dada21: If someone's light-rays that bounce off their body enter your property, they are now YOUR property.
3278:even I wouldn't go so far as to say that any light rays which enter my property now belong to me. Is this true of air, as well? I cannot/imagine/ the possibilities for abuse - by individuals, that is - should such a property law be passed. "You stepped on my grass, so it's legal for me to eat you!"
Oh my God.... yeah. Agree with him/her or not, Dada21 started off arguing things at an appropriate level for the issue at hand... then he lost it.
His comment above is a perfect example of a mentality that runs throughout a lot of/. arguments. Take a social/political issue and attempt to make a point by arguing it at a ludicruously inappropriate low level.
I think this is the geekish desire to win an argument by (supposedly) logical means, regardless of whether this logic is meaningful to the original intent and context of the point being discussed. It's verging on autistic, frankly. I could also invoke the out-of-touch, basement-dwelling Slashdotter stereotype that might explain why some people try to argue social issues in such abstract and ludicruous manners. Either way, it all smacks of silly intellectual masturbation dishonestly masquerading as serious discourse.
I should make clear again that this isn't solely a criticism of Dada21; it's a tendency that pops up time after time in/. discussions like this....
Anyway, if someone thinks that discussing this at the level of "light-rays bouncing" being "your property" or something, as opposed to "you shone the light onto my house" etc. is appropriate for a social issue then... anything goes, all the way down to considering people in terms of their constituent atoms.
The speed of light is a real and unbreakable rule as a result nothing more than 4 or 5 light years away is reachable.
There are at least two major issues with extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Let's assume that they evolved independently of us. It is often said that- by the sheer number of star systems- that there are likely to be a very large number of potentially life-supporting planets elsewhere in the universe. Let's assume that this is correct, and further that life may have evolved on a proportion of them.
Thus, the reasonable conclusion is that there is life "out there". Fair enough. Now; consider the timescale of the evolution of intelligent life on Earth. Very simple bacterial/single-cell type stuff for a large portion of that time. Moderately-intelligent creatures (dinosaurs, birds, etc...) evolving at slow speed for a very long time. Then- on the cliched "24-hour-evolutionary-scale"- mankind, the only organism likely to get anywhere near space-travel- appears at "five-to-midnight".
Furthermore, although Homo Sapiens in their modern form have been around for 200,000 years, most of the progress made towards space travel hasn't been even; it's been very skewed towards the present day. Technological sophistication has been growing ever-faster, on a pretty-much-exponential scale; how much modern technology has been developed in the past 100 years (a lot)- how fast has computer technology developed in the past *30* years (an incredible amount- by many orders of magnitude(*).
It doesn't take a genius to see where this is going. Around 10 years ago, I figured out by myself (**) that the next 1000 (if not closer to 100) years are likely to see more significant and fundamental changes in the nature of the human race than those since the dawn of human-like-intelligence.
My point being this:- Yes, there may be many planets/systems out there capable of evolving and supporting life, and possibly many with life as we speak. However, if we assume that the evolution of life (and technology) follows broadly the same pattern elsewhere as it does on Earth, (very slow for a very long time, then an incredibly sudden surge in intelligence/development), then...
Unless intelligent evolution (and its inevitable offshoot, technology) has independently reached the same "explosive" stage on one of those other worlds at *exactly* at the same time it has on earth (i.e. around the present day), they'll either be way behind us (at best.. primitive man? monkeys? horses?) or so far ahead of us that it's unlikely we can even speculate on where they'll have reached.
Remember; our recent technological evolution has been very sudden relative to the timescale of mankind's evolution. In turn, mankind's evolution has been a sudden event relative to the history of life on the planet.
So, the chances of independently-evolved life elsewhere having reached a comparable stage to us is similar to the chances of two independently-set 24-hour clocks purely coincidentally reading the same time to within a small fraction of a second. If they're more than a few seconds behind, they're nowhere near achieving space travel.... if they're more than a few seconds ahead, they're likely gods, as far as we're likely to be able to comprehend them.
That's assuming they haven't made a fatal mistake as they progress on their exponential evolutionary/technological curve. As with mankind, by the time they've developed space travel, it's likely that they'll be developing sciences and technologies that have the ability (if not used carefully and responsibly), to wipe them out completely. If they're anything like us, their technological evolution will not be matched by social evolution, and there will be great danger that around the time of (shortly before or after) developing space travel, that they'll put a foot wrong and wipe themselves out.
