After comparing the 499kbit H.264, and Theora video clips of Big Buck Bunny, clearly H.264 looks better. At this bitrate, there is obvious degradation in both samples, however H.264 is much more watchable. Theora struggles with flat areas such as text, and there is an unacceptable amount of artifacts around these elements. Perhaps in time, Theora will mature to the point where it can compete.
The same argument has been made time and time again. When I was in high school, it was the difference between someone knowing how to use IM and someone who could program; there was no correlation. Most of these gadgets are nothing but toys. An ipod and cellphone do not serve any academic purposes. They are banned from schools for a reason, simply because they are distracting; especially when half the kids in class are either texting or listening to ipod. Unfortunately, most high schoolers are not responsible enough to keep these devices turned off during class, so they are banned. In college, its another story. College students are usually much more responsible for their actions and can use these devices responsibly. College professors also have the power to fail you for the course for using these "toys" during class, where high school teachers do not.
Goodnight is just plain wrong about his assumptions. Being plugged in all the time is harmful for children. There is a reason why kindergarteners are not allowed to use calculators. If they are using a calculator to compute 2 + 2, then just imagine how dependent they will be when they are in high school.
Just become a laser beam is invisible doesn't mean that it can't hurt you. It is actually significantly more dangerous working with invisible lasers such as ones in the UV frequencies like CD-ROM ones. At least with the red laser, you know where the beam is pointed. Protective laser goggles are made to work with specific lasers. They filter out the harmful ionized part of the laser, that does not always mean that they filter out the visible light spectrum.
The sample-set should also include musicians and audiophiles into the mix. They are far more likely to give an objective opinion compared to people randomly pulled off the street. Both know what to listen for and are well tuned in finding the distortion which is inherit in lossy compression.
In my personal experience, I have listened to mp3 as well as other competing formats for over 10 years and it is very easy for me to discern the difference in bitrates. I wasn't able to do this at first, but I tuned my senses into it over time. I wind up hearing noise and distortion that almost everyone misses.
The current trend in the archival industry is to convert everything to digital. Unfortunately scanning is often a destructive process. In my experience, I have scanned documents that were written over 200 years ago and were still legible. In order to scan these documents, we had to cut all the pages from the binding which effectively destroys the document. The data was then burned onto dvd-r and sent back to the company. If there is any problem with a single disk, there would be a permanent loss of over 100,000 documents.
DVD is fine for the consumer market, if the disc is damaged you can just buy another one. This is not the case with the film industry, once these original masters are gone, they are gone forever. Microfilm, however can last for generations. Even if there is some degradation in the film stock, you can recover almost all the original data. Film can be split into their primary colors onto different reels of microfilm and later be re-joined.
One of my duties in the scanning industry was to operate the microfilm scanner. In this case, these were documents, but any type of information could be theoretically stored. Current models are capable of scanning at least 600 dpi. One of the hardest things would be to rejoin the frames later on and make sure they are all in sync. The way a microfilm scanner works is that on traditional microfilm, there are small squares that mark each frame. The scanner scans continuously and the software searches for these squares known as blips and it will know where to capture the image. With the addition of medium blips for keyframes and large blips for chapters, you can be fairly certain that you will be able to retrieve all the information later. If there is a missing frame, you will only be missing 1 channel of color for that particular frame. This data can be digitally re-created later.
Unlike digital media, microfilm has been around for over 100 years. The images are stored optically rather than digitally so there is a minimal amount of equipment needed for retrieval. Reproduction of microfilm is relatively inexpensive and multiple copies can be produced from the master and can be stored in multiple off-site storage areas. If the master is digital, you can produce multiple copies that are all the same quality so there isn't a single original master. It may be possible to store the sound on microfilm as well. Software would have to be developed to encode and decode the data, but it is possible.
