Re:Subscriptions should add value
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 1
I (mostly) agree with all of the things on your list except for this one:
3.Subscribers automatically get the +1 posting bonus without having to get up to 25 karma.
Posters should have to earn a +1 posting bonus by reputation. Paying for a posting bonus would be akin to paying a professor to slip you a few extra marks on an exam.
My Garmin eTrex Vista GPS unit, which uses the new WAAS technology, is accurate enough to know which lane of the road I'm on!
There's one important thing to note about WAAS, however - It's currently only available in North America. More information about WAAS can be found here.
If Wil is a regular reader/poster of Slashdot, why do we need to compile a list of questions for him to answer offline? Chances are he's reading this forum, and is seeing all proposed questions (presumably at a score of at least +3). We could just drop the formal Slashdot interview mechanism in this case and have him directly interact with the forum. He certainly seems like the type of person who'd be okay with that form of interview, and since he's a regular Slashdotter, he's familiar with the posting process.
I find it very difficult to discuss the difference in quality between compression schemes such as Ogg and MP3 when there is so much variability in quality among the different codecs themselves. In fact, I'd venture to say that the choice of codec plays more of a role in determining the final quality of an encoding than does the choice in compression schemes (e.g., Ogg vs. MP3).
I encode all of my MP3s using the Fraunhofer codec at 128kbps, and my encodings sound better than a lot of what I download off Napster at 192kbps.
Don't you find it a bit scary that during experiments like this, we're cooling matter to a temperature that's a billion times colder than the background ratiation of the universe (3K), creating, for a brief period of time, what is likely to be the coldest matter in the entire universe? Who knows what weird physics we could unintentionally unleash!
Of the six senior software developers in our company (CubeWerx, Inc.), five of us use Linux as our primary (and in most cases, only) operating system. The suits still use Microsoft Windows, but that's mostly because they don't know any better.:-)
You're not right about the other - good and evil are not relative. If they were, there would be -- in someone's mind -- justification for the murder of 6,000+ innocent civilians in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington last week. There is never any justification for the murder of innocents.
The justification need not be rational, but you'd be naive to think that bin Laden didn't have what he considered a strong justification for these attacks. From his point of view, he and his army are the good guys, and the Western world is evil. Everybody, in every conflict, no matter what side they're on, always seem themselves as being the good guys. The real world is not like the movies. There is no Dr. Evil.
To the best of my knowledge, DVD technology allows a movie to be encoded once, in a widescreen aspect ratio, with pan-and-scan information to allow a player to display a 4:3 aspect image by panning the widescreen image appropriately. All players can do this, because it's a non-optional part of the spec. However, very few movies are encoded in this way. Most movies that offer a 4:3 aspect ratio do so by encoding the movie twice (usually by using a double-sided disc). This indeed seems like an unneccessary waste, because the technology allows for a much more elegant solution. But I guess pan-and-scan encoding is expensive, so it's rarely done.
I brought this up here initially because since George Lucas is being reported as going all out with the DVD release of Episode 1, I thought he'd have taken the extra bit of effort to encode pan-and-scan information onto the DVD.
Additionally, many fans of DVD prefer not to have the film hacked to attain that 4:3 ratio. P&S can completely alter scenes and the panning that is added in is just annoying.
But P&S technology offers the choice, so purists can select widescreen or letterbox, and people who want a corner-to-corner picture on their plain-jane TV can select P&S.
Finally, directors (especially ones like Lucas who can have total control) refuse to alter their film by cutting it for P&S because they fell it alters and destroys their film.
How do you think these movies are released to VHS tape or edited for television?
I couldn't help but notice that there's no option for a 4:3 aspect ratio in the specs for this DVD (using either pan-and-scan information or a separate side). The ability to encode multiple aspect ratios on a single DVD was one of the things that really excited me about DVD technology when it first came out. It allows a person to evolve his/her home entertainment system from a regular television to a widescreen system without making any sacrifices at any time. Unfortunately, very few DVDs are produced with this in mind. Most are widescreen only. So when I watch a movie on my 4:3 television I have to put up with a smaller letterboxed picture, causing me to almost have to squint at times to see see details in the movie. Sure, when I get a widescreen TV in the future this won't be a problem, but it frustrates me that I have to put up with this problem now, especially since DVD technology has a solution to it.
