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  1. Re:Thoughts on Digital Projection on Report From The Land of SFX · · Score: 2

    My question is how does the cost of a digital projector stack up against the distribution costs of analog films to theaters?

    I remember reading that the duplication/distribution cost of Star Wars II was around $35 million. That is to get all them analog reels to those 3,000+ screens at once.

    With digital, it would (technically) be possible to have one digital master and transmit via satellite or leased fiber to the theaters.

    The production houses need to look at the cost of GIVING a digital projector to most theaters and going this way. It should by tons cheaper.

  2. Re:Realistic? Bah! on Report From The Land of SFX · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Realistic.

    The best SFX aren't the big ones, they are the little ones that touch things up and you never even suspect.

    The story will always be paramount to a good film, but judicious use of CG can lend that extra touch that pushes the film over the edge of greatness.

  3. Re:Challenge on Broadband To Hit The South Pole · · Score: 1

    My mistake.

    The Lucent LambdaXtreme until pushes a 1.25 Tb signal 4000 Km through a series of 100 Km fiber runs.

    Raman regeneration via a counter-propagating pump, along with Lucent "true wave", zero-dispersion, EDFA fiber is used at each span.

    HOWEVER, the pump laser unit can be, and frequently is, very small. They don't need 60 AMPs and, if done using distributed amplfication, they're tiny. Size of your little finger tiny.

    Check out this link for an example, though I thing Lucent still uses Agere to manufacture the parts.

    That's a long way from 60 AMPs of power.

  4. Re:If we wait on Broadband To Hit The South Pole · · Score: 1

    Sorry. Arctic is up north, Antarctic is down south.

    Up north, the arctic ice cap is mostly over open ocean, except for Greenland.

    Down south, Antarctica actually has land beneath most of the ice.

    If it melts, you'd have to dig, not swim.

  5. Re:Challenge on Broadband To Hit The South Pole · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lucent's new optical equipment can push a signal 2000-4000 KM without need for regeneration. Distance depends on speed. It is all DWDM OC-192 multiplex, so the "slow" speed is still ungodly fast.

    Yes, this is a shipping product.

  6. Different definition of "endowed" on Fully Endowed FW Olin College of Engineering Opens · · Score: 0, Funny

    After reading that article on "Hooters Air" last week, I was thinking of a different definition of "endowed" when I read the title of this article!

    Upon further contemplation, I like my version better.

  7. DOS and batteries on Crypto Leash for Laptops? · · Score: 2

    Get a nice, strong RF generator in the room with all those paranoid stock traders and watch all the laptops encrypt.

    New way for DOS attack!

    Then, when their battery in the "watch" dies? Or better, xmits the decrypt key over WAP or some such and is snooped and possibly CHANGED.

    And the non-volatile RAM that stores the decrypt key proves to be a bit more volatile than thought?

    etc., etc., etc.

  8. So many keynotes... on LWCE Wrapup · · Score: 2

    Sun, IBM, Oracle...

    No wonder some of the people were complaining about nausea from too much corporate speak.

    Internal MS reports from the show should be interesting, if ever made public.

  9. Politics, Finance, etc. on Moving from Corporate IT to Science? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Politics in academia can be a nightmare. Also, if you think you are escaping the bean counter mentality, it depends on where you end up.

    Was it Slashdot that linked a story a couple of days ago on some Canadian University inking a deal with Microsoft and in return all CS/EE majors would need a class in C# to graduate?

    And the link between corporate money and University research is something else you need to be wary of. Heaven forbid your project funding is cut because it won't be "marketable".

    Still, it can certainly be more rewarding at times.

  10. Stop saying "Hacked!" on Slashback: Activism, VOIP, Ivies · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Damn, since when has entering a name, dob and SSN been elevated to "hacking". How about firing the moron who approved such a system, instead of the slightly more secure "mail them a PIN" or some such.

    I'm sorry, that isn't a hack.

    Unfortunately, I didn't see the web site, so maybe someone who did can say. Where was the "do not enter name other than yourself" disclaimer? In big letters on the login, or buried on the "privacy policy" page?

    What a joke.

  11. Re:SSL on Security In Voice Over IP Converged Networks · · Score: 2

    44 KHz, 16-bit! Are you out of your mind!?

    Telephone signals -- the current ones -- are 8 bit, 8 KHz and compressed out the wazoo.

    You aren't playing a concert thru the phone, just talking!

  12. Re:Thank God! on GCC 3.2 Released · · Score: 1

    1.2a, yes. 1.3 freaked the system out with a ton of compile errors. It really didn't like my setup (SMP P-3, all SCSI).

    KDE is where it seemed to die. Hopefully, all is well.

  13. Re:ABI ?? on GCC 3.2 Released · · Score: 1

    Application Binary Interface.

