MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 both, at thier core, operate on the same principles as MPEG-1 (in the video layer).
That is, store only the difference between frames. Do this by spliting it into a series of blocks, and examining each block.
The devil is, as they say, in the details. I admit I'm fuzzy on a number of them, but this should be a respectable overview.
MPEG-2 uses a straightforward system of frames and partial frames (I frames, or key frames in DivX terms), and B and P frames (the two types of partial frames).
MPEG-4 adds a longer group of pictures (more P frames between I frames), additional encoding formats, and motion compensation. That last is the biggie - it means that if you're panning side to side, you just tell the codec to move the block a bit, and then give it the other bits. As compared to having to give it the scene shifted half a block.
MPEG-4 is also much more complex. I belive that any MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 bitstream is a valid MPEG-4 bitstream (or at least, is with a simple header rewrite). MPEG-4 has various additional bits, such as motioncompensation allowed to go out of frame, 1/4 pixel motion comp, B frames, variable sized motion comp blocks, mutlipe frame motion comp and other goodies. I don't think there is an actual codec that supports all of that lot, never mind the rest of the optional parts of the spec yet. That's why there are multiple MPEG-4 codecs - each can use a differnt goodie bag to try to be better than the others.
Other differences are the audio layers used. AAC is part of MPEG-4, in the same way that MP3 was part of MPEG-1.
As far as the best format for a disc goes - neither. In principle, the additional flexability of MPEG-4 should result in better picture / sound for same disk space. In practice, it's all perceptual anyway, so they turn the quality down until someone notices artifacts, and then nudge it up a touch. Sometimes, one might be better, other times the other, but as there is a human tweaking knobs at the backend, you can't tell in advance.
Mmm, yeah. About that certification. This is technically UK based, but I belive that it's essentially the same.
The FCC certification states that the part will comply with EMI regulations, when assembled as expected. That 'as expected' is critical, but I'll come back to that.
In the UK, it is illegal to sell a computer that is not certified to meet EMI regs. There are two ways to do this - one is to test a system (expensive!), the other is to say that each part shouldn't cause a problem, and the assembly shouldn't, so it's fine (and kinda handwave passed it). Unsurpisingly, the latter is what's done.
On the 'as expected', if you dig into it, you'll find that the parts are only specified as confroming to regs when in a metal case. Basically, they haven't given them a full test (expensive!), but stuck them in a steel or aluminium box, booted it, and waved a meter around, and noted that it was under the limits.
The important point that it's illegal to _sell_ a computer that doesn't conform - so you can buy an all plastic case, and that's all fine. But you can't sell a computer in an all plastic case, unless you either test, or certify, that you have reasonable cause to belive that it meets the EMI regs. Case on its own - that' fine, not a problem (provided the power supply is either separate, or in it's own metal box (Faraday cage).
For this reason, I doubt you'll find anywhere that will sell a computer that's not in a Faraday cage (and I suspect that selling computers in a windowed case is boarderline). It's just too expensive to test, and they don't have 'reasonable grounds' to think that it will pass.
That's the whole point of the MMR issue - parents don't need a valid medical reason to refuse it, which means that immunisation rates have sunk to around 90%. That's the point where 'herd protection' begins to break down (i.e. There are enough people vunerable that an endemic is possible).
For example: http://www.dgwsoft.co.uk/homepages/vaccines/altern atives.htm has a direct quote about refusing the MMR vaccine (in this case, on grounds of fetal cell lines). http://www.veganfamily.co.uk/surgery.html (on ground of animal cells lines)
There's plenty more. Have a browse around the MMR sites, and youll note that they don't mention that the vaccine can be forced. They would, if that were the case.
I am not sure how the UK treats "required immunizations"...
Like all medical treatment it may be refused by the patient (or thier guardian, in the event of a minor, or other assignement of power or attorney), in general.
There are some case where in order to do A, you need to take medication B (e.g. hepititus vaccinations for medical people, tetnus et al for military etc). That's a seperate class, however.
There are two cases where refusal to take medication is overridden. The first is when the person making the request is 'not of sound mind'. A very dubious grey area, intented to allow the saving of sucide attempt and similar, can get very long and drawn out. I belive that this is the same as in the USA.
The other case is when there is a clear danger to the health of the nation if you do not take the medication. This law was enacted with the specific intent of forcing people to complete antibiotic courses for Multiple Drug Resistant Tubercalosis (MDR TB). MDR TB can only be treated by a cocktail of drugs, and if the course isn't completed, then there is a change of strains of the bug resistant to them developing. TB is near endemic in some low income areas, and many patients were refusing to compelete the course once they felt better. After the they had to beef up the cocktail of antibiotics, the law was passed. It would also apply to forcing someone to complete treatment for MRSA or VRSA (Methycillian and Vantymicin resistant Stah Aurus respectivly), but given that your in an ICU for those treatments, it's never come up. MDR TB patients have near full activity during treatment, hence the problem. I understand that it takes a court order, but that the issuing of one would be routine. They are rare devices.
