It's easy to say "there's this problem and that problem and this other problem here, man the whole thing's just totally fucked!", reality is never that oversimplified.
Email is being destroyed by SPAM: So.. people are just turning off their computers? No! There's forums, there's instant messaging, and there's chat. If that's not enough reason to calm down, then consider that SPAM will force email to evolve to be more secure. Heck, just the other day I had to fill out a challenge in order to get a message to somebody. Sorry, I don't see this as reason for people to leave the net.
Google's getting flooded with crap: And Google's not going to work to fix that?
Tasteless web design and pop-ups make people leave: Cable TV has 70 channels and people have trouble finding stuff to watch. Yet, the few things they do like make it all worth it. Why is the net different?
The Internet means sitting at noisy and unreliable machines that would land any self-respecting consumer manufacturer with a class action suit: Uh okay. First off, computers aren't that unreliable. As a matter of fact, I think most people would agree they've improved considerably since 95. Remember the days when you'd get randomly disconnected from the net and you'd have to dial up again? Thanks to broadband, that's no biggie. Remember the Windows 95/98 days where you had to reboot at least once/twice a day to be productive? 2000, XP, and Linux have killed that problem. The standards on the internet have improved, so there's not so much in terms of "Oh you have to have this browser, or that plugin, etc". Fewer hiccups. It's even becoming hard to find broken links on the web. They're there, but in the olden days you used to cross your fingers and pray this link works.
So yeah, some annoyances about the net have been brought to light. However, predicting the death of the internet is ridiculous. Humans have a way of overweighing negatives and underweighing positives. "Hmm this new job pays more money, but I like the people at my current job and I'd probably die from missing them so much!" With all the problems he's listed, he's skipped over a few things:
- People have friends/communities on line. - The internet has useful information and files available. Great for pursuing hobbies. - There's still plenty to explore. - The world is full of news (like the war in Iraq) that people want to be up to date on.
None of the problems he's listed will nullify any of the above points which are critically important to a LOT of people.
"In the new Zelda game, for example, you could use the Gameboy Advance connection to summon up a little flying dude that would drop bombs to uncover secret treasures. But you don't need to do it, and it adds nothing to the game experience. "
Actually, if you have a friend watching over your shoulder, (or an obnoxious sibling) it gives them something they can do. You don't just look for stuff with him, he can fight enemies as well. You can drop bombs on enemies for 10 rupees. There are other spells as well, I haven't had time to mess with them yet. It's a co-operative addition. You don't need it to beat the game, but it's more than just 'nothing'. Don't be so cynical about it.
"That has to be the most funniest anology I have ever seen. Are you seriously trying to compare Quake to windowed GUIs? Put down the crack pipe buddy. "
No. For a comparison I'd have to use terms such as 'like' or 'as'. In this case, I was just illustrating a point. Feel free to try to understand what I was saying.
"no matter what my personal opinion is.... i have a dream that one day someone will let a thread ride, without a ms or *nix comment. ok so it will never happen, but a dream is a dream"
Windows 2000 and XP users find BSOD jokes stale. It's the Linux equivalent of jokes about over-reliance on the CLI. "Tee hee, if Linux were a car, you'd have to have to use the keyboard just to start it." "Hehe yeah! And if the car fails to start, it's probably because the caps lock is on! Snicker snicker, snort snort." If you rolled your eyes at that joke, then imagine how an informed Windows user responds to BSOD jokes. "That is soooo 1999."
"Sadly enough, most GUI replacements are mere hacks, and usually have to build on the already unstable native windows stuff. It's even more fun when you try to run serious graphics applications or, god forbid, games."
I haven't had stability issues with the desktop switcher or shell replacement. I've run into a couple of bugs, but not instability.
