I have seen a lot of misinformation regarding digital moviemaking here on/.
Being a film maker of no repute, I shall attempt to address this. I can't answer EVERYTHING, but I can address some of the biggies.
First off the cameras Lucas is using shoot with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels at 24 frames progressive. The format they use is Sony's own HDCAM. This is a compressed digital format. It is not however DV, which refers to a particular codec used most often for standard definition production at 25Mbps. Panasonic has a format called DVCPRO HD which uses the same codec at a 100Mbps profile. HDCAM is about 145Mbps.
Confusingly, many people for some reason think DV also means "Digital Video." This is probably because it does. Mostly video people say digital video and save DV for the codec. I tend to say DV25 or whatever when I am talking codecs, or say MiniDV when talking format...damnable words.
SO, back to HD...There is a huge lossy compression that happens before we can even examine the image. If the image is captured directly to a D-5HD recorder (not to be confused with D-5 which is an SD video format.) from the camera without going to tape, you get a much better product. Lucas has done this for at least some scenes.
What about the notion that 35mm offers more resolution ? It depends. Are you talking about acquisition or projection ? You'll be surprised that while 35mm has a resoltuion advantage, it is not the primary thing that you'll notice when looking at the projected images. Mostly I feel that color generated by these cameras as recorde on tape isn't smooth enough.
For projection HD video projectors using DLP at 1920x1080 are available, and they produce a STUNNING image. I saw one Jan 2001 at NIST's Digital Cinema conference. I couldn't bear watching 35mm projection with my friends later on after the conference. Why ?
Well, first off there is not gate weave or jitter. Images are very solid and clear when they are supposed to be. Better than even the best theatres with union projectionists. (not a lot of those left..Mann's in LA, Uptown in DC, I dunno any more.) What I am talking about is the way film moves. Being a mechanical system there are limits to its operational precision. You get inaccuracies in vertical and horizontal positioning, as well as movement towards or away from the lens, and the lamp. Then there are the subtle deformations of the film itself. This is all well controlled actually, especially when you consider that a 35mm picture is being made into a 70 foot or more picture on projection.
Well, none of that exists for the digital projector.
The color gamut available surpasses that of 35mm film. Most of what I saw was film acquired, which was stunning enough. The digitally generated stuff, Toy Story 2, well...it NEVER looked that good before. Colors literally leap off the screen. It is a cinematographers dream. ( I know cause I dream about having my images projected on that thing...drool drool)
Make no mistake, digital projection is THE future of theatrical exhibition. Even Vittorio Storaro has come out in favor of it. (Storaro is a very highly regarded cinematographer, perhaps the best ever. Check out an interview with him about digital cinema.)
Now, on acquisition 35mm is certainly superior. Not because of format limits...Uncompressed HD is very nice and can compete with 35mm, but rather because of the limitations of current camera design, mostly the CCD's. Still they provide a very good image.
Frankly I am amazed that the film look as good as it does after seeing the previews. A quick look at the previews shows that while the image has flaws, it is quite frankly very very good.
Now when evaluating the technology you have to consider HOW the image reaches the final consumer. For a movie like Star Wars, or FoTR the 35mm camera image is scanned into the systems at ILM or wherever using a laser film scanner, then digital effects, manipulation and elements are all added. Then it is ouput to film, pre composited, via a laser film "printer."
What this means is that the limiting image resolution is set at digitization. This hardly affects most films, but for a Star Wars film, where virtually every scene, if not every frame, contains digital composites, the entire film is produced digitally even if you shoot with film!
For more discussion, argument and general confusion check out the archives of discussions on alt.movies.cinematography, search for "HD film" and you should be overwhelmed.
Well, here's another point for my Slashdot purity test...sigh.
I am responding to your.sig
The line is supposed to be,
"Jesus Saves! Rebound Gretzky...He shoots, HE SCORES!!!"
IEEE1394b already supports 3.6Gbps
on
USB 2.0 For Linux
·
· Score: 2
OK OK so there are no real devices at that data rate yet, but 1394b supports 800Mbps, 1.6Gbps and 3.6Gbps. The standard is inplace and you can expect devices rather soon at 800 and 1.6Gbps with just around the corner.
So...it is useful to reduce the costs of operating water purification facilities. Cities have to run those anyway, so if you install these and capture/harvest the gold that is in the water you are already pumping, you effectively reduce the costs.
I emailed the DOJ, President, VP, My US Senators and Oklahoma Senators about this case asking them to look into it.
Here is the message I sent:
I read about a case regarding Brian K. West in Southeast Oklahoma at:
http://www.linuxfreak.org/post.php/08/17/2001/134. html
If the information contained therein is correct, then there is already a SERIOUS miscarriage of justice going on.