The above law doesn't apply to an immunisation, as it doesn't risk immediate harm to the population if you don't have it. That applies even more so for an immunisation against a drug (e.g. Antabuse or similar).
Being in a high risk group for immunsiations, due to autoimmune disorders, I researched this. Granted, this is all dated 5 ish years ago, but I'm not aware of any major changes. As is stands, there is no way to force a person to have any immunisation, nor to refuse any service (education, welfare or what have you) to someone who does not have that immunisation. The most extreme they can get is to refuse to employ you in certain, specified, jobs (medical or medical related, military and a few others). That's the law. In practice, certain immunisations are administered as routine, and the parents would have to be upfront and direct to refuse them, and tend to get a lot of FUD in response. There's a degree of social pressure applied, which varies depending on, well, which way the wind is blowing it appears.
In short, no, as I understand it; the govenrment can't force an immunisation on the general public, and treatment only in specific cases. Forced drug immunisation as part of a criminal sentance might be possible, but not under current legislation, as I understand it.
Apply (un?)usual IANAL but I researched this a while back disclaimer here.
You can't exactly switch from Gnome to Windows or OSX while staying with the same OS, can you?
No [0], but you can keep the key applications. Commoditity apps (webbrowser, file manager, email) change, but you keep those specific apps that are important (be they business logic, visulisation, simiulation and so on). In general, assuming they're not written to some variety of vendor lock in. Been there, and done that.
Also, corporate adoption can play a big role in inflating one's (collective or not) head.
And that's exactly where copmparisons between OS X, Windows, Gnome and KDE come into play. If some corp decides that one is inferior to the other, that feeds into the improvemnet (at least in free software space).
Recall my point was that it was not immediatly clear that we would have a poorer desktop system if there was only one, rather then both KDE and Gnome. Lack of choice withing the same OS doesn't make them poorer inherently, whilst there is _something_ that it competes with.
[0] Well, actually, yes. You can run Gnome on windows, and you can run Gnome on OS X. In both cases, you can switch interfaces without changing OS, if the apps are avilable for both. That's not what you mean, however.
You are assuming that Gnome competes only with KDE. I do not think that that holds in all cases.
Gnome and KDE also get compared to the various Windows GUI's, and OS X. Therefore, thre is a degree of competition between Gnome and those interfaces. Granted, that's slightly different, given that neither runs on Linux, so that's not relevent to all the users of Gnome.
Still, those drive the Linux UI's forward, along with more obscure UI's. I accept I've not heard many comments that Windows does something better then Gnome (or KDE), but there are a fair few comments that OS X is superior in some aspect or another. That's not to be ignored.
Would UI usability be better served if there was only one free toolkit - dunno, can't say for certain (and probably not, in my opinion). I don't think it's obvous that it would be worse, however.
On your reason #1: there is no claim that the ITU supports the scheme.
The submitter (also the author of the protocol, as he makes clear) notes only that it was 'presented' at the ITU. That's got nothing to do with being supported by it (save that they generally request presentations on things they support. They also get a lot of presentations on research they don't support).
In fact, the inclusion of then names FTC, ACM, NBER and ITU in the summary is, in point of fact, nearly meaningless. All it claims is that he's told them about it. Well, yeah, but how did they respond? That's the question. Unless that's answeared the only reason I can see to list all those names is for an inappropriate air of legitamicy.
So, your real reason #1 aught to be: The creator is making claims the weasel an air of respectability, but in fact have no meaning. Unless someone want's to show a postive responce from those bodies [0], I take that as an attempt _not_ to stand on the merits of the proposal
Interesting, if you read the proceddings of the conference, the overview papers agree that there will be no single technological solution, and don't mention ABM. This says, to me, that there is no particular acceptance of this particular implementation of postage stamps for email.
[0] And I can't find mention of one on the proposal site.
The problem with a separate water filter is that you need some means to force the water through the filter. (The stuff you don't want is too big to get through).
A typical standalone filter uses gravity, and it very, very slow. (note that the typical crappy 'water filters' desinged for tap water don't cut it for swamp water).
Practical reverse osmosis filters use pumps to generate a pressure difference to make the thing work in sensible time. That's a power requirement, and more weight.
