months so submarining should no longer happen.
Isn't the flash file format and programming language an open standard?
Maybe, but I'm not sure that makes it good. I briefly looked at the vector graphics part of the file format and it seemed a bit weird. It reminded me of the internal structure for a legacy scanline rendering algorithm.
OTOH, years ago I did look at (IIRC) Autocad's DXF file format... now that was really scary.
> it doesn't even make sense arguing _against_ document standardization, > nor it makes sense to even immagine a proposal of not having document > not using an open standard
When your company uses 95% *.doc(x), 4.9% *.pdf and 0.1% oddball formats, then arguing for open standards and OpenDocument in particular, elicits as much as a lookin-at-you-weird-smile.. Then they'll go right back to work, consisting of debating how to best implement Windows 7. As much as it sucks and I personally hate it: DOC *IS* the standard.!
Strange as it may seem, although the company I work for use word and *.doc, whenever I received a.docx file from an external source, it was opened perfectly well by my install of OpenOffice. So well, in fact, I assumed for a while that docx was the Open Office format!
Later I was told there was a plug in for our version of word for.docx files, so I installed it. Ironically, that now sometimes fails!
It also makes us nice and easy to keep an eye on. All our activity now leaves a nice little easy to follow trail. Much nicer for the government to follow than before.
Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't this just data any government would have anyway? Surely the only difference is that it is cutting out the dead trees part of the cycle?
What makes you assume "software" solutions to technological problems are not patentable in the EU?
It says so right in the law...
Where? Citation please.
If one goes to the UK Patent office page (governed by EU laws) which states what can and can't be patented you will find that it only says you can't patent "some computer programs".
If, however, an invention meets the criteria in that it relates "to how something works, what it does, what it is made of, or how it is made." then it is fine (assuming, of course, it is inventive and non-obvious)
Ask yourself what is the fundamental difference between a piece of silicon which solves problem "X" (perhaps using dedicated/hardwired logic) and a piece of silicon which solves "X" but also uses a set of CPU instructions to do it?
what about the fact that software patents are not valid in EU? Cant Khronos just release the spec in EU and screw US?
What makes you assume "software" solutions to technological problems are not patentable in the EU? Have a look at probably any computer related patent (e.g picking the first one from ARM I could find) and I suspect you will find both "apparatus" and "method of" versions of the claims. The latter generally refers to a software-based implementation of the invention.
Now, the issue is whether something is obvious and/or trivial and there are certainly a number of granted US patents which have some outrageous claims that haven't got past the EPO examiners.
I hope Google sues anyone who uses location-based advertising. That way, only Google will broadcast my location to advertisers. Avoid Google's product, and BAM! Privacy.
Well, it appears that patent is still being examined in the European patent office (and it looks like it's already had a couple of rounds), so that approach ain't going to work, at least, in Europe.
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Dedicated hardware? For graphics? That's like having a dedicated multicore processor in your PC just to draw some 3D polygons on a 2D screen. Madness!
I appreciate you are being facetious, but I didn't mean not having any graphics hardware. What I meant is having "yet another" bit of dedicated hardware (i.e. sprites) for something that is rather trivial to do with the GPU.
And this isn't just about Flash, it's about anytime you need animation of "sprite-like" objects. Your OS could benefit from it with the mouse cursor for instance. I can use up 2-5% CPU on most machines just by wildly flailing the mouse around. That's an extreme example of course.
What hardware/OS are you using?! AFAIK, hardware cursors are pretty standard in graphics chips/DACs.
I agree especially since there was technology decades ago which allowed very primitive CPU's to animate little blocks in real-time... I'm not sure why it doesn't exist in more "modern" systems. http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Sprite
C64 sprites, IIRC, used dedicated hardware. That doesn't sound quite like the right solution to me.
Obviously, modern PCs and smart phones have graphics hardware too, but one problem is that Flash's rendering model doesn't fit modern GPUs all that well.
How about replacing the tiny windows with decent cameras and screens?
Some years ago, one airline my parents flew on had a camera looking forwards and down from the nose of the plane. You could get a (better than?) pilot's view of the take-off and landing.
It is also possible that you could have a device with an HD screen, but not the capability to watch HD movies.
Right, for example, it would be reeeeaaaally cheap if they gave you a screen with HD definition (and advertised as such) but the graphics chip couldn't churn that many pixels, or if the CPU+GPU choked on common codecs at those sizes. A single HD image != "HD screen for video."
However, in this case, I believe the GPU has full HW support for several video codecs. (This, of course, is assuming Wikipedia has got the details correct!)
Not all taxes. California also has excessive regulation. There is a reason for the huge price drop when you cross state lines out of California.
Judging by the brown tint in air around LA (easily noticeable as you fly in) seems to me the price difference is not big enough.
is a really bad idea, i think the accelerator pedal should be run by a cable or linkage directly to the fuel injection or a throttle body directly (the old fashioned way) without any computer or electronics in between
That can still fail due to wear and tear. A car I used to drive would sometimes stay revving after I lifted my foot from the pedal and it usually took a couple of taps with my foot to get back to idle.
Nonsense. SAD is a direct alternative to DCT for macroblock comparison functions, and motion vector search. It appears most other encoders use DCT (at least by default), which has a serious negative effect on video quality
I don't know very much about video compression so excuse my ignorance, but what compressors use DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) to compare blocks? My understanding is that SAD (Sum of Absolute Differences i.e. Manhattan distance) is used to compare pixel blocks for "similarity" though some might use a cheap transform (e.g. Hadamard), on the block data prior to "SAD", to find better matching blocks whose residual, i.e. after differences are taken, would compress with DCT.
Non square pixels are not a new idea, see for example sensors of cameras.
