No must probably doubling the weight won't halve the mileage. Think about it - most of the energy use will be in wind resistance (which won't change) and the rest in rolling resistance (which will increase, but probably not by that much).
I agree. It's just too damn slow and the whole 'widget' UI is pretty messed up. Some simple examples (there are many more):
* Why do widgets allow you to rotate them? Why on earth would anyone want that? * When you resize widgets the centre is always fixed. I.e. to move a single edge/corner you have to resize the widget then move it. * WTF is up with that 'cashew'? Nobody wants it. * It's really damn slow. I've tried with both nvidia and ATI cards but couldn't get it at all smooth. * Plasma and Qt use different themes. Makes everything weirdly inconsistent. * The layout everywhere is generally much less clean and simple than gnome or KDE3 (ignoring the toolbars).
I used to use KDE3 and it was great, but they really have messed up with KDE4. Anyone want to start a lightweight Qt desktop?:-)
Bah, that's nothing. I made an offline Wikipedia midlet! Unfortunately J2ME is unpleasant to say the least, and my phone only supports 2 GB SD cards so it only has some of the articles and without text.
Re:Android just won't catch up with iPhone
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The native SDK doesn't allow you to do much at the moment. Your app still has to be Java but it can call native functions. Those native functions can't do much useful apart from number crunching at the moment. For example you can't do graphics, input or sound.
I agree. Anything that is actually embarrassing to say doesn't stand much chance of success. Theora and Vorbis are great names, but 'ogg'? It's just an ugly word. I guess we could always use Matroska instead..!
From reading the (very interesting) article, it sounds like he's still saying it is in a sorry state. Summary for those lazy people.
OSS3 was a bit crap and removed from the kernel in favour of ALSA ALSA is also a bit crap because it does mixing in a stupid place, and sometimes not at all. Also it has an unnecessarily complicated API. OSS4 was written, which is much better than ALSA - simpler API, lower latency, better mixing - but isn't included in the mainline kernel. PulseAudio is a horrible horrible ugly evil stupid idiotic hack. Did they never use Arts?!?
So as it stands we have ALSA which is sub-par, being driven by PulseAudio which seems to do its best to cock things up.
"This camera is made by Primesense (you can check theirs patents), it works by projecting a grid (infrared so you can't see it). By analyzing the deformed pattern with a camera, the depth is computed."
Wrong on two counts. Firstly, the Primasense camera works using speckle imaging, not by triangulating a projected pattern. Secondly Natal actually uses technology from 3DV Systems which uses infrared time-of-flight to measure distance.
The actual missing component: gyros. We already know from the Wii that it doesn't accelerometers are pretty useless on their own for all but the most basic tasks.
It would be very cool to have a device that integrated GPS, a digital compass, accelerometers and gyros. That would give you all the low and high frequency information you need to accurately locate its position and orientation in real time.
"Also, I think sometimes they like to show off by writing things people can't understand."
Definitely. E.g. the intro for "dot product" says "It is the standard inner product of the orthonormal Euclidean space." If you're trying to work out what a dot product *is* then that is a completely useless and confusing statement. Mathworld is usually much better than Wikipedia in this respect.
"it really doesn't matter what OS is running because the hackers are gaining physical access to the hardware"
Bullshit. If you used Linux you could easily encrypt the entire disk and require a password to start the ATM software. Now you've gone from:
Windows: Connect USB drive (or whatever), install simple software. Linux: Wipe hard disk, write drivers for the card reader, cash dispenser etc, install new OS with fake ATM interface.
Obviously it's not impossible but it only needs to be really really hard before the hackers will give up.
"It only becomes relevant if you're encoding the entire file that way"
Unfortunately XML is so prevalent that happens a lot. For example, Ordnance Survey's MasterMap comes as compressed XML. Loading a map of Cambridge involves reading over 1 GB of XML data.
EBML is (almost) what XML always should have been.
XML:
Pros: Human readable
Cons: Slow to parse, inconvenient to write parsers for, space-inefficient.
Binary XML:
Pros: Easy to write fast, simple parsers for, space efficient, allows easy random access into the file.
Cons: Needs specialised editor (i.e. an 'XML editor' rather than any old text editor).
"Oh but Java is a plodding, stumbling, lumbering, slug of slowness."
Java does well in these kinds of synthetic tests because it doesn't have to invoke the garbage collector. All the *real life* java programs I use are significantly slower than roughly equivalent C++ programs. E.g. compare NetBeans to Visual Studio, or Azereus to uTorrent. I tried Eclipse once but it was unusably slow.