The trick that's being used here is to use something that's dessicant to pull the water through. Normally, not that useful, but when you eat the dessicant afterwords, that's a net gain of water.
In other words, it's the dried food that pulls the water through. This is a robust, lightweight and fast solution.
The other clever part is to ensure that once the re-hydrated food is eaten, it's going to be water neutral, or better. Some foods require more water than other to digest, and that should be a design plan. Still, even if not, if it doubles the length of time a canteen lasts, that's a huge bonus.
With the C3 and motherboard chipsets. Taiwanese company.
If I recall correctly, S3 is also based in that neck of the woods. (I looked, Japan, and has joint ventures with VIA).
There are motherboard designers out there too, Abit, for example.
So, there are a number of companies designing PC level gear that need pay buggar all attention to the USA laws. Sure, they might not be able to sell as many without DRM, but that's an economics issue - provided there are people who want them, they will be made.
This is a useful step forward, because it demonstrates a method for how to build a device from the familar silicon lithographic procedures.
That's a big step forward, as it gives a method on how to construct these devices in mass production, and cheaply. That's one of the big hurdles before any actual use.
Much of the work to date has been on trying to find such a method. Granted, there is more work to be done on such a substrate (e.g. How many qubits can you have in a single system?), but it's definitly progress.
May I enquire as to why you think that quantum computing is a hoax?
So, I'm reading the shaky claims from SCO, and I'm remembering that Linux used a.out format.
I think that the worst case scenario is that SCO get a tempory injunction blocking the use of ELF (nevermind that no judge would actually agree that to not issue on would cause irreprable harm, given that it's 9 years old). Therefore, there is some merit in ensureing that it is possible to build a modern Linux system on a.out format binaries. Additionally, it torpeados thier claim that ELF is the 'magic pixie dust that they stole to make Linux work'.
This sounds like a case for a source based distribution. Gentoo, being the most used source based distro sounds like a place that might be able to do that. Alas, I'm not familiar enough with Gentoo to comment - so can anyone who is give a definiative answear on whether Gentoo can be used to give a system without ELF binaries. I undertand that there will likely be a bootstrap step (I remember the a.out -> elf shift in the first place, after all).
It's not just (not even, I should say) fear of SCO, but there is significant meaning in being able to switch executable formats - that's a lot of flexability for the future.
Well, the exact specifics depend on how much cash your going to stump up, but forget resolution. Accept that your home movie won't be HDTV, get something that does DV. It's a standard resolution, well supported.
The area's where you want to put the extra cash are:
0) Second camera. It will be much more help than you can imagine. Filming a take from two angles makes syching cuts straight forward, backup for battery / reliabilty etc. If you see the use of 8 mikes, I'm sure you can accept that multiple cameras are handy too. 1) Picture signal-to-noise ratio. You can tweak it in post, but it's better if you don't have to. 2) Optical Zoom. If you've a particular project in mind, you might not need much, but in general, it's handy to have.
The only other feature that's worth looking at is connection methods (IEEE-1394 all the way, really), and if you can push footage back to tape with the camera (very useful for backups for rendered scenes).
Normally, I'd add something about microphone quality, but I get the impression that's not an issue for you.
Firstly, while there may be many messages on SMTP, I don't belive that the total size of transfers gets anywhere near that of BitTorrent. For example: http://www.telecomm.uh.edu/toptalkers_smtp.html gives a (currently) 23 MB transfered per 5 minutes, for a university (at 6pm local). That's, what, one BitTorrent connection?
On the peer to peer or otherwise of SMTP: Peer to peer implies that the cost of transfer/storage is mitigated by the number of people on the network. That's a modern viewpoint, but if you examine what is called p2p, they all have that in common. SMTP doesn't do anything like that - these days it's typically a three hop system: Compsing client -> Source server -> Destination server -> Recivening client. The last hop isn't over SMTP, and the first may not. Any other hops are put in explicitly by the site administrator.
So, no, I wouldn't call SMTP p2p any more than I would call ftp p2p.
See subject line. I accept your rant, and raise you a hear-hear, in general.
However, you seemed to have invoked shades of a strawman - the grandparant did _not_ make any reference to a hydrogen fuel cell. It is, in principle possible to make a fuel cell that will convert fuels other than pure hydrogen into electricty (+ wastes).
That's not to say that they exist - most 'methonal' fuel cells are reformation style, where the carbon -> CO2 converstion is not used to produce power, but just to free up the hydrogen.
In principle, however, there is no theoretical barrier to a gasoline fuel cell, with high efficency (just a huge, _huge_, long list of practical ones). There _is_ a theoretical barrier to raising the efficency of an internal combustion engine.
