Depending on the data, it may interest a lot of people. For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh is more than 2000 years old, and there are still people interested in it. Don't you think people in 1000 years will be as interested in some of our current literature, art, etc.?
Also historians will love any extra data about our time. Even an archive of Myspace could be of interest to some future archaeologists.
...and will there be any DVD readers 1,000 years from now?
Well, maybe the next step will be to build a reader which will last 1000 years. And a computer which can last 1000 years. But how do we tell those people in 1000 years how to use a computer of today to read a DVD of today?
Assuming the only quality loss is due to JPEG compression, I guess a fourier transform should give you a hint: I think the worse quality image should have lower amplitude of high frequencies.
Of course, that criterion may be misleading if the image was otherwise modified. For example noise filters will typically reduce high frequencies as well, but you'd generally consider the result superior (otherwise you woldn't have applied the filter).
What about combining both? Basically, add another abstraction layer: The CSS offers semantic font names for the tag, and additionally allows to provide a mapping for "stylistic" font names. That is, the CSS could specify e.g. "script" for h1 tags and h2 tags, and in a separate section could specify that "script" should be rendered with "handwriting.ttf." That way you'd get
more consistency/easier modification for the web author: If you later decide that you want to use "manualscript.ttf" instead of "handwriting.ttf", you have to change it only in one place, instead of all tag styles you have used them in.
more flexibility for the web reader: You can switch off using the supplied fonts without at the same time switching off using the intended font style (i.e. you can still use script whereever the web designer intended its use, but with your web browser's default script font instead of the web page supplied one, in addition to just overriding the style for certain tags).
If embedded fonts are really only used to change the way letters look like, as opposed to (mis-)using a font to map characters to completely different symbols, then it doesn't really hurt if the browser doesn't support the font. You'll just see a default font instead.
All sites hosting images will just be required to filter for those images which have torrents inside (it shouldn't be hard, just try to decode the torrent, and if you succeed, reject the image). Or alternatively, to implement software which destroys the included torrent before putting the image online.
Anyway, I believe I've made my point in painful detail.
Well, the main thing I learned is that newer versions of gcc are much better in optimizing loops, so instead of writing the loop as version 2, updating the gcc version is the better alternative.
I explicitly said to prefer version 2 over version 3. I agreed that version 1 will be significantly less efficient (seeing the gcc results, I have to significantly weaken that statement). However, the difference between 2 and 3 is outside the loop, and two instructions outside of the loop are very rarely worth the obfuscation of the source. I also see that you omitted the timings in the gcc case, which is the one where in the generated code version 1 is equivalent to version 2.
And of course you still have the undefined behavior in the loop body. When seeking for a job, you better not show your potential employers that code:-)
No mention of TeX version numbering? (Asymptotically approaching pi?)
You may have missed that the article contains three pages. The second page mentions the TeX version numbering (section "Is there a funniest version number of all time?")
No mention of the Marathon series using the largest "version bump" ever? (From Marathon 2 to Marathon Infinity?)
Well, the difference is in seeing the dot as decimal point (i.e. 0.99 = 99/100, 0.100 = 1/10) vs. seeing the dot as just separating two integers (this second view is more obvious in those projects which use three numbers, like 2.11.1, where the dots cannot be mistaken as decimal point any more).
But that's only because at one point in time they dropped the initial "1." because it wouldn't change anymore anyway. So actually, Emacs is at version 1.23.0.96
Another interesting version number case occured during the gcc/egcs split: The egcs releases had two version numbers for the same release: One starting with 1.0.0, numbering the egcs releases, and the other one, IIRC starting with 2.91.0, giving a "gcc version number" to indicate that it was still considered to belong into the gcc family. After egcs officially bacame gcc again, the first releases had the form 2.95.x before the 3.0.0 release came out (starting from which the numbering followed the normal schemes again).
As an additional twist, before it was decided to name the next release 3.0.0, the internal development code had the version 2.96.0, which also was used for a Red Hat gcc release. There never was an official gcc-2.96 release, though.
I'm not sure if the step in Word for Windows version numbers really was because of WordPerfect. Prior to 6.0, Microsoft had two independent Word release series: The original Word running on DOS, which already had reached version 5, and Word for Windows, which only had reached version 2. With Word 6, the DOS and Windows version numbers got synchronized; since 5 was the latest DOS version number, it made sense to use 6 next.
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Depending on the data, it may interest a lot of people. For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh is more than 2000 years old, and there are still people interested in it. Don't you think people in 1000 years will be as interested in some of our current literature, art, etc.?
