Silly mods need to watch more Monty Python, or do we need a sheep dip reference to get them to understand. Maybe if we mentioned that Prof Wilkins first name is Bruce...
Note: I said that it was a binary test asssuming all the equipment was working.
I actually have faith in our legal and policing system not to introduce corruption into something as simple as speeding fines, i.e. I wouldn't expect the police to invent speeding tickets. I know there are plenty of instances of corruption, even in Australia, but I've never heard of speeding tickets simply being invented. And it's good that we have the courts to fall back on in case things do go wrong. I'm all for watching the watchmen and using the courts to challenge dodgy decisions, but laws concerning speeding are there for the public good and I'm happy for them to be enforced, even through the use of automated speed cameras. I never understood why there was so much uproar about them...
And most of them are really well sign posted with (normally at least 2) big signs before them saying "Speed camera ahead" and afterwards a big sign pointing out that your speed was just checked.
So if you get caught speeding by one of those cameras then you're an idiot.
Actually, I kind of like the idea that enforcement of the law can be, in some circumstances at least, automated. There would be very few cases where speeding can be justified and, assuming that all equipment is working properly, it's a binary test: either you were over the speed limit or you weren't. There's not a lot of grey area there. I know a lot of people complain about them with arguments about revenue raising, but I have no problems with them whatsoever.
I've driven past it many times (it borders a main public road) and have even been on a guided tour in there once when I was a kid (about 17 yars ago). There are parts of it that can actually be opened to the public.
Although I heard on the news this morning (Australian EST) that NASA had announced there was damage to tiles on the nose of the shuttle - apparently unrelated to the falling debris.
That, I would have thought, would be more newsworthy for Slashdot - assuming I could actually find a reference to it on the web.
Many people have some political agenda when they work on Free/Open Source Software. Many people don't. Asking "what is [Linux] trying to achieve," isn't a very well-defined question, because "Linux" is not a single sentient entity. It's a community of people with many different goals and ideas.
Great, but I would never have guessed that by reading Slashdot. Maybe that's just because on Slashdot (and in the media in general), the most vocal crowd of Linux users seem to be the fanatics who believe that everyone should use Linux and nothing else, that Windows itself is evil and corrupts people, that non-FOSS software should die a horrible and painful death, that CS degree level computer skills should be the norm in society... You get the idea
First of all that's a steep ask, but secondly I just don't think it's necessary. If that was required for people to switch no one would ever move to Apple.
But there's a difference in the way people move to Apple and the way people move to Linux. With Apple, you're buying a completely new system (some would say, a completely new experience). You buy a new desktop/laptop, new software - new everything for it. Now, some people might move this way from Windows to Linux, i.e. buying a new computer with Linux pre-installed. However, the way most Linux advocates talk about attracting Windows users is by starting them on a dual-boot system, or installing Linux on a pre-existing Windows computer. That's a significantly different method than the way people move from Windows to Apple. Also, Apple does provide information on their website about how you can switch from Windows, which files you need to back-up, how you can import your email, etc. Maybe some Linux distros do that already, but if not then it would be an important bridge to build.
Funnily enough, one of the things that made me the most uneasy playing GTA: SA was the relationships with girlfriends. The concept of reducing a relationship to just another mini-game - well, it doesn't sit comfortably. It's not at all how I treat people, or how relationships should be viewed.
Maybe it's because in real life I'd never go anywhere close to killing people, blowing up things, robbing casinos, racing and crashing cars, etc - but relationships are a little closer to home.
It's kind of a weird thing to pick up on, and I guess it is only a game and doesn't effect what I'm like in real life. Still, I wonder what it says about me that I had no qualms about killing people in games but felt a bit weird about playing games to win hearts,..
That's one that I've wondered about and, last I heard, there was no good answer. It's been about five years since I heard about it, but back then nobody really knew why glass could be seen through.
VLC only includes open source code, including codecs. There are no open source RealMedia codecs or WMV 9 or 10 codecs, hence they are not supported in VLC.
I followed the Wikipedia reference to Woz talking about it on his home page: http://www.woz.org/letters/general/91.html He basically says, maybe it happened and maybe it didn't - could be that memories were fading by that point and that he's over it anyway.
Assuming it did happen - I agree, you'd have to be a jerk to treat your friends like that.
About the same time that people develop who can use them to block laser fire without thinking and who have super-human reflexes.
In the meantime, an army with guns would certainly defeat people with swords, even if they were laser-swords, because it is just not humanly possible to deflect so many bullets (or blaster fire).
