No, I don't mean a compiler with a bunch of specific optimizations built-in, I mean a language with programmable code expansion features so that you can write a library that does this sort of thing. The idea that this should be the job of the library is key.
Nice history lesson. Let me tell you a story about today. Today, we use libraries. We trust the library authors to write efficient code, and we don't worry about machine code anymore because programmer time is more expensive than CPU time. Modern compilers take care of most of the optimization for us. If our applications turn out too slow, we use profiling tools and change our algorithms instead of optimizing instruction sequences.
The author of Blitz++ has proven, through these benchmarks, that his code, when compiled with an actual C++ compiler (gasp, horror, so inefficient!), is more efficient than Fortran at tasks in which Fortran excels. I sure don't think he needs to show any machine code to convince me. In this particular case, the C++ machine code would be much longer and more complex, in fact, since it uses a complex algorithm to traverse the arrays. Therefore, looking at the machine code would be totally missing the point.
Combining 5mm pixel pitch, an RGB color model with 4096 colors, and a superior contrast ratio of 14:1,
magink digital ink technology achieves an extremely natural look that very much resembles the look of
printed images on paper.
Compatibility to outdoor lighting environment
magink's digital ink display billboard is reflective of incident light and requires no integrated illumination.
Light that falls on the display from either the sun or external light sources is actually beneficial to the
visibility of the image. A beautiful image is maintainable under the full range of daylight conditions.
Low energy consumption
magink display does not require any power to maintain an image: the image is held under power-off conditions.
Only when replacing one image with another does the display require punctual application of power in order
to set the new image.
Since energy is needed only for refreshing the image and since magink's digital ink reflective display does
not require back lighting, power consumption is low yielding less energy consumption, less heat dissipation
and a longer mean time between failure (MTBF).
Why do you need to see the machine code? Doesn't the performance of the compiled code speak for itself? He benchmarks the code against hand-optimized Fortran code for the same task, and it beats Fortran. Did you even read the link?
OK, let me rephrase the question. Couldn't you design an language with features specifically designed to enable this type of in-line compile-time code expansion, and have it not turn out as a functional language with retarded syntax?
You can do that with C++?!? And it's super-efficient!?! The article explains that this code actually expands automatically into this loop that traverses the arrays in a convoluted manner designed specifically to improve cache-hit performance. All this complexity is hidden inside the library. Now I see what all these people have been raving about with template metaprogramming and expression templates.
Seems to me that template metaprogramming is a rather awkward way to go about these things though. Couldn't you design a language that had features specifically designed to enable this type of in-line compile-time code expansion?
You make it sound like the only way to increase the artists rights is to take them away.
We're not attempting to increase the rights of the artist. We're trying to increase the fairness of the industry so that artists in general will be better off. It is the case that taking away the same rights from everyone can leave everyone in a better situation. The only way to allow us to live life without the constant fear of being killed is to outlaw murder. Our "right" to murder has been taken away, but everyone benefits.
Copyright is an abstract, arbitrary construct to start with. The whole idea of ownership of non-tangible things such as music is arbitrarily defined by copyright. Copyright can be defined however we want, according to what is best for society as a whole. If it is better to have non-transferable copyrights, then that should be how we do it. Perhaps the rights conferred by copyright shouldn't be referred to as "ownership" at all, because copyright should not be confused with the rights of ownership of tangible things. That causes errors in thinking.
Or are you going to suggest that artists shouldn't be allowed to sell exclusive rights to their works to corporations? If so, you'll have a hell of a time getting anything published, since almost all of the major publishers, record companies, movie studios, etc. are corporations.
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Sure, if an artist went around *now* saying "I'm not giving exclusive rights to anyone" they wouldn't get published. However, that's only because there are other artists who *will* give exclusive rights. If no artist could give exclusive rights, then what would happen?
Let's just leave the Internet out of this for a second, since we're not even sure the old business models will work when the Internet is in the picture. Instead imagine a world without p2p and without exclusive publishing rights. Would music still be published? There would still be demand. Therefore, music would be published and sold. There would still be publishers. Artists could still sell copying rights to publishers. The only difference is, artists could move from publisher to publisher at will, or even use multiple publishers. What does this cause? Competition among publishers! Publishers competing with each other for artists, based on the merits of each publisher's service. Competition drives quality up and prices down. Artists could charge whatever they want for their own works, and the publishing costs would be very low because of competition, so they would get most of the profit.