Computers do a lot of stuff behind the scenes which most people are unaware of. Your computer has more than one operating system on it. Your computer will first be initialized by the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) and perform a Power On Self Test (POST) to initialize your hardware and to do some basic checks. Many manufacturers hide this step by displaying their logo instead of what's actually going on behind the scenes. The BIOS then continues its boot sequence and searches for an operating system. There is a list in the BIOS of where to search for the OS. It will go in a specific order until it finds an operating system and will proceed to boot. All of this is done before WinXP even begins to be initialized. WinXP does many checks behind the scenes such as the registry and system files. It also initializes virtual memory, etc. etc.
This is the way most computers have operated for the past 20 years. The bootstrap sequence is much faster than it was in the early days when it took a few minutes to check the ram. Now it is checked so fast that you can't even see it happen.
One of the biggest problems with the recording industry is that the artists sign over their copyright holdings permanently instead of leasing them. Right now the transfer of copyright is complete and permanent.
The lease should end when the contract does. The artist or artists would then have the option to renew their contract and lease, sign a new contract / release indie, or release it into the public domain.
With a lease, you can be assured that there isn't an abuse of the power that record labels have now. A simple law could make these current types of contracts obsolete and illegal. Artists should also be able to reference this law and get their copyrights returned to the rightful owner.
This kind of thing is being done with the LOTR Trilogy and The Hobbit. The movie rights were leased to Miramax for a short period. If they do not finish the movies within that timeframe, they cannot release them.
Lets face it, record labels themselves are an obsolete business model. There are many ways to do self promotion now and you don't need to include a 3rd party publisher. A simple website, some iTunes tracks and a live tour are you really need to promote yourself. All labels really do is publish little plastic discs. They don't need exclusive rights to your material to do that.
Even though a CD has a large dynamic range window, most new CDs are mastered too hot and there is significant loss due to over normalization and clipping. Older CDs were mastered for Hi-Fi systems and have a great deal of dynamic range. Newer CDs are mastered to be heard on the radio or a portable CD player. Records on the other hand are still mastered to have more dynamic range and therefore are superior recordings.
Analog recordings have a soft window so there isn't hard clipping like there is in the hard window of digtial.
Many technical schools have something similar to your idea. It's called a Cap Stone project which encompasses all you have learned combined and it is done when you are a senior.
I still use Google for my initial searches. I have been noticing that the hits I get are becoming less relavant as time goes on. This is obviously because sponsored links are constantly bringing up irrelavant hits. I don't consider Wikipedia as a traditional search engine so its not going to be able to replace Google. Both still have their usefulness in different ways. Until I get fed up woth my current searching strategy, Google will be my first choice.
MMOs can destroy lives if they are not used carefully. They have a high rate of addiction and must be used with caution. Warcraft is actually one of the mildest MMOs. For the most part, you really don't need to spend a significant amount of time per week to build up a character. After all, it's just a game and for entertainment purposes only. Just about anything used in moderation is safe. The user just has to be aware of their addiction and know when to stop playing. People can get addicted to just about anything, some people are addicted to washing their hands for example.
I thought this was an announcemnt for a new Indiana Jones movie in China.
But seriously, I think this trend of web censorship is just the beginning. Blood sucking politicians enjoy having control over the prolitariat. Controlling the media, whether its newspapers, magazines, tv, news, etc are all signs of despotism. Isn't that right Rupert.
Modern operating systems obfuscate their inner workings. Modern computers no longer require programming skills for day-to-day operation like they did in the past. Many have never heard of a command prompt and wouldn't know what to do with one if they saw it.
The focus on harder science is declining. The AOL(tm) generation have difficulties with some of the most basic tasks. They have too many distractions. High School students try to do their homework while watching TV, listening to their iPod(tm), surfing the web and playing games; while being interrupted by their cellphones ringing every 30 seconds.
Science is not the only thing in decline. Communication skills are also in a sharp and steady decline. Children are learning how to communicate through MySpace(tm) and IM(tm) where grammar, semantics, capitalization and punctuation are never used properly.
