Unlike the creators of Ogg, the guy who created MP3 did it for profit, not fun. You have to pay an insanely huge license fee to use it, even if you write your own implimentation.
I bet he isn't best pleased that hundreds of thousands of people are neglecting to pay him a massive pile of cash, let alone the RIAA.
In case you didn't actually read my last sentence I said that DGPS _doesnt_ calculate the error in your position - this however is a common mistake made by people who think that you can work out how much 'off' a hand held GPS is at one point and then just add or deduct that number at the next point. That's why I clarified it.
I am also well aware that you need to code phase match to geet sub CM accuracy, but you can get pretty damn accurate without it when aided by DGPS error updates.
Conventional civillian GPS (which is not the same as Military GPS, even with SA turned off as it is now) is accurate to typically ~10m. You can enhance that a long way by doing phase matching as well as code matching - survey GPS devices can get down to a few cms (for a price!).
DGPS works on the basis that for each satellite in the area the error arriving at two units within a couple of hundred miles is roughly the same. (Extra delay is caused by things like atmospheric conditions.) You put one reciever on a known point, and calculate the error for each satellite you can see. You then send all of the calculated corrections to the roaming reciever so it can remove the error in the signals it's getting before it calculates it's position. This is considerably cheaper than using a survey grade GPS, as well as faster, but unlike a survey grade GPS you need to have set up a nearby DGPS transmitter first. The (FAA?) have done this around US airports I believe, to allow autolanding systems to double check against DGPS data as well as ILS beacons.
It's worth noting that to be able to use DGPS it's _not_ enough to calculate the error in your _position_ and transmit the correction to that as the roaming unit may be using different satellites to you - you have to transmit the error on each satellite signal. Some Garmin units let you extract this data using an undocumented API.
That's a good thing - as wealth flows out of the US where it has been hoarded in recent years it will flow into poor countries. This will raise the standard of living there, whilst the standard of living in the US drops - evenutally they should meet somewhere in the middle, bar fluctuations.
It won't quite work like that (because it's not a perfect capitalist market) but it's close. Look at the standard of living rises that have occured in the now-maturing tiger economies and even China - the next big wave might be Africa (we can hope).
The rebuttal is pretty interesting, it rests on a fairly simple principle:
When the photons are travelling towards the sail an observer at the light source will see a red shift (doppler effect at work here).
When the photons are travelling away from the sail an observer at the light source will see a blue shift.
Because the observer hasn't changed position the shift can be attributed to a change in energy, which must have gone into the sail (as the only thing the photons encountered, assuming a perfect vaccume) meaning that the increased KE of the sail breaks no laws of physics.
Yup, in the UK A&E is where they do triage and emergency treatment. Roughly the same as the ER in American hospitals, but the rate of lawsuits to patients is lower;o)
I thought that the XBox selling costs covered variable costs (ie the parts in the box), and so even if it doesn't entirley cover the fixed costs (ie the factory) at low volume it will do eventually when enough units have been shipped has been reached?
If this is the case then XBox Linux helps MS by raising the volumes (not to mention giving them better sales figures to lie about to their game makers).
If of course they are selling below variable cost then well, count me in for loads of the things - I have no problems attempting to bankrupt the swine who injected cash into SCO to prolong their litigation.
If you ask your local A&E docs (or ER for the Americans) they will tell you that plenty of people use a toaster as a sexual aid in it's unmodified form.
The end for the middle men?
on
AOL: Amazon Who?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
With the labels and the studios getting more and more involved in distributing directly to the customer, is this signalling the end for the middle men?
People like Amazon will have a hard time selling music if everything from AOL Time Warner and Sony (for example) is only available direct. After all in the online space AOL TW has absolutley no need of Amazon - they are a big enough brand that people will be happy enough to buy things from them, and location is not an issue.
Unfortunatly I can't see the removal of the cut that the middle man gets going to the consumer or even the artist.
It'll be a good things for us geeks on a digital boycott of DRM enabled media however - you won't have to go looking to find out which ones are AOL TW productions, you can just avoid shopping at their e-store:o)
Bear in mind that Boeing Civilian Aircraft is not subsidised by the US Gov't... but then they brought their new 767 tankers at 10 times the normal cost.
Airbus is not subsidised by the EU gov'ts... but they get a sizeable loan on good terms for R&D use.
Governments are governments - when they want to fund something, but are not allowed to, they just find another way to pour the cash in.
This is where Gentoo seems to really win out - IME the Gentoo source (soon to be source+package) repository seems to be second to none. It's well organised, easy to search, centralised, always up to date and very very fast.
Linux on the desktop scratches my itch. I can do everything I want to (even games) and if I can't do something I can usually knock up a script or a bit of C to bend it to my will.
