> maybe the cat was closer to the camera than the man?
At last, I'm not the only one with that impression. TFA mentions that the tail was about 65 cm long, but when you compare it to the dimensions on the picture, it seems half as tall as the man standing nearby, which would make that guy only 1,30 m (4-foot 4") tall. So I believe there might be a perspective effect here...
> > You have to understand, America is like the Titanic.
> >
> What, gradually sinking, in complete denial about it, and the rich are grabbing all the lifeboats?
Ouch. That hurt. Mod parent funny, it really deserves it.
on the previous cooperative Wikipedia-style initiatives on the Net:
Moderators for the submitted articles
A (scientific ?) reviewing committee
This was definitely lacking in the other initiatives.
Of course, this supposes that a committee of reliable people (typically, university researchers, professionals, etc.) culls the articles as they are submitted, and it does require a lot of time. They already do this for peer-reviewed scientific or technical journals, with the difference that they probably get paid for doing it.
Still, I believe in a serious technical/scientific committee donating their time in order to review the validity of articles submitted to online encyclopediae, and being given the rights to prevent the modification of the online articles unless those modifications have been approved. This would be a great step towards reliability in the Wikipedia publishing process.
And besides, to compare this with another great cooperative project, would Linus Torvalds let pieces of the Linux code be updated by any anonymous coward without a proper code review done by a trusted person ? This is the direction that ought to be taken for Wikipedia.
> Lets see, what is more logical? The idea that our entire world
> and life as we know it came from a bunch of exploding gas that
> gradually became more complex and developed into extremely
> intricate organisms, like humans for example. Or that an all
> powerful being created the world as we know it in a mature
> state out of nothing.
Considering the fact that scientific methods have been established to determine the age of fossils, and that a wealth of fossils allowed the paleologists/geologists to trace the history of life on earth to a high level of detail, well, I think the first theory fits reality much better.
Oh, and don't give us the usual bullshit about "planted false evidence to test our faith". It reminds me of children who've been stealing chocolate cookies in the cupboard, and when asked who left chocolate-covered fingerprints all over the place : "I didn't do it dad, it's $YOUR_FAVORITE_MONSTER !". A-hem.
> a TOE label (I would suggest a stylized "EVO" in a circle) would
> mark products that are the product of the theory of evolution.
I have a problem with this : I'm just curious about the number of pharma industry leaders (or agrochemistry, and so on) who are willing to take the risk of having their products (e.g. vaccines, crop seeds) boycotted by a large fringe of the population.
I think a voluntary solution is not applicable here...
Not managers : lawyers ! Now *this* is a US production that is hardly on the decline. Fortunately, the US is also the biggest consumer for these "goods", and there's not many of them left for export.
But I hear that the other countries in the world are increasingly interested in the "barratry & frivolous lawsuits" business model, so I guess the foreign demand is on the rise...
Which goes to show that although the Wikipedia cooperative tool is a wonderful project and can yield excellent articles on consensual and otherwise well-researched topics, it is actually useless when it comes to touchy subjects. Vandalism certainly doesn't help.
Actually, there is another good argument, according to Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as to why Christianity shoud be rejected if ID is accepted:
Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. [This is the main argument behind ID] The argument goes something like this: I refuse to prove that I exist, says God, for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing. But, says Man, the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isnt it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you dont. QED. Oh dear, says God, I hadnt thought of that, and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
Therefore ID and religious faith are mutually exclusive, which is an interesting turn;-)
Indeed, the EU law is already binding on member states, but I have to disagree with you and share the views of RMS on that point : the new constitutional project would have made the EU less democratic and (even) more corporate-driven than it currently is.
With this text, although the EU parliament would have had the power to oppose decisions taken by the EU Council of ministers, the decisions would have been as messy to take or to oppose as with the current EU software, since this directive project was already being discussed in co-decision -- the way nearly every directive would have been, had the text been approved. As we have all seen with the software patents directive, there was still plenty of room for sneaky things to be done by the Council and the Commission to push the agenda of the European Patents Office against the will of the Parliament, and as RMS says, even though the Parliament rubbed their noses this time, they will surely be back with a revenge.
However, if the constitutional treaty had been voted in, the Commission and the Council would have had even more powers; the Commission could have taken "european decisions" (the equivalent of directives, that have force of law) on its own, without any possible democratic check and balance over these : not even the EU Council would have a say on that.
Finally, let us not forget that the inherent flaw of the current EU institutions is that the Council of Ministers has the legislative power at the european scale, and the same ministers apply these european laws using their executive power at the national scale. This is already in contradiction with the principles of separation of powers.
So sure, it will be a while until the EU gathers again around a constitution project. But I think that voting against this one was the right thing to do -- and I for one did it.