Formal instruction teches the fundamentals of programming. If students don't learn cognitive programming skills at a young age, they will be significantly disadvantaged to those that did.
Ideologies like ID/Creation, evolution, natural selection, spontaneous generation, etc. cloud the minds of young people which makes it that much more difficult to think critically.
Ideologies take any branch of science and turn it on it's head. Science should be able to look at what they are studying objectively, not subjectively. Automatically they say it's a missing link, a missing link to what?
Evolution has flaws, unfortunately most are too short sighted to see them. The more we study, the less evidence there is to support evolution. If we are evolving, why are we sicker than ever before? Why are people with disabilities surviving and reproducing? Why are there so many birth defects?
Evolution cannot answer those questions. We are always dealing with the uncertainty principle. Even if we are 99.999% sure that something is true doesn't mean that it is true.
There was a report several years ago about a man finding one of the creatures alive as described in the article. It was an aligator or crocodile with a tail like a fish and no hind legs. He claimed to have taken several pictures of the animal, but only a couple actually developed.
We cannot rule out that this animal is still alive today. There are a myriad of cryptids out there. New species of animals are being discovered all the time. Just because we found a fossil of it, doesn't mean they aren't still around today. Evolutionary science cannot prove that a fossil is millions of years old. They, instead look it up on a chart to see where it fits in their theory and give it an arbitrary number. These numbers are subject to change and often do.
Evolution has been wrong before. There are many scientific blunders and hoaxes dealing with the theory of evolution. Scientists thought the coelacanth died out millions of years ago like dinosaurs. Of course now we know that they live today. People's judgement was so clouded that they called it a living fossil instead of calling it what it really is, a fish.
Sure Betamax was a superior technology compared to VHS, but who won that war? Now they have Bluray. Sure it's a good idea, but Sony is already fumbling the format. It does not matter how good a technology is if the consumers aren't willing to adopt it. DRM takes quite a bit of processing time compared to non-copyprotected media. What does that mean to consumers? Since DRM takes more CPU time and memory, the hardware required to play a DRM'd movie will have to be that much quicker to operate. The faster and more sophisticated the hardware is, the more expensive it will be to us. These units also have a higher energy draw, about 25% more. This is just part of the hidden costs. DRM software doesn't invent itself. It takes a lot of time to develop the software, distribute it, etc etc. Time=Money. This cost is of course passed on to the consumer.
Now lets got to the real issue here. Which will consumers prefer? An expensive, poorly designed piece of technology, or something that is no more difficult to adopt than what they currently have. Most computers have issues playing non-DRM protected HDTV content let alone one that is. I bought the new special edition Terminator II that had the metal case and the high-def version. My computer was brand new at the time and it wouldn't even play it because of the DRM.
So what new format will we choose to distribute the next generation of media? Will it be Bluray or HD-DVD? Maybe neither! There are competing technologies out there that are capable of high-def right now without the need of clunky, ill-deigned DRM software. There's Xvid, DivX, etc, why PAY for proprietary forms of media you can't even bring to your SO's apartment to watch? That was the beauty of VHS, you could record stuff off of tv CHEAPLY, there was ONE format in video stores.
All of this just leads to confusion for the consumer. The new DVD format should piggyback on the old technology and be founded on OPEN standards. History will repeat itself with Sony's proprietary formats. Early adopters of Bluray will be throwing out their money. It will be at least 5 years before HD is fully mainstream. The majority of the movies out there will not benefit from being in HD.
Do you honestly think seeing Gone With the Wind will be better in HD?
The internet as we know it will come to an end if the UN is allowed to take control. The internet will be subject to politicians directly, which is a bad thing. China will have a say in how the internet is run, everyone knows what their position is.
