Agreed. I went into the trouble of trying to run this under Linux. the supplied batch files didn't work - it was missing files due to bad paths. the java application required a HUGE meddling around, choosing the settings, creating tests... I gave up. I'm not *that* motivated to help.
If you're trying to design a public test, the goal is to make it as simple as possible. An online application is an absolute must here.
I would be surprised if there will be anymore than a few hundred responses to this, all from a very specific demographic, Hardly a representative sample of the general population.
It's usually a nice feedback as to when my computer is using the hardrive... lets me know if something is wrong, or if something's going on that i'm not expecting.
Usually, it's also active for short bursts and then you the heads stop moving and it becomes quiet again. Never stopped me from sleeping in the same room with a computer...
the actual rotation of the plate? i can really barely hear that anyway.
I had several ideas which i pitched to Venture Capitalists. They all had no problems signing an NDA and even offered to sign one as soon as I approached them.
This is a very common and accepted practice. VCs are looking for good ideas all the time.
instead direct our inovative talents at something new. You know, these are all parallel efforts. Different people have different interests, and the people who will innovate screen design can't just "divert" their talent towards, say, stem cell research.
Some people, don't want or simply can't innovate.. so would you suggest they just stop whatever it is they're doing because we "don't need" any more incremental improvements?
From my point of view... every little helps and this is not waste. Having them doing nothing would be a waste.
"This could conceivably let a user do all of their" I wonder what the true percentage of users who do not require anything but an office suite to do all their work?
Why do people get the impression that most of the working people are lawyers or secretaries (the only type of workers that could arguably do all their work with on an office suite)? Even accountants use software other than a spreadsheet...
I for one, didn't have any use for a "complete" office suite for years... and the parts that I did use, were mostly for viewing "administrative" documents that were sent to me (obviously, by the only true users of these office applications).
I was using Limited bandwidth, in the sense of finite bandwidth. That mean, not unbound (with a limit).
To ideally represent a square wave, one requires an infinite portion of the spectrum. (Ever seen a sinc function?) - that is impossible with current technology. therefore, we modulate signals, such as square waves and transform them to a finite bandwidth approximate representation.
You might be surprised to learn that "square waves" aren't traveling as is on the lines... they are being modulated in a way that makes them less susceptible to noise, and span across a limited bandwidth... this has the side effect of making them look more like a finite combination of sine waves.
Besides, copper telephone lines used for ADSL aren't shielded either.
Well, you need to measure the ratio of what you have to lose compared to the effort you need to put to change it.
These are large sacrifices if all they can achieve is a "little" bit more privacy. The government already took my fingerprints when I got my visa and when i got drafted to the military. Them having another copy of my fingerprints, is no big deal to me.
So why would I risk my career and vacations for that?
If you were talking about a TRUE revolution... then that's something entirely different. But I remain unconvinced of the importance of these acts, for now - and until that changes - these inconveniences will continue being VERY large sacrifices.
How many people do you know who would sacrifice their career or their personal life for this change to happen?
You can't avoid traveling for a "small amount of personal sacrifice" - it's give up your work (which requires you to travel) or give up on that holiday/vacation that you've been waiting for for so many months. These are VERY large sacrifices for no guaranteed success.
It's an Audio/Video container format, it does not define how the video is compressed in terms of algorithms and whatever, but it does add useful meta-data - nontheless it is a CODEC!
How in the world you're expecting to use an OLD codec to reencode a video stored in a NEW codec, to reduce the file-size of a video by a factor of 5, while NOT losing HUGE amounts of picture quality, is vastly beyond my comprehension. That's probably because you have a very limited capacity of comprehending things.
The parent said: "you could get a pretty good HD quality movie down to about 8GB with Divx, without any real quality drop"
An intelligent observer might note (this is probably the part you're having difficulties with), that a newer codec does not necessarily mean a higher compression ratio.
Some codecs are invented for the sole purpose of adding meta-info to a media file, adding DRM, or changing the way it can be streamed (or not) over a network.
In fact, one can create a new codec (notice the magic key-word NEW) that does nothing what-so-ever and actually performs far worse than 'cat movie.raw.uncompressed >/dev/null' in terms of throughput.
And Yet, it would be newer. (You're probably so shocked by this point that you're starting to doubt your faith and upbringing - that's about time if you ask me)
You see, having a "NEW" thing does not imply anything on the "PROPERTIES" of the "NEW" thing. And certainly does not imply anything regarding the compression ratio.
Getting back on topic, many people are very happy with the quality that can be achieved with XviD using a few gigs of data and can barely tell the difference between that and a H.264 uber NEW 25+MBps HD+++ codec.
I happen to find this feature invaluable, so much that I went further and installed the myurlbar_a extension, to mimic this awesome feature on firefox 2.
Slashdot Mirror
That's actually a common misconception.
US foreign aid to Israel is limited to commodities purchased back from US companies: Israel cannot spend that money in any other way.
The money goes back to US companies like Boeing or Lockheed martin when Israel purchases fighter jets.
You can rest assured, that university research projects in Israel don't see a dime from US tax payer money. (Unless it's some US D.O.D joint effort)
Agreed.
I went into the trouble of trying to run this under Linux.
the supplied batch files didn't work - it was missing files due to bad paths. the java application required a HUGE meddling around, choosing the settings, creating tests... I gave up. I'm not *that* motivated to help.
If you're trying to design a public test, the goal is to make it as simple as possible. An online application is an absolute must here.
I would be surprised if there will be anymore than a few hundred responses to this, all from a very specific demographic, Hardly a representative sample of the general population.
But Hard-drive noise never seemed to bother me.
It's usually a nice feedback as to when my computer is using the hardrive... lets me know if something is wrong, or if something's going on that i'm not expecting.
