Approximation has it's place, but at this bit rate quality anywhere near 35mm prints is nye impossible
We're not talking about the US where digital is pushed as a "superior format" to that of film. When we go do digital movie houses, we expect quality that exceeds that of "regular" 35mm. That the theatre owner saved some bucks by having the film downloaded is irrelevant to us, and it doesn't mean that my 12plex is going to get movies that it wouldn't normally otherwise. NOW Brasil on the other hand, is a different story. The problem they are trying to solve is one of logistics. They are talking about the difference between many theatres either not getting a film at all, or having to wait a significant amount of time, or having to pay very large sums to get them delivered. A previous poster that lives in Brasil mentioned that the city he lives in doesn't even have THX theatres, so they are not going for the ultimate in quality here.
They decided on their primary requirements (ease of distribution) and chose a technology that met that particular requirement. In the states the primary requirement probably isn't going to be the same, so the technology chosen will accordingly differ.
One last point. Your example of the WOO dvd release is important here, because it shows that one of the advantages of digital is that you can adjust compression ratios accordingly. If they decide at some point that the current compression ratios are too aggressive, they can always loosen them up to get better quality.
Now ask yourself "why don't newspapers, magazines and books have a piracy problem, with all these copiers and so forth out there?"
Several reasons:
- Just how long would it take you to photocopy Harry Potter and how good of a copy could you make without destroying the book in the process.
- If you were to take the time to scan it, who would want to bother to print it out since the cost of the paper/toner would probably end up being more than the original book.
- Paper products have a long history and people are accustomed to their "interface" (i.e. I can take it on the bus or in the bathroom or in bed, I can fold it up, throw it in my bag, and I'm only out $5.95 (.50cents for a paper) if I lose it).
- With video and audio, EXACT reproductions can be made with a single mouse click.
- The nature in which their distributed lends themselves to easy reproduction (DRM efforts not withstanding).
Whatever the Printed Word industry has done to protect itself from "piracy", the music and movie industries have to do the same thing to protect themselves from the same threat.
You can't compare the two. Different mediums that came at different times. Just like 30 years ago, film piracy was no big deal. Before cassette tapes, audio piracy wasn't a big deal. Had ebooks taken off, then the "printed" people would be stressing out about piracy as well. Just so happens the preferred distribution media is just some damn inconvenient to reproduce.
I have a feeling that if some area is inaccessible by road, it's not likely to have DSL or fiber running to it either.
To quote from the article:
Rain Networks has developed a system called KinoCast, which downloads films into cinemas via satellite and then controls projection through a central computer working remotely on a virtual private network (VPN).
All the items are RFID tagged to, leading to....
on
RFID Tags For The Rich
·
· Score: 4, Funny
changing room: I'm sorry m'am, but we have you at a size 10, but you have 5 items that are a size 5, you are either trying to steal these items are you are about to ruin these items by trying them on.
I was a bit confused by the decision to include Firewire in this machine. I know it is an apple kind of penchant, but surely a server won't need firewire.
Actually there are lots of reasons to include firewire on a server.
- You can hang a firewire mass storage device off of it to backup (tape, disk, etc), boot from (recovery, etc), add extra storage in a pinch, etc.
- You can create various types of clusters using firewire. One product is the sancube.
- It's cheaper to design in a feature that may not be used in one incarnation of a product, but may be usable in others. Case in point your comment about Audigy sound cards on high end Intel servers, those very same motherboards are probably used in both servers and high end workstations, no point in having two different motherboards just to save a few pennies off of a $500+ mobo.
So you rig your webserver to put out an increasing electrical charge as hits go up, you then have a nice visual indicator of when you're being/.'ed, just like their French page.
Too bad they took the Ferrari thing to such a shallow level. Would would have been REALLY cool would be
- case made of carbon fibre
- billet aluminum trackpoint knob
- "paddle" mouse buttons
- see through area of case above the cpu
- red EVERYWHERE, expect where the black/grey of the cf showed through
- Italian voice sounds by default
- "track" day where all the notebook owners can get together and learn how to properly use their new toys
With all this talk about it not being a democracy and about it being about "art", I'm therefore amazed that George would allow a cut/cropped version of his baby out into the public. Were the movies shot matted so the full screen versions actually are closer to his "vision"?
and you can only manage it via thier browser-based tool (no telnet or tftp).