I live in France and FYI, all the fuss around that patents directive was a decisive argument for my vote against the constitutional proposal, where the Parliament (despite what was often said by the proponents of the text) was given hardly more power to oppose the European Council and the Commission, whereas the Commission, the Council and the Central Bank (all of which are unelected bodies) were given additional powers.
Tell you what : they just failed it in France and Holland a couple of weeks ago. Now the "independent" media and the proponents of the Constitution are crying bloody murder all around the place and insulting the people who voted "NO", instead of admitting that they fucked up in both the writing of the text and the campaign in favour of the constitutional treaty.
It's actually worse than that : over here in Europe, a number of companies actually advertise for bogus positions during hard economic/social times. You will send them an excellent resume, they will scan it, you may get an appointment with them, but you will most certainly not be hired. Simply because the position they advertised for *does* *not* *exist*.
So why do they go through this hassle ? Well, they particularly do this during recession periods in order to look good compared with other businesses which are downsizing. It's all about PR and keeping the confidence of investors. And no, they don't care about wasting *your* precious time and energy.
That's right, they use ISDB-T; this standard requires a special twist on the basic MPEG-2 transport stream, and custom headers for the transport packets, plus a special multiplexing of the packets for the channels broadcast in that system. When I coded a measurement tool for Japanese clients a few years ago, I had several headaches trying to understand how it all worked (plus at that time, most of the documents on that standard were still written in Japanese only, you had to understand the oral explanations of the clients in order to get all the picture).
Concerning AC3 : it's fine and cool, but there is a patent on that system (Dolby), and asian countries hate to base their standards on patented algorithms, especially when those patents are not owned by a local company.
My mistake, I got a little carried away with what I was reading... Still, that is one of the possibilities for his project, as he mentions at the bottom of the page:"This project can be the basis of a real time low cost DVB-T and DVB-H modulator."
and yes, I am a (former) DVB-T engineer (and a consultant in digital video broadcasting at large -- yes, I know a bit about the US and Japanese standards too).
What Fabrice is telling us here is that he has managed to produce a real-time (or close-to-real-time) DVB-T/DVB-H software COFDM modulator, the output of which may be broadcast via the DAC converters of the video board. Given the complexity of the generated signal (more than 6000 subcarriers, not including pilot subcarriers which are used as beacons for the demodulator, and paying respect to the guard interval -- sorry for the technical gobbledygook), this usually requires a dedicated ASIC. Don't forget to include the preliminary phases of the encoding : creating an MPEG-2 video channel, an MEPG-2 transport stream (OK, he did it using a modified MPEG library), then encapsulate this into MPEG-2/DVB frames, add the Reed-Solomon code, perform the interleaving procedure, pour in some Viterbi encoding for redundancy, and feed it to the input of the DVB-T modulator, phew ! you're done.
I want to say hats off, ladies and gentlemen, to this outstanding performance. The Free Software movement definitely needs more guys like Fabrice, and we all need to encourage him into publishing more of his code.
Slashdot Mirror
"I did not have sex with that woman -- Ms. Lewinsky." (Clinton's voice).
OK, picked it from the hacking of "Billy the big-mouthed bass", previously reported here.
not in the "Hardware" section, dammit !
At last, I'm not the only one with that impression. TFA mentions that the tail was about 65 cm long, but when you compare it to the dimensions on the picture, it seems half as tall as the man standing nearby, which would make that guy only 1,30 m (4-foot 4") tall. So I believe there might be a perspective effect here...
Rats. Of course, I meant "goldfish" brain cells.
It seems that some of the Slashdot submitters are now powered by golfish brain cells.
80 *pixels* ? Oh man, what kind of screen are you working on ? Even mobile phones have wider screens these days ! 8-)
> >
> What, gradually sinking, in complete denial about it, and the rich are grabbing all the lifeboats?
Ouch. That hurt. Mod parent funny, it really deserves it.
This was definitely lacking in the other initiatives.
Of course, this supposes that a committee of reliable people (typically, university researchers, professionals, etc.) culls the articles as they are submitted, and it does require a lot of time. They already do this for peer-reviewed scientific or technical journals, with the difference that they probably get paid for doing it.Still, I believe in a serious technical/scientific committee donating their time in order to review the validity of articles submitted to online encyclopediae, and being given the rights to prevent the modification of the online articles unless those modifications have been approved. This would be a great step towards reliability in the Wikipedia publishing process.
And besides, to compare this with another great cooperative project, would Linus Torvalds let pieces of the Linux code be updated by any anonymous coward without a proper code review done by a trusted person ? This is the direction that ought to be taken for Wikipedia.
> and life as we know it came from a bunch of exploding gas that
> gradually became more complex and developed into extremely
> intricate organisms, like humans for example. Or that an all
> powerful being created the world as we know it in a mature
> state out of nothing.