Which now makes me wonder - which came first: the jedi or the lightsabre? Did the jedi develop and invent lightsabres as a weapon that was matched to their abilities, or did people invent lightsabres which led to the discovery (or development) of people with the skills to use them?
Umm, just out of interest - but who do you write applications for?
I understand the frustration at Microsoft, but it's a bit harsh to take it out on your users or customers, isn't it?
I know there's the argument that MS won't patch these things until enough average users complain, but I don't think that's really the case. They know there are issues, but obviously haven't fixed everything yet for one reason or another. A few more people complaining because IE stuffs up after running your application won't make much difference. And beyond that, they'll probably blame your application first anyway.
Thanks for the correction there - that's helpful. I find Music Brainz to be pretty good, but not perfect - apart from the multiple releases issue, sometimes I just get completely wrong recommendations.
Anyway, this over the phone service won't be fingerprinting a whole song, since it needs to work by only hearing a small sample. Whatever it will do, it will be different than the way Music brainz works.
No, Music Brainz looks mainly at the length of the track in milliseconds - at least, that is my understanding.
I imagine this service would compare the actual wave form of the sound played to it through the phone with the waveform of sounds in it's database. I don't believe that Music Brainz does that, as it would essentially require a copy of every matched song to be present in its database.
I may have some of my terminology wrong, but I hope it's clear what I'm getting at.
I think the difference is that MusicBrainz works by looking at the overall length of the song and it also checks any pre-existing ID3 tags. This service would work by actual audio matching - comparing what it 'hears' with the audio 'fingerprint' of songs in its database. Theoretically, it should be more accurate than MusicBrainz.
Well, Quicktime isn't reallt a codec - it's just a container like.avi
Beyond that, it's a good way of ensuring that people on both Windows and Mac platforms can watch it. What would you prefer? wmv? ogg? When you're aiming for the maximum audience then Quicktime isn't bad. Not perfect, but not bad.
Did you not read the bit where it said "Password (see notes below)"?
And below there was a link to follow to get the password. Clever password it was too - very apt for a challenging puzzle; a nice reference to those who came before them.
Do you know that in addition, unlike in the USA (from what I understand), the Australian Government can also hold copyrights.
I might be wrong on this, but I'm led to believe that anything produced by the US Government automatically passes into the public domain (except where national security is concerned). That is not the case in Australia - the Government is a copyright holder, just like any other organisation or individual.
Ah - that sounds like exactly what I saw on TV. I think you just mentioned every part of it - a better technique for growing diamonds, finding the 'sweet spot' for it, De Beers defensive campaign, free machines, etc etc. That's the one.
I saw a documentary on TV last year about a firm that is now 'growing' diamonds - sounded similar to this. Anyway, they were growing them at an incredible rate and they were completely flawless (although i don't know that they were able to specify a size).
On the show, they also talked to a rep from De Beers and a diamond merchant. They basically said that the grown diamonds were almost too good. Despite being a bibt worried about it, they seemed like they would adapt to the new environment. De Beers marketing strategy against something like that would be to promote the classical beauty of natural diamonds, or something like that - basically, advertise the 'snob' value of classically mined diamonds, even if they are less perfect.
On a separate note, I am looking forward to advances in Teflon.
I remember Dr Karl Kruszelnicki (Australians would know who he is) talking at my High School during our final year. Someone posed the old favourite question, "if nothing sticks to teflon, how come it sticks to the frying pan?". Apart from his answer, he did one of his trade-mark tangential replies and said that teflon is soft and therefore scracthes easily, but if you could combine teflon with diamonds, then you'd have a surface that nothing sticks to and that wouldn't scrartch. Of course, diamonds are too expensive for that.
So, with the rise of grown diamonds, I look forward to many advances in easy to use cooking gear.
Ok - I just did a test on my Mac using Xbench to give myself some objective basis for comparison. And I realise that a benchmarking app does not necessarily equate to real world performance, but it's the best I could do.
I have a 5400rpm internal HDD in my Powerbook, and a WD 200Gb 7200rpm w 8mb cache drive in an external case, which is connected via Firewire 800.
On a pure comparison of disk performance using xbench, the internal HDD scored 65.54 and the external drive scored 57.12 (where the higher number is better). That says to me that at least as far as benchmarking is concerned, an average speed internal HDD can still outperform a very good external drive connected via even Firewire800.
Overall, I wonder when people say "it feels faster" whether it reallly is, or whether they just want to believe that it is
Slashdot Mirror
Informative?
Silly mods need to watch more Monty Python, or do we need a sheep dip reference to get them to understand. Maybe if we mentioned that Prof Wilkins first name is Bruce...
Note: I said that it was a binary test asssuming all the equipment was working.
