Part three The Matrix Revolutions is also in production and will be released in December 2000
Now *that's* going to be an expensive stunt!
Re:An even better solution...
on
DRM Helmet
·
· Score: 1
If I own shares in such an entity you would have thought it gives me a claim on the content wouldn't you? I wonder how far such an argument would travel in the courts...
I know I cam be cynical at the best of times,
but I'm having a really hard time believing
about the technical superiority of SACD over
CD.
1) CD has a -96db noise floor. This means if
the volume was high enough to make your ears
bleed, the quietest sound would still be half
the generally accepted quietest audiable sound.
2) CD has a maximum frequency of 22khz. Very
few people can hear these frequencies. Even if
you accept that supersonics add to the perception of the sound,
they won't add in the same way as they do for
"real live" sounds due to the shape of the room
etc, so what's the point?
3) These specifications are mathematically
perfectly achievable. If you had a good enough
CD player you could have the above stated noise floor and frequency response with zero phase distortion etc. That's the
beauty of digital...
A previous post mentioned that SACD simplifies
the technology needed to achieve the high sound
quality. This still neglects the fact that you
can convert a 16 bit CD PCM signal into a ~1mhz
bitstream in the digital domain without losing
any information and feed that into the exact same circuitry as SACD.
4) Sony want to sell SACD players. They could easily adjust the mix etc so the SACD version sounds subjectively better than the CD.... Same
goes for DVD-A.
IMHO anyone who thinks their LPs/SACD/DVD-A sound noticeably better than CD needs to get a better CD player...
Back in the seventies I'm told record companies dropped the price of records and added all sorts of goodies like concert vouchers and posters to discourage taping.
What do you get today to discourage "piracy"? Crappy postage-stamp sized sleeve notes, a disc that probably costs twice as much....
Thinking back to my "scene" days, I remember
seeing free games and demos with incredible graphics.
Demos however are just eye candy, and the games
were inevitably shoot em ups etc.
I suspect that you will find good artists still
designing demos for Windows scene groups.
I just think that geeky strategy games don't
appeal to most people, and that's the reason you don't
see good graphics on freeciv etc, the artists
aren't motivated to get involved.
Actually having MS FUD confuse people into thinking that all copies of software are
illegal could be beneficial in some ways.
I'm sure a lot of the linux vendors would like
to be able to force people to buy the boxed
copies rather than getting dupes. If average
people are convinced that £1 cheapbytes cd is
a bit dodgy (which is unlikely imho) then the
linux people will have more money in their
war chests...
After all - linux can always undercut Windows
on price...
Your argument assumes that innovation drives "our" economy.
It does not. The real money comes from keeping the gravy train
rolling.
No company is going to spend 3 billion dollars developing an
novel engine when they can afford to sell their existing
polluting cast-iron lumps at a higher profit than competitors
through economies of scale. Only in universities is research
into alternative fuels carried out to any serious degree.
And, of course there is the highly profitable issue of oil-cartels.
Why is everyone using inferior Windows? Because people have to
go out on a limb to use the "innovative" stuff like Linux/Beos/Mac.
Microsoft use patents not to protect their "innovation", but to prevent
people from taking a potentially more innovative windows away
from them.
An invention that you patent currently gives you the excusive right
for a large company to steal your invention and out-spend you trying
to fight for it in the courts.
As Stallman says, the current patent system is only useful in corporate
cross licensing, which does encourage innovation, but does not result
in exclusive rights to build, and only serves to give the corporations
even more power.
The reason Slashdot now wants to charge is
because of bandwidth costs.
An earlier suggestion of using mod_gzip to
compress pages before transmission is
a great idea to reduce server bandwidth by
nearly an order of magnitude. This should be
implemented as a matter of urgency imho.
Failing that, has anyone thought of a way to
do a peer-to-peer distributed slashdot that
is truly run by it's users? That would free us
once and for all from the tyrany of adverts:)
The large ads that you see on many other sites are coming here. We really don't have an option: these are what advertisers want, and if we don't provide them, we won't be around much longer.
Why don't you use a Java char array if you
want to manipulate strings like you would in C?
If you know how to optimize Java code it can
be very efficient indeed.
