You're totally wrong. I'm very keen on grammar and spelling, but that's just the way my brain works. I think correcting people's grammar is very obnoxious. Not only that, it implies that there is some sort of "correct" way of speaking, which there isn't. I don't like it, and it has nothing to do with me not recognizing grammatical mistakes.
Look at that last line. "...me not recognizing grammatical mistakes". Seems "incorrect" doesn't it? Well, you should realize that grammar describes the way we talk, it doesn't tell us how we are supposed to talk. So instead of trying to change your speech to fit old rules, why not just come up with a new rule to describe that sentence.
After all, that is how people talk, so you may as well get used to it.
No, it's not that either. Quotation marks implies that you're quoting someone. It should be known, and accepted that when you're quoting someone all the errors are errors made by the person being quoted. And if you're quoting someone who said something in print, I can understand if you put a [sic] after a spelling mistake or a typo. But to put a [sic] after a grammatical error, that's ridiculous. And it's done ALL the time.
By the way, I think [sic] is, if not elitist, then obnoxious. When I didn't know what it meant (as far as I can remember I always knew tho), it didn't bother. The purpose itself is what bothers me. It's a stupid way of showing that someone made a mistake. If I use the word "which" instead of "that", but don't preced "which" by a comma, are you gonna stick a [sic] in there? Are you gonna stick a [sic] in if I refer to a third person singular person with the pronoun "they" (if I don't want to specify gender) even though according to "standard" English "they" only refers to a plural subject? Maybe [sic] has its uses, like when there can be some sort of misinterpretation without it, or something along those lines, but in my observation 95% of the time [sic] is used, it is both obnoxious and gratuitous.
In fact, I even have a recent post complaining to someone about they way they use [sic] (that post might be out of my last 24 comments though). I thought I was the only one who felt that way.
Umm, no you're totally wrong. I have a samsung 27 inch HDTV. I have it running in progressive scan too. If you don't see jaggies you must be totally blind. Do you see jaggies in *any* games? Do you know what jaggies are?
The fact that I see banding only when it's moving has nothing to do with video artifacts. I'm no fool; I know the difference between video artifacts and color banding. Trust me, it's absolutely color banding. I can't really come up with a good explanation for why I only see it when it's moving, but I think it has to do with the shading changing as you move or something. You see banding in the shadows. Where there are very subtle differences in color to show shadow.
If Halo ran in 1080i I wouldn't need 6x anti aliasing like the latest radeon has. But it's one or the other: high res, or anti aliasing. I never said I needed both. If the Xbox has a chip equivalent to the Radeon 9700 it would be able to render Halo easily with 6x anti aliasing.
Dude, you don't have to explain what happens when you have an interlaced image. I know. I'll just assume you're explaining it for everyone else's edification.
Anyway, 1080i has more pixels than 1600x1200, but on the other hand, it doesn't. See, even though they say it's 1920x1080, since it's interlaced, only 1920x540 pixels are being shown per frame. But since The Xbox can't pick and choose which pixels to render, if it wants to run in 1080i it has to render all 1920x1080 pixels, and throw out half of them. That's why 720p is much more effective than 1080i for videogames. The resolution is pretty much the same as 1080i, but with 720p there are no wasted pixels, so it's MUCH easier to render.
Anyway, the fact is, there is definitely color banding in Halo, and yes, I can only see it when I move. When I stand still it like fades away in a few seconds. In other words the fact that I can't see it has more to do with my brain than the actual colors. It doesn't actually "fade away", I just fail to see it after a few seconds. So the difference in colors are the same whether I'm moving or not, but I have an easier time perceiving it while in motion.
I just gotta say something: I never understand people who don't see jaggies, in halo, or anywhere else. They're everywhere! I got a bunch of cool images showing the difference between pictures with jaggies and without jaggies. Just email me and I'll give you my AIM name and I'll send them to you if you want. If you can't see jaggies in Halo YOU'RE BLIND.
BTW, the original post of mine should've said "mmmm radeon 6x anti aliasing" not radio
Well, I think CRTs have infinite precision. What I mean is it all depends on the RAMDAC. But as far as I know it makes absolutely no difference. Anyway, thanks for clarifying that 32-bit color includes alpha.