Using the zoom feature of a DVD player to zoom in past the letterbox strips is not an option for me. It blindly cuts an equal amount off both the left and right sides, regardless of the scene.
I'd like to know why very few DVDs include pan-and-scan information to allow proper viewing in a 4:3 aspact ratio. Is it that much more expensive to produce a DVD this way?
I found both Ultima III and Ultima IV very enthralling. Like most of the people reading this, I blew many many hours playing these games on the Commodore 64, eventually completing both.
I found that the later games, however, didn't have the same attraction. Perhaps it was just because I was growing up (*gasp!*), but I think it was more that the first few games left more to the imagination, whereas the later games tried to compensate for imagination by adding more graphic realism. Don't get me wrong, I think adding more graphic realism is a noble goal. But it doesn't actually improve game play. Ultima III fit on one 180kb disk, but the world of Sosaria within was very rich. The secret to achieving this was to let the mind fill in the details as to how things actually looked and sounded, etc.
(Although I'm sure at the time the designers were just thinking "shit, this is the best we can do in 64K of memory, oh well!".)
The amount of movement varied with the mass of the pendulums, but not the distance or the materials (they mention metal, glass, ceramics, wood, rubber, plastic). Pendulums 6 meters and 150 meters away in a different building, separated by brick walls and an inch of steel, showed identical effects. Even with "trace amounts of iron" a magnetic effect would vary with the square of the distance. But what do I know?
Okay, this is crazy talk. If the effect of this machine is completely independent of distance, wouldn't the entire planet and beyond have felt the effects of this experiment? I don't know about you, but I certainly didn't notice any papers inexplicably sliding off my desk any time within the last few years.
Gravitational effects vary with the square of the distance as well:
Have you seen the orbit that this thing is going into? Now that's some freaky shit! It's been known probably since Newton that this kind of orbit is possible, at least in theory, but have we ever actually tried to attain such an orbit before?
We've come a long way with being able to generate pretty impressive computer graphics, almost to the point where the result is indistiguishable from actually filming something live. Movies like Final Fantasy and Toy Story illustrate how an entire movie can be "filmed" without using a single pixel of real footage. One can envision "actors" of the future who are nothing but CG shapes and algorithms. However, this seems to apply only to the video. What about the audio? Will the industry always have to hire voice actors to supply the vocals of these CG entities, or will voice synthesis technology one day evolve to the point where a character can be entirely (and convincingly) synthesized, voice and all?
It seems almost ironic that it's easier to simulate the visual representation of a character than the audio representation. Thirty years ago we thought that the exact opposite would be true.
Ten years ago I wondered how long it would be before a movie that convincingly rendered and animated photorealistic humans became possible.
I have yet to see this movie, but from what I've seen of the previews, we're getting damn close. It probably won't be too much longer before it becomes almost impossible to tell whether an actor is a person or a computer graphic.
This brings forth an interesting question. If CG actors evolve to the point where they're almost as good as the real thing, will they ever seriously replace the real thing? Will the average movie 20 years from now consist of 100% digital effects (as with Final Fantasy), or will the industry find that the "human touch" is irreplacable regardless of how photorealistic or inexpensive CG becomes?
No component video inputs
on
Linux TV
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· Score: 1
It looks like a pretty cool device, and quite flexible, but one thing I find odd is that it doesn't have any component video (Y, Cr, Cb) inputs. Without component video, this TV will never be taken seriously by true home theatre aficionados.
Re:And there was stupid old me ...
on
Paper Phones
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· Score: 2
According to the pictures in the article, this particular phone doesn't have an LCD. That's certainly an optional piece of technology for a phone, so it makes sense to leave it out if the goal is to make a phone as small, lightweight and cheap as possible. In fact, it cuts down somewhat on the energy requirements as well, allowing for the use of smaller batteries.