Slashdot Mirror
After comparing the 499kbit H.264, and Theora video clips of Big Buck Bunny, clearly H.264 looks better. At this bitrate, there is obvious degradation in both samples, however H.264 is much more watchable. Theora struggles with flat areas such as text, and there is an unacceptable amount of artifacts around these elements. Perhaps in time, Theora will mature to the point where it can compete.
Seriously, we have no idea what kind of room we have to work with, how many people you need space for, etc.
The same argument has been made time and time again. When I was in high school, it was the difference between someone knowing how to use IM and someone who could program; there was no correlation. Most of these gadgets are nothing but toys. An ipod and cellphone do not serve any academic purposes. They are banned from schools for a reason, simply because they are distracting; especially when half the kids in class are either texting or listening to ipod. Unfortunately, most high schoolers are not responsible enough to keep these devices turned off during class, so they are banned. In college, its another story. College students are usually much more responsible for their actions and can use these devices responsibly. College professors also have the power to fail you for the course for using these "toys" during class, where high school teachers do not.
Goodnight is just plain wrong about his assumptions. Being plugged in all the time is harmful for children. There is a reason why kindergarteners are not allowed to use calculators. If they are using a calculator to compute 2 + 2, then just imagine how dependent they will be when they are in high school.
But does it run lin.. oh right.
And is it able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?
Just become a laser beam is invisible doesn't mean that it can't hurt you. It is actually significantly more dangerous working with invisible lasers such as ones in the UV frequencies like CD-ROM ones. At least with the red laser, you know where the beam is pointed. Protective laser goggles are made to work with specific lasers. They filter out the harmful ionized part of the laser, that does not always mean that they filter out the visible light spectrum.
Half octopus, half squid, half man. I'm so serial!
I'll probably get modded down as redundant. Put simply, you can't solve a social issue with a technological one.
1. Find a social issue
2. Invent a quick fix using technology
3. ?????
4. PROFIT!!!
The sample-set should also include musicians and audiophiles into the mix. They are far more likely to give an objective opinion compared to people randomly pulled off the street. Both know what to listen for and are well tuned in finding the distortion which is inherit in lossy compression.
In my personal experience, I have listened to mp3 as well as other competing formats for over 10 years and it is very easy for me to discern the difference in bitrates. I wasn't able to do this at first, but I tuned my senses into it over time. I wind up hearing noise and distortion that almost everyone misses.
Scotty doesn't know, Scotty doesn't know..
The current trend in the archival industry is to convert everything to digital. Unfortunately scanning is often a destructive process. In my experience, I have scanned documents that were written over 200 years ago and were still legible. In order to scan these documents, we had to cut all the pages from the binding which effectively destroys the document. The data was then burned onto dvd-r and sent back to the company. If there is any problem with a single disk, there would be a permanent loss of over 100,000 documents.
DVD is fine for the consumer market, if the disc is damaged you can just buy another one. This is not the case with the film industry, once these original masters are gone, they are gone forever. Microfilm, however can last for generations. Even if there is some degradation in the film stock, you can recover almost all the original data. Film can be split into their primary colors onto different reels of microfilm and later be re-joined.
One of my duties in the scanning industry was to operate the microfilm scanner. In this case, these were documents, but any type of information could be theoretically stored. Current models are capable of scanning at least 600 dpi. One of the hardest things would be to rejoin the frames later on and make sure they are all in sync. The way a microfilm scanner works is that on traditional microfilm, there are small squares that mark each frame. The scanner scans continuously and the software searches for these squares known as blips and it will know where to capture the image. With the addition of medium blips for keyframes and large blips for chapters, you can be fairly certain that you will be able to retrieve all the information later. If there is a missing frame, you will only be missing 1 channel of color for that particular frame. This data can be digitally re-created later.
