Isn't that why most decent music these days is released in "Radio Edit" and "Album Version"?
(With "Radio Edit" being compressed to hell and back for listening on the move..."Album Version" for listening to at home on proper equipment)
The term "radio edit" has been around for donkey's years and usually refers to longer songs (e.g. the "album version") edited for length to make it more acceptable for radio play. It has (or had) nothing to do with dynamic range compression.
Example: I paid $5 for a boxed set of the Beverly Hillbillies a few years ago at WalMart, and the theme song had been replaced; no Homer and Jethro. Contract issues.
According to the Wikipedia article, some of the episodes are public domain (due to owner letting the copyrights lapse), which might explain why your box set was so cheap? If there are other rights issues involved, this may also explain why elements had been removed.
Does a 20kHz sine wave and a 20kHz sawtooth sound different when they're reproduced on a CD? They should...
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. The 20 kHz sawtooth will have harmonics above the Nyquist limit for sampling at 44.1 kHz and hence cannot be accurately reproduced by a CD- this will either lead to aliasing (if unfiltered) or distortion of the wave (if the signal is filtered at the Nyquist limit).
In the latter case, my limited knowledge leads me to assume that once filtered, the sawtooth will be converted to a 20kHz sine wave(?)
But it has no theoretical limitations. In theory Analog can be perfect, it's just a case of spending enough money.
It's not possible to create an analogue device with "perfect" reproduction, as that would imply an infinite number of levels and infinite sample rate and no flaws, ever.
I think what you were trying to say is that in theory, given enough money, inclination and effort we could build an analogue system that met or exceeded whatever arbitrarily high level of accuracy we wanted.
But if we were to accept that as being true, we could, by the same logic, design a digital system that also met any arbitrary level of accuracy (in terms of sampling rate and resolution).
The difference between analogue and digital *equipment* is that digital has a clearly-defined level of accuracy, whereas analogue *equipment* does not have such a clear cut-off. Either can be better depending on the comparison; if it's a worn-out 78RPM record versus a 24-bit 96 kHz recording, "digital" wins. If it's some gritty 4-bit sample I managed to hack an Atari 800 into playing versus a pristine LP on a top-end turntable, etc., "analogue" wins.
But underlying many analogue vs. digital arguments there seems to be the flawed implication that in theory "analogue" is better than "digital". This is flawed because it mixes and confuses two distinct issues- analogue as a theoretical concept that's infinitely continuous, and analogue equipment which- regardless of how well it's made, will always have its limits, even in theory.
All the harmonics of an 8kHz square wave are 'outside the human hearing range' but I know for a fact it's easy to hear the difference between an 8kHz square wave and 8kHz sine wave.
Assuming that first part is correct, how confident are you that you were *actually* listening to a perfect sine wave and a perfect square wave?
The latter is technically impossible anyway, since a square wave implies instantaneous switching between the low and high levels (and vice versa), which is of course impossible with real-world equipment.
Even ignoring that borderline pedantry, however, there is still the possibility that the square wave was being distorted at one or more processing stages before you heard it. I would *not* rely on your single personal experience as proof of a "fact" for that reason.
And don't get me started on interlacing in digital video. It's a "feature" that has only ever made digital video worse and is somehow part of most broadcast standards.
I'm not clear what you're implying should have replaced standard 50 (PAL) or 60 (NTSC) fields per second interlaced video.
Are you suggesting that they should have gone with 50/60 frames per second full progressive video? That would work, but it would also require approaching twice the storage/transmission bandwidth.
Or are you suggesting that we should simply store video in 25/30 frames per second progressive format? While 25/30 frames/sec progressive video and 50/60 fields/sec interlaced video might use the same total number of lines, they *look* different due to the latter's greater temporal resolution. (*) In fact, this difference is one of the major reasons that film and traditional interlaced video look different.
Granted, some people prefer the "filmic" look for dramatic material, but it's not better for everything, and the "detached" feel that 24 to 30 frames/sec rate gives has isn't always what you want- 50/60 fields/sec gives more immediacy and a greater sense of "being there".
I appreciate that from a technical point of view, interlaced video can be a royal pain in the backside in so many respects. But there are still legitimate reasons for not getting rid of it.