Back to the parent comment; if the alien intelligence has survived, and is more
Most low-end prepaid cell phones that I have seen in stores in my part of the United States do not include a digital camera. Therefore, Fujitsu would have to either 1. market this technology to advertisers trying to reach people with high-end phones, or 2. deploy more camera phones. The United States mobile phone market is different to the European market is different to the Japanese market.
In the UK, camera phones are widely available for £50 inc. tax (US$90 approx) upwards, which is what most people would be spending on a phone anyway. (Sure, this isn't "low-end"- you can pick up a Nokia 1101 and the like for £20- but most day-to-day mobile phone users will be buying in the £50-£100 range).
I think it's a mistake to give away free beer. Your point is? You asked what the difference was between your landlord giving away free beer and what Amazon did. I answered your question by pointing out the obvious- unlike the pub landlord, Amazon were not intentionally giving away something for nothing.
That's your answer, and it seems fairly clear to me. I don't see anything there an 8-year-old wouldn't understand.
Note also that you originally said it was "stupid" to give away free beer, not a "mistake". Were you implying that both situations were the same because they both involved "mistakes"?
Well, your pub landlord's may or may not have made a *bad business decision* (i.e. "mistake") when he decided to *intentionally* give away free beer, we can assume as some form of promotion. It's hardly the same as Amazon *unintentionally* "giving away" stuff by charging the wrong amount. I don't know if that's what you meant, or if you genuinely can't see the difference.
Morality is a myth, because everyone has rationalized away an 'immoral' act at one point or another. No, it just means that people aren't good (or consistent) at adhering to (or judging) their own morality, or that it's not as cut-and-dried as people would like.
When my local starts giving away free beer (which does happen from time to time) I drink as much as possible even if I think that the owner is being stupid by giving away free beer. How is that any different from taking free stuff from Amazon? Do you *really* need someone to point out the answer? Amazon's "free stuff" was a mistake on their part and not deliberate policy; in addition most people *knew* Amazon had made a mistake.
I still don't get your point; the company you linked to apparently provides "critical reviews" and "analysis" of research literature. This still suggests research (or rather meta-research) or opinion (or rather.... meta-opinion). My point being that their analysis/research is still original work/opinion, not just synthesis of other people's work as WP is supposed to be.
Not all peer-reviewed stuff is original research. Peer-reviewed literature reviews are important, and generally high quality. In WP's case "original research" (whether or not the name is appropriate) basically includes all work that is not simply a synthesis of existing research, opinion and analysis. So, for example, I could not include my own analysis or review of Tolstoy's work on WP (this would also contradict the Neutral Point-of-view policy, but that's a different issue). However, if a reputable critic (or whoever) published such elsewhere, I could include quotes from this in the article, provided they were relevant and cited appropriately.
5. Publishing articles in peer-reviewed venues is more important, although less visible. The two should be complementary. Peer-reviewed journals should be for new work that is to be judged, whereas WP has a "no original research" policy; i.e. the exact opposite.
Now I've linked to the static page. [wikipedia.org]
That part seems rather hard for some people to grasp, considering how many times I've seen that used as a justification for "thou shalt not cite" bullshit. You're right; that's a stupid reason for not citing Wikipedia. Here's a better one:-
Wikipedia- by its own rules- isn't meant to be a primary source, and all major facts are supposed to be verifiably published by a reliable source, which in practice should require a reference anyway.
If an article (or at least one or more major assertions within it) is lacking references, then... it may well still be usable, but unless you're able to determine who made the statement, its veracity and the person's reliability, you probably shouldn't be citing it. (The effort and quagmire involved in doing so for an encyclopedia anyone can edit being the reasons that WP instituted No-Original-Research and Verifiability rules in the first place).
Just edit the Wikipedia is Failing article to say it's fixed. You're obviously joking, but it's my sincere belief that one of the dangers facing Wikipedia is where the community, and the defence of Wikipedia from criticism becomes more important than the integrity of Wikipedia itself. This is an inherent risk with anything community-based; superficially, the effort is to support and protect the project (and those taking part may well still believe this), but in reality the loyalty is to the community or team, even at the risk of the stated aims of the project.