Also historians will love any extra data about our time. Even an archive of Myspace could be of interest to some future archaeologists.
Only until they discover that the disk was encrypted with some DRM scheme ...
Probably the same way as with users removing the high voltage parts of their CRT TV and using them in unapproved ways.
Well, maybe the next step will be to build a reader which will last 1000 years. And a computer which can last 1000 years. But how do we tell those people in 1000 years how to use a computer of today to read a DVD of today?
Well, we definitely have been on the moon. How else could Michael Jackson have done a moon walk?
Assuming the only quality loss is due to JPEG compression, I guess a fourier transform should give you a hint: I think the worse quality image should have lower amplitude of high frequencies.
Of course, that criterion may be misleading if the image was otherwise modified. For example noise filters will typically reduce high frequencies as well, but you'd generally consider the result superior (otherwise you woldn't have applied the filter).
What about combining both? Basically, add another abstraction layer: The CSS offers semantic font names for the tag, and additionally allows to provide a mapping for "stylistic" font names. That is, the CSS could specify e.g. "script" for h1 tags and h2 tags, and in a separate section could specify that "script" should be rendered with "handwriting.ttf." That way you'd get
If embedded fonts are really only used to change the way letters look like, as opposed to (mis-)using a font to map characters to completely different symbols, then it doesn't really hurt if the browser doesn't support the font. You'll just see a default font instead.
Why not put yourself out of your misery and upgrade to Mac OS X?
You now can install OS X on non-Apple hardware?
I also tend to switch off incandescent light bulbs when I don't need them.
Here I'm sitting in a tin can
far above the world,
my computer's screen is blue,
and there's nothing I can do.
No, it's a 200% increase.
A computer sitting idle needlessly consumes power. A computer switched off doesn't.
But they do create a valid PNG image. So if IE crashes on trying to show that image, it must be an IE bug.
All sites hosting images will just be required to filter for those images which have torrents inside (it shouldn't be hard, just try to decode the torrent, and if you succeed, reject the image). Or alternatively, to implement software which destroys the included torrent before putting the image online.
You suffer from a lack of imagination? :-)
Does it bother you that we are not talking about you?
Don't underestimate the information one can get from the way you wave your hands! :-)
Well, the main thing I learned is that newer versions of gcc are much better in optimizing loops, so instead of writing the loop as version 2, updating the gcc version is the better alternative.
I explicitly said to prefer version 2 over version 3. I agreed that version 1 will be significantly less efficient (seeing the gcc results, I have to significantly weaken that statement). However, the difference between 2 and 3 is outside the loop, and two instructions outside of the loop are very rarely worth the obfuscation of the source. I also see that you omitted the timings in the gcc case, which is the one where in the generated code version 1 is equivalent to version 2.
And of course you still have the undefined behavior in the loop body. When seeking for a job, you better not show your potential employers that code :-)
Do you think you could get more than half a million people to pay to you $10 per month each?
You may have missed that the article contains three pages. The second page mentions the TeX version numbering (section "Is there a funniest version number of all time?")
This one indeed seems to be missing.
Well, the difference is in seeing the dot as decimal point (i.e. 0.99 = 99/100, 0.100 = 1/10) vs. seeing the dot as just separating two integers (this second view is more obvious in those projects which use three numbers, like 2.11.1, where the dots cannot be mistaken as decimal point any more).
But that's only because at one point in time they dropped the initial "1." because it wouldn't change anymore anyway. So actually, Emacs is at version 1.23.0.96
Another interesting version number case occured during the gcc/egcs split: The egcs releases had two version numbers for the same release: One starting with 1.0.0, numbering the egcs releases, and the other one, IIRC starting with 2.91.0, giving a "gcc version number" to indicate that it was still considered to belong into the gcc family. After egcs officially bacame gcc again, the first releases had the form 2.95.x before the 3.0.0 release came out (starting from which the numbering followed the normal schemes again).
As an additional twist, before it was decided to name the next release 3.0.0, the internal development code had the version 2.96.0, which also was used for a Red Hat gcc release. There never was an official gcc-2.96 release, though.
I'm not sure if the step in Word for Windows version numbers really was because of WordPerfect. Prior to 6.0, Microsoft had two independent Word release series: The original Word running on DOS, which already had reached version 5, and Word for Windows, which only had reached version 2. With Word 6, the DOS and Windows version numbers got synchronized; since 5 was the latest DOS version number, it made sense to use 6 next.