This is like saying I went to see Schlinder's list and disappointed by the lack of robots from the future. Yeah, there was a movie I watched in 1992 that had robots from the future that I enjoyed and I think all movies should have robots from the future.
There are lots and lots of variations and genres in pr0n. There are some excellent pr0n that are made like that - kind of half reality show, half pr0n stuff to some genuine acting and storylines. Others want a different take on pr0n where they let the viewers fill in the gaps.
That kind of speed is needed to run things faster. It's like saying, who needs 16 cores, all they do is run things faster!
Less stuff will have to be loaded into RAM as the cost of a disk read isn't catastrophic, IO can substitute for computation - store precomputed textures instead of computing transformations to textures with imprecise fast routines, get away from the mad sequentiality that's everywhere in high performance computing.
RAIDing and striping hard disk requires huge enclosures, heat dissipation problems, vibration problems. Similaring things for flash memory like ganging is very simple and can all fit inside a tiny enclosure without heat or mechanical problems. If 16 cores is the way to go, then why not 16 independent flash disks running inside a 2.5" enclosure running like a lustre disk array? But, unlike a lustre array, you don't have to ask for gobs of sequential data - any random access is fast as sequential access.
Hard disks are really good for storing enormous amounts of data and reading enormous amounts of data sequentially. The only time this fits general consumer demand is for media servers. A fast SSD that stores OS, app data and user data and a secondary hard disk that stores large amounts of data that is rarely accessed but needs to be hand is the way to go.
It's funny how people complain that illegal immigrants are cutting to the front of the immigration line but there's always a place for athletes, actors, and celebrities to go to the front. Of course, there really isn't a line anyway.
God, most Americans are ridiculously dumb when it comes to immigration, even Slashdot.
There is a special class of green card for "special" achievers. They don't go through the H1B process. Most athletes, actors, celebrities go through the E-B2 exceptional ability route.
And, it's designed to get one to the front of the line.
That video is outright wrong. Loudness is achieved by compression as you said, not by increasing the amplitude and chopping the high values.
Compression works by setting the quieter parts louder while keeping the louder parts as loud as they were. Of course, most compressors treat different frequency differently and they have attack and decay type parameters that also varies by frequency.
A tube guitar amp in a lot of settings acts as a compressor. Tape that used to exclusively used for recoding music also acts as a compressor. Every experienced engineer that I have seen has an old (and expensive) compressor along with his digital plugins. The "wall of sound" that was so popular was achieved through compression.
Good recording engineers can produce great sounding tracks with high loudness by really tweaking the compression. I think some music and artists do sound better with high loudness (in the hands of a good engineer). Listen to bands like Oasis where their music was always heavily compressed to begin with. They do not suffer even the slightest with the loudness war.
You'd be surprised at how much you yourself rely on trusting other people, even if you do speak like a stone cold trust no-one badass. You'd also be surprised at how much society relies on the ability of its people to trust each other. This is what pranksters and scammers rely on.
I think a lot of PrankNet activities involve authority figures rather than trust. People will hurt other people or in this case destroy other people's property when they are asked to by an authority. I believe it the Milgram experiment. In none of the cases, were the callers ever faced with the possibility that doing something that was asked would cause them personal injury or loss. They were presented with the situation when not doing something would be bad but doing whatever was asked would not result in any personal loss. The choice was easy.
The CraigsList scams are just versions of Crank Yankers with racist and sexual insults. They are stuff you see on movies in Borat, TV on Crank Yankers etc.
What I'm most uncomfortable is the absolute lack of respect of empathy shown towards the victims. Milgram would never be able to do his experiment in the modern times since the subjects suffered after the experiment. I'm sure a lot of the victims are suffering from post-traumatic stress. I remember a story in MSU (Michigan state) during the Anthrax scares when some employees at an office called the firefighters when they saw a white powder in the garbage bin plastic (it was lubrication powder). The firefighters asked the women to completely undress and hosed them, bleached them etc. After the incident, a lot of the women were psychologically traumatized - some quit their jobs, some are afraid of bleach and the sound of firefighters. They followed everything the firefighters asked them to because the firefighters acted as authority figures. At any time, they could have refused to undress but they all complied against their judgment. Post traumatic stress can be very damaging and only by calling them inferior human beings, were PrankNet members able to rationalize what they were doing.
