Yes, because if we had matter replication technology, there would no longer be an economy for anything but the utilities to power those matter replicators.
The problem is, once you had a matter replicator, you could replicate some solar panels for you and all your neighbors, and then live off the grid! Use the sun's energy to matter replicate all your food, clothes, toys, batteries, etc.
Whenver a company with good engineers but bad marketing dies, not only is there a loss of decent hardware, but also a loss of information. I can't find the original programmers' specs for the Voodoo series anywhere. I used to have the Voodoo3 specs in PDF, but lost it. Does anyone have the Voodoo3 specs? I've got an old voodoo3 sitting around, and I miss hardware level programming it.... 3dfx was the only recent company that was so friendly to Open Source, Free Software, and independent developers as to give out driver source code and hardware specs. Of course, though, some troll is going to try to blame their failure on the fact that they were the only company giving out source code, or that their OSS friendliness was simply a sign of their coming demise...
I have repaired VHS tapes by using a razor blade to cut out a damaged section, and then very carefully use masking tape to attach the two remaning sections of tape together. The first time I tried, I screwed up horribly, and the masking tape was too big to fit through the hole in the VHS cassette. After that though, as long as it's thin enough, and doesn't have bumps or anything, the splice is not noticably more damaging than watching previously viewed or rental tapes is.
I believe that razor blades were (are?) also used in editing of 35mm film back in the day. Otherwise, where would the term used in Premiere have come from?
So yes, it's entirely possible to splice VHS tapes. Really though, it's the spirit of the law that matters, so I don't know if CleanFlicks is actually doing that.
Why hate Utah? There are a lot of artistic wonders in Utah (Utah Symphony, Mormon Tabernacle Choir), not to mention a lot of natural rock formations that have an artistic quality (Goblin Valley, Arches Nat'l Park, Bryce Canyon, Zion's Nat'l Park, etc.). The things you list as your reasons for hating Utah are stereotypes. You hate the stereotype.
Though I have to admit.. while highly inaccurate, the "Mormon Twins" characters from Ocean's Eleven were extremely hilarious. (Do I have my movies right? It was Ocean's Eleven, wasn't it?)
Ocean's Eleven is also a movie that would still retain its original story if the curses were bleeped, dubbed, or muted.
Actually, I know of at least two companies who are producing licensed DVD players that can accept a cut list. One company is spending its time developing ways to speed rotoscoping and masking (frame by frame covering of nudity), while the other is developing the player that can skip scenes altogether. All three of these companies (CleanFlicks, and the two DVD player companies) are in Utah, and there are rumors that CleanFlicks will start distributing the DVD players and cut lists when they are released.
There are also Open Source attempts at a software-only cut list player, but there seems to be a lack of progress there.
OT:
How I wish the DVD spec was open... It costs $5000 to buy it, plus the per-player royalties. Per-player royalties for a $200 player are at least $30 according to one page I read. I think for a software only player it would be something like $8-$10 for a $30 software player. If the spec was open, anybody could make a compatible player. Closing the spec did nothing to stop piracy... All it did was piss off the users of alternative OS'es and believers in a more utopian ideal of software.
I don't know if this system will help or hurt. All I can think of is that it seems a system like this could have possibly prevented the disasters of 9/11/2001.
How? All this anti-Muslim racist bull crap started after 91101. Before then, how would we know to target "persons of Middle Eastern descent?" These were guys who could have just been wantin to live the American dream, and become commercial airline pilots. Even if their links to international crime organizations were known beforehand, what if they themselves had never done anything wrong, and decided to change their ways? Without sufficient data, it's impossible for an algorithm to prevent crimes. Mostly the people who might be caught by the system this article refers to would be copycats, who would be taken care of by the existing means. I am convinced there is no way that the hijackings could have been prevented (Unless you choose to believe the conspiracy theorists who suggest that the administration allowed them to happen in order to improve public opinion of Dubya).