Another problem is edit decay, often exacerbated by Wiki-masturbation. What do I mean? Basically, edits are normally on a small scale. Lots of individual small-scale edits do not make a big article; on the contrary, I've copyedited at least one article that was fine on a sentence-by-sentence level, but messed-up, disorganised, verbose and unreadable because no-one had bothered to step back and look at the article as a whole. Thus many small edits (even if individually useful) tend to increase the structural decay of an article, and make it hard to see when something useful is being lost.
A problem occurs when minor edits are made, or an article changed several times, with little ultimate point (hence "masturbation"). It's in these sorts of pointless changes that good work gets lost for no real purpose. In such cases, it may make sense to go back to an earlier version, compare any major changes, find out why these have happened, and if there seems to have been no justifiable reason for them, to revert some or all of the article.
Should the aim of Wikipedia be change? No. The aim of Wikipedia should be changability; a subtle but very important difference. Unlike evolution in nature, we can go back as far as we like if an earlier version is better, and there's no reason we shouldn't do this. Some subjects inevitably date, necessitating change; but many do not. Changeability is about having the choice, and that includes the choice of saying "actually, the earlier version *was* better".
The WP article actually covers some similar ground to the above, but both are issues that had been on my mind for a long time beforehand.
Re:Wouldn't be the first time
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SCO Vs. Groklaw
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· Score: 3, Funny
Darl is a paranoid maniac. Oddly enough, that's a side effect of smoking crack.
Fair reply; I apologise if I mistook you for a rabid (or at least defensive) BBs fan. I'm not convinced that they're going to be as well remembered in 20 years time as the Stones are today, and I honestly don't think that their 90s output was the creative genius it was made out to be. I still believe that there was a lot of media bandwagon jumping there, and the reason I mentioned it is that bands that are applauded because they're fashionable don't always last.
Another thing is that I don't think that the BBs were ever as big as the Stones (or to give a modern example, U2, not that I'm a big fan of theirs either).
Anyway, if I'm wrong (or if you are) one of us can come back 20 years later, point fingers and say "I told you so";-)
I see what you're saying, and it does tie in with what I already understood the case to be. But I have to say that if this was something I was concerned with, I'd ask someone with a legal background (and understanding of how laws play out in practice) to say what was likely most beneficial, rather than the usual Slashdot situation with a couple of "IANALs" (i.e. me and you) discussing something we're quite vague on. (^_^)
Actually, they started out doing hardcore punk but go on... Okay, so they got commercially successful when they sold out and started doing fratboy music then.
Christ, a few videos that had some retro refrence to them and you're ready to write them off. You mean the "Sabotage" video? That was okay. I was thinking of the retro-kitsch sound and artwork (cheesy use of analogue synths and vocoder- both of which I love sometimes, but not in the way the BBs used them).
So having a fan base makes the fans sheep? No, I said it became uber-fashionable to like them in the mid-late 1990s, and it had more to do with them being latched on as "fashionable" by certain types, with lots of other people following. I'm sure there are people who'd be fans anyway.
The Stones put out a bunch of unsellable shit for a few years there and no one but Stones fans bothered to listen. The BBs have a much better track record than the Stones in this area. And you call the fans sheep but at least the BBs weren't riding past glories for some fresh cash. (can anyone say "The Who"?) I think you've mistaken me for a diehard Stones/Who/whatever fan. I'm not; the Stones today are a tribute act to their earlier selves and little more. But some of the stuff they recorded during the 1960s/early-1970s is (and will continue to be) justifiably remembered.
(Me:)You knew a band was becoming successful when the rumours about them signing to the Beastie Boy's oh-so-fashionable "Grand Royal" label in the US
(You:)What's your point? That during a particular period, it was constantly implied that being signed to the Grand Royal record label was an indication of success and fashionability. Not that Grand Royal seemed especially significant, it was always mentioned that it was the BB's label, cool by association.
I hate to break this to you but the Stones, while a banner for everything that is good and right out rock and roll for some, are mostly disliked. That's why they only sell millions of albums instead of billions. A majority of people have never cared for any one band. If half the people who listen to the BBs today continue to listen to them in the future without the BBs ever gaining another fan they'll still be bigger than the Stones. That's a big if (and your assertion is already questionable). The Stones, regardless of how pointless they are today, have created a legacy that *has* endured. If you're saying that in 20 years time, the BBs will have a greater popular legacy, then... we'll wait and see. I don't think it's at all likely, personally.