There are various forms of scams where people in the US are needed. I was in one (no, I didn't lose money, I just wanted to see where it would lead) where the scammer mailed me 6 $1000 CVS money orders by MoneyGram. I knew I would be arrested if I tried to cash the money orders. Anyway, I wanted to play along and see where it would lead but the scammer's English started deteriorating to such a point that I didn't even want to keep communicating.
However, my point is that the scammer had someone in the US mailing fraudulent money orders. I tried to find some way to contact somebody regarding this but I couldn't find anyone or anything: I made a few calls and tried to talk to a few people but nobody took me seriously. I live in Detroit and went to see the Detroit police as well (if you call 911 in Detroit and don't report murder, the operator will insult you and hang up). Nothing on the web except some volunteer organizations who want me to do e-mail them everything and no contacts or anything afterward.
So, yeah, there is absolutely nothing being done about these scammers.
On low quality speakers and noisy environments, compressed music sounds lots and lots better than the originals. Most people listen to music in their cars, on iPods when walking, working or jogging or in little boomboxes at the picnic or backyard.
Of course, with audiophile equipment with zero noise in the environment and the volume is equalized, the compressed music sounds worse. But, for most purposes that people buy music for, compressed music sounds better.
Of course, the music industry should be selling uncompressed 24bit 192Khz music to the audiophile (who can feel frequencies beyond the hearing range) that is mastered differently.
The main issue is that once it sells a copy, It no longer has any resale rights to that copy.
I'm pretty sure that's what they want to change.
Not because of greed or anything, but because of a more insidious problem - there is an entire industry based around used game sales and trading.
The customer buys the game for $60, sells it used to the store for $20 and the store sells it for $45. Before you say Amazon or eBay, they have really high commission rates on video games - basic 15% + shipping price cut + money handling fees ($1 Amazon fee or paypal fees). So, some stores then instead fixate on used games.
I'm sure what the video game industry wants is to get the used game industry somehow part of the video game industry itself so that money would directly go towards video game development rather than 10 chain stores in a square mile thing.
Basicly for years the carefully craftd release scheduals and marketing plans of huge media companies have been screwed up by a bunch of teenagers having an e-penis waving contest.
The solution has been simple.
XBox has an e-penis system called achievements. If you play a game before a release date, you can get banned and your e-penis tucked away by Microsoft. So, even if people download the data before the pre-release date, they don't dare to play it before the release date which can coincide with the marketing.
The PS3 DRM hasn't been cracked yet.
The XBox360 DRM hasn't been technically cracked also. There is a circumvention to play retail games but not a crack of the DRM like the original XBox.
The next step is to convince AOL to start sending out their software on thumb drives. Then we all win!
Though flash drives list no specs other than the size, there are a lot of variables. I think a flash drive used for software distribution could be optimized for low price that it would suffer on writing or have the writing circuit totally removed to make it only possible to read from.
These flash drives would make for as good a removable storage as CDs made for coasters.
I've had professors whose explanations were clearer than the book's, or in some cases covered material not in a book. When I and other students didn't understand something, they could react to our questions and complaints in a way a book couldn't. They reviewed our code and provided guidance on what was good and bad. One in particular demanded a brief oral design proposal for a major project before you started on it and would ruthlessly critique it. (This would show me the value of designing before coding, even if the "design" is just a brief plan, getting at least a second opinion on your design, and analyzing a design for flaws. My teachers taught me useful techniques applicable to a wide variety of situations. They taught me to formalize problems and identify existing solutions instead of viewing every problem as a completely unique situation. They introduced me to types of development tools I hadn't realized existed. While I question the value of some of my college courses, most of my computer science courses were taught by skilled, inspiring people and I am confident that they made me a better programmer today.
I wasn't clear on my point.
You became a good programmer because you wanted to become a good programmer, your teacher didn't make you a good programmer.
I think that distinction is lost on students sometimes. They feel that they paid for a class, show up half the time and get mad that they weren't turned into good programmers by their teachers. The article is suggesting that the teacher should somehow do a magic act that will get the students to magically work hard and become good programmers.