Totally untrue. I have or had 4 routers (RT311/314 and the MR314 and one other whose model# escapes me now) and they were all accessable via Telnet AND serial (nice since you don't have to reset the unit just in case you totally muck up the ip address). Now if by telnet you mean you can't just be plopped into a shell, then you're sorta right (though you do have access to the command line from the admin menu).
Linksys is a hardware company. They make money by selling hardware. By opening up the software (and making their hardware "hackable"), they will increase their hardware sales.
That's a very simplistic view of the world and one that only works if the hardware manufacturer only sells a single product or has large jumps in capabilities between products within a family. Suppose Linksys intended to supply many of these features in a more expensive (i.e. more profitable) version of the router. They're now hosed as it is now possible for users to upgrade their firmware for free. So sure, they sell more of the cheaper routers, but this is not what they want. This problem will occur anywhere hardware manufacturers try to take advantage of hardware commonality and differentiating similar products through software based features.
Another potential issue is fighting "cloners". If Taiwanese company CloneCo now has easy access to the software feature set, they "merely" have to develop a clone architecture to run the now readily available software.
Really simple example. I send an email to my buddy saying "I'll meet you at the Burger Hut at 11:00am". Presumably, their software would identify "Burger Hut", look up it's address and be able to plot that on a map. If I sent another email at 12:45 to a buddy of mine, you could look at the ip I sent it from. If it's my work ip, then there is a reasonable probability that I'm at work (yes I know, telecomuting and other technologies doesn't make this 100%, but for many it's a damn close guess), so at 12:45, one can guess that I'm at the office. I use my CC at the grocery store, the location of the grocery store is then tracked.
Put all these things together and you get a spatial picture of me. This is simply another way of looking at the data. From this you can more easily discern patterns. A more powerful example is if in another email I mentioned that I ate lunch with Osama, you could correlate the fact that I was at the burger hut around lunch time, and therefore there was a good possibility that Osama was there too.
They stress the importance of determining whether Mars ever supported life before humans touch down on the surface, because "You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet... and contaminate it."
... made from an old cargo bay. It will be too late for the crew to realize that Mars had blown up during their long travel and that they were one planet off, indeed, they were on Jupiter, where a long exiled.....
I'd also be wary of any skeletons with fist sized holes punched outward in their chest cavities.
If hundreds of people got hurt, it would have been easy to figure out who was behind it and this could have escalated the tension greatly.
Even if people did get hurt (and given the situation, it wouldn't be all that shocking to later find out than some might have, the Soviet's perhaps not wanting to admit it), the point is that the Soviets got into that situation by stealing technology. It's hard to get all indignant about having the tech you stole backfire (literally) on you. After all, the Soviets could have simply lied and said that 1000 people were killed if they wanted to use this "underhanded" trick as fuel to the fire right?
did the US know that when they got started in this whole fiasco or do you think they would have done it anyways if there was the potential for many (as in hundreds) people to get hurt/killed?
Undoubtidly they did. After all, they knew the end result would be an explosion (or other catostrophic failure) and they couldn't possibly know exactly when or where. I think this is a one of those "acceptable collateral damage" things. Sacrafice a few to save the many. The good of the many outweighs...., well you get the point.
But will the car plug the meter when I run out of time?
Why not. This would be technically trivial. You modify the parking meter to have rfid sensors just like those toll booths. So you pull up to the thing and it just starts charging your parking account. You leave, it stops. No more getting angry because you left 1hr for the other guy. Or realizing that you didn't bring any quarters with you. Or running out in the middle of a meeting to stuff the meter.
You are confusing the issue here. It has nothing to do with search results produced by the search engine.
I know that, my point was that the search results that come back could also be thought of as "ads". They contain everything an ad would without the graphics. Some could argue that the banner ads are also technically "results" returned by the search, with the only differentiaters being that the "real" results are limited in media presentation and that they are not paid for. I'm saying that the difference between the two is quite blurry. If Playboy wins their suit, then a logical progression could be to argue my above point.