Is it the policy of the United States , the Bush Administration and the Department of Justice to prosecute well intentioned citizens for attempting to help a stranger in an entirely benign manner ?
Would the DOJ prefer that the editor never have been notified about the security issue accessible through routine use of Microsoft software ?
What about the implication for other "good samaritan" acts ? Does the DOJ intend to set a precedent allowing any confused person to prosecute and/or sue anyone who helps them ?
I call on the DOJ to investigate the legal and technical competence of the attorney and law enforcement personnel in this matter.
Feel free to copy this and send it off if you like. With luck, either the DOJ will quit, or we'll get a better explanation. Hopefully we can create an awareness that VOTERS ae watching what happens in these matters, and that we expect reasonable action and competence.
How about making sidewalks out of piezo electric materials, or the walls and floor of any room where you have athletics or even loud sounds ?
Roadways anyone ? You could sandwich piezoelectric materials in between layers of asphalt to help power street lights at least.
Only thing stopping you is ummm...practiciality.
But if the materials were cheap enough, well then it would be interesting at least. We may be able to generate significant power if this was deployed over wide areas.
Uh...you are responding with a reference to the wrong Moore's Law. The one this guy is talking about is a law of Thermodynamics by Grimmey Moore, not Intel founder Gordon Moore.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=Mo or e%27s+Law+Thermodynamics
Context is EVERYTHING sometimes people, think before you post.
Jeez, gimme a break. Companies change. IBM has. Are they 100% perfect no, but then what profit minded company can be with the/. crowd ?
Of course it is in their best interests to do so. They want to be a hardware company like always, and supporting Linux on their hardware is a way for them to point and say you can still use it when they drop driver and OS support for it. It also relaxes the need for them to develop every latest greatest thingy for their systems. Need it now, get Linux or wait.
That is WHY I think their support is very legitimate. Because I can see at least one profit oriented purpose in it.
As to applauding this, it sure is funny, and Ironic. Yes it is Ironic with a capital "I". Can you imagine the IBM of the eighties putting up graffiti anywhere, illegally or otherwise ? That is half the fun of it. If you do not remember the old IBM then you really aren't enjoying this to its fullest.
If you needed proof that _something_ at IBM has changed you just got it. Does it make up for everything they have ever done ? NO. So what ?
If we don't accept the little changes then we'll never get big ones.
...they made a server I could deploy on my hardware and control myself.
People could run of these for their own families, small business. Companies could deploy them for their employees.
It would also be nice if the different servers could talk to each other.
My devices would be updated by both my home server for essential personal information and my work server, for appointments and business data. This should be as seamless as receiving email from these separate people is now.
Naturally, if I wanted to I could pay someone to do this for me, and I'd have to give them my information. They could discount the service if I let them share my information for marketing.
So...anyone starting a project to this the right way ?
At GV Expo in November (Washington D.C.) I got a first look at Adobe Premiere 6. Premiere now allows you to output video that intereacts with a browser.
What it does is "throw out" a URL to the browser and allows you to have information brought in from the web at certain keyframes.
The demo that the Adobe rep showed me was a brief clip on BMX. When they introduce a rider they update a frame with biographical info.
Of course there are security implications...
Here is a write up I did on Premiere 6, while it was still in beta.
I don't know any other tools that allow this so easily...it might be worth it to make a multimedia presentation of your own.
Some people use all the neato features of a card like this to get faster OpenGL performance out of Lightwave or Maya or some such.
It is great that we can use it for games too, but that isn't the point for many. I am sure there will be an even more expensive version of this in Nvidia's Quadro line, it'll have greater throughput and more processing power...so it'll get bought. It'll make DOOM 3 scream, but that isn't why you buy it.
You see Hughes is a defense contractor. The defense industry is all worked up about Electronic Warfare against our national infrastructure, which now includes the Internet and other telecommunications services. They want to know what if anything they can do about it.
I believe Hughes has been tolerant of this game because it is a testing ground for them. I don't think they are testing their best technology at all, but rather practical technologies that are like the infrastructure already deployed.
It is a lot of the same problem...how do you prevent a given behavior when all the resources of that behavior are in the hands of or are accesible to your enemy. The entire Internet is really this way. Yeah Yeah firewalls blah blah. If you have any IP path out to the net or in to your computer, you have the same problem Hughes has with DirecTV. If you happen to be AT&T, WorldCOM, Sprint, UUNet or somesuch it is a big problem. If you use electricity then you have at least one path to attack the electric company.
If Hughes can solve this problem against a motivated enemy (people who want DirecTV for free) then they have a valuable solution that every government wants to buy. And governments have more money than all possible direcTV subscribers are likely to spend even over a very long time.