My point was that a competent teacher would suffice if the student is motivated. Only when it gets to graduate school, should the quality of the professors matter.
Well if you're not asking for teachers needing to be professional published mathematicians, what was that paragraph about?
In history, a lot of very prominent mathematicians of their day and age made their living privately teaching high school kids. In modern times, mathematics isn't seen as an important an asset to have to spend that kind of money even if one has it.
I don't understand why education is seen the way it is in the US. What does the teacher have to do with the quality of education? Does anyone think their teacher helped them become a good programmer. NO. Why do people think their math teachers will make them good mathematicians?
Anyway, I challenge people to name 10 prominent American mathematicians - please non-mathematicians only and let's take Nash as given. Name the last American mathematician to be featured on a postage stamp. Do the same for musician and see how long that takes.
My point is that the US doesn't really have a mathematics appreciating society. It reflects in the education as well. And, don't blame the teachers or the administrators for it.
Since when have musicians EVER made any significant living off of derivative works OTHER than performing live? Mozart did it, Elvis did it, Metallica did it. Artists have never been able to make a substantial income from record (or sheet music) sales. It wasn't until Beethoven that the idea of making money off of copies of musical works even really took off.
The most major example - The Beatles.
The Beatles never toured after their fourth album - partly because of the bigger than Jesus thing and the assassinations in the US of MLK and the Kennedys, and partly because they didn't believe people came to their concerts to listen to their music - they were marketed as boy bands of their day and age.
Anyhow, all the best Beatles records were made without touring. It is because of the royalties of these albums that all the Beatles led comfortable lives after the Beatles broke up.
QED. The null hypothesis was not rejected, therefore your study determined nothing. Speculation is not science.
One rejects a null hypothesis by one's own standards, i.e. confidence and other such measures. If you set the standard stringent enough, the null hypothesis can almost never be rejected and if you set them lax enough can always be rejected. So, your above statement is meaningless. If you said, the null hypothesis cannot be rejected by such and such standards, then it would make some sense.
OK, about speculation. Statistics is about quantifying speculation of sorts, and statistics and mathematics are not sciences. Don't attack the previous sentence, I was just trying to be funny.
42 mpg x 20 mile commute each day is a lot more fuel consumptive than 20 mpg x occasional grocery trip.
I agree with you. This is a law made by a politician. The voting public doesn't have to change their habits - they can live a 100 miles away from their work and cry public transportation isn't a viable option. Just make it a law and things will be all-right attitude.
The whole US auto industry was sustained on a government loophole for high weight cars, and it is now sustained directly by the government. So, I suppose the government has to make some guidelines or otherwise they might to give them more money to stop them from failing. So, I don't think it makes any fucking sense whatsoever.
As such, I'm actually quite happy to hear the news simply because I hope they kick GameStop's ass. I don't buy games from them, but I've read enough of the Penny Arcade to completely [penny-arcade.com] loathe [penny-arcade.com] them [penny-arcade.com] . [penny-arcade.com]
And I have read enough of your post to loathe them too.
I don't buy used games on principle. (Wait... so I'm paying someone for a game and simultaneously not giving the content creators any money? Why not just pirate it and spend more money on new games if I'm not going to pay the creators?)
What principle is that? The principle of irrational consumer? I know lots of people will buy a game new knowing that there will be a used market for it later when they're done.
If you aren't going to buy it new you might as well just pirate it and save the money going to Wal-Mart.
I'd gladly follow your advice but nobody has broken the PS3 yet. What the fuck is up with that? Isn't it already supposed to be broken by now? Will somebody please get on it and try to make it so that I don't have to open the PS3 and solder tiny connections.
But even if I wasn't against the concept of used games I still don't see the financial incentive. Gamestop will pay me less than the parking fee to go in and sell them a game. If I were to drive to a free-parking gamestop it would cost more in gas than they would give me. The used prices of new games tend to be almost the same as new. ~$45-50 for new releases and games on steam tend to be priced as low or lower for older games.
Save some gas. Pirate. Except for the fucking PS3!
First a lot of people who write technical books do not do it for the money. I know professors who write books on subjects that could only be taught as special topics graduate courses and the only copies sold will be to libraries but the amount of work and attention that has gone into that book is incredible. Monetary reward isn't the only reward for writing a technical book.