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Posters should have to earn a +1 posting bonus by reputation. Paying for a posting bonus would be akin to paying a professor to slip you a few extra marks on an exam.
Would this imply that the service providers whose services were used to spread the viruses would be condemned as aiding or harboring terrorists?
There's one important thing to note about WAAS, however - It's currently only available in North America. More information about WAAS can be found here.
So, Wil, waddya think of that idea?
I encode all of my MP3s using the Fraunhofer codec at 128kbps, and my encodings sound better than a lot of what I download off Napster at 192kbps.
Don't you find it a bit scary that during experiments like this, we're cooling matter to a temperature that's a billion times colder than the background ratiation of the universe (3K), creating, for a brief period of time, what is likely to be the coldest matter in the entire universe? Who knows what weird physics we could unintentionally unleash!
Of the six senior software developers in our company (CubeWerx, Inc.), five of us use Linux as our primary (and in most cases, only) operating system. The suits still use Microsoft Windows, but that's mostly because they don't know any better. :-)
The justification need not be rational, but you'd be naive to think that bin Laden didn't have what he considered a strong justification for these attacks. From his point of view, he and his army are the good guys, and the Western world is evil. Everybody, in every conflict, no matter what side they're on, always seem themselves as being the good guys. The real world is not like the movies. There is no Dr. Evil.
I brought this up here initially because since George Lucas is being reported as going all out with the DVD release of Episode 1, I thought he'd have taken the extra bit of effort to encode pan-and-scan information onto the DVD.
But P&S technology offers the choice, so purists can select widescreen or letterbox, and people who want a corner-to-corner picture on their plain-jane TV can select P&S.
How do you think these movies are released to VHS tape or edited for television?
Using the zoom feature of a DVD player to zoom in past the letterbox strips is not an option for me. It blindly cuts an equal amount off both the left and right sides, regardless of the scene.
I'd like to know why very few DVDs include pan-and-scan information to allow proper viewing in a 4:3 aspact ratio. Is it that much more expensive to produce a DVD this way?
I found that the later games, however, didn't have the same attraction. Perhaps it was just because I was growing up (*gasp!*), but I think it was more that the first few games left more to the imagination, whereas the later games tried to compensate for imagination by adding more graphic realism. Don't get me wrong, I think adding more graphic realism is a noble goal. But it doesn't actually improve game play. Ultima III fit on one 180kb disk, but the world of Sosaria within was very rich. The secret to achieving this was to let the mind fill in the details as to how things actually looked and sounded, etc.
(Although I'm sure at the time the designers were just thinking "shit, this is the best we can do in 64K of memory, oh well!".)
Okay, this is crazy talk. If the effect of this machine is completely independent of distance, wouldn't the entire planet and beyond have felt the effects of this experiment? I don't know about you, but I certainly didn't notice any papers inexplicably sliding off my desk any time within the last few years.
Gravitational effects vary with the square of the distance as well:
F = (G * m1 * m2) / r^2
Have you seen the orbit that this thing is going into? Now that's some freaky shit! It's been known probably since Newton that this kind of orbit is possible, at least in theory, but have we ever actually tried to attain such an orbit before?
It seems almost ironic that it's easier to simulate the visual representation of a character than the audio representation. Thirty years ago we thought that the exact opposite would be true.
This brings forth an interesting question. If CG actors evolve to the point where they're almost as good as the real thing, will they ever seriously replace the real thing? Will the average movie 20 years from now consist of 100% digital effects (as with Final Fantasy), or will the industry find that the "human touch" is irreplacable regardless of how photorealistic or inexpensive CG becomes?
It looks like a pretty cool device, and quite flexible, but one thing I find odd is that it doesn't have any component video (Y, Cr, Cb) inputs. Without component video, this TV will never be taken seriously by true home theatre aficionados.
According to the pictures in the article, this particular phone doesn't have an LCD. That's certainly an optional piece of technology for a phone, so it makes sense to leave it out if the goal is to make a phone as small, lightweight and cheap as possible. In fact, it cuts down somewhat on the energy requirements as well, allowing for the use of smaller batteries.