For the record, Windows 95/98/Me is NOT the MS standard for stability. 2000 and even XP are quite stable. I have a dual processor, dual monitor athlon sitting on my desk that does 3D rendering. I reboot maybe once every two weeks and I've never lost an overnight or weekend render. I've had 3 other machines running 2k and they were equally stable. They all kick ass at playing games as well.:P
"Your desktop looks cool. I got a laptop that can't seem to run anything but winders, and I'd love to get ahold of whatever you used to give yourself multiple desktops and such. Mind linking to the base software? (Hey, I don't mind paying if it works worth a crap.) "
Here you go. For $40 you get both the desktop replacement & the multi desktop app. I've used them for like 3 months now and I only have one complaint. It messes up Windows XP's suspend mode. Something doesn't come back out properly. Suspend mode worked great until Aston was installed on my laptop. Oh well. Just wanted to warn ya. Other than that, I've had no instabilities with either the desktop or desktop switching apps.
The desktop switching app (Altdesk) is the best thing that's happened to my interface in a long time. It works the way the task bar should. It was worth it just for that.
I think you'd be surprised at how your computing needs change once you start using the two apps. I can tell you I'm a lot more organized + productive with them.;)
"OK, now start an application, like... say minesweeper. Is it themed ? "
With AstonDesktop? No.
With WindowBlinds? Yes. I used to have WindowBlinds a couple of years ago and they added buttons to each window to do things like roll-up or make always on top.
A combination of the two apps is supposed to be pretty damn cool.
"Ok.. Why not have trunk mounted 8 CD CD-Burners ? Each hour is burned to CD media and then at the end of the shift, the "technician" takes the 8 CD's and burns them onto a DVD, the CD's are then destroyed and the DVD placed into "evidence" ?"
There are a few cons that make this an unattractive idea:
1.) The disc(s) would have to be loaded. (Uh why not go straight to DVD? Did I miss something?) People are human and they could be forgotten. A hard drive based video repository would be automatic.
2.) Security vulnerabilities. You'd need a clerk to keep track of the DVD's. Plus, if one goes missing, there'd be little to no info regarding what happened. If everything's stored on a central server, then access of a file would be logged. It's a lot easier to walk off with 'evidence' than it is to hack into a system and muck with stuff.
3.) Backups aren't easy to do. If the place burns down. That's it. With a central server, they could mirror the data elsewhere. If it's not practical today, it will be before long.
4.) Every time the disc is accessed, there's the potentiality of damage. If the disc is scratched while being taken to an investigator, it's dead.
Like I said, these are just cons, not intended as devastating blows to your alternative suggestion.
"See another poster's post about the distinction between themes (as we use the term here) and "mere" skins."
Even if he meant skin, his point still only works in an over-simplified sense. A lot of a user's interaction with their computer is reflex based triggered by the imagery they're seeing. Landmarks form when you have skins that people can react from.
To put it another way, how easy would it be to play Quake CTF if both sides had the same skin? You'd have to put more brain power into figuring out who's who.
" No statements about the compression algorithm used were made in the article."
They said 3.5 terabytes of storage held 5,000 hours of footage. Doing the math I arrived at 700 megs per hour. I am not a mathematician so if I messed up a decimal point then somebody please correct me. Assuming my math is right, then the only possible way they're storing the footage is to use a codec, likely of MPEG4 relation. (DivX maybe?)
"Second: 13 gigs/hour at 720x480 (DVD quality) is not uncompressed. It's compressed DV, which is (I believe) a variant of Motion JPEG. "
I damn near argued with you on this point, but I decided to verify your claim about it being MPEG based compression before doing that. Glad I did because you're right! DV is probably MPEG related which means that it is a lossy codec. I didn't know that. I've read a million times that it's a lossless codec. However, I did an experiment, and you do lose quality every time you compress with DV. I'm *very* glad you mentioned that because now I know not to use that as an archival format. I guess the reason that myth is about is that you can copy the DV video from tape to tape without generation loss. That's absolutely true. You don't have to de/recompress to transfer the footage. Damn, I've been reading a DV mag a lot lately and never latched on to that detail. *grump* In any case, my claim that it was lossless was wrong. That probably negates that whole point there. (Maybe... the difference wasn't noticable without heavy analysis.)
I never meant to imply that the 13 gigs/hour number was uncompressed. That's the native format of digital video cameras. They're not going to capture it uncompressed. I don't think you can do that with today's products. (I might be wrong, been a while since I looked that up.)