(*) If anyone's thinking that 25/30 (full) frames per second must be the same as 50/60 fields (i.e. "half frames") per second- no, because the order's different. With non-interlaced video, all the lines in each video should be scanned/updated at the same time, so a moving object is updated 25/30 times per second. With interlaced video (where the odd-numbered lines are scanned/displayed first, *then* the even-numbered ones, then the odd ones, then the even ones, etc.) a moving object may have moved in the time between the time the odd-numbered lines are being scanned, and the corresponding even numbered ones are scanned. Hence we still have 50/60 motion "updates" per second (albeit not at full resolution) even though the total number of lines are the same.
It doesn't matter if it's a choice or not. Either you're a part of the ongoing circle of life, or you're not
Hmm... choosing to illustrate your point using a phrase made popular by- and strongly associated with- a well-known gay man? You're either a clever troll or a repressed homosexual. Not sure which....;-)
maybe it would actually be a net benefit for the world if you too did not have children.
Well, I do, and I'll be having more, and if all goes according to plan, I'll offer them a small house to start a family in when they turn 21. If they want to borrow against it to go to university, that's up to them.
If possible, it would be reasonable to notify the appropriate party(s) at the company of the hole beforehand, to give them a chance to fix it- taking care, however, to protect your identity for the reasons given above.
I mean, what's Mariott going to do in revenge? Not fluff his pillows when he stays there?
Er, they (*) are going to make the case that part or all of his activities constituted hacking of or intrusion into their system, leading to his possible arrest.
Unless it's *very* clear that the guy has done nothing wrong- and believe me, this is an area where the lines can be blurred, and even if they aren't can be made to appear that way- he's going to have to defend himself against these accusations with both the police and a court system that probably won't be as tech-savvy as they should be and could quite possibly be swayed into prosecuting a case that probably shouldn't be, by people with a spurious air of authority.
You might get on the front page of Slashdot and a bunch of nerds campaigning for your release, but you'll still have to go through all this even if you do manage to prove your innocence.
The only obvious failing here is that he did something illegal and even provided proof of that. Otherwise they would (hopefully) not be able to prove any damages at all.
This is the kind of dangerous naivity I was talking about.
As someone pointed out, in the Mariott case (where the guy was admittedly guilty AFAICT (**)), their costs probably included the cost of fixing the hole that should have been fixed anyway (regardless of whether it had been hacked- though of course, if it hadn't been, no-one would have fixed it until it was!)
I'm pretty sure that an outright malicious party on a witchhunt would be able to "show" damages if they were so inclined.
(*) This reply doesn't relate specifically to Mariott, but to how a hypothetical party in their position *might* react to what the other person considers a "good faith" report of a security hole. (I've no idea how Mariott specifically would respond.)
(**) Though as someone said when this previously came up, this story does smack of something where there's more to it than we're hearing.
..and that stupid otherwise? The right move was to arrange an IT job interview with Marriott, and claim good security skills.
"I found a security hole in your systems and may help you to improve this, and your systems globally".
No, no, no, no, NO.
You absolutely do *not* do that. Some (reasonable) companies *will* be grateful that you informed them of a problem with their security. Others will get the wrong end of the stick- even if you found the hoed through innocent means- assume that you hacked or were trying to hack into their system, and act accordingly.
Others still won't care, but will be angry that their shortcomings have been exposed (either the organisation as a whole, or vested interests that hold sway within that organisation, e.g. the crappy IT guy who's just been made to look bad) and that they have to correct them. Under such circumstances you are in danger of them maliciously trying to punish you or get revenge in some manner.
You do *not* risk the second or third happening, regardless of whether informing the company would benefit them. Ideally you'd be able to, but this isn't an ideal world, and you do not put yourself at risk for a benefit that they might not perceive as such. At best, if you need to report this kind of thing, you do it anonymously and/or in a manner that makes it untraceable or at least such that you won't be at risk of retribution.
This is the problem with geeks not understanding that the world does not operate in the logical manner they'd like to think, of assuming that people will behave logically and of not factoring in personal politics, self-interest and inadvertantly standing on someone else's toes.
Yeah, I know that cats aren't completely color blind, but they only have about a tenth the density of cones in their eye as a human with normal vision does, and to us, such imagery would look highly desaturated.
Vision is as much what goes on in the various higher-level parts of the brain as the original physical response of the eye to the stimulus.
Saying that something that cat "sees" would look desaturated "to us" is open to question because what the cat "sees" is determined by its brain, which we can assume is designed to work with the cats eyes and hence wouldn't "perceive" it as desaturated.