Well, there it is, a crackpot conspiracy theory. Worthy of Slashdot IMHO.
This thing is not going to compete in quality with DV based camcorders in its price range.
If I were buying a camcorder. I think I'd pass this up rather quickly. For one the imager block will not produce high quality images. Second the data rate is really only good when you compare to LAN streaming video...6Mb/s is not impressive.
MiniDV and Digital8 Camera's record at 25Mbps or ~5MB/s. At that quality this camera can only hold about 9 minutes of DV25 video. Professional DV50 Cameras record at twice the bandwidth, which means that these disks can only store about 5 minutes.
In other words this stuff is useless, and you will very disappointed if you try to use this to archive your wedding or some other precious moment. You will likely end up with a VHS quality image and digital artifacts to boot.
Hmmm, just did the math, you could get 1 hour of DVD quality video from the format, but you will still be limited by the imager to less quality than you find on most VHS camcorders. Also, I question how well you can automatically encode MPEG-2 in real time.
There are other technologies that, when integrated into video systems, offer vastly greater promise.
It is probably too late to really talk to anybody here but...
I've seen a lot of comments regarding how unsafe these things are and comparing them to the lack of safety in automibiles.
One of the greatest troubles with automobiles is the lack of space in which to drive them. Everywhere you look there is something to run into and lots of those things also happen to be moving at relatively high rates of speed.
Well, once we open up the third dimension a lot of that crowding goes away. People will have time to blink out for a bit in most places. Speeds are much lower than traditional aircraft, so there is an excellent chance for even a fairly negligent driver to see an oncoming obstacle and move, especially as a lot of these obstacles are fairly large.
You won't see a lot of commercial use of these devices until their carrying capacity and fuel efficiency increases dramatically. Commercially it will be a niche product...EMT's whizzing to injury sites, police on patrol, etc.
A lot of ground vehicle accidents involve commercial vehicles, and not merely because they are on the road a lot. A lot of commercial drivers become inured to the responsibility of conducting a vehicle.
There are still the problems of takeoff and landing, which are the most dangerosu phases of flight operations. To some extent technology can help an operator manage the troubles there.
There is the problem of engine failure. This can be handled with parachutes, airbags and additional safety gear like helmets and ankle/knee braces.
Finally I imagine that, like motorcycle riders, personal air vehicle operators will exercise greater caution than your average automobile operator. Have you ever noticed how motorcycle drivers pull over very quickly during adverse weather ? I know I have seen many drivers pull over under bridges and call for a ride. Ever notice the conspicuous absence of motorcycles under many weather conditions.
People act as stupid as they think they can get away with, witness motorcycle drivers flying around at 90 or 100 mph. Of course they only seem to do this under dry road conditions with good visibility. People in cars act very stupid because they think they are safe. They are wrong of course. People in jet packs or the like will have to be very aware that they are in danger.
Finally a lot of people who are afraid to drive do so because "They have to." A lot of these people have poor eyesight, poor reflexes or a variety of anxieties about the entire driving process. A lot of these unsafe drivers will simpley choose to stick with ground transportation. We can use stricter licensing to eliminate others.
We can also tie having a personal aircraft license to having a safe ground transportation license. This may make for safer ground drivers, as people vie for their air licenses. Further the only people with air licenses will have at least a moderate record of transport safety.
There are solutions to the problems. They will be found because people want to do this. They will be found because governments want this. (They don't like having to maintain our roadways, anything that can make that problem go away will be helped along.)
The most influential arguments against this technology I've seen on Slashdot come from pilots. Flying is complicated and very technical. Humans and computers can combine to overcome these problems. The Airbus planes are a step in this direction...but not there yet. Imagine having a system like that on a simpler aircraft to assist the pilot. The upside is that the aircraft can be flown more simply by more novice pilots. The down is when the computer screws up and takes away necessary control from the pilot like the A320 at the Paris Airshow a few years back. The answer is not here yet, but it IS coming.
So maybe not next week or next year, but it will get here sooner rather than later. I look forward to it.
I-Max is shot at 48 frames per second, but movies shot at 24 fps are screened at 48 fps. I would recommend trying to get your frame rates above 48fps for your whole experience.
On a 24fps movie the shutter is opened twice per frame. This helps eliminate strobing of the image. Even with this measure, you can see strobing under normal lighting conditions. There is a *technical* reason why movies are shown in the dark.
For comparison NTSC television is shot at 60 fields per second. These 60 fields are interlaced to give 30 frames per second. (Well, actually 29.997 fps)
In any case, you can tell the difference in frame rate. For example Showscan, used for amusement rides, is shot at 60 frames per second, giving a strong "you are there" sensation. The faster the frame rate, the more your brain tends to believe your eyes. (There is an upper limit, but I don't know it.)
