Although "only" 40 now, I remember the OLD Lego that didn't stick together properly, especially not to the newer bricks (the ones we now all know and love). Some older relative gave me a hand-me-down box of old Lego which was a mixture of modern bricks and this weird stuff. Also the colour was slightly off, they were a creamy colour rather than white. As children in the early 70s my friends and I used to call it "mouldy Lego" - but Lego it was, it still had the logo on every brick, although in a slightly-different typeface.
Looking at the Wikipedia page it seems that this was probably pre-1963 Lego (made of cellulose(!) acetate), so it was probably at least eight or nine years old by the time I was playing with it.
Re:My karma can stand it
on
Homer Becomes Omar
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Melon Farmers is a reference to the BBC TV cut of "Repo Man" where the words Mother-fucker were replaced by Melon farmer
I believe the alterations were made by Alex Cox, the director, himself, in response to the BBC's request for cuts so that it could be shown. So he decided to go completely and humorously over-the-top in censoring his own film, partly to make a point, one suspects.
It's a thought, isn't it? Publicise how to make rootkits, until we're all drowning in them a few years down the line, then sell us all Palladium as a fix, with all the DRM/privacy implications as "a necessary inconvenience".
> that's just pathetic--
>
> intel compilers make AMD CPUs crash?
>
> please.
>
> specify exactly how intel compilers do this and maybe
> you have a case. show an ASM code snippet at least.
An analog synth? If only it had been that easy! The definitive account of the making of the original Doctor Who theme tune can be found here. A fascinating read.
If it works like the Waitrose system, then the only difference in the actual shopping trolley is that it has a (dumb) cradle to put the handheld scanner in. The scanner itself goes back on a rack before you leave the shop.
> Self-checkout lines are nothing new. If that's what you're talking about, those are everywhere. > > But the article is talking about a device mounted on the cart with a barcode scanner. You scan the items as you add them to the cart...
Yup, Waitrose in the UK has had this for some time now. From their website:
Quick Pay / Quick Check
Quick Check is our scan as you shop service. Using a handheld scanner, you scan each item as you take it from the shelves. We supply you with special reusable bags, so you can pack as you go. When you have finished shopping, all that is left to do is pay at the Quick Check till, without having to unpack and re-pack your shopping...
You do have to have their account card to do it though.
> They would need a full time department just to handle issues like this.
Given their size and worldwide product reach, you'd think that Microsoft is the one company that would indeed have a full-time department to handle issues like that. And now it appears that they've realised this.
And yeah, Kashmir is quite a well-known dispute, but that's already been said.
I'm pretty sure that when I was at primary school in the mid-70s in the UK we were taught five oceans, but the fifth was called the Antarctic Ocean, not the Southern Ocean.
Amusingly, there's no such place, at least not by name. Due to the shape of the country, there's nothing much to call "East".
Generally speaking (not official titles, but in conversation and local papers) there's North-, Mid-, West-, South-West-, South- and South-East-Wales, but I've NEVER heard anybody refer to East Wales.
I guess you were just hideously unlucky with your choice of compass point there, but it does prove the point in a way!:-)
Re:RGBCMY is more marketing factoid than it isreal
on
RGB to become RGBCMY
·
· Score: 1
Absolutely.
>Uncompressed digital Y'CbCr video can look really good.
It DOES look really good, as it seems you know. And HD looks stunning. But it's a shame that due to the
>MPEG-2 compression, 8-bit quantization artifacts, and poor displays
only people working in TV studios and equipment manufacturers ever get to see it as it should be. If the broadcasters only upped the bitrates by 50% it would be something. Doubled would be even better. But then you'd only be able to sell half the advertising space, wouldn't you?
Current digital TV is the video equivalent of a 128kbps MP3, if not worse.
Re:RGBCMY is more marketing factoid than it isreal
on
RGB to become RGBCMY
·
· Score: 1
The reason Cb and Cr are only sampled at half the rate of Y is because the human visual system has a much better tolerance to low-resolution chrominance information than it does to low-res luminance. The extra chroma samples really aren't needed for display purposes, assuming we're talking 4:2:2 here and not 4:1:1 or worse. (For processing purposes, mainly chroma-keying, 4:4:4 can be useful.)
As for your colour space stuff, plenty of people have already put you right; and I would back them up: I spent ten years designing broadcast video equipment that works in the YCbCr domain, and it's quite easy to generate so-called "illegal colours" that cannot be properly shown on an RGB device; notably the muddy dark green and lurid pink-purple that result from a data stream of all zeroes or all ones respectively.
He's correct on how component video works (it IS three signals just as he describes), but that has very little to do with the rod-cell response that Dr Zowie was talking about. If he'd read it properly he'd see that "the rod cells that are used for night vision have their own separate response spectrum, weighted heavily toward the blue/violet end of the spectrum", so they're NOT just luminance cells.