But even ignoring this philosophical issue, I suspect that- could we wire a cats eye up to a human brain- the other AC reply to you was more plausible when it suggested that it would appear as poorer colour resolution "like a low-quality mjpg video", or a bog-standard VHS recording. Simply because that aspect *would* be dictated by the physicality of the eye- if you have fewer colour sensors, colour resolution is physically going to be worse. (*)
But what we would have (I expect) would be fewer sensors, with each having a comparable colour response (i.e. each would still give off them same level of stimulus in response to the same colour, there would just be fewer such stimulus signals being sent to the brain).
The "less saturation" idea only sounds plausible(!) if- during the cat's-eye-to-human transplant- one hardwired the human's unused optic nerve connections (left over from there being more colour sensors in the human eye than the cats') such that they were feeding back "no colour" signals. Then the overall saturation *might* be perceived as being reduced. However, (a) I doubt our hypothetical eye transplant would be done that way even if it were possible, (b) I doubt the human *brain* would respond that way to such rewiring anyway and (c) This wasn't really my point, which was to "compare" a cat's vision to ours, not to speculate about some weird, esoteric and unlikely transplant;-)
(*) Of course, the brain might "work around" the reduction and "cover it up" with interpolated and "filled" information like it does in everyday use, so that you don't notice it- though it might be possible to show it experimentally. (For example, like how we don't normally perceive our eyes' blind spots because the brain "Photoshops" it out at what I assume is a fairly low/early-level of processing... but we can still demonstrate to ourselves that it is there.
tl; dr Version- Fewer colour sensors are more likely to lead to reduced colour resolution (as per AC) for purely physical reasons. But perception of "reduced saturation" is less likely and getting into that makes assumptions about vision that lead to philosophical issues of perception. (^_^)
They had Sinclair demos in the stores, and it seems like the whole screen blinked every time you pressed a key. What was up with that?
The original ZX80 generated the display mostly in software and couldn't handle processing *and* output at the same time. Handling keypresses therefore resulted in brief blanking.
The ZX81 gave you the choice between this "FAST" mode and a continuous-display but slower mode (er, "SLOW").
Most likely the machine you were using was a ZX80.
I felt sorry for anyone who had this as their first computer.
You shouldn't- given the cost of computers in the UK when the ZX80 and ZX81 came out, for many people it was either a Sinclair or no computer at all, and computers were new, novel and exciting enough then that they would have overlooked the limitations.
Obviously if your first computer was (e.g.) a C64 it's harder to relate to that, but even the C64 was around 18 months after the ZX81, and something like six or more times the price when first released.
That's what you get when you cheap enough to use the CPU as a video generator (thus getting 10% or less free for general programming, unless you suspend the video).
You're right- though actually it was more like 25%. However, that "being concerned with costs" is what made the ZX81 (and the ZX80) far more affordable than its competitors while still remaining a (just) usable mainstream hobbyist machine that brought computing to people in the UK who hadn't previously been able to afford it.
As you imply, one *did* have the option of "suspending the video" by entering "FAST" (full-speed) mode instead of the default "SLOW" (continuous display). This wasn't quite as bad as it sounded though, because it only blanked the display when it was busy (including flickering while it processed keypresses). As soon as it was finished processing, the display automatically came back on. In fact, the older ZX80 *only* had the older FAST mode, and was still usable- but at least the ZX81 gave you the choice.
Obviously a dedicated display chip would have been nicer- as would a real keyboard, colour graphics, sound or a pony... but it would also have cost a lot more and put it out of many peoples' range.
I know that the ZX80 (the first computer under £100) came first, and was very successful by the standards of the time- according to Wikipedia, 100,000 of them were sold. However, it was the ZX81 that took things into another league altogether- apparently 1.5 million were sold!
Being made of Lego bricks, you could be confident of at least being able to stably attach the model rampack to the Lego ZX81, which is more than you could ever say about the real thing! (^_^)
To be fair, the ZX81 was more important than some random beige box, as it was many people in the UK's first computer back in the early 80s, and has significance because of that. (But we already had that discussion four days ago- the thread is still live(!)- so probably not worth repeating it here!)
That said, I agree that there's really nothing to this. Someone constructed a passable scale model of a ZX81 out of Lego about as well as could be expected. (Given that the ZX81 is fairly small and flat to start off with, it was never going to work that well as a Lego model). But is this really of enough interest to post as a story? Maybe if there had been a whole lot of different computers? It appears that the author's aim is that this gets built as part of a custom(?) series of Lego kits based on home computers or something.