Interestingly the guy who created Showscan, Douglass Trumbull, rejects the use of Showscan for storytelling. "It was film that looked too real-too much perhaps like video."(Videography Magazine May 2000 page 30)
There is also the issue of frame rate variance discussed by another poster. When the scene gets 'busy' you want to make sure your frame rate stays high. This is more critical for computer applications because they have an effectively high shutter speed. By this I mean each frame is still and sharp, it lacks motion blur. If it had accurate motion blur a lower frame rate would be more tolerable. (Inaccurate motion blur will confuse the viewers notion of how things are moving.) Without motion blur images are more easily percieved as "strobing" or flickering, which of course detracts from the realism of the environment. Since adding accurate motion blur is hard, you have to pump up those frame rates- and keep them high.
>a federal jury found that Microsoft had violated Connecticut's unfair-trade practices act, but awarded Bristol damages of just $1
>Thats right the jury awarded just one dollar. It was the judge that set the $1 million, at a later date (after appeal?).
>There something weird going on here, and I'm not sure I like it. What makes a jury award such a small amount of compensation that a Judge has to overule it later down the line.
This is a reminder of one problem in dealing with Microsoft: They have a GOOD image. People think about what they see of MS, and they see mostly good things. Most of the features in MS products were unknown to Joe average User before MS stuck it into windows. The average user doesn't care about uptime, and doesn't know all the things Linux can do that Windows can't.
So we have a jury of MS users who are not geeks and they say, "Yeah MS was bad, but they are getting a real bad rap...lets give them a break."
If you are comparing Mac OS X as a server to UNIX: NOT MUCH. You may even lose a little from the point of view of an experienced UNIX admin.
If you are trying to build a network with limited staff resources and experience your only choice has been Windows NT. Apple is aiming squarely at Windows NT/2000 here.
So, which one would you rather have in your network: BSD based Mac OS X OR Win 2K ? Given a real RDBMS I'll choose OS X every time. I trust those Unix guts to keep working. If they fail, I trust Apple's interface builders to have built something a brain dead idiot can figure out when I have to hire the eventual ASSE's (Apple Systems Software Engineers aren't here now, just wait, they may use a different name though.)
To address the idea of why you want your server out in the open: marketing. When you bring the PHB-type investors and clients around your little internet start-up they look at rack systems and think, "What a mess, these systems look like junk, they must be out of date." Show the same morons (morons who happen to have your money) some pretty SGI or Apple servers and they think, "WOW- these guys have all this futuristic computer stuff. They must know what they are doing."
Stupid but true.
Another argument against racks: They cost money. If I have a few systems (less than 5) I'd rather stick each machine in its own case and leave work room around them. The stupid cases cost less money, and might look better.
I think you are more interested in bragging about your machine than being serious about the value of Mac OS X systems.
Mac's already have 64 bit PCI in all their tower systems.
OS X has all the scalability of any BSD, that includes the ability to address 64bit file and memory spaces, on 64 bit hardware. Current Apple processors are 32 bit. Then again with a UNIX kernel moving to 64-bit should be easy.
As to graphics, some people like to use them. It is nice to have several X terminals displayed on the same screen.
Some servers have to be out in the open to impress clients that tour your facility. Some facilities don't have any use for large racks of servers. There are a lot of plcaes that can use the money you spend on racks to acquire another computer or two for use as a special purpose servers.
If you have redundant hotswappable drives and power supplies in your desktop workstation, then you may be over spec. Are you doing some sort of batch processing that runs over 100 days per cycle ? If not maybe you should save a bit and get a couple of desktops next time around.
Mac OS X brings all the reliability and customizability of UNIX together with the usability of a MacOS.
There is a huge market for servers that "normal people" can configure. Right now only Windows NT Server fills the need. MacOS X is definitely better, in every way other than application availability, than the MS offering. That is the real market.
It will not replace serious Sun machines, at least not for a while. But for small deparmental servers and company LAN's this is a serious contender.
Why must they ACCEPT interference? Not why am I at the bottom of the priority list.
They can not Interfere, fine. Sensible. My wireless LAN should not shut down military communications, police communications or broadcast systems.
Let's say you have an amateur radio station next door, and I can pick your transmissions up with my TV. Why can't I shield the TV from your transmissions ? Why should I accept the interference ?
Is there a technical reason why having my TV reflect your transmission would cause the network to fail ? The requirement of acceptance seems to me to indicate that perhaps the sheilding itself may cause interference ? Is that true ? If so how is the interference caused, and how does it manifest ?