Unlike digital media, microfilm has been around for over 100 years. The images are stored optically rather than digitally so there is a minimal amount of equipment needed for retrieval. Reproduction of microfilm is relatively inexpensive and multiple copies can be produced from the master and can be stored in multiple off-site storage areas. If the master is digital, you can produce multiple copies that are all the same quality so there isn't a single original master. It may be possible to store the sound on microfilm as well. Software would have to be developed to encode and decode the data, but it is possible.
an idea!
Computers do a lot of stuff behind the scenes which most people are unaware of. Your computer has more than one operating system on it. Your computer will first be initialized by the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) and perform a Power On Self Test (POST) to initialize your hardware and to do some basic checks. Many manufacturers hide this step by displaying their logo instead of what's actually going on behind the scenes. The BIOS then continues its boot sequence and searches for an operating system. There is a list in the BIOS of where to search for the OS. It will go in a specific order until it finds an operating system and will proceed to boot. All of this is done before WinXP even begins to be initialized. WinXP does many checks behind the scenes such as the registry and system files. It also initializes virtual memory, etc. etc.
This is the way most computers have operated for the past 20 years. The bootstrap sequence is much faster than it was in the early days when it took a few minutes to check the ram. Now it is checked so fast that you can't even see it happen.
One of the biggest problems with the recording industry is that the artists sign over their copyright holdings permanently instead of leasing them. Right now the transfer of copyright is complete and permanent.
The lease should end when the contract does. The artist or artists would then have the option to renew their contract and lease, sign a new contract / release indie, or release it into the public domain.
With a lease, you can be assured that there isn't an abuse of the power that record labels have now. A simple law could make these current types of contracts obsolete and illegal. Artists should also be able to reference this law and get their copyrights returned to the rightful owner.
This kind of thing is being done with the LOTR Trilogy and The Hobbit. The movie rights were leased to Miramax for a short period. If they do not finish the movies within that timeframe, they cannot release them.
Lets face it, record labels themselves are an obsolete business model. There are many ways to do self promotion now and you don't need to include a 3rd party publisher. A simple website, some iTunes tracks and a live tour are you really need to promote yourself. All labels really do is publish little plastic discs. They don't need exclusive rights to your material to do that.
Even though a CD has a large dynamic range window, most new CDs are mastered too hot and there is significant loss due to over normalization and clipping. Older CDs were mastered for Hi-Fi systems and have a great deal of dynamic range. Newer CDs are mastered to be heard on the radio or a portable CD player. Records on the other hand are still mastered to have more dynamic range and therefore are superior recordings.
Analog recordings have a soft window so there isn't hard clipping like there is in the hard window of digtial.
Many technical schools have something similar to your idea. It's called a Cap Stone project which encompasses all you have learned combined and it is done when you are a senior.
You can also substitute Blu-ray for HD-DVD.
I still use Google for my initial searches. I have been noticing that the hits I get are becoming less relavant as time goes on. This is obviously because sponsored links are constantly bringing up irrelavant hits. I don't consider Wikipedia as a traditional search engine so its not going to be able to replace Google. Both still have their usefulness in different ways. Until I get fed up woth my current searching strategy, Google will be my first choice.
MMOs can destroy lives if they are not used carefully. They have a high rate of addiction and must be used with caution. Warcraft is actually one of the mildest MMOs. For the most part, you really don't need to spend a significant amount of time per week to build up a character. After all, it's just a game and for entertainment purposes only. Just about anything used in moderation is safe. The user just has to be aware of their addiction and know when to stop playing. People can get addicted to just about anything, some people are addicted to washing their hands for example.
I thought this was an announcemnt for a new Indiana Jones movie in China.
But seriously, I think this trend of web censorship is just the beginning. Blood sucking politicians enjoy having control over the prolitariat. Controlling the media, whether its newspapers, magazines, tv, news, etc are all signs of despotism. Isn't that right Rupert.
I always wondered where the movie GATTACA got it's title.
The focus on harder science is declining. The AOL(tm) generation have difficulties with some of the most basic tasks. They have too many distractions. High School students try to do their homework while watching TV, listening to their iPod(tm), surfing the web and playing games; while being interrupted by their cellphones ringing every 30 seconds.