As I said, nothing offensive, but nothing of real interest either.
Absolutely agree... when I first saw this I had assumed he was using mechanical logic or something to simulate the instruction set, but... a black box?!?
It still has twice as much processing power as an actual ZX81, though.
Your general sentiment is correct, but your timeline is slightly askew.
MP3s were primarily a concern of the 2000s. While it's true that the parent MPEG-1 format was around in the early 90s, and a few geeks were sharing MP3 files from the mid-90s onwards, it wasn't until the end of the decade (circa 1998) with those uselessly low-capacity early MP3 players that they were on the industry's radar. And they didn't really hit the public consciousness until Napster launched in mid-1999, i.e. when the 90s were almost over.
And the problem with MP3s AFAIK was *always* sharing and piracy. No-one cared about people ripping them to their computers in the 90s, because for most of the decade hard drives were barely big enough to hold a significant number of MP3s, and (e.g.) mid-90s PCs used most of their processing capacity just to play them back. As I said, nerd curiosity at that point.
You could probably combine the 70s and 80s; people were taping in the 70s, and the industry woke up to the threat in the early 80s- I don't think the Walkman was itself a threat, beyond the fact that it made the cassette an even more popular format. (Remember that most Walkmans and the like couldn't even record themselves).
But you're right- the industry has made a fuss about this sort of thing before. They also did it with video recorders in the US in the early 80s, then realised that they could make lots of money selling prerecorded VHS tapes.
Ironically, I don't entirely disagree that piracy may be an issue, and possibly moreso than it was back then. I'm happy for people to make money and profit from their efforts in the creative industries (that is, if people want the results of such efforts).
This doesn't change the fact that the industry is- and always has been- a bunch of greedy bastards willing to screw over the working people they'd like to tell us are being hurt by piracy, and to use piracy as a useful indefinable excuse to cover up their own shortcomings (e.g. maybe people aren't paying money to watch their films because they're shallow, adolescent-oriented, unoriginal toss?) And while I might be in favour of reasonable copyright laws, that's certainly *not* not to the extent that those old, entrenched interests are pushing for draconian laws, not giving a toss about fairness or our civil liberties, just to preserve their own meal ticket.
A super nerd explains why super wifi isn't wifi. General population doesn't give a fuck, as wifi means "wireless internet" to them.
General population then bitches when their Super "WiFi" doesn't interoperate with any of their existing WiFi equipment and in fact can't even be used directly in their laptop at present. From the article:-
For now, at least, you can't move a white-space device around. You can't put a white-space radio into a phone or laptop because each white-space device must check its location against a database to determine which TV channels and wireless microphones are being used in the device's area, so they can avoid those channels. [..] It will be a way for wireless Internet providers, especially in rural areas, to zap their network over to a main router in a home, which will then redistribute it to devices over Ethernet or standard Wi-Fi connections.
So you're right that they probably wouldn't care about the technical issues, and nor would they ever likely care if any difference was totally transparent (and thus irrelevant) to the man on the street. But it's not, and that's why "Super WiFi" is a crap and misleading name, even for Joe Public.
FYI, the TI/99 was selling for $99 when the Sinclair came out.
I'd already heard about TI slashing their prices to below cost in response to Jack Tramiel of Commodore's merciless price war, but I was sure that was later on. Having checked, this article says:-
"In February 1983, TI lowered the price to $150 and was selling the computers at a loss. And in June 1983, TI released a redesigned beige cost-reduced version that it sold, also at a loss, for $99."
That was the better part of a year after even the TS-1000's long-delayed US release anyway. At that point of course the TI/99-4A was better value (even though such obviously unsustainable price-cutting pushed TI out of the market shortly afterwards and left the machine orphaned and unsupported).
All this is true, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. That two long years after its original UK release, in a foreign market competing against slashed-below-cost domestic computers it wasn't such an obviously great buy? Well, yes. But its significance was in the UK market of early 1981, not the US market of early 1983, and there was nothing in the same ballpark pricewise back then. In 1981, most people probably didn't even know they wanted a computer(!)
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't that why most decent music these days is released in "Radio Edit" and "Album Version"? (With "Radio Edit" being compressed to hell and back for listening on the move..."Album Version" for listening to at home on proper equipment)
The term "radio edit" has been around for donkey's years and usually refers to longer songs (e.g. the "album version") edited for length to make it more acceptable for radio play. It has (or had) nothing to do with dynamic range compression.
