I suspect they're engineering a similar mode for MP3 -- hopefully something a little nicer than Joint Stereo, which basically works by doing a mono mix and specifying which frequencies are louder in which channel. No, this doesn't work very well. Concievably, we could see something like VBR on a per-channel basis, but I suspect this would cause existing decoders to collapse. I do believe it's possible to place extra data between MP3 granules; I suppose they'll get their backwards compatible surround mode worked into there.
That is precisely how MP3 mid side stereo mode works. It takes the sum of the channels (the common sounds) and encodes with a higher bitrate than the sounds that differ. Joint stereo is a mode where the encoder decides whether to use Mid-Side or true stereo for each frame depending on the stereo seperation. Joint stereo gives better results than true stereo at the same bitrate.
The mode you describe (mono with frequency info) is Intensity Stereo which few encoders even support.
The air pressure below a cloud is not less than the pressure just outside the cloud's 'shadow'. Think of a bath of water. For example, if you float a rubber duck in it then the pressure below the duck will not be less than the surrounding pressure. This is because the pressure at a depth in a fluid is not related to the shape of the container - only to the depth (and other stuff, like temperature).
If you don't belive me then float something large (like a container ship) in a swimming pool, swim up to the edge of the space under it and observe that you don't get sucked in.
So no, the low pressure associated with some weather phenomena is in no way related to the weight of the clouds. In fact, I would guess that clouds would tend to increase pressure by reflecting sunlight back into the space and cooling the atmosphere beneath them.
The confidence that most of us Linux users have that the code is not stolen from SCO is the assurance of Linux community leaders and various companies selling Linux. This people and companies have deliberately mislead people into illegally using code which belongs, in part, to SCO.
Surely the correct reaction of the community is to pay SCO, look to moving to another operating system and to bring suit against Linus et al for misleading us into committing a crime? Even if the code wasn't stolen from SCO it will still be easier to sue Torvalds, Cox and the rest of the major kernel contributors than to sue a major successful company like SCO.
I ran 'emacs -nw' (to force it not to open another window) in the kde 3.1 konsole and it resized perfectly. Looks like their setup is broken, rather than Emacs.
The old South African government (pre 1990s) had laws that allowed them to detain people without being charged for 90 days without even informing their families of their arrest. The 90 days was renewable, so people could dissapear for arbitrarily long periods of time.
The government said that the people they detained were guilty of treason but most were doing nothing but passively resisting the apartheid policies. For instance, many people who attended the Congress of the People at which the Freedom Charter was drawn up, dissapeared for months afterwards (the leaders of the congress were formally tried for treason).
Citizens of the United States should watch very carefully what happens to their human rights. They pay a lot of lip service to 'liberty', but don't seem really concerned that it's liberty for some. If I was a Muslim in the United States right now I would be very worried about my future freedom.
It would be very risky for Microsoft not to provide a version if windows for x86-64. Microsoft are already facing major competition in their server market from free *nix. If they allowed the competition access to free reign on a very fast and powerful architecture, they would be taking a major risk.
Microsoft need to weigh up development costs against the risk the *nix/x86-64 will become very popular and decide whether its worth their while to compete with a version of Windows. I would guess it is.
Is it really worth getting people to use Linux if we have to take away what people like about Linux to achieve that goal? As you said, customizability is one of the best features of Linux (and other Free/Open) OSs. I am quite partial to being able to switch to a CLI to get some things done, but CLIs also frighten Windows converts. Let's get rid of CLI and customization so Linux is more attractive to beginners.
While we are at it, the whole/etc thing is a bit confusing so we can replace that with a close binary config file format. The user permissions thing needs to go too. The fact that most GNU/Linux systems are available free makes people wonder about their quality, so we can start forcing distros to charge people money. Why don't we just get rid of Distros entirely and make one official shrinkwrap version?
I am not aiming this at papasui personally, but everybody in the Linux community needs to look at what they are trying to make. Are we trying to make the Best Operating System or the Most Popular Operating System?
The monitoring bit has been done before
on
eSuds
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· Score: 1
Something like this has already been done at Smuts Hall, a residence at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. The guys on the network comittee in 2000 set up internet based monitoring for our laundry. The monitor indicates which machines are free and what stage of their cycle they are on.
The system uses a custom designed ISA card to capture the state of the machines and a Java applet shares the information with the rest of the world.