Bittorrent doesn't use the protocol handler. Instead, it relies on the browser identifing the.torrent through MIME types, and passing it to the client.
The external protocol handler would only be invoked if the links were like bt:// or bittorrent://. Never seen one like that.
. At best, its passing unvalidated input to a secure user context...
Thing is, this is the default action for URI schemes that the browser is unaware off.
If you don't know what the scheme is, how can you validate the parameters passed to is, given that, by definition, you don't know anything about it? The difference with the 'delete some files' example is that in that case the browser is aware of what is being desired to occur.
Microsoft handles this problem in IE by a specific block on shell: and I think that's the solution used by Mozilla now.
Yup. The end of life for the Alpha was announced a while ago. I belive that the current generation of chips (EV7) is the last, with the EV7z from HP the really last new Alpha.
Now, whilst it's perfectly possible to migrate from a VAX to OpenVMS on an Alpha it's a bit short sighted to migrate from a old platform to one that's about to enter the same state. The sensible stratagy is for something with a longer lifespan. The Alpha was intended to be that, back in the days of DEC, but Compaq basically folded the Alpha into Intels Itanium chips, which are quite different.
HP talks about supporting Tru64 on Alphaservers up to 2011. I read that to mean that after then, if it breaks, that's it, so you'd better be migrated off it by then [0]. So, given about a year to fully migrate, switching to Alpha would only give you 3 years (1 year to switch to, 3 years, then 1 year to move on). That's not a good proposition, at least to me.
So, the short answear was, yup, Alpha is buried, and the turf goes on top in 5 years.
[0] Granted, that's the possibly just the OS side. It's tricky to get hard details out of HP, short of cornering someone.
I take your point. However, the first rule of pedantry on slashdot is that expect to be out pedanted. I await the witty response to this with bated breath.
A fuel cell converts a chemical fuel into electricity directly. Mitochondria convert organic fuel (i.e. glucose) into another chemical - Adenosine TriPhosphate - ATP [0]. It is the ATP that powers the various processes in the body directly. So, strictly, it's not a fuel cell.
Right, checked twice - time to post this, and see what I missed.
The paper version I was reading not two hours ago makes the important observation that these devices that subject the human body to high voltages are known to be safe, right?
Uh, no, actually. There's not much safety data on them. Probably on the lack of willing participents in safty trials. There are, however, 40-odd docummented cases of injuries from tasers, and one induced miscarriage. And that's a single target weapon, used relativly precisly. (For example, what happens when you sweep this laser guided lightening bolt over someone's eyes, something not feasable with a taser?)
The big danger with this style of 'non-lethal' weapon is that the intended use is for riot control - where they'll be sprayed around pretty indiscriminatly. Whether this particular product / company is real or not, that's teribbly relevent - there's a movement towards developing these weapons, and these questions remain.
Ogg is the AVI equivelent, being a transport and encapsulation layer.
Theora is video codec at the same level as DivX/XVid, more or less. And when you talked about Ogg sound tracks, you ment Vorbis, which is the audio codec.
The reference decoder is slow. That's not a surprise, the beta 1 Vorbis encoder was slow as well, on the basis that absolutly no emphasis has been placed on optimisation yet.
Granted, I'm running about a month behind, but playing a Theora 720x576 25.00 fps video with the player_example soaks up 80-90% of my 1333MHz Althon, skipping a frame or two from time to time, depending on what else the box is doing.
I'll grant that's higher than the typical internet distributed picture area, but that's a pretty clear indication that it's no where near suitible for the PDA level of CPU.
(Oh, and there's some floatingpoint used in scan.c (which is the only file that includes math.h). Not much though, so I suspect that writing an integer only varient would be less work than then the Tremor (integer only Vorbis codec) was.)
So, maybe, but not for a while. That's a question worth asking again when the 1.0 release date is near - as by then the decode will be more efficent, so a better answear can be given.
I'm a theoratician, with Mackrodt, at St Andrews (UK). I do the QM and stat mech on generalised structures, to give the magnetic ordering, allowing for all surface effects. Bizarre stuff sometimes, dull at others. But because of the bizarre stuff (e.g. (100) rocksalt type B2 (say, NiO)) shows two order disorder transitions), you can't assume anything about a frustrated system, even if you know how it behaves in some geometries.
Because the administrators look at the volume of papers, and the citation index of the journals they are published in.
Academic carrear prospects hold a remarkable close association with sum_allpapers(citationindex of journal).
It's nothing to do with getting the word out to other scientists. There are other ways of doing that (arXive.org, conferences, personal communication etc)
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, thanks for that. *adds to mental list of differences*.
MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 both, at thier core, operate on the same principles as MPEG-1 (in the video layer).