Is it merely a problem of wording ? It sounds like any device that produces appropiate emmisions should interfere with my consumer devices, and that my devices are required to accept this interference.
If I were just a mite more paranoid, I'd assert that the government wants to make sure they can shut down and monitor my electronics.
Then again, maybe they do. Of course I could be paranoid...am I paranoid enough ?
Slashdot Mirror
Being a film maker of no repute, I shall attempt to address this. I can't answer EVERYTHING, but I can address some of the biggies.
First off the cameras Lucas is using shoot with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels at 24 frames progressive. The format they use is Sony's own HDCAM. This is a compressed digital format. It is not however DV, which refers to a particular codec used most often for standard definition production at 25Mbps. Panasonic has a format called DVCPRO HD which uses the same codec at a 100Mbps profile. HDCAM is about 145Mbps.
Confusingly, many people for some reason think DV also means "Digital Video." This is probably because it does. Mostly video people say digital video and save DV for the codec. I tend to say DV25 or whatever when I am talking codecs, or say MiniDV when talking format...damnable words.
SO, back to HD...There is a huge lossy compression that happens before we can even examine the image. If the image is captured directly to a D-5HD recorder (not to be confused with D-5 which is an SD video format.) from the camera without going to tape, you get a much better product. Lucas has done this for at least some scenes.
What about the notion that 35mm offers more resolution ? It depends. Are you talking about acquisition or projection ? You'll be surprised that while 35mm has a resoltuion advantage, it is not the primary thing that you'll notice when looking at the projected images. Mostly I feel that color generated by these cameras as recorde on tape isn't smooth enough.
For projection HD video projectors using DLP at 1920x1080 are available, and they produce a STUNNING image. I saw one Jan 2001 at NIST's Digital Cinema conference. I couldn't bear watching 35mm projection with my friends later on after the conference. Why ?
Well, first off there is not gate weave or jitter. Images are very solid and clear when they are supposed to be. Better than even the best theatres with union projectionists. (not a lot of those left..Mann's in LA, Uptown in DC, I dunno any more.) What I am talking about is the way film moves. Being a mechanical system there are limits to its operational precision. You get inaccuracies in vertical and horizontal positioning, as well as movement towards or away from the lens, and the lamp. Then there are the subtle deformations of the film itself. This is all well controlled actually, especially when you consider that a 35mm picture is being made into a 70 foot or more picture on projection.
Well, none of that exists for the digital projector.
The color gamut available surpasses that of 35mm film. Most of what I saw was film acquired, which was stunning enough. The digitally generated stuff, Toy Story 2, well...it NEVER looked that good before. Colors literally leap off the screen. It is a cinematographers dream. ( I know cause I dream about having my images projected on that thing...drool drool)
Make no mistake, digital projection is THE future of theatrical exhibition. Even Vittorio Storaro has come out in favor of it. (Storaro is a very highly regarded cinematographer, perhaps the best ever. Check out an interview with him about digital cinema.)
Now, on acquisition 35mm is certainly superior. Not because of format limits...Uncompressed HD is very nice and can compete with 35mm, but rather because of the limitations of current camera design, mostly the CCD's. Still they provide a very good image.
Frankly I am amazed that the film look as good as it does after seeing the previews. A quick look at the previews shows that while the image has flaws, it is quite frankly very very good.
Now when evaluating the technology you have to consider HOW the image reaches the final consumer. For a movie like Star Wars, or FoTR the 35mm camera image is scanned into the systems at ILM or wherever using a laser film scanner, then digital effects, manipulation and elements are all added. Then it is ouput to film, pre composited, via a laser film "printer."
What this means is that the limiting image resolution is set at digitization. This hardly affects most films, but for a Star Wars film, where virtually every scene, if not every frame, contains digital composites, the entire film is produced digitally even if you shoot with film!
For more discussion, argument and general confusion check out the archives of discussions on alt.movies.cinematography, search for "HD film" and you should be overwhelmed.
I hope that has been entertaining if not useful.
Uhhh...there are in fact airborne strains of Ebola.
In fact Ebola Reston was airborne. For those who don't know Ebola was just outside Washington D.C. in an airborne strain.
Lucky that Ebola Reston appears incapable of infecting humans
Well, here's another point for my Slashdot purity test...sigh.
.sig
I am responding to your
The line is supposed to be,
"Jesus Saves! Rebound Gretzky...He shoots, HE SCORES!!!"
OK OK so there are no real devices at that data rate yet, but 1394b supports 800Mbps, 1.6Gbps and 3.6Gbps. The standard is inplace and you can expect devices rather soon at 800 and 1.6Gbps with just around the corner.
See, they are useful anyway.