Example: I paid $5 for a boxed set of the Beverly Hillbillies a few years ago at WalMart, and the theme song had been replaced; no Homer and Jethro. Contract issues.
According to the Wikipedia article, some of the episodes are public domain (due to owner letting the copyrights lapse), which might explain why your box set was so cheap? If there are other rights issues involved, this may also explain why elements had been removed.
Does a 20kHz sine wave and a 20kHz sawtooth sound different when they're reproduced on a CD? They should...
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. The 20 kHz sawtooth will have harmonics above the Nyquist limit for sampling at 44.1 kHz and hence cannot be accurately reproduced by a CD- this will either lead to aliasing (if unfiltered) or distortion of the wave (if the signal is filtered at the Nyquist limit).
In the latter case, my limited knowledge leads me to assume that once filtered, the sawtooth will be converted to a 20kHz sine wave(?)
But it has no theoretical limitations. In theory Analog can be perfect, it's just a case of spending enough money.
It's not possible to create an analogue device with "perfect" reproduction, as that would imply an infinite number of levels and infinite sample rate and no flaws, ever.
I think what you were trying to say is that in theory, given enough money, inclination and effort we could build an analogue system that met or exceeded whatever arbitrarily high level of accuracy we wanted.
But if we were to accept that as being true, we could, by the same logic, design a digital system that also met any arbitrary level of accuracy (in terms of sampling rate and resolution).
The difference between analogue and digital *equipment* is that digital has a clearly-defined level of accuracy, whereas analogue *equipment* does not have such a clear cut-off. Either can be better depending on the comparison; if it's a worn-out 78RPM record versus a 24-bit 96 kHz recording, "digital" wins. If it's some gritty 4-bit sample I managed to hack an Atari 800 into playing versus a pristine LP on a top-end turntable, etc., "analogue" wins.
But underlying many analogue vs. digital arguments there seems to be the flawed implication that in theory "analogue" is better than "digital". This is flawed because it mixes and confuses two distinct issues- analogue as a theoretical concept that's infinitely continuous, and analogue equipment which- regardless of how well it's made, will always have its limits, even in theory.
All the harmonics of an 8kHz square wave are 'outside the human hearing range' but I know for a fact it's easy to hear the difference between an 8kHz square wave and 8kHz sine wave.
Assuming that first part is correct, how confident are you that you were *actually* listening to a perfect sine wave and a perfect square wave?
The latter is technically impossible anyway, since a square wave implies instantaneous switching between the low and high levels (and vice versa), which is of course impossible with real-world equipment.
Even ignoring that borderline pedantry, however, there is still the possibility that the square wave was being distorted at one or more processing stages before you heard it. I would *not* rely on your single personal experience as proof of a "fact" for that reason.
And don't get me started on interlacing in digital video. It's a "feature" that has only ever made digital video worse and is somehow part of most broadcast standards.
I'm not clear what you're implying should have replaced standard 50 (PAL) or 60 (NTSC) fields per second interlaced video.
Are you suggesting that they should have gone with 50/60 frames per second full progressive video? That would work, but it would also require approaching twice the storage/transmission bandwidth.
Or are you suggesting that we should simply store video in 25/30 frames per second progressive format? While 25/30 frames/sec progressive video and 50/60 fields/sec interlaced video might use the same total number of lines, they *look* different due to the latter's greater temporal resolution. (*) In fact, this difference is one of the major reasons that film and traditional interlaced video look different.
Granted, some people prefer the "filmic" look for dramatic material, but it's not better for everything, and the "detached" feel that 24 to 30 frames/sec rate gives has isn't always what you want- 50/60 fields/sec gives more immediacy and a greater sense of "being there".
I appreciate that from a technical point of view, interlaced video can be a royal pain in the backside in so many respects. But there are still legitimate reasons for not getting rid of it.
(*) If anyone's thinking that 25/30 (full) frames per second must be the same as 50/60 fields (i.e. "half frames") per second- no, because the order's different. With non-interlaced video, all the lines in each video should be scanned/updated at the same time, so a moving object is updated 25/30 times per second. With interlaced video (where the odd-numbered lines are scanned/displayed first, *then* the even-numbered ones, then the odd ones, then the even ones, etc.) a moving object may have moved in the time between the time the odd-numbered lines are being scanned, and the corresponding even numbered ones are scanned. Hence we still have 50/60 motion "updates" per second (albeit not at full resolution) even though the total number of lines are the same.