Usually, it's also active for short bursts and then you the heads stop moving and it becomes quiet again. Never stopped me from sleeping in the same room with a computer...
the actual rotation of the plate? i can really barely hear that anyway.
Too bad the tests were done in the UK...
(It's even in the summary for crying out loud...)
You're naively asking for an OS recommendation on Slashdot?
talk about predictability of results...
This spurs engine sounds just like an extra GPU...
Why not just go with CUDA or some other GP-GPU platform and avoid the hassle?
I know nVidia and AMD/ATI are doing H.264 decoding in hardware using their GPUs... I'm sure you can get software for encoders too.
Bullshit.
I had several ideas which i pitched to Venture Capitalists. They all had no problems signing an NDA and even offered to sign one as soon as I approached them.
This is a very common and accepted practice. VCs are looking for good ideas all the time.
They were awful. they gave me a headache so i stopped reading through it.
Drobo is Too Slow.
Their website says Up to 22MB/s. Really bad considering a single drive today can perform about twice as fast.
Source: http://www.drobo.com/products_drobo_specifications.html#products_nav
it depends on convention.
If an object has methods that operate on himself,
then wife.bitchSlap() cannot be ambiguous, as it is a method of wife.
We can define an interface, say:
public interface BitchSlappable {
public void bitchSlap();
}
and a base wife class, like:
public class Wife implements BitchSlappable {
@Override
public bitchSlap() {
System.out.println("I was bitch-slapped!");
}
}
Therfore, you can clearly see that bitchSlap() is an operation performed on the wife object.
A slightly better OO design would go:
While (true) {
wife.bitchSlap();
}
Where the "me" is an inherent part of the context.
(i.e. wife implies you)
What? They suddenly just brightened up?
It's all about money, right?
So if the defense department or the military will sponsor this, then its most likely to be something of use to them.
I think you should complain to construction or realestate companies,for not putting money into robotics.
The good part is that these things advance the state of robotics and will make a house building robot a little bit easier to design.
Some people, don't want or simply can't innovate.. so would you suggest they just stop whatever it is they're doing because we "don't need" any more incremental improvements?
From my point of view... every little helps and this is not waste. Having them doing nothing would be a waste.
Actually, Ohms law is just a specific case of Gauss's Law - one of the four Maxwell Equations.
"This could conceivably let a user do all of their"
I wonder what the true percentage of users who do not require anything but an office suite to do all their work?
Why do people get the impression that most of the working people are lawyers or secretaries (the only type of workers that could arguably do all their work with on an office suite)?
Even accountants use software other than a spreadsheet...
I for one, didn't have any use for a "complete" office suite for years... and the parts that I did use, were mostly for viewing "administrative" documents that were sent to me (obviously, by the only true users of these office applications).
I was using Limited bandwidth, in the sense of finite bandwidth. That mean, not unbound (with a limit).
To ideally represent a square wave, one requires an infinite portion of the spectrum. (Ever seen a sinc function?) - that is impossible with current technology. therefore, we modulate signals, such as square waves and transform them to a finite bandwidth approximate representation.
You might be surprised to learn that "square waves" aren't traveling as is on the lines... they are being modulated in a way that makes them less susceptible to noise, and span across a limited bandwidth... this has the side effect of making them look more like a finite combination of sine waves. Besides, copper telephone lines used for ADSL aren't shielded either.
Well, they need to post those Bin-Laden tapes to youtube somewhere...
No, an offensive measure would be more like destroying the person's computer, thus taking away his ability to attack you.
Well, you need to measure the ratio of what you have to lose compared to the effort you need to put to change it.
These are large sacrifices if all they can achieve is a "little" bit more privacy. The government already took my fingerprints when I got my visa and when i got drafted to the military. Them having another copy of my fingerprints, is no big deal to me.
So why would I risk my career and vacations for that?
If you were talking about a TRUE revolution... then that's something entirely different. But I remain unconvinced of the importance of these acts, for now - and until that changes - these inconveniences will continue being VERY large sacrifices.
How many people do you know who would sacrifice their career or their personal life for this change to happen?
You can't avoid traveling for a "small amount of personal sacrifice" - it's give up your work (which requires you to travel) or give up on that holiday/vacation that you've been waiting for for so many months. These are VERY large sacrifices for no guaranteed success.
Well, let's reffer to wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec
"A codec is a device or program capable of performing encoding and decoding on a digital data stream or signal."
Do you know the Matroska Project?
http://www.matroska.org/
It's an Audio/Video container format, it does not define how the video is compressed in terms of algorithms and whatever, but it does add useful meta-data - nontheless it is a CODEC!
some kind'a expert you are...
The parent said: "you could get a pretty good HD quality movie down to about 8GB with Divx, without any real quality drop"
An intelligent observer might note (this is probably the part you're having difficulties with), that a newer codec does not necessarily mean a higher compression ratio.
Some codecs are invented for the sole purpose of adding meta-info to a media file, adding DRM, or changing the way it can be streamed (or not) over a network.
In fact, one can create a new codec (notice the magic key-word NEW) that does nothing what-so-ever and actually performs far worse than 'cat movie.raw.uncompressed >
And Yet, it would be newer. (You're probably so shocked by this point that you're starting to doubt your faith and upbringing - that's about time if you ask me)
You see, having a "NEW" thing does not imply anything on the "PROPERTIES" of the "NEW" thing. And certainly does not imply anything regarding the compression ratio.
Getting back on topic,
many people are very happy with the quality that can be achieved with XviD using a few gigs of data and can barely tell the difference between that and a H.264 uber NEW 25+MBps HD+++ codec.
That is what the parent meant.
I happen to find this feature invaluable, so much that I went further and installed the myurlbar_a extension, to mimic this awesome feature on firefox 2.