Naturally, I was grieved as I listened to the news that morning. I was hoping though that some good would come from it and the country would realize that some reformation of foreign policy is necessary. Instead, the exact opposite happens, the wool is pulled over the eyes of the people, and "The Beast" is as aggressive as ever. I'm not a cursing man, but hearing the things our government does "for your safety" makes me want to jump up and scream, "Who the **** gave you the right?" and so on.
Wow, you're rather fortunate. I would also describe my parents as average users. They call me "un-American" for running a communist OS and bashing captialism at every chance. Okay, so maybe that's an exaggeration, but people are a lot more varied than some give them credit for. Some are sheep, some are goats. uh.. no! just kidding... I've tried to show my parents how easy and cool Linux is, but they refuse to try new things.. though I did get my dad to assemble his computer once after I bought some new parts to put in it.
Don't forget Lindows, which is a fork from an earlier version of Xandros (IMO much better in its current 1.3 version that most linux distros, as far as ease of use goes).
What kind of information does the device send on the joystick port? Is it analog, across the axis lines, or digital, across the button lines? How should the data be interpreted? What happens when you try to treat the device as an actual joystick and calibrate it with the Windows control panel (assuming you're using Windows 95 or later)?
With more information, an open source developer such as myself could probably whip up a user-space driver that uses the generic Linux joystick API in a day's worth of spare time, without even needing the hardware.
There's already gnuplot to graph the datapoints once they've been acquired, too, or I've got lots of experience writing graphics stuff (I've written a 3D modeller, a 2D/3D function grapher, a linux framebuffer graphics library, some undistributed xmms plugins,...)...
If you record using a card based on the brooktree bt848/bt878 chipset, your recording software (which might have to be modified to grab the 25 line vbi information, since it's given in a different buffer, iirc) can also record the caption information from the VBI, and overlay it using some kind of OSD. I don't know if there's a consumer digital recording system, however, that preserves the VBI data within the file. I've always wanted to make one (don't have time to do much independent coding these days), or know if one existed, though.
I am aware of the differences, and while my personal software beliefs don't agree 100% with either movement, I'd say I'm probably more aligned to the Free Software movement. My intention was not to confuse people, but rather to indicate that there are similarities between the two, and that the Lindows awards are for both Free Software and Open Source. So, I suppose that my topic is actually an extension of the original topic from FS only into OSS/FS, but I don't think that invalidates my point.
Don't forget about Lindows's "Clicky Award..." Think what you will of Lindows, or LindowsOS, or the name "Clicky," but 50 grand donaed to Open Source software projects is 50 grand. Yeah, $50000US. Go forth and nominate!
Oh, and where it says "we will add you to our mailing database," you can immediately unsubscribe from the Lindows web page.
Notice he said "my eardrum," not "someone's eardrum." Even if it means trading off guard duty with friends bearing rifles to keep the thought police away, he's saying that his ear won't ever be encrypted.
Do you know how royally pissed I'd be if I went deaf some day and put up the cash for a DRM restricted cochlear implant? It's bad enough that there's a business of selling people's headspace (advertising).
Offtopic: Hey, why does slashdot get the ratings wrong all the time? When I replied to your comment, it was +5, Insightful, but after I hit reply, it's only +3, nothing. What gives?
Usually that means that whoever moderated the post made their own post to the discussion, cancelling their moderations. You can't moderate and post in the same discussion.
Pop music and teen idol status aside, it's good to know that scientists will be able to use more of the precious cargo space for useful purposes.
The sad thing is, on slashdot, we cheer when this sort of thing happens, while much of the rest of the world says "oh come on, cut him a break, he's a pop music god!"
Okay, so... 50 ads a day, times a penny, 50 cents a day, times 30 days in a month, 15 bucks a month for commercial free programming. Why not just pay the $15 and forget about the marketing dorks?