Science is not the only thing in decline. Communication skills are also in a sharp and steady decline. Children are learning how to communicate through MySpace(tm) and IM(tm) where grammar, semantics, capitalization and punctuation are never used properly.
Formal instruction teches the fundamentals of programming. If students don't learn cognitive programming skills at a young age, they will be significantly disadvantaged to those that did.
Ideologies take any branch of science and turn it on it's head. Science should be able to look at what they are studying objectively, not subjectively. Automatically they say it's a missing link, a missing link to what?
Evolution has flaws, unfortunately most are too short sighted to see them. The more we study, the less evidence there is to support evolution. If we are evolving, why are we sicker than ever before? Why are people with disabilities surviving and reproducing? Why are there so many birth defects?
Evolution cannot answer those questions. We are always dealing with the uncertainty principle. Even if we are 99.999% sure that something is true doesn't mean that it is true.
There was a report several years ago about a man finding one of the creatures alive as described in the article. It was an aligator or crocodile with a tail like a fish and no hind legs. He claimed to have taken several pictures of the animal, but only a couple actually developed.
We cannot rule out that this animal is still alive today. There are a myriad of cryptids out there. New species of animals are being discovered all the time. Just because we found a fossil of it, doesn't mean they aren't still around today. Evolutionary science cannot prove that a fossil is millions of years old. They, instead look it up on a chart to see where it fits in their theory and give it an arbitrary number. These numbers are subject to change and often do.
Evolution has been wrong before. There are many scientific blunders and hoaxes dealing with the theory of evolution. Scientists thought the coelacanth died out millions of years ago like dinosaurs. Of course now we know that they live today. People's judgement was so clouded that they called it a living fossil instead of calling it what it really is, a fish.
Sure Betamax was a superior technology compared to VHS, but who won that war? Now they have Bluray. Sure it's a good idea, but Sony is already fumbling the format. It does not matter how good a technology is if the consumers aren't willing to adopt it. DRM takes quite a bit of processing time compared to non-copyprotected media. What does that mean to consumers? Since DRM takes more CPU time and memory, the hardware required to play a DRM'd movie will have to be that much quicker to operate. The faster and more sophisticated the hardware is, the more expensive it will be to us. These units also have a higher energy draw, about 25% more. This is just part of the hidden costs. DRM software doesn't invent itself. It takes a lot of time to develop the software, distribute it, etc etc. Time=Money. This cost is of course passed on to the consumer.
Now lets got to the real issue here. Which will consumers prefer? An expensive, poorly designed piece of technology, or something that is no more difficult to adopt than what they currently have. Most computers have issues playing non-DRM protected HDTV content let alone one that is. I bought the new special edition Terminator II that had the metal case and the high-def version. My computer was brand new at the time and it wouldn't even play it because of the DRM.
So what new format will we choose to distribute the next generation of media? Will it be Bluray or HD-DVD? Maybe neither! There are competing technologies out there that are capable of high-def right now without the need of clunky, ill-deigned DRM software. There's Xvid, DivX, etc, why PAY for proprietary forms of media you can't even bring to your SO's apartment to watch? That was the beauty of VHS, you could record stuff off of tv CHEAPLY, there was ONE format in video stores.
All of this just leads to confusion for the consumer. The new DVD format should piggyback on the old technology and be founded on OPEN standards. History will repeat itself with Sony's proprietary formats. Early adopters of Bluray will be throwing out their money. It will be at least 5 years before HD is fully mainstream. The majority of the movies out there will not benefit from being in HD.
Do you honestly think seeing Gone With the Wind will be better in HD?
The internet as we know it will come to an end if the UN is allowed to take control. The internet will be subject to politicians directly, which is a bad thing. China will have a say in how the internet is run, everyone knows what their position is.