... with a kick ass piece of hardware like a
GFX accelerator (any 3D card qualifies) is write
stuff that uses it yourself. Just buying one to
play the latest game seems like a tragic waste
of an amazing piece of technology to me...
If you disagree with someone's patent, ignore
it. Release your patent-violating piece of software (spread it)
without crediting yourself (use a l337 handle instead:)
I don't really care about how the software laws go anymore. Once the whole open source community is forced underground it'll all be quite cool, and it'll make a mockery of the law with so many people casually ignoring it. The "warez" people have been at this for years and survive ok! Only the profiteers get caught, the crackers etc can't really be punished. The judge simply can't see what the defendent has done that warrants 10 years....
Who gives a flying fsck about the PS2?
If you want to get screwed, buy a games
console. Let's face it - PS2 hardware is
crap. If you buy a PC right now you can
do pretty much what you want with it and
no lame-arse company can touch you.
Modern GFX cards, the Emu10k1 and
MMX/SSE/3DNOW have some really powerful
technology that anyone can use (but noone
seems to want to!?).
The pc can do anything a PS2 can do, if
you give it a suitable OS (Ie, instead of
trying to chip a PS2, why don't these
hackers do somthing cool with superior
PC tech?) And yes, before you flame me, I
am planning to do my bit here.
Not quite.
Conventionally sampled audio has to be
bandlimited to half the sampling frequency
for the conventional Shannon interpolation
technique to work. This technique promises to
reconstruct audio that has been sampled without
bandlimiting, which has lots of applications in
audio, especially restoration of poorly sampled
sound.
Mart
Why can't they just support the OS with
only the market-leading/most reliable
X86 hardware? That would reduce their support
costs and still enable people to put together
a relatively cheap Solaris box. Or do they
already do this?
Slashdot Mirror
Licence agreements are written in annoying capitals to specifically discourage people from reading all the way through them.
From the news.com.au report:
Now *that's* going to be an expensive stunt!
If I own shares in such an entity you would have thought it gives me a claim on the content wouldn't you? I wonder how far such an argument would travel in the courts ...
I always considered the DLP chips used in video projectors (that have millions of pivoting mirrors on a silicon chip) to be an application of nanotech
Is there something about DLP that disqualifies it?
Seems to me you'd lose a lot of that HD picture after a few viewings too.
Yeah, right. Just like DAT.
I know I cam be cynical at the best of times, but I'm having a really hard time believing about the technical superiority of SACD over CD.
1) CD has a -96db noise floor. This means if the volume was high enough to make your ears bleed, the quietest sound would still be half the generally accepted quietest audiable sound.
2) CD has a maximum frequency of 22khz. Very few people can hear these frequencies. Even if you accept that supersonics add to the perception of the sound, they won't add in the same way as they do for "real live" sounds due to the shape of the room etc, so what's the point?
3) These specifications are mathematically perfectly achievable. If you had a good enough CD player you could have the above stated noise floor and frequency response with zero phase distortion etc. That's the beauty of digital...
A previous post mentioned that SACD simplifies the technology needed to achieve the high sound quality. This still neglects the fact that you can convert a 16 bit CD PCM signal into a ~1mhz bitstream in the digital domain without losing any information and feed that into the exact same circuitry as SACD.
4) Sony want to sell SACD players. They could easily adjust the mix etc so the SACD version sounds subjectively better than the CD.... Same goes for DVD-A.
IMHO anyone who thinks their LPs/SACD/DVD-A sound noticeably better than CD needs to get a better CD player ...
Back in the seventies I'm told record companies dropped the price of records and added all sorts of goodies like concert vouchers and posters to discourage taping.
What do you get today to discourage "piracy"? Crappy postage-stamp sized sleeve notes, a disc that probably costs twice as much ....
It's all stick and no carrot.
Thinking back to my "scene" days, I remember seeing free games and demos with incredible graphics. Demos however are just eye candy, and the games were inevitably shoot em ups etc.
I suspect that you will find good artists still designing demos for Windows scene groups.
I just think that geeky strategy games don't appeal to most people, and that's the reason you don't see good graphics on freeciv etc, the artists aren't motivated to get involved.
Modding XBoxes is not good enough imho.
We really need Microsoft's private key so a pure software hack can be done.
Of course they'd sell an awful lot more of those if people could run what they want on it, but that would sorta break their business model ...