Also putting a lot of time and effort does not mean money. I know a lot of people who put a lot of time and effort into video games but they pay money and not make money. I don't think the author wrote a book on "Data Compression" for the money; there are more lucrative topics.
I would like to say, not a single idea in the book is novel to the author. They are just retelling of famous algorithms. Does the author pay Claude Shannon? Does the author pay the inventors of FFT? The level of the book is undergraduate and really far away from research level. I know there are graduate level books written on what is 3 pages on this book from the TOC.
On the other hand, most people would probably loan the book from the library than buy a copy.
I think the world needs good books and good takes on old algorithms; this looks like it covers a lot of topics and would be a fine introduction to someone suveying the field of lossless and lossy data compression. But, writing a good book is the most important thing. I have some books in my shelf that I bought because of how awesome they were. I doubt the author bought every reference book that was used on writing that book.
Those lost game disks were lost in the mail... Heh heh... *hides stack of reported "lost" disks under the couch* Nothing to see here, move along!
Why doesn't USPS track every piece of mail that the sender voluntarily puts a bar code on it? Like a universal "delivery confirmation" system that is a real-time tracking system and not a delivery confirmation system that only updates once a day?
The time to scan those barcodes which get bent and unscannable is a problem but if they made a pocket scanner that can scan mail hands-free by the postman, it would solve the problem as each piece of mail is looked at.
Making tampering and stealing mail a felony is the only thing that has kept USPS sort of safe by not making it worth the trouble. USPS insurance is extremely over-priced and dealing with the insurance division is a nightmare.
I had a package lost I had insurance on. Every time I called they would say, "sir, my system is currently down. Could you please call back in a couple of hours?". I would call back and they would say the same thing again. Granted, I thought it was system trouble and I called back in 2 days. I get the same response, "my system is down,..." I call back after 1 week and the system is still down. So, I kept calling until I got someone who didn't claim their system was down.
I still think USPS does a great job with the volume of mail that goes through them. But, I'm astounded that their tracking system is so bad: it's not even called tracking but delivery confirmation.
Zombie console monkey. 'Wanted: Individuals with low self-esteem and high boredom threshold willing to spend long hours poring over server logs and watching blinking lights on a network console.'"
Data miner?
Sounds awfully like data mining except for the blinking lights on the console but rather the status output of your data mining software.
That was stupid of him. What did he expect would happen?
The fact is that there are people who download and watch movies. Do we want our movies reviewed by such people? Do you want your children to read review by such people, or have your children go to school with these people? To be taught by these people. Ladies and gentlemen, the truth is these people are real, and they are among us.
That sounds lovely and all - I appreciate the immense amount of work the developers put in, but they ended up with a game that looks 10 years out of date. So what you're saying is that FOSS FPS games are made by people with the best intentions and skill, but end up being terrible when compared to closed-source commercial games.
You're falling into the trap of thinking of games in terms of release dates and being done and looking for the sequel. It's a stable release checkpoint and not the end of development of the game source.
The aim is not to release a game and start working on the next one. It's a work in progress and it will get better with time.
And, with the "press releases" more and more people will know about the effort and put their effort on it.
I know people are really really excited about data mining. But, it's mostly a rediscovery of statistics that has been done over the last century. The only new thing is that fast computers and cheap storage have made it very easy to store large amounts of data.
This was exciting for the fact that people can do statistical analysis without ever having painfully collect the data. So, all the excitement about data mining might die away once it's been tested and found it doesn't provide all the magic answers (even to questions not asked).
Research papers aren't as impressive because you can potentially get your name on a paper but who know who did the work. Besides, a lot of research papers are just glorified homeworks and surveys whose most valuable part is the introduction to the field rather than the results in the later sections.
However, research papers are important and it's good to be involved in a few of them.
But, I think instead of worrying about this and that, just figure out what you want to do and be good at it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is like saying I went to see Schlinder's list and disappointed by the lack of robots from the future. Yeah, there was a movie I watched in 1992 that had robots from the future that I enjoyed and I think all movies should have robots from the future.