You may still think of them as young snots No, they're all in their forties now, and quite a bit older than me.
Anyway, I don't doubt that they did some stuff that was okay if you're into that sort of thing, but frankly the gushing praise that accompanied some of their 90s stuff was over the top; they're just not that good.
The Beastie Boys are the Rolling Stones of tomorrow. The Beastie Boys? Eurgh. Started out doing fratboy music (which at least wasn't pretending to be anything more). Then they went along the self-consciously cheesy 70s retro path just when it was coming into vogue. That's when they started getting lauded as creative geniuses and could do no wrong in the eyes of the sheep-like hipster crowd. (You knew a band was becoming successful when the rumours about them signing to the Beastie Boy's oh-so-fashionable "Grand Royal" label in the US).
But the opinion of a bunch of late-90s Nathan Barley-types means precisely nothing. The Beastie Boys were- and still are- a bunch of overrated white nerds, and I couldn't give a toss about their music.
No idiotic fees just for the privilege of playing - milking cash out players for online shouldn't be a way to hide the high cost of your console like Microsoft does with the 250 dollars they charge people to play over the life of the console on top of the 400 dollar base price. Dumb Microsoft. Dumb. Assuming MS's aim is to make money (which it is, obviously), and assuming that they successfully "hide the high cost of [their] console" and manage to get more money out of consumers this way, there's nothing "dumb" about it.
Another benefit of assigning copyright to an independent 3rd party is that if you ever wanted to sue of damages as a result of copyright infringement you need the concent of all the copyright holders. With respect, this being Slashdot, it's hard to tell whether this is an accurate interpretation of the law coming from someone with sound legal experience, or if it's just more half-baked armchair legal advice. So please excuse my scepticism if it's the former. However...
IANAL and don't claim to be an expert, but doesn't the copyright on individual lines remain with their original author(s)? That is, releasing a program consisting of my work and Person X's doesn't mean that X has copyright over *my* contribution (*). So although the project as a whole has joint copyright, the owners of several individual parts (which could collectively make up most of the code) could still sue on that basis(?).
Re:One toy will always compete
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The Return of Toys
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· Score: 2, Interesting
[Lego] should pick up more licenses like gundam, macross, battlestar, startrek, or whatever else kids watch nowadays No, they should create a Lego kit with some Manga-ish components (including blocks, weapons and body parts) and let the kids create their own Manga stuff. Well, that's how I'd like them to go about it anyway; I'm not keen on Lego tying itself down to one specific thing too far.
I remember using pieces from a space-themed Lego set as parts of high-tech vehicles/tools used by a criminal gang...:-)
Okay, fair point; I don't use S-Video, so I can't comment on its performance (here in Europe, RGB via SCART is very common), or how similar the effect you describe is to dot crawl (Wikipedia does state that "The infamous dot crawl is eliminated"). Sometime after I'd posted the original message, I was idly wondering how they derived three colour signals from two wires without multiplexing, and should have realised that what you describe was a possibility.
From what I understand of the WP article, the colour multiplexing of two signals into one of S-Video is the same as that on NTSC/PAL- Quadrature Amplitude Multiplexing, i.e. two out-of-phase sine-waves merged. I'm not an expert on this stuff and can't visualise what sort of interference that might cause... so I'll take your word for it.
Of course, NTSC/PAL then modulates the colour signal and adds it to the luminance, so it should exhibit the QAM multiplexing artifacts *and* the frequency modulation luminance/chrominance artifacts; the latter being the one that supposedly causes "real" dot crawl.
(BTW, I did later realise- and mention- the possibility that the original poster was thinking of interlacing artifacts on fine lines; see my reply to my own post).
By contrast, monopolistic behemoths, like Microsoft (and many Japanese companies), have the financial luxury of carefully developing a product. C# is an example of such development. It is nearly flawless and is superior to Java. I agree that C# is probably superior to Java, or at least was when it launched; but you seem to forget that it came out 7 or 8 years later.
Let's be honest; MS were able to benefit from Java's evolution without having to support the dead-ends and (retrospectively) mistaken design decisions that Java accumulated over the years. C# is pretty much what you'd expect if someone were to design a new, legacy-free not-close-enough-to-get-sued copy of Java with the benefit of hindsight and without the issue of compatibility.