It doesn't matter if it's a choice or not. Either you're a part of the ongoing circle of life, or you're not
Hmm... choosing to illustrate your point using a phrase made popular by- and strongly associated with- a well-known gay man? You're either a clever troll or a repressed homosexual. Not sure which.... ;-)
maybe it would actually be a net benefit for the world if you too did not have children.
Well, I do, and I'll be having more, and if all goes according to plan, I'll offer them a small house to start a family in when they turn 21. If they want to borrow against it to go to university, that's up to them.
Hilarity ensues when they turn out to be gay. :-)
He's naive and also he's not from our country so he had no idea how our corporations would react.
You're from Scotland too?
If possible, it would be reasonable to notify the appropriate party(s) at the company of the hole beforehand, to give them a chance to fix it- taking care, however, to protect your identity for the reasons given above.
I mean, what's Mariott going to do in revenge? Not fluff his pillows when he stays there?
Er, they (*) are going to make the case that part or all of his activities constituted hacking of or intrusion into their system, leading to his possible arrest.
Unless it's *very* clear that the guy has done nothing wrong- and believe me, this is an area where the lines can be blurred, and even if they aren't can be made to appear that way- he's going to have to defend himself against these accusations with both the police and a court system that probably won't be as tech-savvy as they should be and could quite possibly be swayed into prosecuting a case that probably shouldn't be, by people with a spurious air of authority.
You might get on the front page of Slashdot and a bunch of nerds campaigning for your release, but you'll still have to go through all this even if you do manage to prove your innocence.
The only obvious failing here is that he did something illegal and even provided proof of that. Otherwise they would (hopefully) not be able to prove any damages at all.
This is the kind of dangerous naivity I was talking about.
As someone pointed out, in the Mariott case (where the guy was admittedly guilty AFAICT (**)), their costs probably included the cost of fixing the hole that should have been fixed anyway (regardless of whether it had been hacked- though of course, if it hadn't been, no-one would have fixed it until it was!)
I'm pretty sure that an outright malicious party on a witchhunt would be able to "show" damages if they were so inclined.
(*) This reply doesn't relate specifically to Mariott, but to how a hypothetical party in their position *might* react to what the other person considers a "good faith" report of a security hole. (I've no idea how Mariott specifically would respond.)
(**) Though as someone said when this previously came up, this story does smack of something where there's more to it than we're hearing.
..and that stupid otherwise? The right move was to arrange an IT job interview with Marriott, and claim good security skills. "I found a security hole in your systems and may help you to improve this, and your systems globally".
No, no, no, no, NO.
You absolutely do *not* do that. Some (reasonable) companies *will* be grateful that you informed them of a problem with their security. Others will get the wrong end of the stick- even if you found the hoed through innocent means- assume that you hacked or were trying to hack into their system, and act accordingly.
Others still won't care, but will be angry that their shortcomings have been exposed (either the organisation as a whole, or vested interests that hold sway within that organisation, e.g. the crappy IT guy who's just been made to look bad) and that they have to correct them. Under such circumstances you are in danger of them maliciously trying to punish you or get revenge in some manner.
You do *not* risk the second or third happening, regardless of whether informing the company would benefit them. Ideally you'd be able to, but this isn't an ideal world, and you do not put yourself at risk for a benefit that they might not perceive as such. At best, if you need to report this kind of thing, you do it anonymously and/or in a manner that makes it untraceable or at least such that you won't be at risk of retribution.
This is the problem with geeks not understanding that the world does not operate in the logical manner they'd like to think, of assuming that people will behave logically and of not factoring in personal politics, self-interest and inadvertantly standing on someone else's toes.
Yeah, I know that cats aren't completely color blind, but they only have about a tenth the density of cones in their eye as a human with normal vision does, and to us, such imagery would look highly desaturated.
Vision is as much what goes on in the various higher-level parts of the brain as the original physical response of the eye to the stimulus.
;-)
Saying that something that cat "sees" would look desaturated "to us" is open to question because what the cat "sees" is determined by its brain, which we can assume is designed to work with the cats eyes and hence wouldn't "perceive" it as desaturated.
But even ignoring this philosophical issue, I suspect that- could we wire a cats eye up to a human brain- the other AC reply to you was more plausible when it suggested that it would appear as poorer colour resolution "like a low-quality mjpg video", or a bog-standard VHS recording. Simply because that aspect *would* be dictated by the physicality of the eye- if you have fewer colour sensors, colour resolution is physically going to be worse. (*)
But what we would have (I expect) would be fewer sensors, with each having a comparable colour response (i.e. each would still give off them same level of stimulus in response to the same colour, there would just be fewer such stimulus signals being sent to the brain).
