Now I can only dream of Creative going under and someone like Nvidia and the ex-Aureal engineers they employed for SoundStorm finally bringing us true positional 3D audio.
Except that nVidia once did something very similar to 3DFX.
You won't see any difference between 8, 12 and 16 bit per channel images with most cards.
This is 99% true for image VIEWING programs. However for image MANIPULATION programs (like the GIMP) it's a very different story.
Say for example you have a photograph that is underexposed such that the brightest pixel is 25% gray. For the sake of argument let's deal with a grayscale image (or just one channel of an RGB image).
On a histogram all the 'bars' for this underexposed picture will be bunched up the left side, occupying the first 25% of the graph. If you want to fix it, you would normally spread out the histogram so that the bars span the whole graph (ie whites appear white instead of 25% gray). Since our shades were originally bunched up we only have a quarter of the possible number of shades available to us. Now if you only have 8 bits per channel there will only be 255/4=64 possible shades of gray in your picture, and banding effects will be very apparent. This will be apparent in the histogram since there will be distinct gaps between each bar.
Try it again with 16 bits per channel, hey let's do even 12 bits per channel. Our total number of gray shades is now 2^12=4096. Divide that by 4=1024 shades to spread out. You can downsample that to 256 shades and still get a full 24-bpp image with no banding. The histogram will now be a continuous solid shape with no gaps (unless any were present in the original image).
With China's abominable human rights record and blatant disregard for it's own (UN-approved) constitution, I'm amazed that companies with any ethics whatsoever are even contemplating doing business with scum like that.
You may as well start selling chemicals for Gas Chambers at Auswhitz. Oh wait...
Just because these jokers have money are we just going to roll over and acquiesce to their own view of the world?
Most people don't realize this, but if you crank up the DVD bitrate to maximum, you'll eat up almost an entire layer in an hour. We need more space...and hence, the new format.
...than a society that suffers very rare and mild terrorist attacks. (Killing Americans at 0.001% the rate of common car accidents.)
Except that there aren't dozens of camps of "car accidents" being trained up in the Middle East with the sole purpose of "happenning" one day in the US.
Never forget that the objective of Islam, apart from the destruction of Christianity and Israel, is to establish every country as a Muslim state, including the US. If that has to mean "death to the infidels", then so be it.
Don't kid yourself. If there was no national security and all Americans had the liberties they think they somehow deserve, these terrorists would jump at the opportunity and bring down the delicate infastructure in a matter of months.
Not that I'm advocating a police state; I'm just saying the issue isn't as clear cut as we would like it to be.
I mean, running on multiple archs is cool and all, but if it pulls down the medium range then what's been gained?
Exactly. Throwing out features to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the name of portability is great for the those fringe architectures that hardly anyone uses, but lowers the standard for the vast majority of users (i386 etc).
What's wrong with going on a feature by feature basis? eg " Feature X: Supported platforms: i386, PPC, AMD64 Unsupported platforms: the rest "
He seems to be warning us against using SUVs as a scapegoat for all energy-inefficient processes.
Sure, they're a prime example of energy inefficiency, but they most certainly aren't the only one. How much energy and oil was used to make the computer monitor you're looking at? The chair you're sitting on? The microwave dinner in your freezer?
Slashdot Mirror
Now I can only dream of Creative going under and someone like Nvidia and the ex-Aureal engineers they employed for SoundStorm finally bringing us true positional 3D audio.
:)
Except that nVidia once did something very similar to 3DFX.
An excellent post otherwise though
... the way George talks I wouldn't be surprised if the original non-special-edition films had already sufferred this fate.
So Java isn't slow anymore.
It just lacks a decent FOSS implementation.
You won't see any difference between 8, 12 and 16 bit per channel images with most cards.
This is 99% true for image VIEWING programs.
However for image MANIPULATION programs (like the GIMP) it's a very different story.
Say for example you have a photograph that is underexposed such that the brightest pixel is 25% gray. For the sake of argument let's deal with a grayscale image (or just one channel of an RGB image).
On a histogram all the 'bars' for this underexposed picture will be bunched up the left side, occupying the first 25% of the graph. If you want to fix it, you would normally spread out the histogram so that the bars span the whole graph (ie whites appear white instead of 25% gray). Since our shades were originally bunched up we only have a quarter of the possible number of shades available to us. Now if you only have 8 bits per channel there will only be 255/4=64 possible shades of gray in your picture, and banding effects will be very apparent. This will be apparent in the histogram since there will be distinct gaps between each bar.