I actually have faith in our legal and policing system not to introduce corruption into something as simple as speeding fines, i.e. I wouldn't expect the police to invent speeding tickets. I know there are plenty of instances of corruption, even in Australia, but I've never heard of speeding tickets simply being invented. And it's good that we have the courts to fall back on in case things do go wrong. I'm all for watching the watchmen and using the courts to challenge dodgy decisions, but laws concerning speeding are there for the public good and I'm happy for them to be enforced, even through the use of automated speed cameras. I never understood why there was so much uproar about them...
And I wouldn't be caught dead voting for Howard.
And most of them are really well sign posted with (normally at least 2) big signs before them saying "Speed camera ahead" and afterwards a big sign pointing out that your speed was just checked.
So if you get caught speeding by one of those cameras then you're an idiot.
Actually, I kind of like the idea that enforcement of the law can be, in some circumstances at least, automated. There would be very few cases where speeding can be justified and, assuming that all equipment is working properly, it's a binary test: either you were over the speed limit or you weren't. There's not a lot of grey area there. I know a lot of people complain about them with arguments about revenue raising, but I have no problems with them whatsoever.
Yep - that's it.
I've driven past it many times (it borders a main public road) and have even been on a guided tour in there once when I was a kid (about 17 yars ago). There are parts of it that can actually be opened to the public.
Although I heard on the news this morning (Australian EST) that NASA had announced there was damage to tiles on the nose of the shuttle - apparently unrelated to the falling debris.
That, I would have thought, would be more newsworthy for Slashdot - assuming I could actually find a reference to it on the web.
Many people have some political agenda when they work on Free/Open Source Software. Many people don't. Asking "what is [Linux] trying to achieve," isn't a very well-defined question, because "Linux" is not a single sentient entity. It's a community of people with many different goals and ideas.
Great, but I would never have guessed that by reading Slashdot.
Maybe that's just because on Slashdot (and in the media in general), the most vocal crowd of Linux users seem to be the fanatics who believe that everyone should use Linux and nothing else, that Windows itself is evil and corrupts people, that non-FOSS software should die a horrible and painful death, that CS degree level computer skills should be the norm in society... You get the idea
First of all that's a steep ask, but secondly I just don't think it's necessary. If that was required for people to switch no one would ever move to Apple.
But there's a difference in the way people move to Apple and the way people move to Linux. With Apple, you're buying a completely new system (some would say, a completely new experience). You buy a new desktop/laptop, new software - new everything for it.
Now, some people might move this way from Windows to Linux, i.e. buying a new computer with Linux pre-installed. However, the way most Linux advocates talk about attracting Windows users is by starting them on a dual-boot system, or installing Linux on a pre-existing Windows computer. That's a significantly different method than the way people move from Windows to Apple.
Also, Apple does provide information on their website about how you can switch from Windows, which files you need to back-up, how you can import your email, etc. Maybe some Linux distros do that already, but if not then it would be an important bridge to build.
I think that it wouldn't beat this one:
Bus line sues women for car-pooling
Nice try though
Funnily enough, one of the things that made me the most uneasy playing GTA: SA was the relationships with girlfriends. The concept of reducing a relationship to just another mini-game - well, it doesn't sit comfortably. It's not at all how I treat people, or how relationships should be viewed. Maybe it's because in real life I'd never go anywhere close to killing people, blowing up things, robbing casinos, racing and crashing cars, etc - but relationships are a little closer to home. It's kind of a weird thing to pick up on, and I guess it is only a game and doesn't effect what I'm like in real life. Still, I wonder what it says about me that I had no qualms about killing people in games but felt a bit weird about playing games to win hearts,..
Hey - I'm up to exactly the same point as well. How fascinating.
That's one that I've wondered about and, last I heard, there was no good answer. It's been about five years since I heard about it, but back then nobody really knew why glass could be seen through.
That's actually not true.
VLC only includes open source code, including codecs. There are no open source RealMedia codecs or WMV 9 or 10 codecs, hence they are not supported in VLC.
I followed the Wikipedia reference to Woz talking about it on his home page: http://www.woz.org/letters/general/91.html
He basically says, maybe it happened and maybe it didn't - could be that memories were fading by that point and that he's over it anyway.
Assuming it did happen - I agree, you'd have to be a jerk to treat your friends like that.
About the same time that people develop who can use them to block laser fire without thinking and who have super-human reflexes.
In the meantime, an army with guns would certainly defeat people with swords, even if they were laser-swords, because it is just not humanly possible to deflect so many bullets (or blaster fire).