The "less saturation" idea only sounds plausible(!) if- during the cat's-eye-to-human transplant- one hardwired the human's unused optic nerve connections (left over from there being more colour sensors in the human eye than the cats') such that they were feeding back "no colour" signals. Then the overall saturation *might* be perceived as being reduced. However, (a) I doubt our hypothetical eye transplant would be done that way even if it were possible, (b) I doubt the human *brain* would respond that way to such rewiring anyway and (c) This wasn't really my point, which was to "compare" a cat's vision to ours, not to speculate about some weird, esoteric and unlikely transplant
(*) Of course, the brain might "work around" the reduction and "cover it up" with interpolated and "filled" information like it does in everyday use, so that you don't notice it- though it might be possible to show it experimentally. (For example, like how we don't normally perceive our eyes' blind spots because the brain "Photoshops" it out at what I assume is a fairly low/early-level of processing... but we can still demonstrate to ourselves that it is there.
tl; dr Version- Fewer colour sensors are more likely to lead to reduced colour resolution (as per AC) for purely physical reasons. But perception of "reduced saturation" is less likely and getting into that makes assumptions about vision that lead to philosophical issues of perception. (^_^)
Not sure what happens when the other cat wants to use it while the first cat is sleeping.
As the GP implied, don't look too closely at your plant pots.
Or he is just using his fingers to feel the patterns of thickly printed ink on the form.
Er, no. The obvious answer is that being cat-like, he shares their well-developed olfactory system, and hence reads by sense of smell.
Also, he sure plays a mean pinball.
They had Sinclair demos in the stores, and it seems like the whole screen blinked every time you pressed a key. What was up with that?
The original ZX80 generated the display mostly in software and couldn't handle processing *and* output at the same time. Handling keypresses therefore resulted in brief blanking.
The ZX81 gave you the choice between this "FAST" mode and a continuous-display but slower mode (er, "SLOW").
Most likely the machine you were using was a ZX80.
I felt sorry for anyone who had this as their first computer.
You shouldn't- given the cost of computers in the UK when the ZX80 and ZX81 came out, for many people it was either a Sinclair or no computer at all, and computers were new, novel and exciting enough then that they would have overlooked the limitations.
Obviously if your first computer was (e.g.) a C64 it's harder to relate to that, but even the C64 was around 18 months after the ZX81, and something like six or more times the price when first released.
That's what you get when you cheap enough to use the CPU as a video generator (thus getting 10% or less free for general programming, unless you suspend the video).
You're right- though actually it was more like 25%. However, that "being concerned with costs" is what made the ZX81 (and the ZX80) far more affordable than its competitors while still remaining a (just) usable mainstream hobbyist machine that brought computing to people in the UK who hadn't previously been able to afford it.
As you imply, one *did* have the option of "suspending the video" by entering "FAST" (full-speed) mode instead of the default "SLOW" (continuous display). This wasn't quite as bad as it sounded though, because it only blanked the display when it was busy (including flickering while it processed keypresses). As soon as it was finished processing, the display automatically came back on. In fact, the older ZX80 *only* had the older FAST mode, and was still usable- but at least the ZX81 gave you the choice.
Obviously a dedicated display chip would have been nicer- as would a real keyboard, colour graphics, sound or a pony... but it would also have cost a lot more and put it out of many peoples' range.
I know that the ZX80 (the first computer under £100) came first, and was very successful by the standards of the time- according to Wikipedia, 100,000 of them were sold. However, it was the ZX81 that took things into another league altogether- apparently 1.5 million were sold!
RAM Pack?
Being made of Lego bricks, you could be confident of at least being able to stably attach the model rampack to the Lego ZX81, which is more than you could ever say about the real thing! (^_^)
To be fair, the ZX81 was more important than some random beige box, as it was many people in the UK's first computer back in the early 80s, and has significance because of that. (But we already had that discussion four days ago- the thread is still live(!)- so probably not worth repeating it here!)
That said, I agree that there's really nothing to this. Someone constructed a passable scale model of a ZX81 out of Lego about as well as could be expected. (Given that the ZX81 is fairly small and flat to start off with, it was never going to work that well as a Lego model). But is this really of enough interest to post as a story? Maybe if there had been a whole lot of different computers? It appears that the author's aim is that this gets built as part of a custom(?) series of Lego kits based on home computers or something.