Anyway, I play Halo, for Xbox alot and noticed that there is color banding. If you stop moving, it instantly disappears (in other words you stop noticing it). But it's pretty bad, I mean, I'm not particularly sensitive, as far as I know. So I assumed Halo has 32 bit color, and it almost certainly has alpha. So what's the deal? I guess the only conclusion is that Halo must be only 16 bit, with 4 bits alpha. As much as I love Halo, the color depth and the low resolution (television) ruins it for me. Actually, it's not so much the low resolution, but the jaggies that come with low res. Effective anti-aliasing (mmmm radio 6x sampling) would take care of it pretty well, but unfortunately the Xbox doesn't do anti aliasing without taking a big hit. From what I see it looks like the anti alias only certain polygon edges, but there are still jaggies (big ones!) EVERYWHERE. Whatever.
Umm, no. Pixels are made up of subpixels. A red subpixel, a blue one and a green one. All pixels are equal, therefore you can't have a red pixel and a blue and a green one.
Anyway, if you're telling me that my monitor really has 3 times as many pixels as I thought, then yes, you're right. Dithering gets more and more effective the higher the resolution is. But the fact is, the standard is not to call subpixels pixels. They are subpixels. If they really considered them pixels, then they should've advertised that they have 76,800 pixels and not 25,600 (160x160). But according to standard definitions of "pixel" and "resolution" they were being fraudulent.
It's like saying, yeah, this car has 600 horsepower. But our definition of horse power is that 4HP = 1 of what most people call horsepower. We have very strong horses.
I didn't know what dithering was before I looked at the picture but this is what I gather from it. If you have a 1 bit display (just black and white), if you make every other pixel black, and every other pixel white, it will give the appearance of being gray (especially at higher resolutions). That is what dithering is. This is opposed to showing a pixel that is actually gray (half black half white, that is, each sub pixel [red, blue, green] on equal intensity, at half intensity). So the difference between 12 bit dithering, as the m130 does, and true 58,000 colors is considerable. The fact that Palm's spin on it is that it shows 58,000 colors instead of 64,000 leads me to believe that they knew all along about the limitations in the device.
Even if you can get 12-bit (dithered) color to look almost as good as non-dithered 16 bit color (which you can't, but lets just assume), it's still fraud. 16 bit color can be made to look even better if it is dithered. The only way they could've avoided fraud (and even then it would've been sketchy) is if they said "16-bit quality color" or "as good as 16-bit color"
And whoever thinks that the difference between 12 bit color and 16 bit color is just for bragging rights, I suggest they play video games. Even with 32 bit color, if alpha is using some of those bits, you will *still* see color banding, especially in motion. The next generation of videocards is working on 64-bit color (although, they're not actually displaying at 64 bits, just 64 bits are used for calculations, to minimize cumulative color distortion through multiple passes).
I really don't think it's a "big step", I think it just reveals how big and ponderous that corporation is. On the other hand, I'd bet this hardware is set up to recognize all kinds of "broadcast flags" and other such nonsense.
If nobody is willing to make them, then that's what you want! That's perfect. So if you go into business you'll be the only one selling them! It's like the restaurant that's so busy, nobody goes there anymore.
You can put all "intellectual property" under the same catergory, but it shouldn't be. All I was trying to say was that while trademark has its place, the example here is just abuse, and what the MLB is doing shouldn't be okay.
I think you're missing the point though. Yes, Jabber is compatible with AIM, ICQ, Y!M and MSN messenger, but the real purpose of jabber is to establish a standard protocol. Jabber hopes to be to instant messaging what POP3 is to email.
Until there is some sort of public infrastructure that allows anyone to serve on the internet, free of charge, almost all sites are going to have to make some money, just to pay for bandwidth. Many people are willing to devote many hours of their own time for no other reason than to do a service for other people. But to actually spend money out of their own pockets? It's a rare person who will do that. Those sites are just trying to stay afloat.
"...and you're naive to think that any copyright holder will allow it."
I think that the underlying issue here is "why is this a crime at all?". I believe the only point of trademark is to make sure that people don't sell a product pretending to be yours. I can't sell videogames and call them "nintendo" because I would be falsely saying that these videogames were made by nintendo. But if you're just using their logo as a way of referring to their product? I don't see the problem with it, and preventing that just oversteps the scope of what trademarks should be.
You're right, but I want to hear stories about Star Trek and Firefly, and any other interesting show that might be on television. Is there any way to disable the "non-geek-uninteresting-tvshow-boring-news" catergory? Of course not. And besides, whether or not I can see the story about buffy, it's still a sign that slashdot's quality is waning.
All of what you're saying is true, but you keep talking about IP addresses while the real question is why do they have a cookie that lasts 36 years? Again, what you're saying is true, but why not have the cookie last 6 months? By the way, I accept the cookie in order to save my preferences (I like seeing 100 results per page rather than 10).