When a trademark is the same as a common word, shouldn't the determination be made based on intent?
Problem with that is when you run into trademarked words that are generic in meaning within a particular industry. Playboy for instance. Webster says the definition of "playboy" is:
a man who lives a life devoted chiefly to the pursuit of pleasure
Obviously sex and naked chicks falls right in line with that definition. So the intent of an advertiser becomes much fuzzier. Where do you draw the line between those who it makes sense to want to keyword on the generic meaning (and it makes sense for them to do so) and those who specifically want to "leach" of the real Playboy? Can Playboy the enterprise now lock out anything remotely related to male entertainment based on their name? If so, expect a huge surge of companies to trademark the broadest terms possible for their industries.
But I think it's justified here, where someone is using a company's trademark to sell related but non-affiliated goods.
This is interesting. What will they say if porn site X, which has the text "better looking than playmates" in their title, which will appear in the search results summary, also comes up for the playmate search? It is also effectively an advertisment for their commercial service. Does Yahoo (or any other search engine) have to filter or modify what's presented for their search results?
You'd think the fake would be obvious ....
on
Spirit Rolls on Mars
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
NASA also has photos, straight from their fake set in Hollywood where they produce all the "space" footage.
You'd think the fact that they are fake would be obvious from the pictures with OJ in them!
Several people have posted (in the usual/. manner) that they don't see an issue with the devil, it's a cartoon, right wing religious wackos, etc. Well its not the devil, it's what the devils are doing. The devils are in a pose that mimics one that is usually associated with valour and the giving of ones life for "liberty" (whether or not you agree that this particular pose does or not is for another discussion). So now you have a logo that uses characters associated with negative deeds (the devil, cartoon or not) in the place of men associated with honor and self sacrafice. Given the current events, I could see how this logo, while passing under the radar for many years, is now suddenly considered inappropriate.
I can understand how many would find it inappropriate, which is unfortunate because for those who've been around the BSD and the computer scene for a while know exactly what the logo is trying to represent and it's quite accurate in that regard.
I agree with the submitter in spirit, why is it that the lowest payed workers are the ones that need such accurate, high security time clocks?
Because they tend to be working in larger numbers and the companies they work for typcially have smaller margins. Also, with customer service companies, when Chuck the fry cook decides to leave an hour early and have Molly punch him out, it could lead to soggy fries and unhappy customers.
Do you have enough of an understanding of these companies and their balance sheets (margins, calculated money lost to time card fraud, etc) to see why something like may or may not make sense. Not saying that I do, but I'm not the one criticizing their actions.
Plus what does security have to do with this? You think McDonalds is worried about someone from Burger King punching in as an employee and stealing the next days menu?
AMD's new stuff has been pretty impressive, but it really bothers me when they pull this type of stuff:
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4GHz 1MB Q2 '04
AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.4GHz 512KB Q2 '04
What's the problem. They're saying that having the smaller cache gives you less performance. Are you upset that they happen to have the same clock speed? I assume you'd prefer nomenclature more on the order of "AMD Athlon 64 2.4/512 and 2.4/1024"? In many ways they way they are currently doing it is more descriptive to the average buyer. No guessing as to how much performance you're giving up by going with the smaller cache,or how much you're gaining by going with the bigger (performance benchmark inflation not withstanding).
NO Apple was the market leader in the PC world then IBM with MS dos came on the seen and over took Apple
How are you defining PC? Are you calling the Apple II a PC. If so, then are you also saying that the Atari 400/800 and TRS series were NOT pc's, since on a market share basis they both outsold the Apple II until the PC came along. At that point PC's outsold AppleII and Mac sales since the begining.