"Third: Given that laptop hard drives are available in sizes up to 60 GB, it's entirely possible for them to be storing raw DV video. With a 60GB laptop drive, you could store over 5 hours of video without recompressing it. Go to a shock-mounted 3.5" drive and 60GB is SMALL."
Capturing that much footage isn't the problem. The problem is archiving it. If a single officer is capturing 60 gigs of day, you run out of terabytes REAL fast.
Here's what my desktop looks like. It's customized with my own (in progress) artwork on it. And yes, those are buttons and multiple desktops there. Some of the stuff there is default, and some of it I added on my own.
So yes, you can modify your 'hard-coded' theme. Somebody's already gone through all the work to do it.
"Right. Because themes are the most important thing, ever. This isn't an media player, it's a GUI."
Themes are the UI. When you customize your theme to put buttons where you need them, then you're making your UI more useful to you. I thought customization was a big whoop-dee-doo feature of Linux. Now it's being poo-poo'd?
Re:We Need Good Watermarking
on
DVRs for Cop Cars
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
"Imagine a Rodney King scenario, but since the cops have it on digital video they could "edit in" some attack footage before the beating starts. Call me paranoid, but it would be possible. "
Paranoid.:)
First off, if you do the math, it's about 700 megs per hour of footage, as opposed the 13 gig it'd take to losslessly compress it. In order to edit somebody in, the video'd have to be recompressed, and that would be noticable upon analysis.
Secondly, it is *very* hard to digitally add/replace somebody in a video. Professional studios have difficulty doing thing, it's inconcievable that the police could cover something up that way. They wouldn't have the talent on their own and the money needed to do it enough to not raise eyebrows would raise eyebrows.
It'd actually be easier to pull that off with plain old VHS camcorders. You can duplicate them without too much quality loss. (Or at least noticable.) The video's lower res and fuzzier so it'd be easy to mask effects. The higher the resolution and color accuracy of video, the harder it is to satisfactorally match it.
"Devices like this ensure that geeks do not get laid by the cute coworker down the hall. "
Perhaps, but they do ensure that you're the one the cute coworker down the hall comes to when she needs her computer fixed. For a lot of geeks, that's a drastic improvement. Remember when the comic book store guy tried to push through the Vulcan Pon Farr ritual? It's kinda like that.
"Anyway, as the admins have been pleading for a little while now, may I suggest using the meta-moderation power at your disposal occasionally? Takes about 1 minute to do... "
Actually I have been doing that. Unfortunately, there's still the matter of somebody getting dropped under the average threshold and not having their words read. That's why I tried to draw some attention to it. (I usually get modded off-topic in the process. Good thing I have 'excellent karma'.)
Truth be told, I'm not sure the moderators get the point when I meta-mod them as unfair. I labled one unfair a couple of days ago because somebody made an obscure (yet relevant) reference and he got modded 'off-topic' for it. I suspect he just didn't get the reference and thought somebody was just babbling. He didn't take two seconds (like I did) to do a google search and understand the reference. So when I meta-mod him as unfair, he may not have realized why.
At least when I bitch in a comment, another dude with mod points can say "Hey! He has a point!", although usually they say "hey! There's somebody I can mod down! Ooo that gives me tingles."
"You know what we really want -- booth babe pictures! "
Off-topic? Booth babes are half the experience of E3! I'm not joking or being sarcastic about that. E3 would not be the same if not for the booth attractions.
Is it just me, or am I finding a lot of inappropriate 'Off-topic' moderations lately?
Slashdot Mirror
Just curious if this could also mean stronger steel. Okay, I've been watching Knight Rider, sue me.
"How about engine parts? They might make an engine that would run for a half million miles with normal oil changes."
;)
Yeah, I'm sure the car industry will hop all over the ability to provide cars that last longer.
"Hopefully "people" will be victorious over "government sanctioned actions". "
Well, in this case the Gov't isn't the big bad guy. It's the corporations.
"Using this same logic you could conclude that snail mail (normal postal mail) is a failure."
Same goes for television, the record store, the Playstation, and the cinema.