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Al Qaeda might be neither a state nor a nation, and perhaps the US has no choice but to not declare a war, but the implications are nevertheless the same: there will be no defined end to this "war" and therefore there will be no end to the limitations of our liberty.
It may be standard practice, but is meaningless without a long term cookie. The point is, the IP address ties a user to a specific computer at any given moment. The cookie ties together all the IP addresses, and therefore all the searches that was ever done on that computer, and by that user can be mined from all that data. 36 year cookies are not standard practice.
Yes, but if you read Mr. Anti-Google's article on this, I think he said it's tied to your IP address. So even though their tracking isn't as bad as what you described in your first example, law enforcement can still muscle them, and they can even be subpoenaed to reveal the searches of someone being investigated. I'm quite sure it will never happen to me, but that's not the point. The fact that they even have that info is wrong. I suggest you read the article. I am/was a big google fan, and you might be surprised as I was by the article; you WILL be surprised. Just read it, it's worse than you make it out to be.
Same difference. The only reason it's legal for me to do it is because it is absolutely impossible to prevent. If they could prevent it, it would be illegal too.
Yes, but if I bought an apple burner, and then I subsequently bought a 3rd party burner, should it be *illegal* to make the apple software compatible with 3rd party hardware? Why don't they just do it the old fashioned way? Make it more difficult to crack. Duh.
What they need with video phones is for the video camera to be behind the screen (in the top third), so you can make eyecontact. Otherwise you're just talking to someone while you're watching a video of them and it ends up being weird.
Of course, I don't think it's possible (at least not for a reasonable price) to do that yet, and that is the thing holding back videophones, and it's logical successor, telepresence/teleimmersion (I prefer the word telepresence, more appropriate).
Telepresence is where you sit in front of a videoscreen, and behind the screen is an array of video cameras. same thing on the other side (person you're "viewing"). So when you both sit down, it's just like sitting across the table from someone (in theory, at least).
Slashdot Mirror
You're totally wrong. I'm very keen on grammar and spelling, but that's just the way my brain works. I think correcting people's grammar is very obnoxious. Not only that, it implies that there is some sort of "correct" way of speaking, which there isn't. I don't like it, and it has nothing to do with me not recognizing grammatical mistakes.
Look at that last line. "...me not recognizing grammatical mistakes". Seems "incorrect" doesn't it? Well, you should realize that grammar describes the way we talk, it doesn't tell us how we are supposed to talk. So instead of trying to change your speech to fit old rules, why not just come up with a new rule to describe that sentence.
After all, that is how people talk, so you may as well get used to it.
No, it's not that either. Quotation marks implies that you're quoting someone. It should be known, and accepted that when you're quoting someone all the errors are errors made by the person being quoted. And if you're quoting someone who said something in print, I can understand if you put a [sic] after a spelling mistake or a typo. But to put a [sic] after a grammatical error, that's ridiculous. And it's done ALL the time.
By the way, I think [sic] is, if not elitist, then obnoxious. When I didn't know what it meant (as far as I can remember I always knew tho), it didn't bother. The purpose itself is what bothers me. It's a stupid way of showing that someone made a mistake. If I use the word "which" instead of "that", but don't preced "which" by a comma, are you gonna stick a [sic] in there? Are you gonna stick a [sic] in if I refer to a third person singular person with the pronoun "they" (if I don't want to specify gender) even though according to "standard" English "they" only refers to a plural subject? Maybe [sic] has its uses, like when there can be some sort of misinterpretation without it, or something along those lines, but in my observation 95% of the time [sic] is used, it is both obnoxious and gratuitous.
In fact, I even have a recent post complaining to someone about they way they use [sic] (that post might be out of my last 24 comments though). I thought I was the only one who felt that way.
Umm, no you're totally wrong. I have a samsung 27 inch HDTV. I have it running in progressive scan too. If you don't see jaggies you must be totally blind. Do you see jaggies in *any* games? Do you know what jaggies are?
The fact that I see banding only when it's moving has nothing to do with video artifacts. I'm no fool; I know the difference between video artifacts and color banding. Trust me, it's absolutely color banding. I can't really come up with a good explanation for why I only see it when it's moving, but I think it has to do with the shading changing as you move or something. You see banding in the shadows. Where there are very subtle differences in color to show shadow.