Not to dismiss some of the nice features, but it's easier to see the need for (and implement) them in a language piggybacking on 7-8 years worth of someone else's experience.
Additional: On reflection, I think what you had in mind is the flickering of fine lines caused by interlacing; this is a separate phenomenon to dot crawl.
antp:I've always wondered... is there actually a visible difference between 480p and plain S-Video/RGB input?
ivan256:Yes. There is significantly less dot crawl.
Although they are different formats, neither RGB, nor S-Video should exhibit dot crawl.
Dot crawl happens when separate colour and luminance signals are multiplexed (with colour modulated onto a high-frequency subcarrier). The sudden colour transition is (in effect) a high frequency signal which exceeds the safe bandwidth of the colour subcarrier and causes it to spill into the luminance signal, creating bogus detail.
RGB shouldn't exhibit dot-crawl at all, because it carries separate R, G and B signals on separate wires. At any rate, I've never, ever seen dot crawl with an RGB connection (via SCART).
Although S-Video *is* different, however, it still carries colour and luminance on separate wires, so it shouldn't show dot-crawl either(!); the Wikipedia article confirms this.
Slashdot Mirror
dada21: If someone's light-rays that bounce off their body enter your property, they are now YOUR property.
/imagine/ the possibilities for abuse - by individuals, that is - should such a property law be passed. "You stepped on my grass, so it's legal for me to eat you!"
/. arguments. Take a social/political issue and attempt to make a point by arguing it at a ludicruously inappropriate low level.
/. discussions like this....
3278:even I wouldn't go so far as to say that any light rays which enter my property now belong to me. Is this true of air, as well? I cannot
Oh my God.... yeah. Agree with him/her or not, Dada21 started off arguing things at an appropriate level for the issue at hand... then he lost it.
His comment above is a perfect example of a mentality that runs throughout a lot of
I think this is the geekish desire to win an argument by (supposedly) logical means, regardless of whether this logic is meaningful to the original intent and context of the point being discussed. It's verging on autistic, frankly. I could also invoke the out-of-touch, basement-dwelling Slashdotter stereotype that might explain why some people try to argue social issues in such abstract and ludicruous manners. Either way, it all smacks of silly intellectual masturbation dishonestly masquerading as serious discourse.
I should make clear again that this isn't solely a criticism of Dada21; it's a tendency that pops up time after time in
Anyway, if someone thinks that discussing this at the level of "light-rays bouncing" being "your property" or something, as opposed to "you shone the light onto my house" etc. is appropriate for a social issue then... anything goes, all the way down to considering people in terms of their constituent atoms.
The speed of light is a real and unbreakable rule as a result nothing more than 4 or 5 light years away is reachable.
There are at least two major issues with extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Let's assume that they evolved independently of us. It is often said that- by the sheer number of star systems- that there are likely to be a very large number of potentially life-supporting planets elsewhere in the universe. Let's assume that this is correct, and further that life may have evolved on a proportion of them.
Thus, the reasonable conclusion is that there is life "out there". Fair enough. Now; consider the timescale of the evolution of intelligent life on Earth. Very simple bacterial/single-cell type stuff for a large portion of that time. Moderately-intelligent creatures (dinosaurs, birds, etc...) evolving at slow speed for a very long time. Then- on the cliched "24-hour-evolutionary-scale"- mankind, the only organism likely to get anywhere near space-travel- appears at "five-to-midnight".
Furthermore, although Homo Sapiens in their modern form have been around for 200,000 years, most of the progress made towards space travel hasn't been even; it's been very skewed towards the present day. Technological sophistication has been growing ever-faster, on a pretty-much-exponential scale; how much modern technology has been developed in the past 100 years (a lot)- how fast has computer technology developed in the past *30* years (an incredible amount- by many orders of magnitude(*).
It doesn't take a genius to see where this is going. Around 10 years ago, I figured out by myself (**) that the next 1000 (if not closer to 100) years are likely to see more significant and fundamental changes in the nature of the human race than those since the dawn of human-like-intelligence.
My point being this:- Yes, there may be many planets/systems out there capable of evolving and supporting life, and possibly many with life as we speak. However, if we assume that the evolution of life (and technology) follows broadly the same pattern elsewhere as it does on Earth, (very slow for a very long time, then an incredibly sudden surge in intelligence/development), then...