Some VCRs also detect ads by sensing for highly compressed audio with much higher pervieved volume. I expect these ones will never stop working.
It sure does piss me off when the adverts come on at 3x the volume of the program...
Together with a fellow GNOME hacker, de Icaza was able to convince some venture capitalists (AKA "suckers")
They sure were.
Actually having MS FUD confuse people into thinking that all copies of software are illegal could be beneficial in some ways.
I'm sure a lot of the linux vendors would like to be able to force people to buy the boxed copies rather than getting dupes. If average people are convinced that £1 cheapbytes cd is a bit dodgy (which is unlikely imho) then the linux people will have more money in their war chests ...
After all - linux can always undercut Windows on price ...
Your argument assumes that innovation drives "our" economy. It does not. The real money comes from keeping the gravy train rolling.
No company is going to spend 3 billion dollars developing an novel engine when they can afford to sell their existing polluting cast-iron lumps at a higher profit than competitors through economies of scale. Only in universities is research into alternative fuels carried out to any serious degree.
And, of course there is the highly profitable issue of oil-cartels.
Why is everyone using inferior Windows? Because people have to go out on a limb to use the "innovative" stuff like Linux/Beos/Mac. Microsoft use patents not to protect their "innovation", but to prevent people from taking a potentially more innovative windows away from them.
An invention that you patent currently gives you the excusive right for a large company to steal your invention and out-spend you trying to fight for it in the courts.
As Stallman says, the current patent system is only useful in corporate cross licensing, which does encourage innovation, but does not result in exclusive rights to build, and only serves to give the corporations even more power.
That analogy would only work if you could only buy cola from Britney's Bubbly Pop Shop.
This is not an advertising issue.
The reason Slashdot now wants to charge is because of bandwidth costs.
:)
An earlier suggestion of using mod_gzip to compress pages before transmission is a great idea to reduce server bandwidth by nearly an order of magnitude. This should be implemented as a matter of urgency imho.
Failing that, has anyone thought of a way to do a peer-to-peer distributed slashdot that is truly run by it's users? That would free us once and for all from the tyrany of adverts
That's your lot.
The large ads that you see on many other sites are coming here. We really don't have an option: these are what advertisers want, and if we don't provide them, we won't be around much longer.
That's ok. Neither will we.
Last post?
This would make a worthwhile hedge against TransGaming going tits up. Maybe this'll result in some real games for Linux for a change ....
Why don't you use a Java char array if you want to manipulate strings like you would in C?
If you know how to optimize Java code it can be very efficient indeed.
I'm sure they'll be allowed to use the name. Austin Powers is a Bond parody, after all.
If you disagree with someone's patent, ignore it. Release your patent-violating piece of software (spread it) without crediting yourself (use a l337 handle instead :)
I don't really care about how the software laws go anymore. Once the whole open source community is forced underground it'll all be quite cool, and it'll make a mockery of the law with so many people casually ignoring it. The "warez" people have been at this for years and survive ok! Only the profiteers get caught, the crackers etc can't really be punished. The judge simply can't see what the defendent has done that warrants 10 years ....
Who gives a flying fsck about the PS2? If you want to get screwed, buy a games console. Let's face it - PS2 hardware is crap. If you buy a PC right now you can do pretty much what you want with it and no lame-arse company can touch you. Modern GFX cards, the Emu10k1 and MMX/SSE/3DNOW have some really powerful technology that anyone can use (but noone seems to want to!?). The pc can do anything a PS2 can do, if you give it a suitable OS (Ie, instead of trying to chip a PS2, why don't these hackers do somthing cool with superior PC tech?) And yes, before you flame me, I am planning to do my bit here.
Not quite. Conventionally sampled audio has to be bandlimited to half the sampling frequency for the conventional Shannon interpolation technique to work. This technique promises to reconstruct audio that has been sampled without bandlimiting, which has lots of applications in audio, especially restoration of poorly sampled sound. Mart
Actually, wasn't X-Windows released in 1987 (2 years after MS Windows)? Sun Microsystems came up with OpenWindows in about 1982/3 though.
Why can't they just support the OS with only the market-leading/most reliable X86 hardware? That would reduce their support costs and still enable people to put together a relatively cheap Solaris box. Or do they already do this?