If Halo ran in 1080i I wouldn't need 6x anti aliasing like the latest radeon has. But it's one or the other: high res, or anti aliasing. I never said I needed both. If the Xbox has a chip equivalent to the Radeon 9700 it would be able to render Halo easily with 6x anti aliasing.
Dude, you don't have to explain what happens when you have an interlaced image. I know. I'll just assume you're explaining it for everyone else's edification.
Anyway, 1080i has more pixels than 1600x1200, but on the other hand, it doesn't. See, even though they say it's 1920x1080, since it's interlaced, only 1920x540 pixels are being shown per frame. But since The Xbox can't pick and choose which pixels to render, if it wants to run in 1080i it has to render all 1920x1080 pixels, and throw out half of them. That's why 720p is much more effective than 1080i for videogames. The resolution is pretty much the same as 1080i, but with 720p there are no wasted pixels, so it's MUCH easier to render.
Anyway, the fact is, there is definitely color banding in Halo, and yes, I can only see it when I move. When I stand still it like fades away in a few seconds. In other words the fact that I can't see it has more to do with my brain than the actual colors. It doesn't actually "fade away", I just fail to see it after a few seconds. So the difference in colors are the same whether I'm moving or not, but I have an easier time perceiving it while in motion.
I just gotta say something: I never understand people who don't see jaggies, in halo, or anywhere else. They're everywhere! I got a bunch of cool images showing the difference between pictures with jaggies and without jaggies. Just email me and I'll give you my AIM name and I'll send them to you if you want. If you can't see jaggies in Halo YOU'RE BLIND.
BTW, the original post of mine should've said "mmmm radeon 6x anti aliasing" not radio
LOL, maybe. I had to think about it for like five minutes; I guess I got it wrong. :) Thanks!
Well, I think CRTs have infinite precision. What I mean is it all depends on the RAMDAC. But as far as I know it makes absolutely no difference. Anyway, thanks for clarifying that 32-bit color includes alpha.
Anyway, I play Halo, for Xbox alot and noticed that there is color banding. If you stop moving, it instantly disappears (in other words you stop noticing it). But it's pretty bad, I mean, I'm not particularly sensitive, as far as I know. So I assumed Halo has 32 bit color, and it almost certainly has alpha. So what's the deal? I guess the only conclusion is that Halo must be only 16 bit, with 4 bits alpha. As much as I love Halo, the color depth and the low resolution (television) ruins it for me. Actually, it's not so much the low resolution, but the jaggies that come with low res. Effective anti-aliasing (mmmm radio 6x sampling) would take care of it pretty well, but unfortunately the Xbox doesn't do anti aliasing without taking a big hit. From what I see it looks like the anti alias only certain polygon edges, but there are still jaggies (big ones!) EVERYWHERE. Whatever.
^^^^^^^^^Mod this up!
I don't care if it's anonymous.
Umm, no. Pixels are made up of subpixels. A red subpixel, a blue one and a green one. All pixels are equal, therefore you can't have a red pixel and a blue and a green one.
Anyway, if you're telling me that my monitor really has 3 times as many pixels as I thought, then yes, you're right. Dithering gets more and more effective the higher the resolution is. But the fact is, the standard is not to call subpixels pixels. They are subpixels. If they really considered them pixels, then they should've advertised that they have 76,800 pixels and not 25,600 (160x160). But according to standard definitions of "pixel" and "resolution" they were being fraudulent.
It's like saying, yeah, this car has 600 horsepower. But our definition of horse power is that 4HP = 1 of what most people call horsepower. We have very strong horses.
That link doesn't work, so try this
I didn't know what dithering was before I looked at the picture but this is what I gather from it. If you have a 1 bit display (just black and white), if you make every other pixel black, and every other pixel white, it will give the appearance of being gray (especially at higher resolutions). That is what dithering is. This is opposed to showing a pixel that is actually gray (half black half white, that is, each sub pixel [red, blue, green] on equal intensity, at half intensity). So the difference between 12 bit dithering, as the m130 does, and true 58,000 colors is considerable. The fact that Palm's spin on it is that it shows 58,000 colors instead of 64,000 leads me to believe that they knew all along about the limitations in the device.
Even if you can get 12-bit (dithered) color to look almost as good as non-dithered 16 bit color (which you can't, but lets just assume), it's still fraud. 16 bit color can be made to look even better if it is dithered. The only way they could've avoided fraud (and even then it would've been sketchy) is if they said "16-bit quality color" or "as good as 16-bit color"
And whoever thinks that the difference between 12 bit color and 16 bit color is just for bragging rights, I suggest they play video games. Even with 32 bit color, if alpha is using some of those bits, you will *still* see color banding, especially in motion. The next generation of videocards is working on 64-bit color (although, they're not actually displaying at 64 bits, just 64 bits are used for calculations, to minimize cumulative color distortion through multiple passes).