Re:Go to Africa. Learn what poor means.
on
The Almighty Buck
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I would agree with you that rich people should get some perspective by going to economically less developed countries in Africa and seeing their way of life.People in the United States would be shocked to learn that the average wage is Mozambique is equal to 5 South African Rands a day (about $.50) and even the very wealthy would not get close to earning $1000 in a month.
So, wealthy people of the World, go to Mozambique, see how the people live and get some perspective. While you are on this odysee of financial discovery, you can have an amazingly affordable holiday on some of the best, least trafficed, beaches in the world. Remember to spend plenty of dollars while you are there.
I don't agree with you about "no freedom" and "very poor quality of life". The citizens of many African countries have better personal freedoms than people in Western Countries. South Africans, for instance, have a great level of freedom of freedom of speach and thought. This is true in many African democracies. Many people in Africa, despite not being able to afford a DVD player, let alone a radio, still have a excellent quality of life. It is a simple life, which many would swap for a western lifestyle, but it is also a way of life that many citizens of the first world would swap theirs for.
As a fellow South African, I am deeply concerned by this comment and ones like it whaich have been poseted here. Sure, Mr Mbeki has made some major mistkes in dealing with some pressing issues. Sure, the government's economic policies regarding privatisation and government control are not overly clear.
Even acknowledging all this problems, South Africa's government is not bad by world standards. Firstly, they hava managed to retain a very high level of freedom for all South Africans, mor than can be said of That Major Democracy Across The Atlantic. Secondly, they have worked very hard to provide for the primary health care and education needs of a largely underprivledged population.Thirdy, they have implemented basically sound economic policies.
There are a lot of cluess idiots in the South African government, but equally there are many clueless idiots in any government. The important point is that the government is working to make sure that all the tenents of the Bill of Rights are fulfilled for all South Africans.
Sure, this is a stupid step to take, but it does not make SA a banana republic, any more than the DMCA makes the USA a banana republic.
As somebody who is just a few years on the good side of being a teen, most of what you have to say strikes me as completely naive.
While it is a good idea to keep young people safe from harm, you need to be sure you don't keep too much of a close eye on them. People have this bad habit of rebelling if they are held on a too tight leash. If I think of my peers, most of the ones I know who 'went off the rails' in their later teenage years where ones whose parents were too strict, rather than too lenient.
When you are organising parties, LAN game evenings and other social events for kids it is a good idea to give them some freedom in a safe environment. If you make sure every person under 18 is protected from the real world until they come of age, then they will not be prepared to face the challenges of freedom when they finally get it.
So give those kids some freedom. Let them game all night. Let them eat junk food. Let the sneak out and share a cigarette. You might not think that it's the best thing for them now, but I think you would be doing them a favour in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
The air pressure below a cloud is not less than the pressure just outside the cloud's 'shadow'. Think of a bath of water. For example, if you float a rubber duck in it then the pressure below the duck will not be less than the surrounding pressure. This is because the pressure at a depth in a fluid is not related to the shape of the container - only to the depth (and other stuff, like temperature).
If you don't belive me then float something large (like a container ship) in a swimming pool, swim up to the edge of the space under it and observe that you don't get sucked in.
So no, the low pressure associated with some weather phenomena is in no way related to the weight of the clouds. In fact, I would guess that clouds would tend to increase pressure by reflecting sunlight back into the space and cooling the atmosphere beneath them.
The confidence that most of us Linux users have that the code is not stolen from SCO is the assurance of Linux community leaders and various companies selling Linux. This people and companies have deliberately mislead people into illegally using code which belongs, in part, to SCO.
Surely the correct reaction of the community is to pay SCO, look to moving to another operating system and to bring suit against Linus et al for misleading us into committing a crime? Even if the code wasn't stolen from SCO it will still be easier to sue Torvalds, Cox and the rest of the major kernel contributors than to sue a major successful company like SCO.
Note: No, I am not serious. Sorry.
I ran 'emacs -nw' (to force it not to open another window) in the kde 3.1 konsole and it resized perfectly. Looks like their setup is broken, rather than Emacs.
The old South African government (pre 1990s) had laws that allowed them to detain people without being charged for 90 days without even informing their families of their arrest. The 90 days was renewable, so people could dissapear for arbitrarily long periods of time.
The government said that the people they detained were guilty of treason but most were doing nothing but passively resisting the apartheid policies. For instance, many people who attended the Congress of the People at which the Freedom Charter was drawn up, dissapeared for months afterwards (the leaders of the congress were formally tried for treason).