Unless intelligent evolution (and its inevitable offshoot, technology) has independently reached the same "explosive" stage on one of those other worlds at *exactly* at the same time it has on earth (i.e. around the present day), they'll either be way behind us (at best.. primitive man? monkeys? horses?) or so far ahead of us that it's unlikely we can even speculate on where they'll have reached.
Remember; our recent technological evolution has been very sudden relative to the timescale of mankind's evolution. In turn, mankind's evolution has been a sudden event relative to the history of life on the planet.
So, the chances of independently-evolved life elsewhere having reached a comparable stage to us is similar to the chances of two independently-set 24-hour clocks purely coincidentally reading the same time to within a small fraction of a second. If they're more than a few seconds behind, they're nowhere near achieving space travel.... if they're more than a few seconds ahead, they're likely gods, as far as we're likely to be able to comprehend them.
That's assuming they haven't made a fatal mistake as they progress on their exponential evolutionary/technological curve. As with mankind, by the time they've developed space travel, it's likely that they'll be developing sciences and technologies that have the ability (if not used carefully and responsibly), to wipe them out completely. If they're anything like us, their technological evolution will not be matched by social evolution, and there will be great danger that around the time of (shortly before or after) developing space travel, that they'll put a foot wrong and wipe themselves out.
Back to the parent comment; if the alien intelligence has survived, and is more
I thought Google came over more than a little cult-like when I heard about their "Testing on the Toilet" initiative...
In the UK, camera phones are widely available for £50 inc. tax (US$90 approx) upwards, which is what most people would be spending on a phone anyway. (Sure, this isn't "low-end"- you can pick up a Nokia 1101 and the like for £20- but most day-to-day mobile phone users will be buying in the £50-£100 range).
Anyhow, it strikes me that this technology would be most successful in Japan (different again); they've already got stuff like that which is popular there.
That's your answer, and it seems fairly clear to me. I don't see anything there an 8-year-old wouldn't understand.
Note also that you originally said it was "stupid" to give away free beer, not a "mistake". Were you implying that both situations were the same because they both involved "mistakes"?
Well, your pub landlord's may or may not have made a *bad business decision* (i.e. "mistake") when he decided to *intentionally* give away free beer, we can assume as some form of promotion. It's hardly the same as Amazon *unintentionally* "giving away" stuff by charging the wrong amount. I don't know if that's what you meant, or if you genuinely can't see the difference.
I still don't get your point; the company you linked to apparently provides "critical reviews" and "analysis" of research literature. This still suggests research (or rather meta-research) or opinion (or rather.... meta-opinion). My point being that their analysis/research is still original work/opinion, not just synthesis of other people's work as WP is supposed to be.
If an article (or at least one or more major assertions within it) is lacking references, then... it may well still be usable, but unless you're able to determine who made the statement, its veracity and the person's reliability, you probably shouldn't be citing it. (The effort and quagmire involved in doing so for an encyclopedia anyone can edit being the reasons that WP instituted No-Original-Research and Verifiability rules in the first place).
Another problem is edit decay, often exacerbated by Wiki-masturbation. What do I mean? Basically, edits are normally on a small scale. Lots of individual small-scale edits do not make a big article; on the contrary, I've copyedited at least one article that was fine on a sentence-by-sentence level, but messed-up, disorganised, verbose and unreadable because no-one had bothered to step back and look at the article as a whole. Thus many small edits (even if individually useful) tend to increase the structural decay of an article, and make it hard to see when something useful is being lost.
A problem occurs when minor edits are made, or an article changed several times, with little ultimate point (hence "masturbation"). It's in these sorts of pointless changes that good work gets lost for no real purpose. In such cases, it may make sense to go back to an earlier version, compare any major changes, find out why these have happened, and if there seems to have been no justifiable reason for them, to revert some or all of the article.
Should the aim of Wikipedia be change? No. The aim of Wikipedia should be changability; a subtle but very important difference. Unlike evolution in nature, we can go back as far as we like if an earlier version is better, and there's no reason we shouldn't do this. Some subjects inevitably date, necessitating change; but many do not. Changeability is about having the choice, and that includes the choice of saying "actually, the earlier version *was* better".
The WP article actually covers some similar ground to the above, but both are issues that had been on my mind for a long time beforehand.