It's easy to say "there's this problem and that problem and this other problem here, man the whole thing's just totally fucked!", reality is never that oversimplified.
Email is being destroyed by SPAM: So.. people are just turning off their computers? No! There's forums, there's instant messaging, and there's chat. If that's not enough reason to calm down, then consider that SPAM will force email to evolve to be more secure. Heck, just the other day I had to fill out a challenge in order to get a message to somebody. Sorry, I don't see this as reason for people to leave the net.
Google's getting flooded with crap: And Google's not going to work to fix that?
Tasteless web design and pop-ups make people leave: Cable TV has 70 channels and people have trouble finding stuff to watch. Yet, the few things they do like make it all worth it. Why is the net different?
The Internet means sitting at noisy and unreliable machines that would land any self-respecting consumer manufacturer with a class action suit: Uh okay. First off, computers aren't that unreliable. As a matter of fact, I think most people would agree they've improved considerably since 95. Remember the days when you'd get randomly disconnected from the net and you'd have to dial up again? Thanks to broadband, that's no biggie. Remember the Windows 95/98 days where you had to reboot at least once/twice a day to be productive? 2000, XP, and Linux have killed that problem. The standards on the internet have improved, so there's not so much in terms of "Oh you have to have this browser, or that plugin, etc". Fewer hiccups. It's even becoming hard to find broken links on the web. They're there, but in the olden days you used to cross your fingers and pray this link works.
So yeah, some annoyances about the net have been brought to light. However, predicting the death of the internet is ridiculous. Humans have a way of overweighing negatives and underweighing positives. "Hmm this new job pays more money, but I like the people at my current job and I'd probably die from missing them so much!" With all the problems he's listed, he's skipped over a few things:
- People have friends/communities on line.
- The internet has useful information and files available. Great for pursuing hobbies.
- There's still plenty to explore.
- The world is full of news (like the war in Iraq) that people want to be up to date on.
None of the problems he's listed will nullify any of the above points which are critically important to a LOT of people.
"Since when did the earth have two moons? Is it possible to see the other one? "
That's no moon....
"In the new Zelda game, for example, you could use the Gameboy Advance connection to summon up a little flying dude that would drop bombs to uncover secret treasures. But you don't need to do it, and it adds nothing to the game experience. "
Actually, if you have a friend watching over your shoulder, (or an obnoxious sibling) it gives them something they can do. You don't just look for stuff with him, he can fight enemies as well. You can drop bombs on enemies for 10 rupees. There are other spells as well, I haven't had time to mess with them yet. It's a co-operative addition.
You don't need it to beat the game, but it's more than just 'nothing'. Don't be so cynical about it.
" Finding out that the PAL GC has no S-video stopped me from buying one."
I hope I'm never that elite.
"That has to be the most funniest anology I have ever seen. Are you seriously trying to compare Quake to windowed GUIs? Put down the crack pipe buddy. "
No. For a comparison I'd have to use terms such as 'like' or 'as'. In this case, I was just illustrating a point. Feel free to try to understand what I was saying.
"no matter what my personal opinion is.... i have a dream that one day someone will let a thread ride, without a ms or *nix comment. ok so it will never happen, but a dream is a dream"
Windows 2000 and XP users find BSOD jokes stale. It's the Linux equivalent of jokes about over-reliance on the CLI. "Tee hee, if Linux were a car, you'd have to have to use the keyboard just to start it." "Hehe yeah! And if the car fails to start, it's probably because the caps lock is on! Snicker snicker, snort snort." If you rolled your eyes at that joke, then imagine how an informed Windows user responds to BSOD jokes. "That is soooo 1999."
"My wife introduced me to this
how to use technology to avoid work
Buy a vibrator. "
That wouldn't bother me if your teeth weren't chipped.
"Sadly enough, most GUI replacements are mere hacks, and usually have to build on the already unstable native windows stuff. It's even more fun when you try to run serious graphics applications or, god forbid, games."
:P
I haven't had stability issues with the desktop switcher or shell replacement. I've run into a couple of bugs, but not instability.