I might be wrong, but I think that for a short time some snake-oil shops actually DID sell colour-overlays for b/w sets just so that you could sort of pretend to keep with the Joneses. Utterly ludicrous, of course, I have no idea how they decided to put which colour where, or whether it just tinted the whole screen. I just know I read it once, a long time ago.
I'd just like to second the Greg Egan recommendation, especially for Axiomatic. Superb book. His other short story collection, Luminous, ain't too shoddy either.
Egan is essential reading for anybody who likes hard science in their science-fiction. Best author I've read in years.
Enough of one to know that you got it wrong about TOS.:-)
The scale in TOS was that the velocity (in multiples of c) was the warp number cubed. So Warp 1 = c Warp 2 = 8c Warp 3 = 27c Warp 4 = 64c and so on.
You're right that they rejigged it for TNG onwards such that Warp 10 was an infinite speed. And yes, VOY:Threshold was an appalling pile of poo, for any number of reasons.
Shall I say then, that in all my years of living in England and Wales I'd never heard the term used as a synonym for electric companies before. Shame on me, as my Dad was born and brought up in Ayr, and I visit now and then.
I did say that Scotland had more hydro power though, perhaps I didn't realise quite how much.;-)
> Why are British power companies referred to as 'hydro?'
Um, they aren't. Or if they are, I've never noticed in all my years of existence in the U.K. We also tend to have "secondary schools" not "high schools", so I'm pretty sure the grandparent poster wasn't British.
Hydro isn't the main method of production over here in the U.K. The figures for England and Wales are: 35% - Gas 34% - Coal 15% - Nuclear 7% - Pumped Storage & Renewables 5% - Interconnectors 4% - Oil
(Source: http://www.electricity.org.uk/media/documents/pdf/ Intro_UK_Elec_Ind.pdf There's more hydroelectric stuff in Scotland, which those figures don't cover though.
While I'm here, the power-line in question is a major National Grid line (Melksham - Seabank / Imperial Park) carrying 400kV, with a peak power-flow of 161MW along one circuit and 481MW along the other, according to the National Grid website. Even before I saw the directions I knew where it was as it's very distinctive - most pylons in the U.K. don't look like that, they have the three phases stacked one above the other on each side of the tower. The cable configuration in the photo is usually only used for brief hops over sudden hills, as it is in this case. I wonder if the fact that it has four sets of conductors nearest the ground rather than just two was a factor in him choosing that site? (Yes, it's quite near Bristol, however there are other lines, indeed stretches of that line, that are much nearer.)
You need to look up the difference between natural and even-tempered scales. In the latter, they're the same thing, in a natural scale they're not. Can supply more detail in the unlikely event you're interested.
Slashdot Mirror
E. E. "Doc" Smith?
Although "only" 40 now, I remember the OLD Lego that didn't stick together properly, especially not to the newer bricks (the ones we now all know and love). Some older relative gave me a hand-me-down box of old Lego which was a mixture of modern bricks and this weird stuff. Also the colour was slightly off, they were a creamy colour rather than white. As children in the early 70s my friends and I used to call it "mouldy Lego" - but Lego it was, it still had the logo on every brick, although in a slightly-different typeface. Looking at the Wikipedia page it seems that this was probably pre-1963 Lego (made of cellulose(!) acetate), so it was probably at least eight or nine years old by the time I was playing with it.
I believe the alterations were made by Alex Cox, the director, himself, in response to the BBC's request for cuts so that it could be shown. So he decided to go completely and humorously over-the-top in censoring his own film, partly to make a point, one suspects.
See http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/faqmf.htm
It's a thought, isn't it? Publicise how to make rootkits, until we're all drowning in them a few years down the line, then sell us all Palladium as a fix, with all the DRM/privacy implications as "a necessary inconvenience".
>
> intel compilers make AMD CPUs crash?
>
> please.
>
> specify exactly how intel compilers do this and maybe
> you have a case. show an ASM code snippet at least.
Not the CPU itself, but certainly the program that it's running: http://www.swallowtail.org/naughty-intel.html
An analog synth? If only it had been that easy! The definitive account of the making of the original Doctor Who theme tune can be found here. A fascinating read.
If it works like the Waitrose system, then the only difference in the actual shopping trolley is that it has a (dumb) cradle to put the handheld scanner in. The scanner itself goes back on a rack before you leave the shop.
Good call as to the probable reason for removing them, though, hadn't thought of that.
Yup, Waitrose in the UK have had this for ages.
>
> But the article is talking about a device mounted on the cart with a barcode scanner. You scan the items as you add them to the cart...
Yup, Waitrose in the UK has had this for some time now. From their website:
Quick Pay / Quick Check
Quick Check is our scan as you shop service.