Fair reply; I apologise if I mistook you for a rabid (or at least defensive) BBs fan. I'm not convinced that they're going to be as well remembered in 20 years time as the Stones are today, and I honestly don't think that their 90s output was the creative genius it was made out to be. I still believe that there was a lot of media bandwagon jumping there, and the reason I mentioned it is that bands that are applauded because they're fashionable don't always last.
;-)
Another thing is that I don't think that the BBs were ever as big as the Stones (or to give a modern example, U2, not that I'm a big fan of theirs either).
Anyway, if I'm wrong (or if you are) one of us can come back 20 years later, point fingers and say "I told you so"
I see what you're saying, and it does tie in with what I already understood the case to be. But I have to say that if this was something I was concerned with, I'd ask someone with a legal background (and understanding of how laws play out in practice) to say what was likely most beneficial, rather than the usual Slashdot situation with a couple of "IANALs" (i.e. me and you) discussing something we're quite vague on. (^_^)
Anyway, I don't doubt that they did some stuff that was okay if you're into that sort of thing, but frankly the gushing praise that accompanied some of their 90s stuff was over the top; they're just not that good.
But the opinion of a bunch of late-90s Nathan Barley-types means precisely nothing. The Beastie Boys were- and still are- a bunch of overrated white nerds, and I couldn't give a toss about their music.
It's only dumb if it's unsuccessful.
IANAL and don't claim to be an expert, but doesn't the copyright on individual lines remain with their original author(s)? That is, releasing a program consisting of my work and Person X's doesn't mean that X has copyright over *my* contribution (*). So although the project as a whole has joint copyright, the owners of several individual parts (which could collectively make up most of the code) could still sue on that basis(?).
I remember using pieces from a space-themed Lego set as parts of high-tech vehicles/tools used by a criminal gang...
I should fix one point in the above post; the difference between Java and C# was more like 5-6 years, but my point still holds.
Okay, fair point; I don't use S-Video, so I can't comment on its performance (here in Europe, RGB via SCART is very common), or how similar the effect you describe is to dot crawl (Wikipedia does state that "The infamous dot crawl is eliminated"). Sometime after I'd posted the original message, I was idly wondering how they derived three colour signals from two wires without multiplexing, and should have realised that what you describe was a possibility.
From what I understand of the WP article, the colour multiplexing of two signals into one of S-Video is the same as that on NTSC/PAL- Quadrature Amplitude Multiplexing, i.e. two out-of-phase sine-waves merged. I'm not an expert on this stuff and can't visualise what sort of interference that might cause... so I'll take your word for it.
Of course, NTSC/PAL then modulates the colour signal and adds it to the luminance, so it should exhibit the QAM multiplexing artifacts *and* the frequency modulation luminance/chrominance artifacts; the latter being the one that supposedly causes "real" dot crawl.
(BTW, I did later realise- and mention- the possibility that the original poster was thinking of interlacing artifacts on fine lines; see my reply to my own post).
Let's be honest; MS were able to benefit from Java's evolution without having to support the dead-ends and (retrospectively) mistaken design decisions that Java accumulated over the years. C# is pretty much what you'd expect if someone were to design a new, legacy-free not-close-enough-to-get-sued copy of Java with the benefit of hindsight and without the issue of compatibility.
Not to dismiss some of the nice features, but it's easier to see the need for (and implement) them in a language piggybacking on 7-8 years worth of someone else's experience.
Additional: On reflection, I think what you had in mind is the flickering of fine lines caused by interlacing; this is a separate phenomenon to dot crawl.
antp: I've always wondered... is there actually a visible difference between 480p and plain S-Video/RGB input?
ivan256: Yes. There is significantly less dot crawl.
Although they are different formats, neither RGB, nor S-Video should exhibit dot crawl.
Dot crawl happens when separate colour and luminance signals are multiplexed (with colour modulated onto a high-frequency subcarrier). The sudden colour transition is (in effect) a high frequency signal which exceeds the safe bandwidth of the colour subcarrier and causes it to spill into the luminance signal, creating bogus detail.
RGB shouldn't exhibit dot-crawl at all, because it carries separate R, G and B signals on separate wires. At any rate, I've never, ever seen dot crawl with an RGB connection (via SCART).
Although S-Video *is* different, however, it still carries colour and luminance on separate wires, so it shouldn't show dot-crawl either(!); the Wikipedia article confirms this.
Perhaps you meant composite video?