That is, store only the difference between frames. Do this by spliting it into a series of blocks, and examining each block.
The devil is, as they say, in the details. I admit I'm fuzzy on a number of them, but this should be a respectable overview.
MPEG-2 uses a straightforward system of frames and partial frames (I frames, or key frames in DivX terms), and B and P frames (the two types of partial frames).
MPEG-4 adds a longer group of pictures (more P frames between I frames), additional encoding formats, and motion compensation. That last is the biggie - it means that if you're panning side to side, you just tell the codec to move the block a bit, and then give it the other bits. As compared to having to give it the scene shifted half a block.
MPEG-4 is also much more complex. I belive that any MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 bitstream is a valid MPEG-4 bitstream (or at least, is with a simple header rewrite). MPEG-4 has various additional bits, such as motioncompensation allowed to go out of frame, 1/4 pixel motion comp, B frames, variable sized motion comp blocks, mutlipe frame motion comp and other goodies. I don't think there is an actual codec that supports all of that lot, never mind the rest of the optional parts of the spec yet. That's why there are multiple MPEG-4 codecs - each can use a differnt goodie bag to try to be better than the others.
Other differences are the audio layers used. AAC is part of MPEG-4, in the same way that MP3 was part of MPEG-1.
As far as the best format for a disc goes - neither. In principle, the additional flexability of MPEG-4 should result in better picture / sound for same disk space. In practice, it's all perceptual anyway, so they turn the quality down until someone notices artifacts, and then nudge it up a touch. Sometimes, one might be better, other times the other, but as there is a human tweaking knobs at the backend, you can't tell in advance.
They changed the article text. On the front page, it did not atrribute the text, as the parent was objecting to.
:' ...". And there is no notice that this change occured.
On the story itself (thank you, tab browsing), it starts "According to The Register
Mmm, yeah. About that certification. This is technically UK based, but I belive that it's essentially the same.
The FCC certification states that the part will comply with EMI regulations, when assembled as expected. That 'as expected' is critical, but I'll come back to that.
In the UK, it is illegal to sell a computer that is not certified to meet EMI regs. There are two ways to do this - one is to test a system (expensive!), the other is to say that each part shouldn't cause a problem, and the assembly shouldn't, so it's fine (and kinda handwave passed it). Unsurpisingly, the latter is what's done.
On the 'as expected', if you dig into it, you'll find that the parts are only specified as confroming to regs when in a metal case. Basically, they haven't given them a full test (expensive!), but stuck them in a steel or aluminium box, booted it, and waved a meter around, and noted that it was under the limits.
The important point that it's illegal to _sell_ a computer that doesn't conform - so you can buy an all plastic case, and that's all fine. But you can't sell a computer in an all plastic case, unless you either test, or certify, that you have reasonable cause to belive that it meets the EMI regs. Case on its own - that' fine, not a problem (provided the power supply is either separate, or in it's own metal box (Faraday cage).
For this reason, I doubt you'll find anywhere that will sell a computer that's not in a Faraday cage (and I suspect that selling computers in a windowed case is boarderline). It's just too expensive to test, and they don't have 'reasonable grounds' to think that it will pass.
Sort of, your both right and wrong.
n atives.htm has a direct quote about refusing the MMR vaccine (in this case, on grounds of fetal cell lines).l (on ground of animal cells lines)
Policy, yes. Law, no.
That's the whole point of the MMR issue - parents don't need a valid medical reason to refuse it, which means that immunisation rates have sunk to around 90%. That's the point where 'herd protection' begins to break down (i.e. There are enough people vunerable that an endemic is possible).
For example: http://www.dgwsoft.co.uk/homepages/vaccines/alter
http://www.veganfamily.co.uk/surgery.htm
There's plenty more. Have a browse around the MMR sites, and youll note that they don't mention that the vaccine can be forced. They would, if that were the case.
Like all medical treatment it may be refused by the patient (or thier guardian, in the event of a minor, or other assignement of power or attorney), in general.
There are some case where in order to do A, you need to take medication B (e.g. hepititus vaccinations for medical people, tetnus et al for military etc). That's a seperate class, however.
There are two cases where refusal to take medication is overridden. The first is when the person making the request is 'not of sound mind'. A very dubious grey area, intented to allow the saving of sucide attempt and similar, can get very long and drawn out. I belive that this is the same as in the USA.