Using a handheld scanner, you scan each item as you take it from the shelves. We supply you with special reusable bags, so you can pack as you go. When you have finished shopping, all that is left to do is pay at the Quick Check till, without having to unpack and re-pack your shopping...
You do have to have their account card to do it though.
Will keep "syzygy" in mind for future use though... ;-)
> There are two of them: General and Specific
General and Special.
> They would need a full time department just to handle issues like this.
Given their size and worldwide product reach, you'd think that Microsoft is the one company that would indeed have a full-time department to handle issues like that. And now it appears that they've realised this.
And yeah, Kashmir is quite a well-known dispute, but that's already been said.
I'm pretty sure that when I was at primary school in the mid-70s in the UK we were taught five oceans, but the fifth was called the Antarctic Ocean, not the Southern Ocean.
Generally speaking (not official titles, but in conversation and local papers) there's North-, Mid-, West-, South-West-, South- and South-East-Wales, but I've NEVER heard anybody refer to East Wales.
I guess you were just hideously unlucky with your choice of compass point there, but it does prove the point in a way! :-)
>Uncompressed digital Y'CbCr video can look really good.
It DOES look really good, as it seems you know. And HD looks stunning. But it's a shame that due to the
>MPEG-2 compression, 8-bit quantization artifacts, and poor displays
only people working in TV studios and equipment manufacturers ever get to see it as it should be. If the broadcasters only upped the bitrates by 50% it would be something. Doubled would be even better. But then you'd only be able to sell half the advertising space, wouldn't you?
Current digital TV is the video equivalent of a 128kbps MP3, if not worse.
As for your colour space stuff, plenty of people have already put you right; and I would back them up: I spent ten years designing broadcast video equipment that works in the YCbCr domain, and it's quite easy to generate so-called "illegal colours" that cannot be properly shown on an RGB device; notably the muddy dark green and lurid pink-purple that result from a data stream of all zeroes or all ones respectively.
He's correct on how component video works (it IS three signals just as he describes), but that has very little to do with the rod-cell response that Dr Zowie was talking about. If he'd read it properly he'd see that "the rod cells that are used for night vision have their own separate response spectrum, weighted heavily toward the blue/violet end of the spectrum", so they're NOT just luminance cells.
I might be wrong, but I think that for a short time some snake-oil shops actually DID sell colour-overlays for b/w sets just so that you could sort of pretend to keep with the Joneses. Utterly ludicrous, of course, I have no idea how they decided to put which colour where, or whether it just tinted the whole screen. I just know I read it once, a long time ago.
Egan is essential reading for anybody who likes hard science in their science-fiction. Best author I've read in years.
Enough of one to know that you got it wrong about TOS. :-)
The scale in TOS was that the velocity (in multiples of c) was the warp number cubed. So
Warp 1 = c
Warp 2 = 8c
Warp 3 = 27c
Warp 4 = 64c
and so on.
You're right that they rejigged it for TNG onwards such that Warp 10 was an infinite speed. And yes, VOY:Threshold was an appalling pile of poo, for any number of reasons.
Shall I say then, that in all my years of living in England and Wales I'd never heard the term used as a synonym for electric companies before. Shame on me, as my Dad was born and brought up in Ayr, and I visit now and then.
I did say that Scotland had more hydro power though, perhaps I didn't realise quite how much. ;-)
> Why are British power companies referred to as 'hydro?'
Um, they aren't. Or if they are, I've never noticed in all my years of existence in the U.K. We also tend to have "secondary schools" not "high schools", so I'm pretty sure the grandparent poster wasn't British.
Hydro isn't the main method of production over here in the U.K. The figures for England and Wales are:/ Intro_UK_Elec_Ind.pdf
35% - Gas
34% - Coal
15% - Nuclear
7% - Pumped Storage & Renewables
5% - Interconnectors
4% - Oil
(Source: http://www.electricity.org.uk/media/documents/pdf
There's more hydroelectric stuff in Scotland, which those figures don't cover though.
While I'm here, the power-line in question is a major National Grid line (Melksham - Seabank / Imperial Park) carrying 400kV, with a peak power-flow of 161MW along one circuit and 481MW along the other, according to the National Grid website. Even before I saw the directions I knew where it was as it's very distinctive - most pylons in the U.K. don't look like that, they have the three phases stacked one above the other on each side of the tower. The cable configuration in the photo is usually only used for brief hops over sudden hills, as it is in this case. I wonder if the fact that it has four sets of conductors nearest the ground rather than just two was a factor in him choosing that site? (Yes, it's quite near Bristol, however there are other lines, indeed stretches of that line, that are much nearer.)
Know what squiggleslash means about that kiddie porn story though, it was utterly disgraceful. More News of the World than Observer.
You need to look up the difference between natural and even-tempered scales. In the latter, they're the same thing, in a natural scale they're not. Can supply more detail in the unlikely event you're interested.