If Linus intends to willfully violate someone else's IP, he should have no problem with me violating his IP
Read his list post again -- he said he would willfully remain ignorant, and deal with any patent issues as they are brought to the kernel by the patent holders (as opposed to actively seeking patents on things that might one day be implemented in the kernel, slowing development significantly). Usually, as was the case with the free SVQ1 Sorenson codec, if patents are discovered which would impede development, a new algorithm that does the same thing can be created or implemented.
Of course, the 2.8 MHz sampling rate is ridiculous (24bit/96KHz is more than enough for almost anything)
That's 2.8MHz at 1-bit precision. See, sound is encoded on a SACD kind of based on density. The greater the amplitude, the greater the density of the on bits. This way, the audio can be rudimentarily decoded by passing the 2.8MHz stream through a 22kHz (or 30kHz if you want to annoy your dog as well as your neighbors) or so low-pass filter. You can convert that 2.8MHz 1-bit stream into a 192kHz/24-bit stream, or a 96kHz/32-bit stream, or whatever you want, because the sound information is still there. I'm not sure exactly how they convert an analog stream into a 2.8MHz stream of 1-bit data, because I'm getting my information from the super audio CD official website. (...like they'd give away crucial information to their competitors before all the patents are approved...) I'm sure it's just an engineering problem.
Way back when I was working on libfbx, we (the two main libfbx developers) learned of a 48-bit framebuffer developed by SGI. It's used mainly to render special FX for Hollywood. After several composited layers with various effects on an 8-bit per channel system, you can really start to notice the quantization artifacts. Moving to 12- or 16-bits per color channel (depending on whether there's an alpha channel) makes a huge improvement. I've never heard of any 16 byte per pixel (128bit) image format. It'd probably be something like 16-bits per channel RGBA (64), plus 32-bit depth buffer (96), plus 16-bit stencil and select(pick) buffers (128).
I already own a $400 POS desk phone called by the name of iPhone. It has a 640x480 monochrome touch screen. It was bundled with a bigplanet multi-level marketing scheme my parents bought into a few years ago. I doubt Apple would want to be associated with such a butt-ugly piece of hardware.
They'd have to come up with a better name if they released a phone of any kind.
...ease up the installer...names packages in accordance to functionality...
Well let's see.. LindowsOS does both those already. Your other point about X isn't really valid, because although it'd be nice to replace X with something like DirectFB, it's not really necessary, and would be difficult to do (X has hundreds of drivers, and the linux kernel has only a few framebuffer drivers. The conversion process is not trivial. I wrote an accelerated client driver for the 3dfx voodoo 3/4/5 for libfbx, and while it wasn't that difficult, it's not something you can just write a script to do).
I think the render farm is a pretty good idea. This product doesn't seem to be the kind of software to compete with Premiere. Even small studios with only 6 people usually have an extremely expensive (as much as $80g's or higher) dedicated render system in the basement or equipment room that does all the editing and effects in realtime, with client computers (usually Macintosh or SGI) doing little more than displaying the result. Larger houses don't usually have computers to do editing (at least not for the user interface), but instead have large consoles.
Compositing and 3D animation/CGI are usually done with single client computers and render farms, however.
Could you explain to a layperson (me) how you can see those phrases on the vinyl? Every piece of vinyl I've seen, it's hard enough just to see where one song ends and the next begins. Then again, the newest record I've seen is from 1978... Are records pressed differently now, or are trance records labeled somehow?
As for making it so you can identify phrasing and such, I always wondered how hard it would be to add a new type of packet to the Ogg (or some other) format, so that you can store uncompressed audio (or 320 kbit compressed for the super poor DJ's who can't afford to burn a lot of CD's yet...) in the file, along with beat and sample information for each audio frame. A playback program or digital turntable could read this information and build a visualization chart that looks something like
[Insert here the best ASCII art interface diagram ever that the lameness filter wouldn't pass through no matter how much I varied the characters -- see my/. journal for the ascii diagram]
Base song title/artist
Location of beats
Base song samples
< Sample1 > < Sample1 >
< - - - - Sample2 - - - - >
Sources added by the DJ
Line going through to indicate current position
Current song time Song time remaining
Current show time Show time remaining
P.S. -- If you're thinking of commercializing on this, then patent is pending (with free license to share-and-share-alike (i.e. GPL, LGPL...)projects). Otherwise, I'm too poor to file a patent.