Which now makes me wonder - which came first: the jedi or the lightsabre? Did the jedi develop and invent lightsabres as a weapon that was matched to their abilities, or did people invent lightsabres which led to the discovery (or development) of people with the skills to use them?
I remember Steve Jobs Macworld keynote in January 2003 where he claimed that 03 would be "the year of the laptop".r s/2
http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-12302003.a
Maybe he was just a couple of years early?
Umm, just out of interest - but who do you write applications for? I understand the frustration at Microsoft, but it's a bit harsh to take it out on your users or customers, isn't it? I know there's the argument that MS won't patch these things until enough average users complain, but I don't think that's really the case. They know there are issues, but obviously haven't fixed everything yet for one reason or another. A few more people complaining because IE stuffs up after running your application won't make much difference. And beyond that, they'll probably blame your application first anyway.
Thanks for the correction there - that's helpful. I find Music Brainz to be pretty good, but not perfect - apart from the multiple releases issue, sometimes I just get completely wrong recommendations.
Anyway, this over the phone service won't be fingerprinting a whole song, since it needs to work by only hearing a small sample. Whatever it will do, it will be different than the way Music brainz works.
No, Music Brainz looks mainly at the length of the track in milliseconds - at least, that is my understanding.
I imagine this service would compare the actual wave form of the sound played to it through the phone with the waveform of sounds in it's database. I don't believe that Music Brainz does that, as it would essentially require a copy of every matched song to be present in its database.
I may have some of my terminology wrong, but I hope it's clear what I'm getting at.
I think the difference is that MusicBrainz works by looking at the overall length of the song and it also checks any pre-existing ID3 tags. This service would work by actual audio matching - comparing what it 'hears' with the audio 'fingerprint' of songs in its database. Theoretically, it should be more accurate than MusicBrainz.
Well, Quicktime isn't reallt a codec - it's just a container like .avi
Beyond that, it's a good way of ensuring that people on both Windows and Mac platforms can watch it. What would you prefer? wmv? ogg? When you're aiming for the maximum audience then Quicktime isn't bad. Not perfect, but not bad.
Sorry - you fail already.
Did you not read the bit where it said "Password (see notes below)"?
And below there was a link to follow to get the password. Clever password it was too - very apt for a challenging puzzle; a nice reference to those who came before them.
Do you know that in addition, unlike in the USA (from what I understand), the Australian Government can also hold copyrights.
I might be wrong on this, but I'm led to believe that anything produced by the US Government automatically passes into the public domain (except where national security is concerned). That is not the case in Australia - the Government is a copyright holder, just like any other organisation or individual.
Ah - that sounds like exactly what I saw on TV. I think you just mentioned every part of it - a better technique for growing diamonds, finding the 'sweet spot' for it, De Beers defensive campaign, free machines, etc etc. That's the one.
I saw a documentary on TV last year about a firm that is now 'growing' diamonds - sounded similar to this. Anyway, they were growing them at an incredible rate and they were completely flawless (although i don't know that they were able to specify a size).
On the show, they also talked to a rep from De Beers and a diamond merchant. They basically said that the grown diamonds were almost too good. Despite being a bibt worried about it, they seemed like they would adapt to the new environment. De Beers marketing strategy against something like that would be to promote the classical beauty of natural diamonds, or something like that - basically, advertise the 'snob' value of classically mined diamonds, even if they are less perfect.
On a separate note, I am looking forward to advances in Teflon.
I remember Dr Karl Kruszelnicki (Australians would know who he is) talking at my High School during our final year. Someone posed the old favourite question, "if nothing sticks to teflon, how come it sticks to the frying pan?". Apart from his answer, he did one of his trade-mark tangential replies and said that teflon is soft and therefore scracthes easily, but if you could combine teflon with diamonds, then you'd have a surface that nothing sticks to and that wouldn't scrartch. Of course, diamonds are too expensive for that.
So, with the rise of grown diamonds, I look forward to many advances in easy to use cooking gear.
Thank you for your time.
Ok - I just did a test on my Mac using Xbench to give myself some objective basis for comparison. And I realise that a benchmarking app does not necessarily equate to real world performance, but it's the best I could do.
I have a 5400rpm internal HDD in my Powerbook, and a WD 200Gb 7200rpm w 8mb cache drive in an external case, which is connected via Firewire 800.
On a pure comparison of disk performance using xbench, the internal HDD scored 65.54 and the external drive scored 57.12 (where the higher number is better). That says to me that at least as far as benchmarking is concerned, an average speed internal HDD can still outperform a very good external drive connected via even Firewire800.
Overall, I wonder when people say "it feels faster" whether it reallly is, or whether they just want to believe that it is