Considering the fact that scientific methods have been established to determine the age of fossils, and that a wealth of fossils allowed the paleologists/geologists to trace the history of life on earth to a high level of detail, well, I think the first theory fits reality much better.
Oh, and don't give us the usual bullshit about "planted false evidence to test our faith". It reminds me of children who've been stealing chocolate cookies in the cupboard, and when asked who left chocolate-covered fingerprints all over the place : "I didn't do it dad, it's $YOUR_FAVORITE_MONSTER !". A-hem.
> a TOE label (I would suggest a stylized "EVO" in a circle) would > mark products that are the product of the theory of evolution. I have a problem with this : I'm just curious about the number of pharma industry leaders (or agrochemistry, and so on) who are willing to take the risk of having their products (e.g. vaccines, crop seeds) boycotted by a large fringe of the population. I think a voluntary solution is not applicable here...
Not managers : lawyers ! Now *this* is a US production that is hardly on the decline. Fortunately, the US is also the biggest consumer for these "goods", and there's not many of them left for export.
But I hear that the other countries in the world are increasingly interested in the "barratry & frivolous lawsuits" business model, so I guess the foreign demand is on the rise...
Mod parent up. And we're not even talking about Abu Ghraib and Gitmo...
Which goes to show that although the Wikipedia cooperative tool is a wonderful project and can yield excellent articles on consensual and otherwise well-researched topics, it is actually useless when it comes to touchy subjects. Vandalism certainly doesn't help.
With this text, although the EU parliament would have had the power to oppose decisions taken by the EU Council of ministers, the decisions would have been as messy to take or to oppose as with the current EU software, since this directive project was already being discussed in co-decision -- the way nearly every directive would have been, had the text been approved. As we have all seen with the software patents directive, there was still plenty of room for sneaky things to be done by the Council and the Commission to push the agenda of the European Patents Office against the will of the Parliament, and as RMS says, even though the Parliament rubbed their noses this time, they will surely be back with a revenge.
However, if the constitutional treaty had been voted in, the Commission and the Council would have had even more powers; the Commission could have taken "european decisions" (the equivalent of directives, that have force of law) on its own, without any possible democratic check and balance over these : not even the EU Council would have a say on that.
Finally, let us not forget that the inherent flaw of the current EU institutions is that the Council of Ministers has the legislative power at the european scale, and the same ministers apply these european laws using their executive power at the national scale. This is already in contradiction with the principles of separation of powers.
So sure, it will be a while until the EU gathers again around a constitution project. But I think that voting against this one was the right thing to do -- and I for one did it.
I thought it was helleborus. "Foetidus" means stinky in latin.
I live in France and FYI, all the fuss around that patents directive was a decisive argument for my vote against the constitutional proposal, where the Parliament (despite what was often said by the proponents of the text) was given hardly more power to oppose the European Council and the Commission, whereas the Commission, the Council and the Central Bank (all of which are unelected bodies) were given additional powers.
So why do they go through this hassle ? Well, they particularly do this during recession periods in order to look good compared with other businesses which are downsizing. It's all about PR and keeping the confidence of investors. And no, they don't care about wasting *your* precious time and energy.
Nope, Mauritius became part of the British Empire in 1810. It got its independence in 1968. La Réunion, OTOH, is still a French DOM.
Sort of. But I dare you to do this with just a PC and a measly VGA board ;-)
Concerning AC3 : it's fine and cool, but there is a patent on that system (Dolby), and asian countries hate to base their standards on patented algorithms, especially when those patents are not owned by a local company.
My mistake, I got a little carried away with what I was reading... Still, that is one of the possibilities for his project, as he mentions at the bottom of the page :"This project can be the basis of a real time low cost DVB-T and DVB-H modulator."
What Fabrice is telling us here is that he has managed to produce a real-time (or close-to-real-time) DVB-T/DVB-H software COFDM modulator, the output of which may be broadcast via the DAC converters of the video board. Given the complexity of the generated signal (more than 6000 subcarriers, not including pilot subcarriers which are used as beacons for the demodulator, and paying respect to the guard interval -- sorry for the technical gobbledygook), this usually requires a dedicated ASIC. Don't forget to include the preliminary phases of the encoding : creating an MPEG-2 video channel, an MEPG-2 transport stream (OK, he did it using a modified MPEG library), then encapsulate this into MPEG-2/DVB frames, add the Reed-Solomon code, perform the interleaving procedure, pour in some Viterbi encoding for redundancy, and feed it to the input of the DVB-T modulator, phew ! you're done.
I want to say hats off, ladies and gentlemen, to this outstanding performance. The Free Software movement definitely needs more guys like Fabrice, and we all need to encourage him into publishing more of his code.
Chapeau bas, mon cher Fabrice !
I'm pretty sure that W really meant Syprus instead. Oh, wait... never mind.