The other case is when there is a clear danger to the health of the nation if you do not take the medication. This law was enacted with the specific intent of forcing people to complete antibiotic courses for Multiple Drug Resistant Tubercalosis (MDR TB). MDR TB can only be treated by a cocktail of drugs, and if the course isn't completed, then there is a change of strains of the bug resistant to them developing. TB is near endemic in some low income areas, and many patients were refusing to compelete the course once they felt better. After the they had to beef up the cocktail of antibiotics, the law was passed. It would also apply to forcing someone to complete treatment for MRSA or VRSA (Methycillian and Vantymicin resistant Stah Aurus respectivly), but given that your in an ICU for those treatments, it's never come up. MDR TB patients have near full activity during treatment, hence the problem. I understand that it takes a court order, but that the issuing of one would be routine. They are rare devices.
The above law doesn't apply to an immunisation, as it doesn't risk immediate harm to the population if you don't have it. That applies even more so for an immunisation against a drug (e.g. Antabuse or similar).
Being in a high risk group for immunsiations, due to autoimmune disorders, I researched this. Granted, this is all dated 5 ish years ago, but I'm not aware of any major changes. As is stands, there is no way to force a person to have any immunisation, nor to refuse any service (education, welfare or what have you) to someone who does not have that immunisation. The most extreme they can get is to refuse to employ you in certain, specified, jobs (medical or medical related, military and a few others). That's the law. In practice, certain immunisations are administered as routine, and the parents would have to be upfront and direct to refuse them, and tend to get a lot of FUD in response. There's a degree of social pressure applied, which varies depending on, well, which way the wind is blowing it appears.
In short, no, as I understand it; the govenrment can't force an immunisation on the general public, and treatment only in specific cases. Forced drug immunisation as part of a criminal sentance might be possible, but not under current legislation, as I understand it.
Apply (un?)usual IANAL but I researched this a while back disclaimer here.
No [0], but you can keep the key applications. Commoditity apps (webbrowser, file manager, email) change, but you keep those specific apps that are important (be they business logic, visulisation, simiulation and so on). In general, assuming they're not written to some variety of vendor lock in. Been there, and done that.
And that's exactly where copmparisons between OS X, Windows, Gnome and KDE come into play. If some corp decides that one is inferior to the other, that feeds into the improvemnet (at least in free software space).
Recall my point was that it was not immediatly clear that we would have a poorer desktop system if there was only one, rather then both KDE and Gnome. Lack of choice withing the same OS doesn't make them poorer inherently, whilst there is _something_ that it competes with.
[0] Well, actually, yes. You can run Gnome on windows, and you can run Gnome on OS X. In both cases, you can switch interfaces without changing OS, if the apps are avilable for both. That's not what you mean, however.
You are assuming that Gnome competes only with KDE. I do not think that that holds in all cases.
Gnome and KDE also get compared to the various Windows GUI's, and OS X. Therefore, thre is a degree of competition between Gnome and those interfaces. Granted, that's slightly different, given that neither runs on Linux, so that's not relevent to all the users of Gnome.
Still, those drive the Linux UI's forward, along with more obscure UI's. I accept I've not heard many comments that Windows does something better then Gnome (or KDE), but there are a fair few comments that OS X is superior in some aspect or another. That's not to be ignored.
Would UI usability be better served if there was only one free toolkit - dunno, can't say for certain (and probably not, in my opinion). I don't think it's obvous that it would be worse, however.
On your reason #1: there is no claim that the ITU supports the scheme.
The submitter (also the author of the protocol, as he makes clear) notes only that it was 'presented' at the ITU. That's got nothing to do with being supported by it (save that they generally request presentations on things they support. They also get a lot of presentations on research they don't support).
In fact, the inclusion of then names FTC, ACM, NBER and ITU in the summary is, in point of fact, nearly meaningless. All it claims is that he's told them about it. Well, yeah, but how did they respond? That's the question. Unless that's answeared the only reason I can see to list all those names is for an inappropriate air of legitamicy.
So, your real reason #1 aught to be: The creator is making claims the weasel an air of respectability, but in fact have no meaning. Unless someone want's to show a postive responce from those bodies [0], I take that as an attempt _not_ to stand on the merits of the proposal
Interesting, if you read the proceddings of the conference, the overview papers agree that there will be no single technological solution, and don't mention ABM. This says, to me, that there is no particular acceptance of this particular implementation of postage stamps for email.
[0] And I can't find mention of one on the proposal site.
The problem with a separate water filter is that you need some means to force the water through the filter. (The stuff you don't want is too big to get through).
A typical standalone filter uses gravity, and it very, very slow. (note that the typical crappy 'water filters' desinged for tap water don't cut it for swamp water).
Practical reverse osmosis filters use pumps to generate a pressure difference to make the thing work in sensible time. That's a power requirement, and more weight.