    I think. :-)

  14. Re:Thank God! on GCC 3.2 Released · · Score: 1

    You have patience. I broke the 1.3 CD I downloaded into small pieces after 2 days of fighting with it. I applaud your ability to last a whole week.

  15. Re:Old News on MIT vs. Las Vegas · · Score: 1

    "Can't" is a really strong word. A six deck shoe can be counted, especially if you are not trying to track every card but the ratio of high to low cards left in the shoe.

    It isn't trivial, but it is possible for the well trained with a good head for numbers.

  16. Re:Opals are a bad idea. -- agreed on Diamonds - Are They Really Worth the Cost? · · Score: 2

    Unless, of course, she really, really wants an opal -- like my wife did.

    Much cheaper than diamonds, too. Untill I was fool enough to educater her about Black Opal. God, that shit is expensive!

  17. Re:Funny. on OEone HomeBase Desktop · · Score: 1

    Almost, but not quite. Thin Clients, like the Java Station, ThinkNIC and others rely too much on the back end. They don't have enough horsepower on the local part. They also cost too much, especially when you can get a 1.5 GHz PC for $299 w/o monitor.

    This can combine the power of local apps/local storage with the flexibility of ASP-delivered services.

    Think of the potential thin clients would have had if they were 1.5 GHz+ CPUs, 256 Mb RAM w/20 Gb hard drives for data cache and cable modem+ connections (assuming the ASP is 1 hop away). Oh, yeah. And they cost $99.

  18. Re:NOT open licensed on The Return Of Solaris 9 For x86 · · Score: 2

    Different definition of "stable". Sun means "once up, will run until the nearest star is a lump of cold, dark coal". Sun also has some very nice hardware to support all this uptime.

    They have a reputation to maintain, and a bunch of people saying "Linux is stable" is different than the extensive testing Sun has done.

    YES, Linux is stable, but right now, Sun has much better support for hot-swap hardware and other "forever-up" features.

  19. Re:Woo! Great on The Return Of Solaris 9 For x86 · · Score: 1

    Okay, okay. I was actually referring to Solaris 9 Sparc.

  20. Re:Woo! Great on The Return Of Solaris 9 For x86 · · Score: 2

    "good installer" is a matter of opinion. On older hardware (Sparc 5, for example) it is dog slow. It looks like it is 100% Java now, and no non-GUI install interface.

    On a newer system, it seems nice. I must admit, the admin bit is slick -- sort of like MMC.

  21. Re:Brute Force on Speaking in Tongues · · Score: 1

    I wasn't thinking word for word translation.

    In your example, the translation of the phrase "I want to go to " stays the same in the target language regardless of the noun, almost all the time. [You actually translated it is 'I have to go to', btw]

    "[Yo] quiero ir a " works for almost all cases of "I want to go to ".

    Phrases would change slightly depending on context, but that could be compensated for.

    What I am thinking of would doubtlessly work much better for non-interactive written words than interactive conversation.

    Finally, to the person who claimed there would be an almost unlimited number of sentences to translate. In theory, yes but in reality, no. Remember the article on the conversation bot? The researcher discovered that 90% of conversations use only a few words in very similar structures. There may be 100,000+ words in the English language but most people use less than 10,000 on a regular basis. It wouldn't be as massive a job as you suggest.

  22. Brute Force on Speaking in Tongues · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've long wondered why someone doesn't just brute force translation.

    Create a human translated database of damn near EVERYTHING in two languages, like English and Spanish. Then, just do fast lookups.

    Computing power is such that this would be possible.

  23. Re:Conspiracies, nuts, and JFK on Conspiracies And Probability · · Score: 2, Informative

    1) Because one bullet was supposed to have gone thru three people, all at different angles.

    2) Because the gov't has a bad habit of covering up anything that might potentially embarrass them. Then, they cover up (lie) about the rest just for good measure.

    3) Because evidence "disappeared" -- like frames from Zapruder's film. Odds are some buffoon bureaucrats simply lost stuff, but it doesn't look good.

  24. Re:On my way home today.... on Conspiracies And Probability · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    NewTek is releasing a LightWave render engine for Linux. It is official, now.

    A full port would be a nice add on.

  25. Nothing New on Attack Of The Dreamcasts · · Score: 2

    I remember building what looked like a serial port gender changer with a wire hanging out of it, but was really an AM transmitter. Plug it into a serial port, and it acted as a radio modem sending out everything that went over the serial port.

    This was back in the days of 1200/2400 baud modems. Plans for the device were in 2600 magazine. It had a range of about 500 meters, and broadcast on about 560 KHz. You needed a companion device on the other end. You could record the audio signals then decode them on your PC later. ...

    On a side note. Even better would be a handheld with TWO expansion ports -- one ethernet to sniff and one 802.11b to sneak it out. Just park across the street with a laptop and another 802.11b card. Instant backdoor to the network.