Feel free to copy this and send it off if you like. With luck, either the DOJ will quit, or we'll get a better explanation. Hopefully we can create an awareness that VOTERS ae watching what happens in these matters, and that we expect reasonable action and competence.
How about making sidewalks out of piezo electric materials, or the walls and floor of any room where you have athletics or even loud sounds ?
Roadways anyone ? You could sandwich piezoelectric materials in between layers of asphalt to help power street lights at least.
Only thing stopping you is ummm...practiciality.
But if the materials were cheap enough, well then it would be interesting at least. We may be able to generate significant power if this was deployed over wide areas.
Oops, wrong link...sorry, here is the right one...
http://www.c3f.com/nty0129.html
It is the first link on the Google page.
Science at its best.
Gimmey Moore forever!
Uh...you are responding with a reference to the wrong Moore's Law. The one this guy is talking about is a law of Thermodynamics by Grimmey Moore, not Intel founder Gordon Moore.
o or e%27s+Law+Thermodynamics
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=M
Context is EVERYTHING sometimes people, think before you post.
Jeez, gimme a break. Companies change. IBM has. Are they 100% perfect no, but then what profit minded company can be with the /. crowd ?
/.,"Its Funny Laugh."
Of course it is in their best interests to do so. They want to be a hardware company like always, and supporting Linux on their hardware is a way for them to point and say you can still use it when they drop driver and OS support for it. It also relaxes the need for them to develop every latest greatest thingy for their systems. Need it now, get Linux or wait.
That is WHY I think their support is very legitimate. Because I can see at least one profit oriented purpose in it.
As to applauding this, it sure is funny, and Ironic. Yes it is Ironic with a capital "I". Can you imagine the IBM of the eighties putting up graffiti anywhere, illegally or otherwise ? That is half the fun of it. If you do not remember the old IBM then you really aren't enjoying this to its fullest.
If you needed proof that _something_ at IBM has changed you just got it. Does it make up for everything they have ever done ? NO. So what ?
If we don't accept the little changes then we'll never get big ones.
Enjoy it, as seen on
...they made a server I could deploy on my hardware and control myself.
People could run of these for their own families, small business. Companies could deploy them for their employees.
It would also be nice if the different servers could talk to each other.
My devices would be updated by both my home server for essential personal information and my work server, for appointments and business data. This should be as seamless as receiving email from these separate people is now.
Naturally, if I wanted to I could pay someone to do this for me, and I'd have to give them my information. They could discount the service if I let them share my information for marketing.
So...anyone starting a project to this the right way ?
At GV Expo in November (Washington D.C.) I got a first look at Adobe Premiere 6. Premiere now allows you to output video that intereacts with a browser.
What it does is "throw out" a URL to the browser and allows you to have information brought in from the web at certain keyframes.
The demo that the Adobe rep showed me was a brief clip on BMX. When they introduce a rider they update a frame with biographical info.
Of course there are security implications...
Here is a write up I did on Premiere 6, while it was still in beta.
I don't know any other tools that allow this so easily...it might be worth it to make a multimedia presentation of your own.
Some people use all the neato features of a card like this to get faster OpenGL performance out of Lightwave or Maya or some such.
It is great that we can use it for games too, but that isn't the point for many. I am sure there will be an even more expensive version of this in Nvidia's Quadro line, it'll have greater throughput and more processing power...so it'll get bought. It'll make DOOM 3 scream, but that isn't why you buy it.
Unless you are a, "soul of independent means."
TM is a mark that can be used by anyone to indicate that they consider it a trademark
Circle R is what you get to put on when you are Federally Registered with the USPTO
I have a theory, hypothesis whatever.
You see Hughes is a defense contractor. The defense industry is all worked up about Electronic Warfare against our national infrastructure, which now includes the Internet and other telecommunications services. They want to know what if anything they can do about it.
I believe Hughes has been tolerant of this game because it is a testing ground for them. I don't think they are testing their best technology at all, but rather practical technologies that are like the infrastructure already deployed.
It is a lot of the same problem...how do you prevent a given behavior when all the resources of that behavior are in the hands of or are accesible to your enemy. The entire Internet is really this way. Yeah Yeah firewalls blah blah. If you have any IP path out to the net or in to your computer, you have the same problem Hughes has with DirecTV. If you happen to be AT&T, WorldCOM, Sprint, UUNet or somesuch it is a big problem. If you use electricity then you have at least one path to attack the electric company.
If Hughes can solve this problem against a motivated enemy (people who want DirecTV for free) then they have a valuable solution that every government wants to buy. And governments have more money than all possible direcTV subscribers are likely to spend even over a very long time.
Well, there it is, a crackpot conspiracy theory. Worthy of Slashdot IMHO.