Find me a speedy desktop Java program and I'll change my mind about it.
Yeah I also get pissed off by the ads. It's not like there's a lot of them, however there are only about 5 different ads! If I hear "Hi, I'm Jonathan from Spotify" one more time I shall go mad!
Fortunately I managed to cobble together this python script that mutes the adverts. You have to have add the name of the adverts manually but as I said there aren't many!
Limitations:
1. Works in Gnome. 2. You need a sound card with many channels. Spotify detects if you mute 'Master' or 'PCM', but not 'Front'. 3. You need to leave the Spotify window open (i.e. not minimised to tray). 4. You have to run it after running Spotify.
If someone wants to clean it up a bit that'd be great.:-)
-----8<-----
import gtk, wnck, alsaaudio
mix = alsaaudio.Mixer("Front");
def mute(): mix.setmute(1);
def unmute(): mix.setmute(0);
def nameChanged(window): name = window.get_name(); print name if any([x in name for x in ["Broadband", "Spotify - Spotify", "Sony Music", "MTV", "TalkTalk", "CardSmart"]]): print "Muting" mute() else: print "Unmuting" unmute()
def main(): screen = wnck.screen_get_default()
spotify_found = False;
# Process pending gtk+ events so that wnck can find out about existing windows. while gtk.events_pending(): gtk.main_iteration() for window in screen.get_windows(): if window.has_name(): if window.get_name().startswith("Spotify"): window.connect("name-changed", nameChanged) spotify_found = True; print "Found spotify window: " + window.get_name()
if not spotify_found: print "No spotify window found." exit()
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"It's vital to their funding model, and they're just protecting their interests."
Funny, because going to the NPG (and most other large museums in London) is free and has been for some time. They're mostly tax-payer funded.
No must probably doubling the weight won't halve the mileage. Think about it - most of the energy use will be in wind resistance (which won't change) and the rest in rolling resistance (which will increase, but probably not by that much).
No because the weight-mileage relationship is likely to be highly non-linear.
I agree. It's just too damn slow and the whole 'widget' UI is pretty messed up. Some simple examples (there are many more):
* Why do widgets allow you to rotate them? Why on earth would anyone want that?
* When you resize widgets the centre is always fixed. I.e. to move a single edge/corner you have to resize the widget then move it.
* WTF is up with that 'cashew'? Nobody wants it.
* It's really damn slow. I've tried with both nvidia and ATI cards but couldn't get it at all smooth.
* Plasma and Qt use different themes. Makes everything weirdly inconsistent.
* The layout everywhere is generally much less clean and simple than gnome or KDE3 (ignoring the toolbars).
I used to use KDE3 and it was great, but they really have messed up with KDE4. Anyone want to start a lightweight Qt desktop? :-)
Bah, that's nothing. I made an offline Wikipedia midlet! Unfortunately J2ME is unpleasant to say the least, and my phone only supports 2 GB SD cards so it only has some of the articles and without text.
The native SDK doesn't allow you to do much at the moment. Your app still has to be Java but it can call native functions. Those native functions can't do much useful apart from number crunching at the moment. For example you can't do graphics, input or sound.
Air gets my vote too. It would be interesting if they could do the experiment again in a vacuum.
Presumably yes. Just need to link your facebook profile to your location (and get everyone else to do that).
Just what I was thinking. That's nearly half my rent!
"I came on it accidentally"
Ha, could have chosen better words!
I agree. Anything that is actually embarrassing to say doesn't stand much chance of success. Theora and Vorbis are great names, but 'ogg'? It's just an ugly word. I guess we could always use Matroska instead..!
From reading the (very interesting) article, it sounds like he's still saying it is in a sorry state. Summary for those lazy people.
OSS3 was a bit crap and removed from the kernel in favour of ALSA
ALSA is also a bit crap because it does mixing in a stupid place, and sometimes not at all. Also it has an unnecessarily complicated API.
OSS4 was written, which is much better than ALSA - simpler API, lower latency, better mixing - but isn't included in the mainline kernel.
PulseAudio is a horrible horrible ugly evil stupid idiotic hack. Did they never use Arts?!?
So as it stands we have ALSA which is sub-par, being driven by PulseAudio which seems to do its best to cock things up.
"This camera is made by Primesense (you can check theirs patents), it works by projecting a grid (infrared so you can't see it). By analyzing the deformed pattern with a camera, the depth is computed."