For the record, Windows 95/98/Me is NOT the MS standard for stability. 2000 and even XP are quite stable. I have a dual processor, dual monitor athlon sitting on my desk that does 3D rendering. I reboot maybe once every two weeks and I've never lost an overnight or weekend render. I've had 3 other machines running 2k and they were equally stable. They all kick ass at playing games as well.
"Your desktop looks cool. I got a laptop that can't seem to run anything but winders, and I'd love to get ahold of whatever you used to give yourself multiple desktops and such. Mind linking to the base software? (Hey, I don't mind paying if it works worth a crap.) "
;)
Here you go. For $40 you get both the desktop replacement & the multi desktop app. I've used them for like 3 months now and I only have one complaint. It messes up Windows XP's suspend mode. Something doesn't come back out properly. Suspend mode worked great until Aston was installed on my laptop. Oh well. Just wanted to warn ya. Other than that, I've had no instabilities with either the desktop or desktop switching apps.
The desktop switching app (Altdesk) is the best thing that's happened to my interface in a long time. It works the way the task bar should. It was worth it just for that.
I think you'd be surprised at how your computing needs change once you start using the two apps. I can tell you I'm a lot more organized + productive with them.
"OK, now start an application, like ... say minesweeper. Is it themed ? "
With AstonDesktop? No.
With WindowBlinds? Yes. I used to have WindowBlinds a couple of years ago and they added buttons to each window to do things like roll-up or make always on top.
A combination of the two apps is supposed to be pretty damn cool.
" Give me a PDA any day. "
Okie doke. That'll be $500 (bluetooth card sold seperately).
"Ok.. Why not have trunk mounted 8 CD CD-Burners ? Each hour is burned to CD media and then at the end of the shift, the "technician" takes the 8 CD's and burns them onto a DVD, the CD's are then destroyed and the DVD placed into "evidence" ?"
There are a few cons that make this an unattractive idea:
1.) The disc(s) would have to be loaded. (Uh why not go straight to DVD? Did I miss something?) People are human and they could be forgotten. A hard drive based video repository would be automatic.
2.) Security vulnerabilities. You'd need a clerk to keep track of the DVD's. Plus, if one goes missing, there'd be little to no info regarding what happened. If everything's stored on a central server, then access of a file would be logged. It's a lot easier to walk off with 'evidence' than it is to hack into a system and muck with stuff.
3.) Backups aren't easy to do. If the place burns down. That's it. With a central server, they could mirror the data elsewhere. If it's not practical today, it will be before long.
4.) Every time the disc is accessed, there's the potentiality of damage. If the disc is scratched while being taken to an investigator, it's dead.
Like I said, these are just cons, not intended as devastating blows to your alternative suggestion.
"See another poster's post about the distinction between themes (as we use the term here) and "mere" skins."
Even if he meant skin, his point still only works in an over-simplified sense. A lot of a user's interaction with their computer is reflex based triggered by the imagery they're seeing. Landmarks form when you have skins that people can react from.
To put it another way, how easy would it be to play Quake CTF if both sides had the same skin? You'd have to put more brain power into figuring out who's who.
" No statements about the compression algorithm used were made in the article."
They said 3.5 terabytes of storage held 5,000 hours of footage. Doing the math I arrived at 700 megs per hour. I am not a mathematician so if I messed up a decimal point then somebody please correct me. Assuming my math is right, then the only possible way they're storing the footage is to use a codec, likely of MPEG4 relation. (DivX maybe?)
"Second: 13 gigs/hour at 720x480 (DVD quality) is not uncompressed. It's compressed DV, which is (I believe) a variant of Motion JPEG. "
I damn near argued with you on this point, but I decided to verify your claim about it being MPEG based compression before doing that. Glad I did because you're right! DV is probably MPEG related which means that it is a lossy codec. I didn't know that. I've read a million times that it's a lossless codec. However, I did an experiment, and you do lose quality every time you compress with DV. I'm *very* glad you mentioned that because now I know not to use that as an archival format. I guess the reason that myth is about is that you can copy the DV video from tape to tape without generation loss. That's absolutely true. You don't have to de/recompress to transfer the footage. Damn, I've been reading a DV mag a lot lately and never latched on to that detail. *grump* In any case, my claim that it was lossless was wrong. That probably negates that whole point there. (Maybe... the difference wasn't noticable without heavy analysis.)
