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User: magnum3065

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  1. Re:Digital Video storage claims way off on LaCie Releases 500GB Add On Drives · · Score: 1

    Well, ok, but they specifically say "uncompressed" video. Now maybe they really meant to say losslessly compressed video, but they should make this clear.

  2. Digital Video storage claims way off on LaCie Releases 500GB Add On Drives · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was curious about their claim that the drive can hold 2 days of uncompressed digital video since they didn't make any reference to the resolution or frame rate of the video they were talking about. I quickly found some figures here for storage rates for video. Based on their figures for NTSC video stored uncompressed in MJPEG format the video should run about 20MB/s not including the audio they factor in later. At this rate 500GB will only store 7 hours of uncompressed video, only 30% of what they claim. Now, I know companies like to tweak their statistics to make their products seem better, but this seems very misleading.

  3. Re:its not cell phones on Cell Phones for the Deaf · · Score: 1

    In order to clarify the type of mobile phone. Satellite phones could also be considered mobile phones, but they definately aren't cell(ular) phones.

  4. Re:Great Idea on Software For Ransom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This has been done before. Anyone remember Blender (http://www.blender.org/)? They did this months ago when they were on the verge of bankruptcy their shareholders agreed to release the code if they received $100,000 in donations. It seemed to work out well for them, but they already had a well established program developed by full-time programmer and had quite a significant following of users. I'm not sure they would have been able to pull this off if they had tried to do it early on.

  5. Re:Never thought this day would come on Portable.NET Now 100% Free Software · · Score: 1

    OpenGL has been supported for a long time now: http://csgl.sourceforge.net/

    In fact most any existing library can be easily used within C# since it is very easy to import functions from DLLs.

  6. Doom III is CPU limited on Slashback: Circumvention, AOLandfill, Scoffing · · Score: 1

    Ok, as I'm sure was mentioned when the Doom III demo came out, it is not slowed down by the video card, so any comparison of video cards based on Doom III is completely irrelevant. I ran the Doom III demo on my GeForce4 4600, and my friend got about the same performance on his GeForce DDR. The leaked version of Doom III is very CPU intensive, most likely because it was compiled without optimizations, kind of like the leaked versions of UT2003. Therefore since the CPU is the bottleneck, using a faster card will not have a noticeable effect on the speed. We need to wait until a version of Doom III intended for public use is available to make any judgements of hardware based upon its performance.

  7. Re:Not as funny as you'd think on Slashback: ClonesMAX, Animation, Dislaimers · · Score: 1

    Part of the issue here is not how often your eye can perceive a new image, but how much flicker you can notice. While the center of your eye that sees color and detail may not notice the fact that an image is changing until you get down below 24fps, the periferal vision can notice changes in overall light intensity at much higher rates. This is the reason that 60Hz is acceptable for an active matrix LCD but not for a CRT. An LCD can keep a pixel active continuously so there is no flicker, while a CRT's pixel is brightened when the beam hits it and slowly fades.

    Hopefully digital recordings for movies and digital projectors will get more widespread use soon, since this should get rid of the refresh rate issue which is the main problem that I see with movies right now.

  8. Re:get this out on ptp on Doom 3 Alpha Leaked · · Score: 1

    Try eDonkey if you're serious about P2P. Not as good for music, but much better for pretty much everything else. Sites like Sharereactor catalogue links to good downloads like Doom3: http://www.sharereactor.com/release.php?id=2946

    Personally I'd recommend the eMule client ( http://www.emule-project.net ) for eDonkey though, rather than the normal one.

  9. How does this relate to Divx? on ffmpeg: Free Software's WMA decoder · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could someone explain what WMA has to do with Divx?

  10. Why build a new, separate system? on Canada to Launch Countrywide Virtual SuperComputer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    rather than joining a currently existing project? I'm a student at the University of Virginia and we have a project like this that's been going on for 5 years now: http://legion.virginia.edu/

    They talk about how they feel that Canada should be pursuing its own supercomputing, but why not join up with other universities that have been pursuing similar projects and give Canada access to the computing power of other countries as well? Isn't the goal here for people to work together for mutual benefit? I don't understand why they feel the need to isolate their Canadian initiative, rather than giving Canada the access to computing power far greater than they can acheive on their own.

    Check out photos of UVA's branch of Legion: http://legion.virginia.edu/centurion/Photos.html
    (I think these are a little out of date. There's a bunch of rack-mount machines in there now too)
    This room has big glass walls, and everytime I walk by it I wish I had a room like it.

  11. Target Consumers? on Questions for a Lecture on Microsoft's Palladium? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm curious who Microsoft expects to be the target customer base for this software, do they expect home users, or businesses. Will this be used in general across an office, or possibly only for machines that require high security (e.g. servers with remote access)? It seems that the average home user wouldn't want to be troubled with some of the new security features, and since technologies of questionable legality (mp3, divx, etc.) are becoming popular in the main-stream now, many people would actually be opposed to some of the new security measures. So, since Microsoft has typically targetted an average home user with their products, do they expect to win over the home user market for this new product, or do they simply plan on a small user-base that requires a more substantial amount of security at first, then try to make the system more wide-spread among consumers later?

  12. Re:why is this news? on USDOI Goes 100% Microsoft · · Score: 1

    This isn't really anything new either. It may be completely official now, but this has pretty much been their policy for years. They used to have more Unix machines and such, but they weren't willing to keep good system admins around to maintain them, so the machines were left pretty much unused.

  13. Fortunately the patent doesn't cover these claims on Suddenly a JPEG Patent and Licensing Fee · · Score: 1

    Direct from the patent: "The present invention specifically relates to methods and apparatus useful in video compression systems."

    Therefore, the patent should not apply to any still image compression like Forgent seems to claim. It does seem that they may be able to stake some claims to MotionJPEGs, which could cause some problems for makers of digital video cameras, but from what I've read of the patent, most of Forgent's claims wouldn't hold up in court.

  14. Re:This is a very good tool on Microcoolers Could Change Processor Design · · Score: 1

    Placing stuff on both sides of the cooler wouldn't work. The "coolers" don't actually change the total temperature, but move heat from one side to another. They're basically like micro-peltiers, and anyone who is into overclocking knows that putting a peltier on upside down will fry your chip. What happens is that one side cools down, but the other side heats up so putting something on both sides of the cooler would ruin whatever was on the hot side.

  15. Re:And this will work how? on Microcoolers Could Change Processor Design · · Score: 1

    The point of these isn't for you to go buy them and put it on your chip to overclock it. Chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD can build these into a chip in order to keep it cooler, and therefore they can make faster chips. The reason you don't have heat problems unless you overclock is because Intel and AMD design the chips so that they will not overheat at their rated speed, but in order to keep making faster chips they need to keep finding ways to better cool the chips. Heatsinks and fans work for now, but as chips get faster, cooling will need to improve, and this is supposed to help in that.