At any rate, I've always wanted to try my hand at spinning some tracks, I've made some loop-based songs before (using my own loops that I created). What's the best way to start learning to DJ?
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Yes, because if we had matter replication technology, there would no longer be an economy for anything but the utilities to power those matter replicators.
The problem is, once you had a matter replicator, you could replicate some solar panels for you and all your neighbors, and then live off the grid! Use the sun's energy to matter replicate all your food, clothes, toys, batteries, etc.
Whenver a company with good engineers but bad marketing dies, not only is there a loss of decent hardware, but also a loss of information. I can't find the original programmers' specs for the Voodoo series anywhere. I used to have the Voodoo3 specs in PDF, but lost it. Does anyone have the Voodoo3 specs? I've got an old voodoo3 sitting around, and I miss hardware level programming it.... 3dfx was the only recent company that was so friendly to Open Source, Free Software, and independent developers as to give out driver source code and hardware specs. Of course, though, some troll is going to try to blame their failure on the fact that they were the only company giving out source code, or that their OSS friendliness was simply a sign of their coming demise...
I have repaired VHS tapes by using a razor blade to cut out a damaged section, and then very carefully use masking tape to attach the two remaning sections of tape together. The first time I tried, I screwed up horribly, and the masking tape was too big to fit through the hole in the VHS cassette. After that though, as long as it's thin enough, and doesn't have bumps or anything, the splice is not noticably more damaging than watching previously viewed or rental tapes is.
I believe that razor blades were (are?) also used in editing of 35mm film back in the day. Otherwise, where would the term used in Premiere have come from?
So yes, it's entirely possible to splice VHS tapes. Really though, it's the spirit of the law that matters, so I don't know if CleanFlicks is actually doing that.
Why hate Utah? There are a lot of artistic wonders in Utah (Utah Symphony, Mormon Tabernacle Choir), not to mention a lot of natural rock formations that have an artistic quality (Goblin Valley, Arches Nat'l Park, Bryce Canyon, Zion's Nat'l Park, etc.). The things you list as your reasons for hating Utah are stereotypes. You hate the stereotype.
Though I have to admit.. while highly inaccurate, the "Mormon Twins" characters from Ocean's Eleven were extremely hilarious. (Do I have my movies right? It was Ocean's Eleven, wasn't it?)
Ocean's Eleven is also a movie that would still retain its original story if the curses were bleeped, dubbed, or muted.
Actually, I know of at least two companies who are producing licensed DVD players that can accept a cut list. One company is spending its time developing ways to speed rotoscoping and masking (frame by frame covering of nudity), while the other is developing the player that can skip scenes altogether. All three of these companies (CleanFlicks, and the two DVD player companies) are in Utah, and there are rumors that CleanFlicks will start distributing the DVD players and cut lists when they are released.
There are also Open Source attempts at a software-only cut list player, but there seems to be a lack of progress there.
OT:
How I wish the DVD spec was open... It costs $5000 to buy it, plus the per-player royalties. Per-player royalties for a $200 player are at least $30 according to one page I read. I think for a software only player it would be something like $8-$10 for a $30 software player. If the spec was open, anybody could make a compatible player. Closing the spec did nothing to stop piracy... All it did was piss off the users of alternative OS'es and believers in a more utopian ideal of software.