If I were buying a camcorder. I think I'd pass this up rather quickly. For one the imager block will not produce high quality images. Second the data rate is really only good when you compare to LAN streaming video...6Mb/s is not impressive.
MiniDV and Digital8 Camera's record at 25Mbps or ~5MB/s. At that quality this camera can only hold about 9 minutes of DV25 video. Professional DV50 Cameras record at twice the bandwidth, which means that these disks can only store about 5 minutes.
In other words this stuff is useless, and you will very disappointed if you try to use this to archive your wedding or some other precious moment. You will likely end up with a VHS quality image and digital artifacts to boot.
Hmmm, just did the math, you could get 1 hour of DVD quality video from the format, but you will still be limited by the imager to less quality than you find on most VHS camcorders. Also, I question how well you can automatically encode MPEG-2 in real time.
There are other technologies that, when integrated into video systems, offer vastly greater promise.
It is probably too late to really talk to anybody here but...
I've seen a lot of comments regarding how unsafe these things are and comparing them to the lack of safety in automibiles.
One of the greatest troubles with automobiles is the lack of space in which to drive them. Everywhere you look there is something to run into and lots of those things also happen to be moving at relatively high rates of speed.
Well, once we open up the third dimension a lot of that crowding goes away. People will have time to blink out for a bit in most places. Speeds are much lower than traditional aircraft, so there is an excellent chance for even a fairly negligent driver to see an oncoming obstacle and move, especially as a lot of these obstacles are fairly large.
You won't see a lot of commercial use of these devices until their carrying capacity and fuel efficiency increases dramatically. Commercially it will be a niche product...EMT's whizzing to injury sites, police on patrol, etc.
A lot of ground vehicle accidents involve commercial vehicles, and not merely because they are on the road a lot. A lot of commercial drivers become inured to the responsibility of conducting a vehicle.
There are still the problems of takeoff and landing, which are the most dangerosu phases of flight operations. To some extent technology can help an operator manage the troubles there.
There is the problem of engine failure. This can be handled with parachutes, airbags and additional safety gear like helmets and ankle/knee braces.
Finally I imagine that, like motorcycle riders, personal air vehicle operators will exercise greater caution than your average automobile operator. Have you ever noticed how motorcycle drivers pull over very quickly during adverse weather ? I know I have seen many drivers pull over under bridges and call for a ride. Ever notice the conspicuous absence of motorcycles under many weather conditions.
People act as stupid as they think they can get away with, witness motorcycle drivers flying around at 90 or 100 mph. Of course they only seem to do this under dry road conditions with good visibility. People in cars act very stupid because they think they are safe. They are wrong of course. People in jet packs or the like will have to be very aware that they are in danger.
Finally a lot of people who are afraid to drive do so because "They have to." A lot of these people have poor eyesight, poor reflexes or a variety of anxieties about the entire driving process. A lot of these unsafe drivers will simpley choose to stick with ground transportation. We can use stricter licensing to eliminate others.
We can also tie having a personal aircraft license to having a safe ground transportation license. This may make for safer ground drivers, as people vie for their air licenses. Further the only people with air licenses will have at least a moderate record of transport safety.
There are solutions to the problems. They will be found because people want to do this. They will be found because governments want this. (They don't like having to maintain our roadways, anything that can make that problem go away will be helped along.)
The most influential arguments against this technology I've seen on Slashdot come from pilots. Flying is complicated and very technical. Humans and computers can combine to overcome these problems. The Airbus planes are a step in this direction...but not there yet. Imagine having a system like that on a simpler aircraft to assist the pilot. The upside is that the aircraft can be flown more simply by more novice pilots. The down is when the computer screws up and takes away necessary control from the pilot like the A320 at the Paris Airshow a few years back. The answer is not here yet, but it IS coming.
So maybe not next week or next year, but it will get here sooner rather than later. I look forward to it.
I-Max is shot at 48 frames per second, but movies shot at 24 fps are screened at 48 fps. I would recommend trying to get your frame rates above 48fps for your whole experience.
On a 24fps movie the shutter is opened twice per frame. This helps eliminate strobing of the image. Even with this measure, you can see strobing under normal lighting conditions. There is a *technical* reason why movies are shown in the dark.
For comparison NTSC television is shot at 60 fields per second. These 60 fields are interlaced to give 30 frames per second. (Well, actually 29.997 fps)
In any case, you can tell the difference in frame rate. For example Showscan, used for amusement rides, is shot at 60 frames per second, giving a strong "you are there" sensation. The faster the frame rate, the more your brain tends to believe your eyes. (There is an upper limit, but I don't know it.)