Alvy Ray Smith, computer graphics researcher and co-founder of Pixar, will tell you that A Pixel Is Not A Little Square, A Pixel Is Not A Little Square, A Pixel Is Not A Little Square! (And a Voxel is Not a Little Cube). I don't necessarily agree with everything in the article (e.g. coordinate systems) but it is worth a read.
I don't buy the article's conclusions. Ghana has cats? fine. Turkey has mucho cats everywhere! A cat might even shit on your head while you eat in a fancy restaurant in Taksim. All middle eastern countries have oodles of cats, afaik. Yet they suck ass at soccer?
Germany is a dog country, very few cats here. Brazil doesn't have street cats like Turkey either. etc.
IIRC, Turkey reached the final 4 places in the last world cup and I think their top domestic teams often do reasonably well in the European Championship (?) league. I don't follow the game enough to know why they didn't qualify for this competition
Antarctica got robbed!
They tried but were disqualified because the penguins tried to incubate the ball.
AFFECT is a transitive verb. "I can affect your computer's operation with this sledgehammer."
EFFECT is an object of action. "The effect of my hitting your computer with my sledgehammer is a reduction in idiotic posts on the wacky."
please everybody to get this correct in the future.
Sorry to be a pedant, but "effect" can also be used as a verb in the sense of causing something. e.g. "To effect a change in the system we can swap the polarity".
Some environmental groups have warned these cables could be used instead to import non-renewable electricity from coal- and gas-fired power stations in north Africa.
At least the minister's response quoted in the article is positive. The summary butchered it:
"This is a good question but not a question to destroy our project," Oettinger said. "This question must be answered by a good answer and so we need ways to ensure that our import of electricity is from renewables."
Simple solution. All they need to do is put a big diode in the cables to stop any electricity going back the other way. 8-P
Woot! My full tower case PC, mixing desk and desktop montors are now a cell phone! Might skip taking it to work though, since the thing weighs about 50kgs thanks to the subwoofer.
Ahh..retro. It's like a 1980s model phone then.
You are talking about a DEVICE. No one here has a problem with patents for THINGS, but we do have a problem with patents on IDEAS. Software patents are just that, patenting an idea, an algorithm. Math. .
You may not patent math per se, but you can patent a novel and non obvious application of it. RSA is a good example.
2. being allowed to patent something that has already been published (for up to 12 months)
It's my understanding that only the US has that "feature".
4. non-immediate disclosure of the patent at the time of submission (eg. submarine patents - disclosure that occurs after numerous other parties have 'innovated' along the same line.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's pretty much universal that patent applications become public after about a 18 months so submarining should no longer happen.
Isn't the flash file format and programming language an open standard?
Maybe, but I'm not sure that makes it good. I briefly looked at the vector graphics part of the file format and it seemed a bit weird. It reminded me of the internal structure for a legacy scanline rendering algorithm.
OTOH, years ago I did look at (IIRC) Autocad's DXF file format... now that was really scary.
Only if you want the SSD to die within a month. Windows writes to the swapfile pretty much constantly.
Oh dear, I'd better remember to replace my SSD-based laptop, err, 9 months ago.
Why does Apple get all the press when the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk has been around for ages?
(check the user-posted photos)
I now have tears in my eyes from laughing so much. Brilliant.
> it doesn't even make sense arguing _against_ document standardization,
> nor it makes sense to even immagine a proposal of not having document
> not using an open standard
When your company uses 95% *.doc(x), 4.9% *.pdf and 0.1% oddball formats, then arguing for open standards and OpenDocument in particular, elicits as much as a lookin-at-you-weird-smile.. Then they'll go right back to work, consisting of debating how to best implement Windows 7. As much as it sucks and I personally hate it: DOC *IS* the standard.!
Strange as it may seem, although the company I work for use word and *.doc, whenever I received a .docx file from an external source, it was opened perfectly well by my install of OpenOffice. So well, in fact, I assumed for a while that docx was the Open Office format!
Later I was told there was a plug in for our version of word for .docx files, so I installed it. Ironically, that now sometimes fails!
It also makes us nice and easy to keep an eye on. All our activity now leaves a nice little easy to follow trail. Much nicer for the government to follow than before.
Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't this just data any government would have anyway? Surely the only difference is that it is cutting out the dead trees part of the cycle?
Are they making dimmable LED lights yet?
A quick search turned up this. I'd imagine there are other makes.
What makes you assume "software" solutions to technological problems are not patentable in the EU?
It says so right in the law...
Where? Citation please.
If one goes to the UK Patent office page (governed by EU laws) which states what can and can't be patented you will find that it only says you can't patent "some computer programs".
If, however, an invention meets the criteria in that it relates "to how something works, what it does, what it is made of, or how it is made." then it is fine (assuming, of course, it is inventive and non-obvious)
Ask yourself what is the fundamental difference between a piece of silicon which solves problem "X" (perhaps using dedicated/hardwired logic) and a piece of silicon which solves "X" but also uses a set of CPU instructions to do it?
what about the fact that software patents are not valid in EU? Cant Khronos just release the spec in EU and screw US?
What makes you assume "software" solutions to technological problems are not patentable in the EU? Have a look at probably any computer related patent (e.g picking the first one from ARM I could find) and I suspect you will find both "apparatus" and "method of" versions of the claims. The latter generally refers to a software-based implementation of the invention.
Now, the issue is whether something is obvious and/or trivial and there are certainly a number of granted US patents which have some outrageous claims that haven't got past the EPO examiners.
I hope Google sues anyone who uses location-based advertising. That way, only Google will broadcast my location to advertisers. Avoid Google's product, and BAM! Privacy.
Well, it appears that patent is still being examined in the European patent office (and it looks like it's already had a couple of rounds), so that approach ain't going to work, at least, in Europe.