Sure, if Linux was no longer 'sexy' I might have to give up playing some new releases (UT2k3 for example, or NWN) but I could live with that - the Quake engines were opened up way before Linux was a buzzword and they are still fun to play. There might have been more GPL game development too that way.
So in the long run all of the troll bitching about OSS desktops being 'not ready' or 'unsexy' means nothing. It'll carry on being used by the people who it is ready for, and the reast can join up gradually as it gets more mature or gains a feature they want. Doesn't mean much to me - and it's not like it's all going to stop working with vendor support yanked thanks to the GPL.
If you like it, use it. If you don't fix your problem or use something else. If everyone took that attitude towards Linux specifically and OSS in general the world would be a less irritating place:o)
Recently Creative have done a fair bit of interest/benefit to the open source community, including:
Open sourcing their first stage OpenGL 2 compiler. (To drive adoption, this is good for us because OpenGL2 will work with Linux, DirectX doesnt.)
Providing information to develop open source drivers for Creative soundcards, including the info needed to develop the Audigy drivers and other associated kit - and hosting the development on their servers.
Releasing Linux drivers for their high end kit, showing their support publicly for the platform.
Sure, all this stuff benefits them too, but that's the point of Open Source stuff - scratch your own itch, and then let other people use it.
I know these latest drivers aren't open source, but that might change with time if they see a benefit from their other investments in the area.
Since when did your PHB need a good reason to make a decision? He probably saw a picture of Tux and thought that a fat penguin wasn't the image his company wanted to project. I've seen projects canned for even sillier reasons than that, believe it or not.
Greedy overcharging telcos make grid computing over the internet more expensive than traditional supercomputing, unless you can get people to pay for you (SETI).
...as I use it to grab a lot of stuff. It would be a real pisser if they recognised what it could do to them and shut it down before it was (technically and mind share wise) ready to go underground.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, you can put multiple Xterms on different TTYs and use ctrl-alt to switch. Or you can use Xnest to do it.
OS X and Windows are latecommers to the game. OSS even had the cube thing first - check out 3ddesk.
Unlike the creators of Ogg, the guy who created MP3 did it for profit, not fun. You have to pay an insanely huge license fee to use it, even if you write your own implimentation.
I bet he isn't best pleased that hundreds of thousands of people are neglecting to pay him a massive pile of cash, let alone the RIAA.
Jeesus, clueless anonymous wanker alert.
In case you didn't actually read my last sentence I said that DGPS _doesnt_ calculate the error in your position - this however is a common mistake made by people who think that you can work out how much 'off' a hand held GPS is at one point and then just add or deduct that number at the next point. That's why I clarified it.
I am also well aware that you need to code phase match to geet sub CM accuracy, but you can get pretty damn accurate without it when aided by DGPS error updates.
I think you are refering to DGPS?
Conventional civillian GPS (which is not the same as Military GPS, even with SA turned off as it is now) is accurate to typically ~10m. You can enhance that a long way by doing phase matching as well as code matching - survey GPS devices can get down to a few cms (for a price!).
DGPS works on the basis that for each satellite in the area the error arriving at two units within a couple of hundred miles is roughly the same. (Extra delay is caused by things like atmospheric conditions.) You put one reciever on a known point, and calculate the error for each satellite you can see. You then send all of the calculated corrections to the roaming reciever so it can remove the error in the signals it's getting before it calculates it's position. This is considerably cheaper than using a survey grade GPS, as well as faster, but unlike a survey grade GPS you need to have set up a nearby DGPS transmitter first. The (FAA?) have done this around US airports I believe, to allow autolanding systems to double check against DGPS data as well as ILS beacons.
It's worth noting that to be able to use DGPS it's _not_ enough to calculate the error in your _position_ and transmit the correction to that as the roaming unit may be using different satellites to you - you have to transmit the error on each satellite signal. Some Garmin units let you extract this data using an undocumented API.
That's a good thing - as wealth flows out of the US where it has been hoarded in recent years it will flow into poor countries. This will raise the standard of living there, whilst the standard of living in the US drops - evenutally they should meet somewhere in the middle, bar fluctuations.
It won't quite work like that (because it's not a perfect capitalist market) but it's close. Look at the standard of living rises that have occured in the now-maturing tiger economies and even China - the next big wave might be Africa (we can hope).
You don't see a _change_ in colour shift if the photons go right by the craft. A change in colour shift proportionally equal to a change in energy.
The rebuttal is pretty interesting, it rests on a fairly simple principle:
When the photons are travelling towards the sail an observer at the light source will see a red shift (doppler effect at work here).
When the photons are travelling away from the sail an observer at the light source will see a blue shift.
Because the observer hasn't changed position the shift can be attributed to a change in energy, which must have gone into the sail (as the only thing the photons encountered, assuming a perfect vaccume) meaning that the increased KE of the sail breaks no laws of physics.