Interestingly the guy who created Showscan, Douglass Trumbull, rejects the use of Showscan for storytelling. "It was film that looked too real-too much perhaps like video."(Videography Magazine May 2000 page 30)
There is also the issue of frame rate variance discussed by another poster. When the scene gets 'busy' you want to make sure your frame rate stays high. This is more critical for computer applications because they have an effectively high shutter speed. By this I mean each frame is still and sharp, it lacks motion blur. If it had accurate motion blur a lower frame rate would be more tolerable. (Inaccurate motion blur will confuse the viewers notion of how things are moving.) Without motion blur images are more easily percieved as "strobing" or flickering, which of course detracts from the realism of the environment. Since adding accurate motion blur is hard, you have to pump up those frame rates- and keep them high.
>Thats right the jury awarded just one dollar. It was the judge that set the $1 million, at a later date (after appeal?).
>There something weird going on here, and I'm not sure I like it. What makes a jury award such a small amount of compensation that a Judge has to overule it later down the line.
This is a reminder of one problem in dealing with Microsoft: They have a GOOD image. People think about what they see of MS, and they see mostly good things. Most of the features in MS products were unknown to Joe average User before MS stuck it into windows. The average user doesn't care about uptime, and doesn't know all the things Linux can do that Windows can't.
So we have a jury of MS users who are not geeks and they say, "Yeah MS was bad, but they are getting a real bad rap...lets give them a break."
If you are trying to build a network with limited staff resources and experience your only choice has been Windows NT. Apple is aiming squarely at Windows NT/2000 here.
So, which one would you rather have in your network: BSD based Mac OS X OR Win 2K ? Given a real RDBMS I'll choose OS X every time. I trust those Unix guts to keep working. If they fail, I trust Apple's interface builders to have built something a brain dead idiot can figure out when I have to hire the eventual ASSE's (Apple Systems Software Engineers aren't here now, just wait, they may use a different name though.)
To address the idea of why you want your server out in the open: marketing. When you bring the PHB-type investors and clients around your little internet start-up they look at rack systems and think, "What a mess, these systems look like junk, they must be out of date." Show the same morons (morons who happen to have your money) some pretty SGI or Apple servers and they think, "WOW- these guys have all this futuristic computer stuff. They must know what they are doing."
Stupid but true.
Another argument against racks: They cost money. If I have a few systems (less than 5) I'd rather stick each machine in its own case and leave work room around them. The stupid cases cost less money, and might look better.
Mac's already have 64 bit PCI in all their tower systems.
OS X has all the scalability of any BSD, that includes the ability to address 64bit file and memory spaces, on 64 bit hardware. Current Apple processors are 32 bit. Then again with a UNIX kernel moving to 64-bit should be easy.
As to graphics, some people like to use them. It is nice to have several X terminals displayed on the same screen.
Some servers have to be out in the open to impress clients that tour your facility. Some facilities don't have any use for large racks of servers. There are a lot of plcaes that can use the money you spend on racks to acquire another computer or two for use as a special purpose servers.
If you have redundant hotswappable drives and power supplies in your desktop workstation, then you may be over spec. Are you doing some sort of batch processing that runs over 100 days per cycle ? If not maybe you should save a bit and get a couple of desktops next time around.
Mac OS X brings all the reliability and customizability of UNIX together with the usability of a MacOS.
There is a huge market for servers that "normal people" can configure. Right now only Windows NT Server fills the need. MacOS X is definitely better, in every way other than application availability, than the MS offering. That is the real market.
It will not replace serious Sun machines, at least not for a while. But for small deparmental servers and company LAN's this is a serious contender.
Why must they ACCEPT interference? Not why am I at the bottom of the priority list.
They can not Interfere, fine. Sensible. My wireless LAN should not shut down military communications, police communications or broadcast systems.
Let's say you have an amateur radio station next door, and I can pick your transmissions up with my TV. Why can't I shield the TV from your transmissions ? Why should I accept the interference ?
Is there a technical reason why having my TV reflect your transmission would cause the network to fail ? The requirement of acceptance seems to me to indicate that perhaps the sheilding itself may cause interference ? Is that true ? If so how is the interference caused, and how does it manifest ?
Is it merely a problem of wording ? It sounds like any device that produces appropiate emmisions should interfere with my consumer devices, and that my devices are required to accept this interference.
If I were just a mite more paranoid, I'd assert that the government wants to make sure they can shut down and monitor my electronics.
Then again, maybe they do. Of course I could be paranoid...am I paranoid enough ?
Forgot to say that the model number should be prominently printed on the faceplate.
The HP 4020 series is a CDR not a CDRW.
I assume it includes both the external (HP 4020) and internal (HP 4020i) models.
I do not have the site mirrored, but I do know there is a claim form available, as well as a PDF of the settlement.