The trick that's being used here is to use something that's dessicant to pull the water through. Normally, not that useful, but when you eat the dessicant afterwords, that's a net gain of water.
In other words, it's the dried food that pulls the water through. This is a robust, lightweight and fast solution.
The other clever part is to ensure that once the re-hydrated food is eaten, it's going to be water neutral, or better. Some foods require more water than other to digest, and that should be a design plan. Still, even if not, if it doubles the length of time a canteen lasts, that's a huge bonus.
VIA.
With the C3 and motherboard chipsets. Taiwanese company.
If I recall correctly, S3 is also based in that neck of the woods. (I looked, Japan, and has joint ventures with VIA).
There are motherboard designers out there too, Abit, for example.
So, there are a number of companies designing PC level gear that need pay buggar all attention to the USA laws. Sure, they might not be able to sell as many without DRM, but that's an economics issue - provided there are people who want them, they will be made.
This is a useful step forward, because it demonstrates a method for how to build a device from the familar silicon lithographic procedures.
That's a big step forward, as it gives a method on how to construct these devices in mass production, and cheaply. That's one of the big hurdles before any actual use.
Much of the work to date has been on trying to find such a method. Granted, there is more work to be done on such a substrate (e.g. How many qubits can you have in a single system?), but it's definitly progress.
May I enquire as to why you think that quantum computing is a hoax?
So, I'm reading the shaky claims from SCO, and I'm remembering that Linux used a.out format.
I think that the worst case scenario is that SCO get a tempory injunction blocking the use of ELF (nevermind that no judge would actually agree that to not issue on would cause irreprable harm, given that it's 9 years old). Therefore, there is some merit in ensureing that it is possible to build a modern Linux system on a.out format binaries. Additionally, it torpeados thier claim that ELF is the 'magic pixie dust that they stole to make Linux work'.
This sounds like a case for a source based distribution. Gentoo, being the most used source based distro sounds like a place that might be able to do that. Alas, I'm not familiar enough with Gentoo to comment - so can anyone who is give a definiative answear on whether Gentoo can be used to give a system without ELF binaries. I undertand that there will likely be a bootstrap step (I remember the a.out -> elf shift in the first place, after all).
It's not just (not even, I should say) fear of SCO, but there is significant meaning in being able to switch executable formats - that's a lot of flexability for the future.
So, a.out Gentoo, anyone?
Well, the exact specifics depend on how much cash your going to stump up, but forget resolution. Accept that your home movie won't be HDTV, get something that does DV. It's a standard resolution, well supported.
The area's where you want to put the extra cash are:
0) Second camera. It will be much more help than you can imagine. Filming a take from two angles makes syching cuts straight forward, backup for battery / reliabilty etc. If you see the use of 8 mikes, I'm sure you can accept that multiple cameras are handy too.
1) Picture signal-to-noise ratio. You can tweak it in post, but it's better if you don't have to.
2) Optical Zoom. If you've a particular project in mind, you might not need much, but in general, it's handy to have.
The only other feature that's worth looking at is connection methods (IEEE-1394 all the way, really), and if you can push footage back to tape with the camera (very useful for backups for rendered scenes).
Normally, I'd add something about microphone quality, but I get the impression that's not an issue for you.
Firstly, while there may be many messages on SMTP, I don't belive that the total size of transfers gets anywhere near that of BitTorrent. For example:
http://www.telecomm.uh.edu/toptalkers_smtp.html gives a (currently) 23 MB transfered per 5 minutes, for a university (at 6pm local). That's, what, one BitTorrent connection?
On the peer to peer or otherwise of SMTP: Peer to peer implies that the cost of transfer/storage is mitigated by the number of people on the network. That's a modern viewpoint, but if you examine what is called p2p, they all have that in common. SMTP doesn't do anything like that - these days it's typically a three hop system: Compsing client -> Source server -> Destination server -> Recivening client. The last hop isn't over SMTP, and the first may not. Any other hops are put in explicitly by the site administrator.
So, no, I wouldn't call SMTP p2p any more than I would call ftp p2p.
See subject line. I accept your rant, and raise you a hear-hear, in general.
However, you seemed to have invoked shades of a strawman - the grandparant did _not_ make any reference to a hydrogen fuel cell. It is, in principle possible to make a fuel cell that will convert fuels other than pure hydrogen into electricty (+ wastes).
That's not to say that they exist - most 'methonal' fuel cells are reformation style, where the carbon -> CO2 converstion is not used to produce power, but just to free up the hydrogen.
In principle, however, there is no theoretical barrier to a gasoline fuel cell, with high efficency (just a huge, _huge_, long list of practical ones). There _is_ a theoretical barrier to raising the efficency of an internal combustion engine.