I never meant to imply that the 13 gigs/hour number was uncompressed. That's the native format of digital video cameras. They're not going to capture it uncompressed. I don't think you can do that with today's products. (I might be wrong, been a while since I looked that up.)
"Third: Given that laptop hard drives are available in sizes up to 60 GB, it's entirely possible for them to be storing raw DV video. With a 60GB laptop drive, you could store over 5 hours of video without recompressing it. Go to a shock-mounted 3.5" drive and 60GB is SMALL."
Capturing that much footage isn't the problem. The problem is archiving it. If a single officer is capturing 60 gigs of day, you run out of terabytes REAL fast.
"If I could re-theme my hardcoded windows GUI, themes would be the most important thing, ever. "
You can re-theme it. Check out this thread here.
Here's what my desktop looks like. It's customized with my own (in progress) artwork on it. And yes, those are buttons and multiple desktops there. Some of the stuff there is default, and some of it I added on my own.
So yes, you can modify your 'hard-coded' theme. Somebody's already gone through all the work to do it.
"Right. Because themes are the most important thing, ever. This isn't an media player, it's a GUI."
Themes are the UI. When you customize your theme to put buttons where you need them, then you're making your UI more useful to you. I thought customization was a big whoop-dee-doo feature of Linux. Now it's being poo-poo'd?
"Just gotta remember my EMP when driving about. "
"Sir, please turn off the vacuum..."
"Imagine a Rodney King scenario, but since the cops have it on digital video they could "edit in" some attack footage before the beating starts. Call me paranoid, but it would be possible. "
:)
Paranoid.
First off, if you do the math, it's about 700 megs per hour of footage, as opposed the 13 gig it'd take to losslessly compress it. In order to edit somebody in, the video'd have to be recompressed, and that would be noticable upon analysis.
Secondly, it is *very* hard to digitally add/replace somebody in a video. Professional studios have difficulty doing thing, it's inconcievable that the police could cover something up that way. They wouldn't have the talent on their own and the money needed to do it enough to not raise eyebrows would raise eyebrows.
It'd actually be easier to pull that off with plain old VHS camcorders. You can duplicate them without too much quality loss. (Or at least noticable.) The video's lower res and fuzzier so it'd be easy to mask effects. The higher the resolution and color accuracy of video, the harder it is to satisfactorally match it.
I wouldn't worry.
"Devices like this ensure that geeks do not get laid by the cute coworker down the hall. "
Perhaps, but they do ensure that you're the one the cute coworker down the hall comes to when she needs her computer fixed. For a lot of geeks, that's a drastic improvement. Remember when the comic book store guy tried to push through the Vulcan Pon Farr ritual? It's kinda like that.
"Anyway, as the admins have been pleading for a little while now, may I suggest using the meta-moderation power at your disposal occasionally? Takes about 1 minute to do... "
Actually I have been doing that. Unfortunately, there's still the matter of somebody getting dropped under the average threshold and not having their words read. That's why I tried to draw some attention to it. (I usually get modded off-topic in the process. Good thing I have 'excellent karma'.)
Truth be told, I'm not sure the moderators get the point when I meta-mod them as unfair. I labled one unfair a couple of days ago because somebody made an obscure (yet relevant) reference and he got modded 'off-topic' for it. I suspect he just didn't get the reference and thought somebody was just babbling. He didn't take two seconds (like I did) to do a google search and understand the reference. So when I meta-mod him as unfair, he may not have realized why.
At least when I bitch in a comment, another dude with mod points can say "Hey! He has a point!", although usually they say "hey! There's somebody I can mod down! Ooo that gives me tingles."
"You know what we really want -- booth babe pictures! "
Off-topic? Booth babes are half the experience of E3! I'm not joking or being sarcastic about that. E3 would not be the same if not for the booth attractions.
Is it just me, or am I finding a lot of inappropriate 'Off-topic' moderations lately?