I really don't think it's a "big step", I think it just reveals how big and ponderous that corporation is. On the other hand, I'd bet this hardware is set up to recognize all kinds of "broadcast flags" and other such nonsense.
If nobody is willing to make them, then that's what you want! That's perfect. So if you go into business you'll be the only one selling them! It's like the restaurant that's so busy, nobody goes there anymore.
You can put all "intellectual property" under the same catergory, but it shouldn't be. All I was trying to say was that while trademark has its place, the example here is just abuse, and what the MLB is doing shouldn't be okay.
I think you're missing the point though. Yes, Jabber is compatible with AIM, ICQ, Y!M and MSN messenger, but the real purpose of jabber is to establish a standard protocol. Jabber hopes to be to instant messaging what POP3 is to email.
Until there is some sort of public infrastructure that allows anyone to serve on the internet, free of charge, almost all sites are going to have to make some money, just to pay for bandwidth. Many people are willing to devote many hours of their own time for no other reason than to do a service for other people. But to actually spend money out of their own pockets? It's a rare person who will do that. Those sites are just trying to stay afloat.
"...and you're naive to think that any copyright holder will allow it."
I think that the underlying issue here is "why is this a crime at all?". I believe the only point of trademark is to make sure that people don't sell a product pretending to be yours. I can't sell videogames and call them "nintendo" because I would be falsely saying that these videogames were made by nintendo. But if you're just using their logo as a way of referring to their product? I don't see the problem with it, and preventing that just oversteps the scope of what trademarks should be.
For anyone intersted, you should read "the metaphysics of star trek". I really enjoyed that book. They discuss that particular episode a *lot*.
You're right, but I want to hear stories about Star Trek and Firefly, and any other interesting show that might be on television. Is there any way to disable the "non-geek-uninteresting-tvshow-boring-news" catergory? Of course not. And besides, whether or not I can see the story about buffy, it's still a sign that slashdot's quality is waning.
All of what you're saying is true, but you keep talking about IP addresses while the real question is why do they have a cookie that lasts 36 years? Again, what you're saying is true, but why not have the cookie last 6 months? By the way, I accept the cookie in order to save my preferences (I like seeing 100 results per page rather than 10).
Al Qaeda might be neither a state nor a nation, and perhaps the US has no choice but to not declare a war, but the implications are nevertheless the same: there will be no defined end to this "war" and therefore there will be no end to the limitations of our liberty.
It may be standard practice, but is meaningless without a long term cookie. The point is, the IP address ties a user to a specific computer at any given moment. The cookie ties together all the IP addresses, and therefore all the searches that was ever done on that computer, and by that user can be mined from all that data. 36 year cookies are not standard practice.
Yes, but if you read Mr. Anti-Google's article on this, I think he said it's tied to your IP address. So even though their tracking isn't as bad as what you described in your first example, law enforcement can still muscle them, and they can even be subpoenaed to reveal the searches of someone being investigated. I'm quite sure it will never happen to me, but that's not the point. The fact that they even have that info is wrong. I suggest you read the article. I am/was a big google fan, and you might be surprised as I was by the article; you WILL be surprised. Just read it, it's worse than you make it out to be.
Same difference. The only reason it's legal for me to do it is because it is absolutely impossible to prevent. If they could prevent it, it would be illegal too.
What about keystroke loggers? I doubt PGP or any other software encryption will get around that.
Wait, what's BWM?
Yes, but if I bought an apple burner, and then I subsequently bought a 3rd party burner, should it be *illegal* to make the apple software compatible with 3rd party hardware? Why don't they just do it the old fashioned way? Make it more difficult to crack. Duh.
What they need with video phones is for the video camera to be behind the screen (in the top third), so you can make eyecontact. Otherwise you're just talking to someone while you're watching a video of them and it ends up being weird.
Of course, I don't think it's possible (at least not for a reasonable price) to do that yet, and that is the thing holding back videophones, and it's logical successor, telepresence/teleimmersion (I prefer the word telepresence, more appropriate).
Telepresence is where you sit in front of a videoscreen, and behind the screen is an array of video cameras. same thing on the other side (person you're "viewing"). So when you both sit down, it's just like sitting across the table from someone (in theory, at least).