What of the current music industry? Well, it is mostly advertising nowadays, I think. Publishing is a small part of it. So today's music publishers could just turn into advertising agencies for artists. I guess nothing would stop artists from signing stupid contracts with these advertising agencies, but you can't protect people from their own stupidity. At least under this system the music would always belong to the artist, and publishing would be cheap.
How about making copyright non-transferrable? So if I write a song, Michael Jackson can never come in and buy the rights to it so I can't publish my own song, and if I write a song, no corporation can ever own the rights to it. I always will own the song. If my group writes the [song, book, code], we own it as a group, until the copyright expires.
I haven't thought this through a whole lot, and I realize that it would have a lot of kinks to work out. (How would anyone get permission to copy a song if they weren't the artist? Obviously the copyright holder would have to be able to sign contracts granting that permission, but that is the same as giving up ownership of the song if the contract is horrible enough. Maybe copyright holders could always retain the option to terminate any contract that gives someone else part of the copyright, or something. Or maybe copyright holders could simply not be able to enter into contracts that would forbid them from entering copying contracts with others.) But I think it's an interesting idea. What does Slashdot think?
Wow, they actually appear to be the first people to have this idea. They started back when KDE 1 was still widely used and they used the original KFM browser component instead of the KDE 2 KHTML component.
I imagine the features of Lotus relating to hypertext embedding were described in great detail in all of the manuals that came with the software, and were advertised when pitching the software to companies. After all, the ability to embed Excel spreadsheets isn't something you just "happen" to have in your software and never notice, and it isn't something you can add to 10-year-old software in a matter of minutes if it was never used in that manner before.
Embedding of plugins or external applications is a feature that would take significant effort and testing to develop, and would consequently be a major feature of the software. It is extremely hard to imagine that nobody has ever exercised this major "embedding" feature of Notes before, even before the filing date of the patent.
Yes you can trademark the name Apple, but only as it relates to a particular business segment. It really does make sense. Think about it. What if I started a company named Apple Computer, that sold computers. The real Apple would rightfully be able to sue me, because that is quite confusing. Now think back a couple years, before OS X came out and Apple became cool again. Suppose you knew that Apple records was the name of the company that publishes Beatles CDs (I did). Now suppose you hear about applemusic.com. Wouldn't you assume that it was the Beatles company at that site? I would have. That is the situation most normal people are in, because they know very little, if anything at all about Apple Computer. Apple Computer is not something they think about more than once a year. I can see applemusic.com as being confusing to these people.
What do you want them to do? Give up this hugely profitable and innovative business just because some company is going to file a lawsuit? Music is practically the core of Apple's strategy lately, and they can't give it up no matter what it costs them. They'll just have to suck it up and pay out to the leeches at Apple records. What they would do if they were smart is negotiate a new contract this time so they don't get sued in the future, because Apple's music strategy is not going away.
Google results mirror the interests of its users. I fail to see this as a bad thing. The vision is that in the future, everyone *will* be on the web, *everyone* will blog if they want to, and so anyone who wants to can have their opinion expressed and influence Google results themselves. Everyone will bring their experiences to the web, making it richer on every topic you can imagine, not just those having to do with what geeks care about. Right now Google is a great place to find information on computer-related issues, because much of the web is concerned with these issues. In the future, if everyone uses the web, then Google will be a great place to find information on everything.
This is a far-looking view, I don't expect that it will happen to a huge extent in the near future (like 10 years). But maybe in 50 or 100.
It doesn't prevent you from playing half-life on two different computers with the same key, or even making a LAN party with only a single key. Steam might. It involves a LOT of communication over the network with Valve, sending who-knows-what.
Hopefully the legitimacy of being a paid reporter would be able to be replaced by the legitimacy stories would get from making it through several levels of this collaborative filtering. Advertising would also help this if significant money was being made. Being a well-known and popular blogger might confer some sort of legitimacy and also carry some responsibility. The objectivity issue is interesting; however, I would question the objectivity of our current news sources anyway. I think a network of blogs could be just as objective, again due to filtering. Such a network might also have stories with a wider range of viewpoints, which might be a good thing.