Slashdot Mirror
Approximation has it's place, but at this bit rate quality anywhere near 35mm prints is nye impossible
We're not talking about the US where digital is pushed as a "superior format" to that of film. When we go do digital movie houses, we expect quality that exceeds that of "regular" 35mm. That the theatre owner saved some bucks by having the film downloaded is irrelevant to us, and it doesn't mean that my 12plex is going to get movies that it wouldn't normally otherwise. NOW Brasil on the other hand, is a different story. The problem they are trying to solve is one of logistics. They are talking about the difference between many theatres either not getting a film at all, or having to wait a significant amount of time, or having to pay very large sums to get them delivered. A previous poster that lives in Brasil mentioned that the city he lives in doesn't even have THX theatres, so they are not going for the ultimate in quality here.
They decided on their primary requirements (ease of distribution) and chose a technology that met that particular requirement. In the states the primary requirement probably isn't going to be the same, so the technology chosen will accordingly differ.
One last point. Your example of the WOO dvd release is important here, because it shows that one of the advantages of digital is that you can adjust compression ratios accordingly. If they decide at some point that the current compression ratios are too aggressive, they can always loosen them up to get better quality.
Now ask yourself "why don't newspapers, magazines and books have a piracy problem, with all these copiers and so forth out there?"
Several reasons:
- Just how long would it take you to photocopy Harry Potter and how good of a copy could you make without destroying the book in the process.
- If you were to take the time to scan it, who would want to bother to print it out since the cost of the paper/toner would probably end up being more than the original book.
- Paper products have a long history and people are accustomed to their "interface" (i.e. I can take it on the bus or in the bathroom or in bed, I can fold it up, throw it in my bag, and I'm only out $5.95 (.50cents for a paper) if I lose it).
- With video and audio, EXACT reproductions can be made with a single mouse click.
- The nature in which their distributed lends themselves to easy reproduction (DRM efforts not withstanding).
Whatever the Printed Word industry has done to protect itself from "piracy", the music and movie industries have to do the same thing to protect themselves from the same threat.
You can't compare the two. Different mediums that came at different times. Just like 30 years ago, film piracy was no big deal. Before cassette tapes, audio piracy wasn't a big deal. Had ebooks taken off, then the "printed" people would be stressing out about piracy as well. Just so happens the preferred distribution media is just some damn inconvenient to reproduce.
I have a feeling that if some area is inaccessible by road, it's not likely to have DSL or fiber running to it either.
To quote from the article:
Rain Networks has developed a system called KinoCast, which downloads films into cinemas via satellite and then controls projection through a central computer working remotely on a virtual private network (VPN).
changing room: I'm sorry m'am, but we have you at a size 10, but you have 5 items that are a size 5, you are either trying to steal these items are you are about to ruin these items by trying them on.
customer: open the changing room doors please
changing room: I'm sorry, I can't do that
I was a bit confused by the decision to include Firewire in this machine. I know it is an apple kind of penchant, but surely a server won't need firewire.
Actually there are lots of reasons to include firewire on a server.
- You can hang a firewire mass storage device off of it to backup (tape, disk, etc), boot from (recovery, etc), add extra storage in a pinch, etc.
- You can create various types of clusters using firewire. One product is the sancube.
- It's cheaper to design in a feature that may not be used in one incarnation of a product, but may be usable in others. Case in point your comment about Audigy sound cards on high end Intel servers, those very same motherboards are probably used in both servers and high end workstations, no point in having two different motherboards just to save a few pennies off of a $500+ mobo.
So you rig your webserver to put out an increasing electrical charge as hits go up, you then have a nice visual indicator of when you're being /.'ed, just like their French page.
Too bad they took the Ferrari thing to such a shallow level. Would would have been REALLY cool would be
- case made of carbon fibre
- billet aluminum trackpoint knob
- "paddle" mouse buttons
- see through area of case above the cpu
- red EVERYWHERE, expect where the black/grey of the cf showed through
- Italian voice sounds by default
- "track" day where all the notebook owners can get together and learn how to properly use their new toys
With all this talk about it not being a democracy and about it being about "art", I'm therefore amazed that George would allow a cut/cropped version of his baby out into the public. Were the movies shot matted so the full screen versions actually are closer to his "vision"?
and you can only manage it via thier browser-based tool (no telnet or tftp).
