Yes, the video is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, so you can remix this to improve it. I'm checking with Sheryl as to whether she is okay with me offering the 2 GB raw DV format version of Mix Tape (720x480 resolution) to people who want to remix. That way you avoid adding even more compression artifacts to the video.
Given the file size and low number of interested users, I would probably have to send people DVD-Rs in exchange for some nominal fee to cover media and postage costs. Of course, that might violate the non-commercial clause, so maybe we would have to do it some other way. Anyone interested in the source should email me, and I'll see what we can work out.
One thing to keep in mind also is that the raw footage was pretty poor quality. We shot this video over the course of 5 days using a very abused DV cam that was one of the cheapest on the market 3 years ago. By all reports in various forums, it should have died a year ago.
Fortunately, Sheryl won a better camera out of the deal, so we'll see if that improves picture quality in the future.:) (Too bad she didn't win the G5. The Final Cut render time is painfully long on her iMac.)
I purposely made the Quicktime files for "Mix Tape" use MPEG4 and not Sorenson for this very reason. As many other people in this thread have pointed out, they work with mplayer as long as you have ffmpeg and faad support linked in (and you don't care about patents).
In our case (Mix Tape), we selected the Share-Alike license because that was the license selected by Jim's Big Ego for the "Mix Tape" song we used. That made our choice pretty straightforward.
Yup. Looks like changer is way cheaper. A Sony 300 DVD changer seems to cost ~$460, whereas doing 1TB RAID 0 array is going to be about $900-1000 for just the disks.
I suppose philosophically one could allow backwards communication of information as long as the whole process was consistent. It's easy to think of situations which would not be allowed (the communication equivalent of killing your grandfather). But, you could also think of scenarios where the information you communicate backwards would simply be part of the timeline leading up to the event where you send your message back in time. It only makes sense from a 4-D viewpoint, where such things would be "causality loops."
However, there may be some good reason from physics (or more philosophy) that this would still be logically inconsistent. Abandoning causality should not be taken lightly.:)
Yes. FTL communication of information would lead to violation of causality. You would be able to send messages back in time.
Easiest way to see this is to imagine A and B have an instantaneous communication device. They synchronize their clocks and then separate at velocity v. Some time later (t1), A sends an instant message ("lol d00d") to B. Due to time dilation, A knows B will receive this message when his clock says t2, where t2 < t1. In B's frame, he receives this message when his clock says t2, and he instantly responds ("r0x0r!"). In B's frame, A is moving away at speed v, so the time that B knows is on A's clock when he receives his instant message is t3 < t2. But that means that A receives a response to his IM at t3 < t1, which is before he sent it!
So that rules out instant communication. If you redo this argument mathematically, but allow the speed of the communication to be a parameter, you can find a constraint on the speed of information exchange to preserve causality. It's not immediately obvious to me that it will come out to be the speed of light, though. I suspect that it should, or I'v made an error in setting up this thought experiment.
Incidentally, this was the trick used on that nifty TI graphing calculator hack which played "music" out the link port. The link port is just a digital I/O on the bottom of the calc, but someone figured out how to toggle it on and off in machine code to use it just like a "1-bit D/A". Plug some headphones in (with appropriate adapter) and you heard some really poor quality Green Day song. The frequency wasn't nearly high to be more than a proof of concept, but it was cool nevertheless.
Doesn't matter. The Mac and and X11 versions are released under the GPL, so commercial/non-commercial is irrelevant. The Windows version is not released under the GPL, so free software on Windows can't use QT.
The problem is that Trolltech is being sloppy in their FAQ mixing up "commercial" with "non-free". As long as they distribute QT under the GPL (and not a modified GPL-like license) then you can make QT software for any use whatsoever as long as you comply with the GPL. Their FAQ just assumes that if you want to make a commercial product, you won't make it free software (which is probably a reasonable assumption in general).
The word is "Relativity." "Relativism" is usually used after the words "cultural" or "moral.":)
And I don't think Einstein's problem was understanding quantum mechanics (a field he helped usher in with his work on the photoelectric effect) but rather an uneasiness with the non-determinism in physical processes that QM implied.
This is just another piece of evidence for my conspiracy theory that the editors purposely pick flamebait (usually more subtle than this story) to increase the number of story comments....
Exactly, they're like shells. Maybe shells constructed under completely different world-views, but still shells nonetheless. Each lives inside the other, and you move to smaller shells by adding constraints (moving slow, weak gravitational fields), etc.