Once again, this is all just speculation. It remains to be seen if this can work in the real world to replace journalism as we know it and all that. But I think it would be cool.
Depends on the video input. Most new consoles, I believe, calculate a different frame for each interlaced pass, so the effective framerate is 60 fps at a reduced resolution. I think TV cameras do this as well. Hollywood movies don't, since their source is 25 fps. (I've always wondered how they manage to look decent at such a low framerate that is different from TV's base framerate, it must be all the motion blur. I guess PAL would be better for movies.).
And what I'm saying is that journalists can blog too, instead of writing for a publication, if they are worried that they aren't getting heard because they're not a blogger. The only thing is that this may mean that "journalist" may start to disappear as a paid position like it is today. (perhaps they could sell targeted text ads to still make money?) But that's speculation, and far into the future. Certainly now bloggers do much better as essayists than news reporters. But that could change. Think Drudge report, or Kuro5hin or Slashdot even, if you have a sufficiently loose definition of blog. A large enough network of Slashdot-type sites, each with a community and each with a different focus, would have sufficient breadth to pull in a good number of interesting stories, while serving as a filtering mechanism at the same time. Then higher-level news blogs might emerge that cull the most interesting stories making the rounds in each sub-topic community. Or perhaps you could just bookmark a few sub-topic sites that interest you and just read those all the time.
I'm not sure what you mean by "reducing" blogs to "merely" altering Google's results. Nobody is saying that blogs are reduced to anything. How is allowing blogs to determine Google rankings, which are arguably the most influential things on the Internet, reducing them in any way? I'd say its magnifying their power. It's not like their sole purpose will be to alter Google rankings. It's just a nice side effect that Google wants to make use of.
If you want blogs that have fewer links and more discussion, I'm sure you'll always be able to find them. Even the small number of links on a link-light personal blog are likely to be very high quality though, worth their weight in gold to Google.
Because tv is interlaced, so you effectively get two very low-resolution frames for every 30 fps "frame". The effective framerate of TVs is 60 fps. (or I suppose 50 for you PAL folks)
I often hear people say "after 30 fps you can't tell the difference", or something to that effect. That might be true if you were playing back the frames evenly spaced. However, your monitor runs at a fixed 60 Hz framerate (or 70 or 80, but let's just say 60), so a "fps" of 50 will have you showing 5 frames, showing the last frame again, and then showing 5 more, which can produce a noticable stutter even though the "fps" is 50. So that is one reason why you might want a "fps" of at least 60 (or 70, or 80). Also, the really meaningful value is "minimum fps", because that is what you're going to get when you're fighting the boss and all these guys are coming at you and all these things are happening at once. Usually, a higher average fps (say, 120) indicates that the minimum fps will also be higher. So, a high fps score can still be good even if your monitor can't display 120 frames every second.
I believe that was Bink video. (We're talking about the videos in.exe form that you can download from FilePlanet, such as this one). I, too, was really impressed by the quality. It looked like the scenes were actually being rendered in real time, no exaggeration at all. Can we get that for MPlayer?;-) Seriously, though, the filesize of this video was really quite large compared to the length (a minute or two, 100 MB). Compare that to DivX at 500 MB an hour for quite decent quality. I wonder what DivX could achieve if you gave it that much room for a few minutes of video?
Supposedly Bink uses a compression technology based on wavelets that is not used anywhere else. Looking at the quality of that movie, it seems pretty interesting. That would be a neat reverse-engineering project, for somebody with the time.
They'd have to be awfully fast at coding to have a ton of half-life 2 specific optimizations already. It was just announced not that long ago, and I doubt ATI immediately got a snapshot of the very secret "Source" engine to start tweaking with.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I don't mean a compiler with a bunch of specific optimizations built-in, I mean a language with programmable code expansion features so that you can write a library that does this sort of thing. The idea that this should be the job of the library is key.
The author of Blitz++ has proven, through these benchmarks, that his code, when compiled with an actual C++ compiler (gasp, horror, so inefficient!), is more efficient than Fortran at tasks in which Fortran excels. I sure don't think he needs to show any machine code to convince me. In this particular case, the C++ machine code would be much longer and more complex, in fact, since it uses a complex algorithm to traverse the arrays. Therefore, looking at the machine code would be totally missing the point.