Totally untrue. I have or had 4 routers (RT311/314 and the MR314 and one other whose model# escapes me now) and they were all accessable via Telnet AND serial (nice since you don't have to reset the unit just in case you totally muck up the ip address). Now if by telnet you mean you can't just be plopped into a shell, then you're sorta right (though you do have access to the command line from the admin menu).
Linksys is a hardware company. They make money by selling hardware. By opening up the software (and making their hardware "hackable"), they will increase their hardware sales.
That's a very simplistic view of the world and one that only works if the hardware manufacturer only sells a single product or has large jumps in capabilities between products within a family. Suppose Linksys intended to supply many of these features in a more expensive (i.e. more profitable) version of the router. They're now hosed as it is now possible for users to upgrade their firmware for free. So sure, they sell more of the cheaper routers, but this is not what they want. This problem will occur anywhere hardware manufacturers try to take advantage of hardware commonality and differentiating similar products through software based features.
Another potential issue is fighting "cloners". If Taiwanese company CloneCo now has easy access to the software feature set, they "merely" have to develop a clone architecture to run the now readily available software.
Really simple example. I send an email to my buddy saying "I'll meet you at the Burger Hut at 11:00am". Presumably, their software would identify "Burger Hut", look up it's address and be able to plot that on a map. If I sent another email at 12:45 to a buddy of mine, you could look at the ip I sent it from. If it's my work ip, then there is a reasonable probability that I'm at work (yes I know, telecomuting and other technologies doesn't make this 100%, but for many it's a damn close guess), so at 12:45, one can guess that I'm at the office. I use my CC at the grocery store, the location of the grocery store is then tracked.
Put all these things together and you get a spatial picture of me. This is simply another way of looking at the data. From this you can more easily discern patterns. A more powerful example is if in another email I mentioned that I ate lunch with Osama, you could correlate the fact that I was at the burger hut around lunch time, and therefore there was a good possibility that Osama was there too.
They stress the importance of determining whether Mars ever supported life before humans touch down on the surface, because "You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet ... and contaminate it."
... made from an old cargo bay. It will be too late for the crew to realize that Mars had blown up during their long travel and that they were one planet off, indeed, they were on Jupiter, where a long exiled .....
I'd also be wary of any skeletons with fist sized holes punched outward in their chest cavities.
If hundreds of people got hurt, it would have been easy to figure out who was behind it and this could have escalated the tension greatly.
...., well you get the point.
Even if people did get hurt (and given the situation, it wouldn't be all that shocking to later find out than some might have, the Soviet's perhaps not wanting to admit it), the point is that the Soviets got into that situation by stealing technology. It's hard to get all indignant about having the tech you stole backfire (literally) on you. After all, the Soviets could have simply lied and said that 1000 people were killed if they wanted to use this "underhanded" trick as fuel to the fire right?
did the US know that when they got started in this whole fiasco or do you think they would have done it anyways if there was the potential for many (as in hundreds) people to get hurt/killed?
Undoubtidly they did. After all, they knew the end result would be an explosion (or other catostrophic failure) and they couldn't possibly know exactly when or where. I think this is a one of those "acceptable collateral damage" things. Sacrafice a few to save the many. The good of the many outweighs
But will the car plug the meter when I run out of time?
Why not. This would be technically trivial. You modify the parking meter to have rfid sensors just like those toll booths. So you pull up to the thing and it just starts charging your parking account. You leave, it stops. No more getting angry because you left 1hr for the other guy. Or realizing that you didn't bring any quarters with you. Or running out in the middle of a meeting to stuff the meter.
You are confusing the issue here. It has nothing to do with search results produced by the search engine.
I know that, my point was that the search results that come back could also be thought of as "ads". They contain everything an ad would without the graphics. Some could argue that the banner ads are also technically "results" returned by the search, with the only differentiaters being that the "real" results are limited in media presentation and that they are not paid for. I'm saying that the difference between the two is quite blurry. If Playboy wins their suit, then a logical progression could be to argue my above point.
When a trademark is the same as a common word, shouldn't the determination be made based on intent?