How? All this anti-Muslim racist bull crap started after 91101. Before then, how would we know to target "persons of Middle Eastern descent?" These were guys who could have just been wantin to live the American dream, and become commercial airline pilots. Even if their links to international crime organizations were known beforehand, what if they themselves had never done anything wrong, and decided to change their ways? Without sufficient data, it's impossible for an algorithm to prevent crimes. Mostly the people who might be caught by the system this article refers to would be copycats, who would be taken care of by the existing means. I am convinced there is no way that the hijackings could have been prevented (Unless you choose to believe the conspiracy theorists who suggest that the administration allowed them to happen in order to improve public opinion of Dubya).
Naturally, I was grieved as I listened to the news that morning. I was hoping though that some good would come from it and the country would realize that some reformation of foreign policy is necessary. Instead, the exact opposite happens, the wool is pulled over the eyes of the people, and "The Beast" is as aggressive as ever. I'm not a cursing man, but hearing the things our government does "for your safety" makes me want to jump up and scream, "Who the **** gave you the right?" and so on.
Wow, you're rather fortunate. I would also describe my parents as average users. They call me "un-American" for running a communist OS and bashing captialism at every chance. Okay, so maybe that's an exaggeration, but people are a lot more varied than some give them credit for. Some are sheep, some are goats. uh.. no! just kidding... I've tried to show my parents how easy and cool Linux is, but they refuse to try new things.. though I did get my dad to assemble his computer once after I bought some new parts to put in it.
Don't forget Lindows, which is a fork from an earlier version of Xandros (IMO much better in its current 1.3 version that most linux distros, as far as ease of use goes).
http://www.lindows.com/
What kind of information does the device send on the joystick port? Is it analog, across the axis lines, or digital, across the button lines? How should the data be interpreted? What happens when you try to treat the device as an actual joystick and calibrate it with the Windows control panel (assuming you're using Windows 95 or later)?
...)...
With more information, an open source developer such as myself could probably whip up a user-space driver that uses the generic Linux joystick API in a day's worth of spare time, without even needing the hardware.
There's already gnuplot to graph the datapoints once they've been acquired, too, or I've got lots of experience writing graphics stuff (I've written a 3D modeller, a 2D/3D function grapher, a linux framebuffer graphics library, some undistributed xmms plugins,
If you record using a card based on the brooktree bt848/bt878 chipset, your recording software (which might have to be modified to grab the 25 line vbi information, since it's given in a different buffer, iirc) can also record the caption information from the VBI, and overlay it using some kind of OSD. I don't know if there's a consumer digital recording system, however, that preserves the VBI data within the file. I've always wanted to make one (don't have time to do much independent coding these days), or know if one existed, though.
Ever read that book, "The Alliance," by (don't remember who)?
It's a good one.
I am aware of the differences, and while my personal software beliefs don't agree 100% with either movement, I'd say I'm probably more aligned to the Free Software movement. My intention was not to confuse people, but rather to indicate that there are similarities between the two, and that the Lindows awards are for both Free Software and Open Source. So, I suppose that my topic is actually an extension of the original topic from FS only into OSS/FS, but I don't think that invalidates my point.
Don't forget about Lindows's "Clicky Award..." Think what you will of Lindows, or LindowsOS, or the name "Clicky," but 50 grand donaed to Open Source software projects is 50 grand. Yeah, $50000US. Go forth and nominate!
Oh, and where it says "we will add you to our mailing database," you can immediately unsubscribe from the Lindows web page.
Notice he said "my eardrum," not "someone's eardrum." Even if it means trading off guard duty with friends bearing rifles to keep the thought police away, he's saying that his ear won't ever be encrypted.
Do you know how royally pissed I'd be if I went deaf some day and put up the cash for a DRM restricted cochlear implant? It's bad enough that there's a business of selling people's headspace (advertising).
Usually that means that whoever moderated the post made their own post to the discussion, cancelling their moderations. You can't moderate and post in the same discussion.
Pop music and teen idol status aside, it's good to know that scientists will be able to use more of the precious cargo space for useful purposes.
The sad thing is, on slashdot, we cheer when this sort of thing happens, while much of the rest of the world says "oh come on, cut him a break, he's a pop music god!"