As I said, nothing offensive, but nothing of real interest either.
Absolutely agree... when I first saw this I had assumed he was using mechanical logic or something to simulate the instruction set, but... a black box?!?
It still has twice as much processing power as an actual ZX81, though.
He's probably gen-X. That stupid Alanis song ruined that word for an entire generation.
I doubt that. Do you realise how many times it's been pointed out by various parties how ironic it is that all "Ironic's" examples of irony aren't?
They've probably heard that more times than they've heard the song itself...
Your general sentiment is correct, but your timeline is slightly askew.
MP3s were primarily a concern of the 2000s. While it's true that the parent MPEG-1 format was around in the early 90s, and a few geeks were sharing MP3 files from the mid-90s onwards, it wasn't until the end of the decade (circa 1998) with those uselessly low-capacity early MP3 players that they were on the industry's radar. And they didn't really hit the public consciousness until Napster launched in mid-1999, i.e. when the 90s were almost over.
And the problem with MP3s AFAIK was *always* sharing and piracy. No-one cared about people ripping them to their computers in the 90s, because for most of the decade hard drives were barely big enough to hold a significant number of MP3s, and (e.g.) mid-90s PCs used most of their processing capacity just to play them back. As I said, nerd curiosity at that point.
You could probably combine the 70s and 80s; people were taping in the 70s, and the industry woke up to the threat in the early 80s- I don't think the Walkman was itself a threat, beyond the fact that it made the cassette an even more popular format. (Remember that most Walkmans and the like couldn't even record themselves).
But you're right- the industry has made a fuss about this sort of thing before. They also did it with video recorders in the US in the early 80s, then realised that they could make lots of money selling prerecorded VHS tapes.
Ironically, I don't entirely disagree that piracy may be an issue, and possibly moreso than it was back then. I'm happy for people to make money and profit from their efforts in the creative industries (that is, if people want the results of such efforts).
This doesn't change the fact that the industry is- and always has been- a bunch of greedy bastards willing to screw over the working people they'd like to tell us are being hurt by piracy, and to use piracy as a useful indefinable excuse to cover up their own shortcomings (e.g. maybe people aren't paying money to watch their films because they're shallow, adolescent-oriented, unoriginal toss?) And while I might be in favour of reasonable copyright laws, that's certainly *not* not to the extent that those old, entrenched interests are pushing for draconian laws, not giving a toss about fairness or our civil liberties, just to preserve their own meal ticket.
A super nerd explains why super wifi isn't wifi. General population doesn't give a fuck, as wifi means "wireless internet" to them.
General population then bitches when their Super "WiFi" doesn't interoperate with any of their existing WiFi equipment and in fact can't even be used directly in their laptop at present. From the article:-
For now, at least, you can't move a white-space device around. You can't put a white-space radio into a phone or laptop because each white-space device must check its location against a database to determine which TV channels and wireless microphones are being used in the device's area, so they can avoid those channels. [..] It will be a way for wireless Internet providers, especially in rural areas, to zap their network over to a main router in a home, which will then redistribute it to devices over Ethernet or standard Wi-Fi connections.
So you're right that they probably wouldn't care about the technical issues, and nor would they ever likely care if any difference was totally transparent (and thus irrelevant) to the man on the street. But it's not, and that's why "Super WiFi" is a crap and misleading name, even for Joe Public.
FYI, the TI/99 was selling for $99 when the Sinclair came out.
I'd already heard about TI slashing their prices to below cost in response to Jack Tramiel of Commodore's merciless price war, but I was sure that was later on. Having checked, this article says:-
"In February 1983, TI lowered the price to $150 and was selling the computers at a loss. And in June 1983, TI released a redesigned beige cost-reduced version that it sold, also at a loss, for $99."
That was the better part of a year after even the TS-1000's long-delayed US release anyway. At that point of course the TI/99-4A was better value (even though such obviously unsustainable price-cutting pushed TI out of the market shortly afterwards and left the machine orphaned and unsupported).
All this is true, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. That two long years after its original UK release, in a foreign market competing against slashed-below-cost domestic computers it wasn't such an obviously great buy? Well, yes. But its significance was in the UK market of early 1981, not the US market of early 1983, and there was nothing in the same ballpark pricewise back then. In 1981, most people probably didn't even know they wanted a computer(!)