Try it again with 16 bits per channel, hey let's do even 12 bits per channel. Our total number of gray shades is now 2^12=4096. Divide that by 4=1024 shades to spread out. You can downsample that to 256 shades and still get a full 24-bpp image with no banding. The histogram will now be a continuous solid shape with no gaps (unless any were present in the original image).
Still only 8 bits per channel? This means it is /still/ next to useless for serious photo manipulation.
Every other aspect of the GIMP is brilliant and very usable, but being locked into 24bpp RGB is a show-stopper for my line of work.
Honestly, it's not that hard to do. CinePaint (aka FilmGIMP) has had this feature for quite some time now. What's the holdup? Plugin limitaitons?
Boo because they come from Fraunhofer.
...of how capatilism doesn't work.
These providers have no obligation whatsoever to provide any level of redundancy so long as you keep paying their bills.
Yes because as we all know the pornography industry has headed the invention of the computer, the digital watch and the question mark.
The scary part is, there's probably someone who actually believes this stuff.
...or you could just buy an iRiver right now.
Why is this even an issue?
With China's abominable human rights record and blatant disregard for it's own (UN-approved) constitution, I'm amazed that companies with any ethics whatsoever are even contemplating doing business with scum like that.
You may as well start selling chemicals for Gas Chambers at Auswhitz. Oh wait...
Just because these jokers have money are we just going to roll over and acquiesce to their own view of the world?
You'd think Mr Shuttleworth could afford to buy wiki.ubuntu.com a real SSL certificate...
Most people don't realize this, but if you crank up the DVD bitrate to maximum, you'll eat up almost an entire layer in an hour. We need more space...and hence, the new format.
Or just a more efficient video codec, say, MPEG4.
Except that the novels aren't canon. Lucas authorizes them but he isn't dictated to by them.
Unless you still believe Boba Fett's real name is Jaster Merell.
Nonetheless they're still a fun read.
s/hollywood/lucasfilm/g
Hollywood had very little to do with any of the Star Wars movies.
...than a society that suffers very rare and mild terrorist attacks. (Killing Americans at 0.001% the rate of common car accidents.)
Except that there aren't dozens of camps of "car accidents" being trained up in the Middle East with the sole purpose of "happenning" one day in the US.
Never forget that the objective of Islam, apart from the destruction of Christianity and Israel, is to establish every country as a Muslim state, including the US. If that has to mean "death to the infidels", then so be it.
Don't kid yourself. If there was no national security and all Americans had the liberties they think they somehow deserve, these terrorists would jump at the opportunity and bring down the delicate infastructure in a matter of months.
Not that I'm advocating a police state; I'm just saying the issue isn't as clear cut as we would like it to be.
Truly yours is a comment without parallel.
... I sincerely hope they don't think the only portable music player out there is white with an Apple logo on it?
Surely?
Gnumeric is nice, but I still haven't figured how to get it to import tab-delimited text from a file that doesn't have a .CSV extension!
Right, I'll have an Athlon64 3500+ Mandriva box, thanks. ...
...
uh, heh heh sorry I thought I'd heard you say you didn't do AMD.
(walks to door, crosses road)
When they abolish DRM formats, of course!
$100 million? Pah.
You couldn't pay me enough to use Windows Vista.
I mean, running on multiple archs is cool and all, but if it pulls down the medium range then what's been gained?
Exactly. Throwing out features to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the name of portability is great for the those fringe architectures that hardly anyone uses, but lowers the standard for the vast majority of users (i386 etc).
What's wrong with going on a feature by feature basis?
eg
"
Feature X: Supported platforms:
i386, PPC, AMD64
Unsupported platforms:
the rest
"
Quick, go tell your 2IC!
I don't think he said that driving SUVs was okay.
He seems to be warning us against using SUVs as a scapegoat for all energy-inefficient processes.
Sure, they're a prime example of energy inefficiency, but they most certainly aren't the only one. How much energy and oil was used to make the computer monitor you're looking at? The chair you're sitting on? The microwave dinner in your freezer?
Like a proper little Darwin
Well there's a start to your bad science right there.