Xiph developed a fixed-point decoder, which is used by the tkcPlayer from theKompany, available for Sharp Zaurus.
Okay, so ... 50 ads a day, times a penny, 50 cents a day, times 30 days in a month, 15 bucks a month for commercial free programming. Why not just pay the $15 and forget about the marketing dorks?
Read his list post again -- he said he would willfully remain ignorant, and deal with any patent issues as they are brought to the kernel by the patent holders (as opposed to actively seeking patents on things that might one day be implemented in the kernel, slowing development significantly). Usually, as was the case with the free SVQ1 Sorenson codec, if patents are discovered which would impede development, a new algorithm that does the same thing can be created or implemented.
That's 2.8MHz at 1-bit precision. See, sound is encoded on a SACD kind of based on density. The greater the amplitude, the greater the density of the on bits. This way, the audio can be rudimentarily decoded by passing the 2.8MHz stream through a 22kHz (or 30kHz if you want to annoy your dog as well as your neighbors) or so low-pass filter. You can convert that 2.8MHz 1-bit stream into a 192kHz/24-bit stream, or a 96kHz/32-bit stream, or whatever you want, because the sound information is still there. I'm not sure exactly how they convert an analog stream into a 2.8MHz stream of 1-bit data, because I'm getting my information from the super audio CD official website. (...like they'd give away crucial information to their competitors before all the patents are approved...) I'm sure it's just an engineering problem.
Way back when I was working on libfbx, we (the two main libfbx developers) learned of a 48-bit framebuffer developed by SGI. It's used mainly to render special FX for Hollywood. After several composited layers with various effects on an 8-bit per channel system, you can really start to notice the quantization artifacts. Moving to 12- or 16-bits per color channel (depending on whether there's an alpha channel) makes a huge improvement. I've never heard of any 16 byte per pixel (128bit) image format. It'd probably be something like 16-bits per channel RGBA (64), plus 32-bit depth buffer (96), plus 16-bit stencil and select(pick) buffers (128).
I already own a $400 POS desk phone called by the name of iPhone. It has a 640x480 monochrome touch screen. It was bundled with a bigplanet multi-level marketing scheme my parents bought into a few years ago. I doubt Apple would want to be associated with such a butt-ugly piece of hardware.
They'd have to come up with a better name if they released a phone of any kind.
Well let's see.. LindowsOS does both those already. Your other point about X isn't really valid, because although it'd be nice to replace X with something like DirectFB, it's not really necessary, and would be difficult to do (X has hundreds of drivers, and the linux kernel has only a few framebuffer drivers. The conversion process is not trivial. I wrote an accelerated client driver for the 3dfx voodoo 3/4/5 for libfbx, and while it wasn't that difficult, it's not something you can just write a script to do).
I think the render farm is a pretty good idea. This product doesn't seem to be the kind of software to compete with Premiere. Even small studios with only 6 people usually have an extremely expensive (as much as $80g's or higher) dedicated render system in the basement or equipment room that does all the editing and effects in realtime, with client computers (usually Macintosh or SGI) doing little more than displaying the result. Larger houses don't usually have computers to do editing (at least not for the user interface), but instead have large consoles.
Compositing and 3D animation/CGI are usually done with single client computers and render farms, however.
Of course, I could be just making this all up.
As for making it so you can identify phrasing and such, I always wondered how hard it would be to add a new type of packet to the Ogg (or some other) format, so that you can store uncompressed audio (or 320 kbit compressed for the super poor DJ's who can't afford to burn a lot of CD's yet...) in the file, along with beat and sample information for each audio frame. A playback program or digital turntable could read this information and build a visualization chart that looks something like
[Insert here the best ASCII art interface diagram ever that the lameness filter wouldn't pass through no matter how much I varied the characters -- see my
At any rate, I've always wanted to try my hand at spinning some tracks, I've made some loop-based songs before (using my own loops that I created). What's the best way to start learning to DJ?