Bittorrent doesn't use the protocol handler. Instead, it relies on the browser identifing the .torrent through MIME types, and passing it to the client.
The external protocol handler would only be invoked if the links were like bt:// or bittorrent://. Never seen one like that.
Thing is, this is the default action for URI schemes that the browser is unaware off.
If you don't know what the scheme is, how can you validate the parameters passed to is, given that, by definition, you don't know anything about it? The difference with the 'delete some files' example is that in that case the browser is aware of what is being desired to occur.
Microsoft handles this problem in IE by a specific block on shell: and I think that's the solution used by Mozilla now.
Yup. The end of life for the Alpha was announced a while ago. I belive that the current generation of chips (EV7) is the last, with the EV7z from HP the really last new Alpha.
Now, whilst it's perfectly possible to migrate from a VAX to OpenVMS on an Alpha it's a bit short sighted to migrate from a old platform to one that's about to enter the same state. The sensible stratagy is for something with a longer lifespan. The Alpha was intended to be that, back in the days of DEC, but Compaq basically folded the Alpha into Intels Itanium chips, which are quite different.
HP talks about supporting Tru64 on Alphaservers up to 2011. I read that to mean that after then, if it breaks, that's it, so you'd better be migrated off it by then [0]. So, given about a year to fully migrate, switching to Alpha would only give you 3 years (1 year to switch to, 3 years, then 1 year to move on). That's not a good proposition, at least to me.
So, the short answear was, yup, Alpha is buried, and the turf goes on top in 5 years.
[0] Granted, that's the possibly just the OS side. It's tricky to get hard details out of HP, short of cornering someone.
I take your point. However, the first rule of pedantry on slashdot is that expect to be out pedanted. I await the witty response to this with bated breath.
A fuel cell converts a chemical fuel into electricity directly. Mitochondria convert organic fuel (i.e. glucose) into another chemical - Adenosine TriPhosphate - ATP [0]. It is the ATP that powers the various processes in the body directly. So, strictly, it's not a fuel cell.
Right, checked twice - time to post this, and see what I missed.
[0] Strictly, it converts ADP to ATP.
is actually still valid if this is a fake.
The paper version I was reading not two hours ago makes the important observation that these devices that subject the human body to high voltages are known to be safe, right?
Uh, no, actually. There's not much safety data on them. Probably on the lack of willing participents in safty trials. There are, however, 40-odd docummented cases of injuries from tasers, and one induced miscarriage. And that's a single target weapon, used relativly precisly. (For example, what happens when you sweep this laser guided lightening bolt over someone's eyes, something not feasable with a taser?)
The big danger with this style of 'non-lethal' weapon is that the intended use is for riot control - where they'll be sprayed around pretty indiscriminatly. Whether this particular product / company is real or not, that's teribbly relevent - there's a movement towards developing these weapons, and these questions remain.
Ogg is the AVI equivelent, being a transport and encapsulation layer.
Theora is video codec at the same level as DivX/XVid, more or less. And when you talked about Ogg sound tracks, you ment Vorbis, which is the audio codec.
Spot on with the direct show filters though
The reference decoder is slow. That's not a surprise, the beta 1 Vorbis encoder was slow as well, on the basis that absolutly no emphasis has been placed on optimisation yet.
Granted, I'm running about a month behind, but playing a Theora 720x576 25.00 fps video with the player_example soaks up 80-90% of my 1333MHz Althon, skipping a frame or two from time to time, depending on what else the box is doing.
I'll grant that's higher than the typical internet distributed picture area, but that's a pretty clear indication that it's no where near suitible for the PDA level of CPU.
(Oh, and there's some floatingpoint used in scan.c (which is the only file that includes math.h). Not much though, so I suspect that writing an integer only varient would be less work than then the Tremor (integer only Vorbis codec) was.)
So, maybe, but not for a while. That's a question worth asking again when the 1.0 release date is near - as by then the decode will be more efficent, so a better answear can be given.
I'm a theoratician, with Mackrodt, at St Andrews (UK). I do the QM and stat mech on generalised structures, to give the magnetic ordering, allowing for all surface effects. Bizarre stuff sometimes, dull at others. But because of the bizarre stuff (e.g. (100) rocksalt type B2 (say, NiO)) shows two order disorder transitions), you can't assume anything about a frustrated system, even if you know how it behaves in some geometries.
Because the administrators look at the volume of papers, and the citation index of the journals they are published in.
Academic carrear prospects hold a remarkable close association with sum_allpapers(citationindex of journal).
It's nothing to do with getting the word out to other scientists. There are other ways of doing that (arXive.org, conferences, personal communication etc)