At least, this is the case for the big theories that stand the tests of experiment. There is also a lot of wadded up paper in the history of physics as well.:)
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Given the file size and low number of interested users, I would probably have to send people DVD-Rs in exchange for some nominal fee to cover media and postage costs. Of course, that might violate the non-commercial clause, so maybe we would have to do it some other way. Anyone interested in the source should email me, and I'll see what we can work out.
No, I think it was a result of either me not knowing what to do with the MPEG4 codec in Final Cut, or the awful output of our cheap DV cam.
Fortunately, Sheryl won a better camera out of the deal, so we'll see if that improves picture quality in the future. :) (Too bad she didn't win the G5. The Final Cut render time is painfully long on her iMac.)
I purposely made the Quicktime files for "Mix Tape" use MPEG4 and not Sorenson for this very reason. As many other people in this thread have pointed out, they work with mplayer as long as you have ffmpeg and faad support linked in (and you don't care about patents).
Actually, we made copies of our video in Ogg Theora format available, but Creative Commons chose not to link directly to the Mix Tape page.
In our case (Mix Tape), we selected the Share-Alike license because that was the license selected by Jim's Big Ego for the "Mix Tape" song we used. That made our choice pretty straightforward.
Yup. Looks like changer is way cheaper. A Sony 300 DVD changer seems to cost ~$460, whereas doing 1TB RAID 0 array is going to be about $900-1000 for just the disks.
However, there may be some good reason from physics (or more philosophy) that this would still be logically inconsistent. Abandoning causality should not be taken lightly. :)
Easiest way to see this is to imagine A and B have an instantaneous communication device. They synchronize their clocks and then separate at velocity v. Some time later (t1), A sends an instant message ("lol d00d") to B. Due to time dilation, A knows B will receive this message when his clock says t2, where t2 < t1. In B's frame, he receives this message when his clock says t2, and he instantly responds ("r0x0r!"). In B's frame, A is moving away at speed v, so the time that B knows is on A's clock when he receives his instant message is t3 < t2. But that means that A receives a response to his IM at t3 < t1, which is before he sent it!
So that rules out instant communication. If you redo this argument mathematically, but allow the speed of the communication to be a parameter, you can find a constraint on the speed of information exchange to preserve causality. It's not immediately obvious to me that it will come out to be the speed of light, though. I suspect that it should, or I'v made an error in setting up this thought experiment.
Incidentally, this was the trick used on that nifty TI graphing calculator hack which played "music" out the link port. The link port is just a digital I/O on the bottom of the calc, but someone figured out how to toggle it on and off in machine code to use it just like a "1-bit D/A". Plug some headphones in (with appropriate adapter) and you heard some really poor quality Green Day song. The frequency wasn't nearly high to be more than a proof of concept, but it was cool nevertheless.
Doesn't matter. The Mac and and X11 versions are released under the GPL, so commercial/non-commercial is irrelevant. The Windows version is not released under the GPL, so free software on Windows can't use QT.
The problem is that Trolltech is being sloppy in their FAQ mixing up "commercial" with "non-free". As long as they distribute QT under the GPL (and not a modified GPL-like license) then you can make QT software for any use whatsoever as long as you comply with the GPL. Their FAQ just assumes that if you want to make a commercial product, you won't make it free software (which is probably a reasonable assumption in general).
As the inorganic life in "Home Soil" (ST:TNG) put it: "ugly bags of mostly water."
The Earth will still have you outclassed for computational power for quite a while, unless you are VERY patient. :)
How are you getting super efficient C code from your python programs?
US Lottery? I didn't think there was such a thing. I'm only aware of state (or sometimes regional) lotteries.
The word is "Relativity." "Relativism" is usually used after the words "cultural" or "moral." :)
And I don't think Einstein's problem was understanding quantum mechanics (a field he helped usher in with his work on the photoelectric effect) but rather an uneasiness with the non-determinism in physical processes that QM implied.
This is just another piece of evidence for my conspiracy theory that the editors purposely pick flamebait (usually more subtle than this story) to increase the number of story comments....
One man's lightening bolt is another man's elevator power source.
I don't think he was referring to John Dvorak either...
At least, this is the case for the big theories that stand the tests of experiment. There is also a lot of wadded up paper in the history of physics as well. :)
Actually, that sounds pretty good.
Hahaha. Thanks for a good laugh.
Um, Gillette wasn't the one taking photos of customers. It was Tesco. Gillette just happens to make the Mach 3 razors which were being watched.
Uh oh. I thought it was a little odd that a cloud of cigarette smoke was following me around...