There are lots and lots of variations and genres in pr0n. There are some excellent pr0n that are made like that - kind of half reality show, half pr0n stuff to some genuine acting and storylines. Others want a different take on pr0n where they let the viewers fill in the gaps.
That kind of speed is needed to run things faster. It's like saying, who needs 16 cores, all they do is run things faster!
Less stuff will have to be loaded into RAM as the cost of a disk read isn't catastrophic, IO can substitute for computation - store precomputed textures instead of computing transformations to textures with imprecise fast routines, get away from the mad sequentiality that's everywhere in high performance computing.
RAIDing and striping hard disk requires huge enclosures, heat dissipation problems, vibration problems. Similaring things for flash memory like ganging is very simple and can all fit inside a tiny enclosure without heat or mechanical problems. If 16 cores is the way to go, then why not 16 independent flash disks running inside a 2.5" enclosure running like a lustre disk array? But, unlike a lustre array, you don't have to ask for gobs of sequential data - any random access is fast as sequential access.
Hard disks are really good for storing enormous amounts of data and reading enormous amounts of data sequentially. The only time this fits general consumer demand is for media servers. A fast SSD that stores OS, app data and user data and a secondary hard disk that stores large amounts of data that is rarely accessed but needs to be hand is the way to go.
God, most Americans are ridiculously dumb when it comes to immigration, even Slashdot.
There is a special class of green card for "special" achievers. They don't go through the H1B process. Most athletes, actors, celebrities go through the E-B2 exceptional ability route.
And, it's designed to get one to the front of the line.
That video is outright wrong. Loudness is achieved by compression as you said, not by increasing the amplitude and chopping the high values.
Compression works by setting the quieter parts louder while keeping the louder parts as loud as they were. Of course, most compressors treat different frequency differently and they have attack and decay type parameters that also varies by frequency.
A tube guitar amp in a lot of settings acts as a compressor. Tape that used to exclusively used for recoding music also acts as a compressor. Every experienced engineer that I have seen has an old (and expensive) compressor along with his digital plugins. The "wall of sound" that was so popular was achieved through compression.
Good recording engineers can produce great sounding tracks with high loudness by really tweaking the compression. I think some music and artists do sound better with high loudness (in the hands of a good engineer). Listen to bands like Oasis where their music was always heavily compressed to begin with. They do not suffer even the slightest with the loudness war.
I think a lot of PrankNet activities involve authority figures rather than trust. People will hurt other people or in this case destroy other people's property when they are asked to by an authority. I believe it the Milgram experiment. In none of the cases, were the callers ever faced with the possibility that doing something that was asked would cause them personal injury or loss. They were presented with the situation when not doing something would be bad but doing whatever was asked would not result in any personal loss. The choice was easy.
The CraigsList scams are just versions of Crank Yankers with racist and sexual insults. They are stuff you see on movies in Borat, TV on Crank Yankers etc.
What I'm most uncomfortable is the absolute lack of respect of empathy shown towards the victims. Milgram would never be able to do his experiment in the modern times since the subjects suffered after the experiment. I'm sure a lot of the victims are suffering from post-traumatic stress. I remember a story in MSU (Michigan state) during the Anthrax scares when some employees at an office called the firefighters when they saw a white powder in the garbage bin plastic (it was lubrication powder). The firefighters asked the women to completely undress and hosed them, bleached them etc. After the incident, a lot of the women were psychologically traumatized - some quit their jobs, some are afraid of bleach and the sound of firefighters. They followed everything the firefighters asked them to because the firefighters acted as authority figures. At any time, they could have refused to undress but they all complied against their judgment. Post traumatic stress can be very damaging and only by calling them inferior human beings, were PrankNet members able to rationalize what they were doing.
However, my point is that the scammer had someone in the US mailing fraudulent money orders. I tried to find some way to contact somebody regarding this but I couldn't find anyone or anything: I made a few calls and tried to talk to a few people but nobody took me seriously. I live in Detroit and went to see the Detroit police as well (if you call 911 in Detroit and don't report murder, the operator will insult you and hang up). Nothing on the web except some volunteer organizations who want me to do e-mail them everything and no contacts or anything afterward.
So, yeah, there is absolutely nothing being done about these scammers.