Print quality image
Combining 5mm pixel pitch, an RGB color model with 4096 colors, and a superior contrast ratio of 14:1, magink digital ink technology achieves an extremely natural look that very much resembles the look of printed images on paper.
Compatibility to outdoor lighting environment
magink's digital ink display billboard is reflective of incident light and requires no integrated illumination. Light that falls on the display from either the sun or external light sources is actually beneficial to the visibility of the image. A beautiful image is maintainable under the full range of daylight conditions.
Low energy consumption
magink display does not require any power to maintain an image: the image is held under power-off conditions. Only when replacing one image with another does the display require punctual application of power in order to set the new image.
Since energy is needed only for refreshing the image and since magink's digital ink reflective display does not require back lighting, power consumption is low yielding less energy consumption, less heat dissipation and a longer mean time between failure (MTBF).
Why do you need to see the machine code? Doesn't the performance of the compiled code speak for itself? He benchmarks the code against hand-optimized Fortran code for the same task, and it beats Fortran. Did you even read the link?
OK, let me rephrase the question. Couldn't you design an language with features specifically designed to enable this type of in-line compile-time code expansion, and have it not turn out as a functional language with retarded syntax?
You can do that with C++?!? And it's super-efficient!?! The article explains that this code actually expands automatically into this loop that traverses the arrays in a convoluted manner designed specifically to improve cache-hit performance. All this complexity is hidden inside the library. Now I see what all these people have been raving about with template metaprogramming and expression templates.
Seems to me that template metaprogramming is a rather awkward way to go about these things though. Couldn't you design a language that had features specifically designed to enable this type of in-line compile-time code expansion?
We're not attempting to increase the rights of the artist. We're trying to increase the fairness of the industry so that artists in general will be better off. It is the case that taking away the same rights from everyone can leave everyone in a better situation. The only way to allow us to live life without the constant fear of being killed is to outlaw murder. Our "right" to murder has been taken away, but everyone benefits.
Copyright is an abstract, arbitrary construct to start with. The whole idea of ownership of non-tangible things such as music is arbitrarily defined by copyright. Copyright can be defined however we want, according to what is best for society as a whole. If it is better to have non-transferable copyrights, then that should be how we do it. Perhaps the rights conferred by copyright shouldn't be referred to as "ownership" at all, because copyright should not be confused with the rights of ownership of tangible things. That causes errors in thinking.
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Sure, if an artist went around *now* saying "I'm not giving exclusive rights to anyone" they wouldn't get published. However, that's only because there are other artists who *will* give exclusive rights. If no artist could give exclusive rights, then what would happen?
Let's just leave the Internet out of this for a second, since we're not even sure the old business models will work when the Internet is in the picture. Instead imagine a world without p2p and without exclusive publishing rights. Would music still be published? There would still be demand. Therefore, music would be published and sold. There would still be publishers. Artists could still sell copying rights to publishers. The only difference is, artists could move from publisher to publisher at will, or even use multiple publishers. What does this cause? Competition among publishers! Publishers competing with each other for artists, based on the merits of each publisher's service. Competition drives quality up and prices down. Artists could charge whatever they want for their own works, and the publishing costs would be very low because of competition, so they would get most of the profit.
What of the current music industry? Well, it is mostly advertising nowadays, I think. Publishing is a small part of it. So today's music publishers could just turn into advertising agencies for artists. I guess nothing would stop artists from signing stupid contracts with these advertising agencies, but you can't protect people from their own stupidity. At least under this system the music would always belong to the artist, and publishing would be cheap.
I haven't thought this through a whole lot, and I realize that it would have a lot of kinks to work out. (How would anyone get permission to copy a song if they weren't the artist? Obviously the copyright holder would have to be able to sign contracts granting that permission, but that is the same as giving up ownership of the song if the contract is horrible enough. Maybe copyright holders could always retain the option to terminate any contract that gives someone else part of the copyright, or something. Or maybe copyright holders could simply not be able to enter into contracts that would forbid them from entering copying contracts with others.) But I think it's an interesting idea. What does Slashdot think?