Wrong on two counts. Firstly, the Primasense camera works using speckle imaging, not by triangulating a projected pattern. Secondly Natal actually uses technology from 3DV Systems which uses infrared time-of-flight to measure distance.
Well it was a few mW received from a 1 MW transmitter. So.... 12 zeros...
The actual missing component: gyros. We already know from the Wii that it doesn't accelerometers are pretty useless on their own for all but the most basic tasks.
This video illustrates the difference they make:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s19W-MG-whE
It would be very cool to have a device that integrated GPS, a digital compass, accelerometers and gyros. That would give you all the low and high frequency information you need to accurately locate its position and orientation in real time.
Just tell them you use Linux, even if you don't. They'll probably be able to add you to a white list.
"Also, I think sometimes they like to show off by writing things people can't understand."
Definitely. E.g. the intro for "dot product" says "It is the standard inner product of the orthonormal Euclidean space." If you're trying to work out what a dot product *is* then that is a completely useless and confusing statement. Mathworld is usually much better than Wikipedia in this respect.
"it really doesn't matter what OS is running because the hackers are gaining physical access to the hardware"
Bullshit. If you used Linux you could easily encrypt the entire disk and require a password to start the ATM software. Now you've gone from:
Windows: Connect USB drive (or whatever), install simple software.
Linux: Wipe hard disk, write drivers for the card reader, cash dispenser etc, install new OS with fake ATM interface.
Obviously it's not impossible but it only needs to be really really hard before the hackers will give up.
"It only becomes relevant if you're encoding the entire file that way"
Unfortunately XML is so prevalent that happens a lot. For example, Ordnance Survey's MasterMap comes as compressed XML. Loading a map of Cambridge involves reading over 1 GB of XML data.
EBML is (almost) what XML always should have been.
XML:
Pros: Human readable
Cons: Slow to parse, inconvenient to write parsers for, space-inefficient.
Binary XML:
Pros: Easy to write fast, simple parsers for, space efficient, allows easy random access into the file.
Cons: Needs specialised editor (i.e. an 'XML editor' rather than any old text editor).
I'd much much much rather have the latter.
What about man in the middle attacks? E.g. over insecure wifi. You still need SSL I think.
"Oh but Java is a plodding, stumbling, lumbering, slug of slowness."
Java does well in these kinds of synthetic tests because it doesn't have to invoke the garbage collector. All the *real life* java programs I use are significantly slower than roughly equivalent C++ programs. E.g. compare NetBeans to Visual Studio, or Azereus to uTorrent. I tried Eclipse once but it was unusably slow.
Find me a speedy desktop Java program and I'll change my mind about it.
They're more different than that. To use a car analogy, it's like saying "not all cars are 4x4s".
Yeah I also get pissed off by the ads. It's not like there's a lot of them, however there are only about 5 different ads! If I hear "Hi, I'm Jonathan from Spotify" one more time I shall go mad!
:-)
Fortunately I managed to cobble together this python script that mutes the adverts. You have to have add the name of the adverts manually but as I said there aren't many!
Limitations:
1. Works in Gnome.
2. You need a sound card with many channels. Spotify detects if you mute 'Master' or 'PCM', but not 'Front'.
3. You need to leave the Spotify window open (i.e. not minimised to tray).
4. You have to run it after running Spotify.
If someone wants to clean it up a bit that'd be great.
-----8<-----
import gtk, wnck, alsaaudio
mix = alsaaudio.Mixer("Front");
def mute():
mix.setmute(1);
def unmute():
mix.setmute(0);
def nameChanged(window):
name = window.get_name();
print name
if any([x in name for x in ["Broadband", "Spotify - Spotify", "Sony Music", "MTV", "TalkTalk", "CardSmart"]]):
print "Muting"
mute()
else:
print "Unmuting"
unmute()
def main():
screen = wnck.screen_get_default()
spotify_found = False;
# Process pending gtk+ events so that wnck can find out about existing windows.
while gtk.events_pending():
gtk.main_iteration()
for window in screen.get_windows():
if window.has_name():
if window.get_name().startswith("Spotify"):
window.connect("name-changed", nameChanged)
spotify_found = True;
print "Found spotify window: " + window.get_name()
if not spotify_found:
print "No spotify window found."
exit()
win = gtk.Window()
win.set_title("Spotify Advert Destroyer!")
def destroy_event(widget, data=None):
gtk.main_quit()
win.connect("destroy", destroy_event)
win.show()
gtk.main()
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
Well that would be really annoying. Much better to do it on submission.