On low quality speakers and noisy environments, compressed music sounds lots and lots better than the originals. Most people listen to music in their cars, on iPods when walking, working or jogging or in little boomboxes at the picnic or backyard.
Of course, with audiophile equipment with zero noise in the environment and the volume is equalized, the compressed music sounds worse. But, for most purposes that people buy music for, compressed music sounds better.
Of course, the music industry should be selling uncompressed 24bit 192Khz music to the audiophile (who can feel frequencies beyond the hearing range) that is mastered differently.
I'm pretty sure that's what they want to change.
Not because of greed or anything, but because of a more insidious problem - there is an entire industry based around used game sales and trading.
The customer buys the game for $60, sells it used to the store for $20 and the store sells it for $45. Before you say Amazon or eBay, they have really high commission rates on video games - basic 15% + shipping price cut + money handling fees ($1 Amazon fee or paypal fees). So, some stores then instead fixate on used games.
I'm sure what the video game industry wants is to get the used game industry somehow part of the video game industry itself so that money would directly go towards video game development rather than 10 chain stores in a square mile thing.
The solution has been simple.
XBox has an e-penis system called achievements. If you play a game before a release date, you can get banned and your e-penis tucked away by Microsoft. So, even if people download the data before the pre-release date, they don't dare to play it before the release date which can coincide with the marketing.
The PS3 DRM hasn't been cracked yet. The XBox360 DRM hasn't been technically cracked also. There is a circumvention to play retail games but not a crack of the DRM like the original XBox.
Though flash drives list no specs other than the size, there are a lot of variables. I think a flash drive used for software distribution could be optimized for low price that it would suffer on writing or have the writing circuit totally removed to make it only possible to read from.
These flash drives would make for as good a removable storage as CDs made for coasters.
I wasn't clear on my point.
You became a good programmer because you wanted to become a good programmer, your teacher didn't make you a good programmer.
I think that distinction is lost on students sometimes. They feel that they paid for a class, show up half the time and get mad that they weren't turned into good programmers by their teachers. The article is suggesting that the teacher should somehow do a magic act that will get the students to magically work hard and become good programmers.
My point was that a competent teacher would suffice if the student is motivated. Only when it gets to graduate school, should the quality of the professors matter.
In history, a lot of very prominent mathematicians of their day and age made their living privately teaching high school kids. In modern times, mathematics isn't seen as an important an asset to have to spend that kind of money even if one has it.
I don't understand why education is seen the way it is in the US. What does the teacher have to do with the quality of education? Does anyone think their teacher helped them become a good programmer. NO. Why do people think their math teachers will make them good mathematicians?
Anyway, I challenge people to name 10 prominent American mathematicians - please non-mathematicians only and let's take Nash as given. Name the last American mathematician to be featured on a postage stamp. Do the same for musician and see how long that takes.
My point is that the US doesn't really have a mathematics appreciating society. It reflects in the education as well. And, don't blame the teachers or the administrators for it.
The most major example - The Beatles.
The Beatles never toured after their fourth album - partly because of the bigger than Jesus thing and the assassinations in the US of MLK and the Kennedys, and partly because they didn't believe people came to their concerts to listen to their music - they were marketed as boy bands of their day and age.
Anyhow, all the best Beatles records were made without touring. It is because of the royalties of these albums that all the Beatles led comfortable lives after the Beatles broke up.
One rejects a null hypothesis by one's own standards, i.e. confidence and other such measures. If you set the standard stringent enough, the null hypothesis can almost never be rejected and if you set them lax enough can always be rejected. So, your above statement is meaningless. If you said, the null hypothesis cannot be rejected by such and such standards, then it would make some sense.
OK, about speculation. Statistics is about quantifying speculation of sorts, and statistics and mathematics are not sciences. Don't attack the previous sentence, I was just trying to be funny.
I agree with you. This is a law made by a politician. The voting public doesn't have to change their habits - they can live a 100 miles away from their work and cry public transportation isn't a viable option. Just make it a law and things will be all-right attitude.
The whole US auto industry was sustained on a government loophole for high weight cars, and it is now sustained directly by the government. So, I suppose the government has to make some guidelines or otherwise they might to give them more money to stop them from failing. So, I don't think it makes any fucking sense whatsoever.