Wow, they actually appear to be the first people to have this idea. They started back when KDE 1 was still widely used and they used the original KFM browser component instead of the KDE 2 KHTML component.
I concur.
Embedding of plugins or external applications is a feature that would take significant effort and testing to develop, and would consequently be a major feature of the software. It is extremely hard to imagine that nobody has ever exercised this major "embedding" feature of Notes before, even before the filing date of the patent.
No. We're merely exercising our freedom of expression. You don't have a freedom for your opinions to be automatically accepted when you express them.
Yes you can trademark the name Apple, but only as it relates to a particular business segment. It really does make sense. Think about it. What if I started a company named Apple Computer, that sold computers. The real Apple would rightfully be able to sue me, because that is quite confusing. Now think back a couple years, before OS X came out and Apple became cool again. Suppose you knew that Apple records was the name of the company that publishes Beatles CDs (I did). Now suppose you hear about applemusic.com. Wouldn't you assume that it was the Beatles company at that site? I would have. That is the situation most normal people are in, because they know very little, if anything at all about Apple Computer. Apple Computer is not something they think about more than once a year. I can see applemusic.com as being confusing to these people.
What do you want them to do? Give up this hugely profitable and innovative business just because some company is going to file a lawsuit? Music is practically the core of Apple's strategy lately, and they can't give it up no matter what it costs them. They'll just have to suck it up and pay out to the leeches at Apple records. What they would do if they were smart is negotiate a new contract this time so they don't get sued in the future, because Apple's music strategy is not going away.
This is a far-looking view, I don't expect that it will happen to a huge extent in the near future (like 10 years). But maybe in 50 or 100.
It doesn't prevent you from playing half-life on two different computers with the same key, or even making a LAN party with only a single key. Steam might. It involves a LOT of communication over the network with Valve, sending who-knows-what.
Once again, this is all just speculation. It remains to be seen if this can work in the real world to replace journalism as we know it and all that. But I think it would be cool.
Depends on the video input. Most new consoles, I believe, calculate a different frame for each interlaced pass, so the effective framerate is 60 fps at a reduced resolution. I think TV cameras do this as well. Hollywood movies don't, since their source is 25 fps. (I've always wondered how they manage to look decent at such a low framerate that is different from TV's base framerate, it must be all the motion blur. I guess PAL would be better for movies.).
I'm not sure what you mean by "reducing" blogs to "merely" altering Google's results. Nobody is saying that blogs are reduced to anything. How is allowing blogs to determine Google rankings, which are arguably the most influential things on the Internet, reducing them in any way? I'd say its magnifying their power. It's not like their sole purpose will be to alter Google rankings. It's just a nice side effect that Google wants to make use of.
If you want blogs that have fewer links and more discussion, I'm sure you'll always be able to find them. Even the small number of links on a link-light personal blog are likely to be very high quality though, worth their weight in gold to Google.
I often hear people say "after 30 fps you can't tell the difference", or something to that effect. That might be true if you were playing back the frames evenly spaced. However, your monitor runs at a fixed 60 Hz framerate (or 70 or 80, but let's just say 60), so a "fps" of 50 will have you showing 5 frames, showing the last frame again, and then showing 5 more, which can produce a noticable stutter even though the "fps" is 50. So that is one reason why you might want a "fps" of at least 60 (or 70, or 80). Also, the really meaningful value is "minimum fps", because that is what you're going to get when you're fighting the boss and all these guys are coming at you and all these things are happening at once. Usually, a higher average fps (say, 120) indicates that the minimum fps will also be higher. So, a high fps score can still be good even if your monitor can't display 120 frames every second.
Supposedly Bink uses a compression technology based on wavelets that is not used anywhere else. Looking at the quality of that movie, it seems pretty interesting. That would be a neat reverse-engineering project, for somebody with the time.
They'd have to be awfully fast at coding to have a ton of half-life 2 specific optimizations already. It was just announced not that long ago, and I doubt ATI immediately got a snapshot of the very secret "Source" engine to start tweaking with.
Also, the Planet Half-Life Screenshot Gallery, a page with a huge number of interviews with Valve staff and previews of the game, and Videos. The huge one is awesome.
September 30th! I can't wait!