Citizens of the United States should watch very carefully what happens to their human rights. They pay a lot of lip service to 'liberty', but don't seem really concerned that it's liberty for some. If I was a Muslim in the United States right now I would be very worried about my future freedom.
It would be very risky for Microsoft not to provide a version if windows for x86-64. Microsoft are already facing major competition in their server market from free *nix. If they allowed the competition access to free reign on a very fast and powerful architecture, they would be taking a major risk.
Microsoft need to weigh up development costs against the risk the *nix/x86-64 will become very popular and decide whether its worth their while to compete with a version of Windows. I would guess it is.
Is it really worth getting people to use Linux if we have to take away what people like about Linux to achieve that goal? As you said, customizability is one of the best features of Linux (and other Free/Open) OSs. I am quite partial to being able to switch to a CLI to get some things done, but CLIs also frighten Windows converts. Let's get rid of CLI and customization so Linux is more attractive to beginners.
/etc thing is a bit confusing so we can replace that with a close binary config file format. The user permissions thing needs to go too. The fact that most GNU/Linux systems are available free makes people wonder about their quality, so we can start forcing distros to charge people money. Why don't we just get rid of Distros entirely and make one official shrinkwrap version?
While we are at it, the whole
I am not aiming this at papasui personally, but everybody in the Linux community needs to look at what they are trying to make. Are we trying to make the Best Operating System or the Most Popular Operating System?
Something like this has already been done at Smuts Hall, a residence at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. The guys on the network comittee in 2000 set up internet based monitoring for our laundry. The monitor indicates which machines are free and what stage of their cycle they are on.
The system uses a custom designed ISA card to capture the state of the machines and a Java applet shares the information with the rest of the world.
I would agree with you that rich people should get some perspective by going to economically less developed countries in Africa and seeing their way of life.People in the United States would be shocked to learn that the average wage is Mozambique is equal to 5 South African Rands a day (about $.50) and even the very wealthy would not get close to earning $1000 in a month.
So, wealthy people of the World, go to Mozambique, see how the people live and get some perspective. While you are on this odysee of financial discovery, you can have an amazingly affordable holiday on some of the best, least trafficed, beaches in the world. Remember to spend plenty of dollars while you are there.
I don't agree with you about "no freedom" and "very poor quality of life". The citizens of many African countries have better personal freedoms than people in Western Countries. South Africans, for instance, have a great level of freedom of freedom of speach and thought. This is true in many African democracies. Many people in Africa, despite not being able to afford a DVD player, let alone a radio, still have a excellent quality of life. It is a simple life, which many would swap for a western lifestyle, but it is also a way of life that many citizens of the first world would swap theirs for.
As a fellow South African, I am deeply concerned by this comment and ones like it whaich have been poseted here. Sure, Mr Mbeki has made some major mistkes in dealing with some pressing issues. Sure, the government's economic policies regarding privatisation and government control are not overly clear.
Even acknowledging all this problems, South Africa's government is not bad by world standards. Firstly, they hava managed to retain a very high level of freedom for all South Africans, mor than can be said of That Major Democracy Across The Atlantic. Secondly, they have worked very hard to provide for the primary health care and education needs of a largely underprivledged population.Thirdy, they have implemented basically sound economic policies.
There are a lot of cluess idiots in the South African government, but equally there are many clueless idiots in any government. The important point is that the government is working to make sure that all the tenents of the Bill of Rights are fulfilled for all South Africans.
Sure, this is a stupid step to take, but it does not make SA a banana republic, any more than the DMCA makes the USA a banana republic.
As somebody who is just a few years on the good side of being a teen, most of what you have to say strikes me as completely naive.
While it is a good idea to keep young people safe from harm, you need to be sure you don't keep too much of a close eye on them. People have this bad habit of rebelling if they are held on a too tight leash. If I think of my peers, most of the ones I know who 'went off the rails' in their later teenage years where ones whose parents were too strict, rather than too lenient.
When you are organising parties, LAN game evenings and other social events for kids it is a good idea to give them some freedom in a safe environment. If you make sure every person under 18 is protected from the real world until they come of age, then they will not be prepared to face the challenges of freedom when they finally get it.
So give those kids some freedom. Let them game all night. Let them eat junk food. Let the sneak out and share a cigarette. You might not think that it's the best thing for them now, but I think you would be doing them a favour in the long run.