And I have read enough of your post to loathe them too.
What principle is that? The principle of irrational consumer? I know lots of people will buy a game new knowing that there will be a used market for it later when they're done.
I'd gladly follow your advice but nobody has broken the PS3 yet. What the fuck is up with that? Isn't it already supposed to be broken by now? Will somebody please get on it and try to make it so that I don't have to open the PS3 and solder tiny connections.
Save some gas. Pirate. Except for the fucking PS3!
There is a whole lot of stupid right there.
First a lot of people who write technical books do not do it for the money. I know professors who write books on subjects that could only be taught as special topics graduate courses and the only copies sold will be to libraries but the amount of work and attention that has gone into that book is incredible. Monetary reward isn't the only reward for writing a technical book.
Also putting a lot of time and effort does not mean money. I know a lot of people who put a lot of time and effort into video games but they pay money and not make money. I don't think the author wrote a book on "Data Compression" for the money; there are more lucrative topics.
I would like to say, not a single idea in the book is novel to the author. They are just retelling of famous algorithms. Does the author pay Claude Shannon? Does the author pay the inventors of FFT? The level of the book is undergraduate and really far away from research level. I know there are graduate level books written on what is 3 pages on this book from the TOC.
On the other hand, most people would probably loan the book from the library than buy a copy.
I think the world needs good books and good takes on old algorithms; this looks like it covers a lot of topics and would be a fine introduction to someone suveying the field of lossless and lossy data compression. But, writing a good book is the most important thing. I have some books in my shelf that I bought because of how awesome they were. I doubt the author bought every reference book that was used on writing that book.
Why doesn't USPS track every piece of mail that the sender voluntarily puts a bar code on it? Like a universal "delivery confirmation" system that is a real-time tracking system and not a delivery confirmation system that only updates once a day?
The time to scan those barcodes which get bent and unscannable is a problem but if they made a pocket scanner that can scan mail hands-free by the postman, it would solve the problem as each piece of mail is looked at.
Making tampering and stealing mail a felony is the only thing that has kept USPS sort of safe by not making it worth the trouble. USPS insurance is extremely over-priced and dealing with the insurance division is a nightmare.
I had a package lost I had insurance on. Every time I called they would say, "sir, my system is currently down. Could you please call back in a couple of hours?". I would call back and they would say the same thing again. Granted, I thought it was system trouble and I called back in 2 days. I get the same response, "my system is down, ..." I call back after 1 week and the system is still down. So, I kept calling until I got someone who didn't claim their system was down.
I still think USPS does a great job with the volume of mail that goes through them. But, I'm astounded that their tracking system is so bad: it's not even called tracking but delivery confirmation.
Recently, I've been getting search results from nearby locations in craigslist.
Before I would do a search and modify the city name in the link and it would do the search for that city.
But, I'm sure there's a craigslist extension for mozilla that simplifies the things even more.
Data miner?
Sounds awfully like data mining except for the blinking lights on the console but rather the status output of your data mining software.
The fact is that there are people who download and watch movies. Do we want our movies reviewed by such people? Do you want your children to read review by such people, or have your children go to school with these people? To be taught by these people. Ladies and gentlemen, the truth is these people are real, and they are among us.
You're falling into the trap of thinking of games in terms of release dates and being done and looking for the sequel. It's a stable release checkpoint and not the end of development of the game source.
The aim is not to release a game and start working on the next one. It's a work in progress and it will get better with time.
And, with the "press releases" more and more people will know about the effort and put their effort on it.
I know people are really really excited about data mining. But, it's mostly a rediscovery of statistics that has been done over the last century. The only new thing is that fast computers and cheap storage have made it very easy to store large amounts of data.
This was exciting for the fact that people can do statistical analysis without ever having painfully collect the data. So, all the excitement about data mining might die away once it's been tested and found it doesn't provide all the magic answers (even to questions not asked).
Research papers aren't as impressive because you can potentially get your name on a paper but who know who did the work. Besides, a lot of research papers are just glorified homeworks and surveys whose most valuable part is the introduction to the field rather than the results in the later sections.
However, research papers are important and it's good to be involved in a few of them.
But, I think instead of worrying about this and that, just figure out what you want to do and be good at it.