...when you can skim that article and not need to look anything up.
Yup, in the UK A&E is where they do triage and emergency treatment. Roughly the same as the ER in American hospitals, but the rate of lawsuits to patients is lower ;o)
The system described in 'Airframe' by Micheal Crighton (sp?) - which is well worth a read if you can find a copy.
I thought that the XBox selling costs covered variable costs (ie the parts in the box), and so even if it doesn't entirley cover the fixed costs (ie the factory) at low volume it will do eventually when enough units have been shipped has been reached?
If this is the case then XBox Linux helps MS by raising the volumes (not to mention giving them better sales figures to lie about to their game makers).
If of course they are selling below variable cost then well, count me in for loads of the things - I have no problems attempting to bankrupt the swine who injected cash into SCO to prolong their litigation.
my toaster to be a sexual aid
If you ask your local A&E docs (or ER for the Americans) they will tell you that plenty of people use a toaster as a sexual aid in it's unmodified form.
With the labels and the studios getting more and more involved in distributing directly to the customer, is this signalling the end for the middle men?
:o)
People like Amazon will have a hard time selling music if everything from AOL Time Warner and Sony (for example) is only available direct. After all in the online space AOL TW has absolutley no need of Amazon - they are a big enough brand that people will be happy enough to buy things from them, and location is not an issue.
Unfortunatly I can't see the removal of the cut that the middle man gets going to the consumer or even the artist.
It'll be a good things for us geeks on a digital boycott of DRM enabled media however - you won't have to go looking to find out which ones are AOL TW productions, you can just avoid shopping at their e-store
Bear in mind that Boeing Civilian Aircraft is not subsidised by the US Gov't... but then they brought their new 767 tankers at 10 times the normal cost.
Airbus is not subsidised by the EU gov'ts... but they get a sizeable loan on good terms for R&D use.
Governments are governments - when they want to fund something, but are not allowed to, they just find another way to pour the cash in.
This is where Gentoo seems to really win out - IME the Gentoo source (soon to be source+package) repository seems to be second to none. It's well organised, easy to search, centralised, always up to date and very very fast.
Except that dumping $2m worth of stock on the market might just cause the share price to implode!
We can hope anyway.
Linux on the desktop scratches my itch. I can do everything I want to (even games) and if I can't do something I can usually knock up a script or a bit of C to bend it to my will.
:o)
Sure, if Linux was no longer 'sexy' I might have to give up playing some new releases (UT2k3 for example, or NWN) but I could live with that - the Quake engines were opened up way before Linux was a buzzword and they are still fun to play. There might have been more GPL game development too that way.
So in the long run all of the troll bitching about OSS desktops being 'not ready' or 'unsexy' means nothing. It'll carry on being used by the people who it is ready for, and the reast can join up gradually as it gets more mature or gains a feature they want. Doesn't mean much to me - and it's not like it's all going to stop working with vendor support yanked thanks to the GPL.
If you like it, use it. If you don't fix your problem or use something else. If everyone took that attitude towards Linux specifically and OSS in general the world would be a less irritating place
Recently Creative have done a fair bit of interest/benefit to the open source community, including:
Open sourcing their first stage OpenGL 2 compiler. (To drive adoption, this is good for us because OpenGL2 will work with Linux, DirectX doesnt.)
Providing information to develop open source drivers for Creative soundcards, including the info needed to develop the Audigy drivers and other associated kit - and hosting the development on their servers.
Releasing Linux drivers for their high end kit, showing their support publicly for the platform.
Sure, all this stuff benefits them too, but that's the point of Open Source stuff - scratch your own itch, and then let other people use it.
I know these latest drivers aren't open source, but that might change with time if they see a benefit from their other investments in the area.
One of the Darwin awards if for a guy who managed to kill himself with a 9V PPC battery, by sticking the electrods into his thumb. Whoops.
Since when did your PHB need a good reason to make a decision? He probably saw a picture of Tux and thought that a fat penguin wasn't the image his company wanted to project. I've seen projects canned for even sillier reasons than that, believe it or not.
When I _phone_ tech support half the trouble is describing things without using tech jargon. They seem to get confused very easily.
Greedy overcharging telcos make grid computing over the internet more expensive than traditional supercomputing, unless you can get people to pay for you (SETI).
Why does 'Oberführer Von Oppenheim' keep popping into my head?
...as I use it to grab a lot of stuff. It would be a real pisser if they recognised what it could do to them and shut it down before it was (technically and mind share wise) ready to go underground.
Ultimitly if you piss off your developers AND your customers...
...you will fit in perfectly in the Microsoft Windows world. Nice to see Adobe joining like minded people ;o)