Problem with that is when you run into trademarked words that are generic in meaning within a particular industry. Playboy for instance. Webster says the definition of "playboy" is:
a man who lives a life devoted chiefly to the pursuit of pleasure
Obviously sex and naked chicks falls right in line with that definition. So the intent of an advertiser becomes much fuzzier. Where do you draw the line between those who it makes sense to want to keyword on the generic meaning (and it makes sense for them to do so) and those who specifically want to "leach" of the real Playboy? Can Playboy the enterprise now lock out anything remotely related to male entertainment based on their name? If so, expect a huge surge of companies to trademark the broadest terms possible for their industries.
But I think it's justified here, where someone is using a company's trademark to sell related but non-affiliated goods.
This is interesting. What will they say if porn site X, which has the text "better looking than playmates" in their title, which will appear in the search results summary, also comes up for the playmate search? It is also effectively an advertisment for their commercial service. Does Yahoo (or any other search engine) have to filter or modify what's presented for their search results?
NASA also has photos, straight from their fake set in Hollywood where they produce all the "space" footage.
You'd think the fact that they are fake would be obvious from the pictures with OJ in them!
SCENE: Dr Evil addressing /. audience ...
... and the reward for best logo will be ... [PAUSE FOR EFFECT] 1 HUUUNNNDREED DOLLARS!
Dr. Evil:
[FAST ZOOM ON DR. EVILS MOUTH/PINKY]
Dr. Evil: And can I get a logo with devils with frickin lasers on their heads!
Several people have posted (in the usual /. manner) that they don't see an issue with the devil, it's a cartoon, right wing religious wackos, etc. Well its not the devil, it's what the devils are doing. The devils are in a pose that mimics one that is usually associated with valour and the giving of ones life for "liberty" (whether or not you agree that this particular pose does or not is for another discussion). So now you have a logo that uses characters associated with negative deeds (the devil, cartoon or not) in the place of men associated with honor and self sacrafice. Given the current events, I could see how this logo, while passing under the radar for many years, is now suddenly considered inappropriate.
I can understand how many would find it inappropriate, which is unfortunate because for those who've been around the BSD and the computer scene for a while know exactly what the logo is trying to represent and it's quite accurate in that regard.
I agree with the submitter in spirit, why is it that the lowest payed workers are the ones that need such accurate, high security time clocks?
Because they tend to be working in larger numbers and the companies they work for typcially have smaller margins. Also, with customer service companies, when Chuck the fry cook decides to leave an hour early and have Molly punch him out, it could lead to soggy fries and unhappy customers.
Do you have enough of an understanding of these companies and their balance sheets (margins, calculated money lost to time card fraud, etc) to see why something like may or may not make sense. Not saying that I do, but I'm not the one criticizing their actions.
Plus what does security have to do with this? You think McDonalds is worried about someone from Burger King punching in as an employee and stealing the next days menu?
AMD's new stuff has been pretty impressive, but it really bothers me when they pull this type of stuff: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4GHz 1MB Q2 '04 AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.4GHz 512KB Q2 '04
,or how much you're gaining by going with the bigger (performance benchmark inflation not withstanding).
What's the problem. They're saying that having the smaller cache gives you less performance. Are you upset that they happen to have the same clock speed? I assume you'd prefer nomenclature more on the order of "AMD Athlon 64 2.4/512 and 2.4/1024"? In many ways they way they are currently doing it is more descriptive to the average buyer. No guessing as to how much performance you're giving up by going with the smaller cache
Sorry the Atari 400 came out in 1979 the Apple II came out in 1977
Which is why I mentioned both the Atari's and the TRS-80, which came out in 77 as well and outsold the II at the time.
I can remember only one company that licensed the Micro Channel (ALR, I think),
Two others I can think of are NCR and Tandy.
NO Apple was the market leader in the PC world then IBM with MS dos came on the seen and over took Apple
How are you defining PC? Are you calling the Apple II a PC. If so, then are you also saying that the Atari 400/800 and TRS series were NOT pc's, since on a market share basis they both outsold the Apple II until the PC came along. At that point PC's outsold AppleII and Mac sales since the begining.